These post drivers are marvellously skilful at whip-snapping. They can almost crack out a tune with their whips, and they make a noise consistent with their ideas of the importance of their freight, or perhaps as a signal to the landlords that especial attention is required, as distinguished foreigners are coming; for, as they approached hotels, or drove into their court-yards, it was always with eight or a dozen pistol-like cracks in succession that brought out a bowing landlord and string of servants, who formed a double line from the carriage to the door, welcoming the tourist in with great deference and politeness. On the road the whip-cracks admonish all peasants, donkey-carts, and market-wagons to sheer off, and allow monsieur's carriage to pass; and, as he enters a little village, the fusillade from his lash brings half the population to the doors and windows.
Our first day's journey, after leaving Sion, was through the Rhone Valley—rather a hot ride, and tame and uninteresting after the grand views we had been enjoying. We passed Sierre on a hill-side, rattled over a bridge across the Rhone, having a view of pleasantly-wooded hills near at hand, and the great mountains in the background; then passed two or three other villages, and finally halted at a place called Tourtemagne for dinner. After this we pushed on, went past Visp, and in the afternoon trotted into Brieg, where, with a view to a good night's rest before the morrow's journey, we stopped for the night. After tea we had a magnificent view of sunset upon the lofty snow-clads above us, which fairly glowed in a halo of rose-pink—a beautiful and indescribable effect. Far away up on one of the mountain sides we were pointed to the road over which we were to journey on the morrow. After an early breakfast we started off with the usual fusillade of whip-cracks, and were soon upon the famous Simplon Road.
This magnificent road is one of the wonders of the old world. Its cost must have been enormous, and the cost of keeping it in such splendid condition very large, owing to the injury it must inevitably sustain from storms and avalanches during the winter season. The cost of the road is said to have averaged over three thousand pounds sterling per mile. The splendid engineering excites admiration from even the inexperienced in those matters. You go sometimes right up the very face of a steep mountain, that would seem to have originally been almost inaccessible, by means of a series of zigzags. Then again the road winds round a huge mountain wall, thousands of feet high on one side, with a yawning ravine thousands of feet deep on the other. Long tunnels pierce through the very heart of mountains. Bridges span dizzy heights and mad torrents. Great galleries, or shelters, protect some parts of the road, which are suspended midway up the mountain, from the avalanches which ever and anon thunder down from above. At one place, where a great a roaring cataract comes down, the road is conducted safely under the sheet, which scatters but a few drops of spray upon it, except the covered portion, as it leaps clear over the passage, and plunges into the deep abyss below, a mass of thundering foam.
This part of the road, we were told, although it was a section not six hundred feet long, was one of the most difficult to construct, and required the labor of a hundred men for over a year and a half before it could be completed, it being necessary in some places to suspend the workmen by ropes from above, until a platform and a footing could be built. And, indeed, standing there with the torrent roaring above, and leaping clear over our heads away down into that rocky gorge, the clean, broad road the only foothold about there, we could only wonder at human skill, perseverance, and ingenuity in overcoming natural obstacles. From the great glaciers far above the Kaltwasser come several other rushing cascades, one of which, as you approach, seems as if it would drop directly upon the road itself, but hits just short of it, and plunges directly under, so that you can stand on the arched bridge, and look right at it, as it comes leaping fiercely to wards you.
Murray gives the bridges, great and small, on this wonderful road between Brieg and Sesto as "six hundred and eleven, in addition to the far more vast and costly constructions, such as terraces of massive masonry, miles in length, ten galleries, either cut out of the living rock or built of solid stone, twenty houses of refuge to shelter travellers, and lodge the laborers constantly employed in taking care of the road. Its breadth is throughout at least twenty-five feet, in some places thirty feet, and the average slope nowhere exceeds six inches in six feet and a half."
After emerging from the Kaltwasser Glacier Gallery, we had a superb view of the Rhone Valley, with Brieg, which we had left in the morning, directly beneath us, while away across the valley, distinctly visible in the clear atmosphere, rose the Bernese Alps, with the Breithorn, and Aletshorn, and the great Aletsch Glacier distinctly visible. At the highest point of the pass is the Hospice, over six thousand two hundred feet above the level of the sea; and here we halted for a lunch, and then trudged on in advance, leaving the carriage and ladies to overtake us—enjoying the wild scenery of distant snow-capped mountains, great glaciers, with cascades pouring from their ruffled edges to the green valleys that were far below.
Soon after passing the little village of Simplon, we came to the never-to-be-forgotten ravine of Gondo, one of the wildest, grandest, and most magnificent gorges in the whole Alps. The ravine, as you proceed, grows narrower and narrower, with its huge, lofty walls of rock rising on either side. The furious River Diveria rushes through it like a regiment of white-plumed cavalry at full gallop, and its thundering roar is not unlike the tremendous rush of their thousand hoof-beats, as it goes up between these massy barriers. The gorge narrows till there is nought but road and river, with the black crags jutting out over the pathway, and we come to a huge black mass that seems a barrier directly across it; but through this the determined engineers have bored a great gallery, and we ride through a tunnel of six hundred and eighty-three feet in length, to emerge upon a new surprise, and a scene which called forth a shout of admiration from every one of us.
As we emerged from this dark, rocky grotto, we beheld the towering masses of rock on either side, like great walls of granite upholding, the blue masonry of heaven, that seemed bent like a vaulted arch above; and from one side, right at our very path, coming from far above with a roar like thunder, leaped a mass of foam, like a huge cascade of snowy ostrich plumes—the Fressinone Waterfall, which tossed its fine, scintillating spray upon the slender bridge that spanned the gorge, while the roaring cataract itself passed beneath, striking sixty or eighty feet below upon the black rocks. It is a magnificent cascade, and prepared us for the grandeur of the great gorge of Gondo, with its huge walls of rock rising two thousand feet high, which seemed, when we were hemmed in to their prison walls of black granite, as though there was no possible way out, except upwards to the strip of sky that roofed the narrow ravine.
Other cascades and waterfalls we saw, but none like the magnificent Fressinone, with the graceful and apparently slender-arched bridge, that almost trembled beneath its rush as we stood upon it—the huge rocky walls towering to heaven, the black entrance to the tunnel just beyond, looking, in the midst of this wild scene of terrific grandeur, like the cavern of some powerful enchanter—the wild, deep gorge, with the foaming waters swiftly gliding away in masses of tumbling foam far below, and all the surroundings so grand and picturesque as to make it no wonder that it is a favorite study for artists, as one of the most spirited of Alpine pictures.
We passed the granite pillar that marked the boundary line, and were in Italy; and soon after at the mountain custom-house and inn, where we were to dine. The officials are very polite, make scarce any examination whatever of the luggage of tourists; and our trunks remained undisturbed on the travelling carriage while we dined.