It is curious, too, to hear, as one may, most authentically, the length of time life can be preserved beneath the snow. Individuals have been buried so long as three entire days, and yet taken out alive. The cold, of which it would be supposed they had suffered dreadfully, seems scarcely very great; and the porous nature of the snow, and possibly the chinks and crevices left between falling masses, have usually left air sufficient for respiration. That individuals in such circumstances of peril are not, always at least, devoid of their exercise of the faculties, I remember one instance which is sufficiently convincing. It was in the Via Mala, about five miles from the village of Splügen, where, in the year 1829, the little cabriolet that conveyed the mail was swept away by an avalanche. The calamity was not known for full seven or eight hours afterwards, when some travellers from Andeer reaching the spot, found the road blocked up by snow, and perceived a portion of the wooden rail of the road, and a fragment of a horse-harness adhering to it, half-way down the precipice. The guides of the party, well accustomed to reason from such sad premises, at once saw what had happened. Conceiving, however, that the driver had been carried down over the cliff, and consequently to certain death, they directed their sole care to clearing a passage for the travellers. In so doing, they proceeded with long poles to sound the snow, and ascertain to what depth it lay unhardened. It was in one of these “explorations,” and when the pole had sunk above ten feet deep into a mass of soft unfrozen snow, that the man who held it found himself unable to withdraw the staff, and called his comrades to aid him. They soon perceived, however, that the resistance gradually yielded, and from the instinct peculiar to the “hand”—another illustration for Sir Charles Bell—they recognised that it must be the grip of human fingers which held the other end of the pole. They immediately began to excavate on the spot, and in half an hour liberated the poor postilion of the mail car, who, although hearing the shouts and cries of the party for nearly an hour over his head, could not succeed in making his own voice heard, and but for the fortunate accident of the pole must have perished.
Many curious escapes were told to me, but this appeared most singular of all; and now I come back to Steuben, or rather to the wild mountain above it, over which, by a succession of windings, the road leads which joins the Vorarlberg to the Tyrol. About one third of the ascent accomplished, you come upon an abrupt turning of the way, in rounding which a wide carriage can scarcely escape grating on the rock on one side, while from the window on the opposite, the traveller looks down upon * gorge actually yawning at his feet; the low barrier of wall, which does not rise above the nave of the wheel, is a very frail and insignificant protection ok such a spot, but when hid from view, as it is to those seated in a carriage, the effect of the gulf is really enough to shake common nerves. A little inscription upon a stone in this wall records the name of the engineer—Donegani, if I remember aright—who, deeming this spot the triumph of his skill, has selected it whereon to inscribe his achievement. There is another meaning connected with the place, but unrecorded; it could not, indeed, have been transmitted like that of the Engineer, for when the event of which it treats occurred, there was neither wall nor railing, and the road passed some twelve feet higher up, over a ledge of rock, and actually seemed to jut out above the precipice. There is, indeed, a memorial of the transaction to which I allude, but it stands about twelve hundred feet down in the gorge below,—a small wooden cross of rudest workmanship, with the equally rudely inscribed words, “Der Vorspann’s Grab.”
Now for the story, which happily is short.
It was late on a severe evening of winter, as a calèche drawn by two horses drew up to the door of the post-house at Steuben; for then, as now, Steuben was the last post-station before commencing the ascent of the Arlberg. The travellers, two in number, wore military cloaks and foraging caps; but what the precise rank, or to what arm of the service they belonged, not even the prying observations of the host could fathom. Their orders were for fresh horses immediately to cross the mountain, and although the snow-drift was falling fast, and the night dark as pitch, they peremptorily insisted on proceeding. The post regulations of those days were not very stringent and arbitrary; as a post-master may seem nowadays, he was nothing to the autocrat that once ruled the comings and goings of unhappy travellers.
When he averred that his horses had done enough—that it was a saint’s-day—that the weather was too bad or his postilions too weary, the case was hopeless, and the traveller was consigned, without appeal, to the consolations of his own philosophy.
It chanced that on this occasion the whole disposable cavalry of the Post consisted of two blind mares, which were both too old and weak to tempt the cravings of the Commissary, who a few days before had seized on all the draught-cattle to convey stores to Feldkirch, at that time menaced by a French force under Massena.
The officers, however, were urgent in their demand; it was of the last importance that they should reach Inspruck by the following evening. At last, half by menace, half by entreaty, it was arranged that the two old mares should be harnessed to the carriage, the host remonstrating all the while on the inability of the expedient, and averring that, without a Vorspann, a relay of horses, to lead at the steepest parts of the mountain, the attempt would be fruitless. “Nay,” added he, “if you doubt me, ask the boy who is sleeping yonder, and has been driving the Vorspann for years over the Arlberg.” The travellers turned and beheld on a heap of straw, in the corner of the kitchen, a poor little boy, whose ragged uniform of postilion had evidently reached him at third or fourth hand, so large and loosely did it hang around his slender figure. He was sleeping soundly, as well he might, for he had twice crossed the mountain to St. Cristoph on that same day.
“And this book,” said one of the travellers, taking a very tattered and well-thumbed volume which had dropped from the sleeper’s fingers, “has this poor little fellow time to read?”
“He contrives to do it somehow,” said the host, laughing; “nay, more, as you may see there, he has begun to teach himself French. Since he heard that the French army was about to invade us, he has never ceased his studies, sitting up half the night working at that old grammar there, for which he gave all his month’s earnings.”
“And what maybe his reason for this?” said the elder traveller, evidently interested in the recital.