The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches

by David Starr Jordan

As one approaches the Hospice he is met by a noisy band of great dogs, yellow and white, with the loudest of bass voices, barking incessantly, eager to pull you out of the snow, and finding that you do not need this sort of rescue, apparently equally eager to tear you to pieces for having deceived them. Classical names these dogs still bear—names worthy of the mountain long sacred to Jupiter, on which the Hospice is built—Jupitère, Junon, Mars, Vulcan, Pluton, the inevitable Leon, and the indomitable Turc, and all have for the traveler such a greeting as only a band of big, idle dogs can give. These dogs are not so large nor so well kept as the Saint Bernard dogs we see in American cities, but they have the same great head, huge feet and legs, and the same intelligent eye, as if they were capable of doing anything if they would only stop barking long enough to think of something else.

The inside of the house corresponds to its outer appearance. Thick, heavy triple doors admit you to a cold hall floored with stone. Adjoining this is a parlor, likewise floored with the coldest of stone, and this parlor is used as the dining-room and waiting-room for travelers. Its walls are hung with pictures, many of them valuable works of art, the gifts of former guests, while its chilly air is scantily warmed by a small fireplace, on which whoever will may throw pine boughs and fragments of the spongy wood of the fir. By this fire the guests take their turn in getting partly warmed, then pass away to shiver in the outer wastes of the room.

[Illustration: Hospice of the Great Saint Bernard.]

In this room the travelers are served with plain repasts, princes and peasants alike, coarse bread, red wine, coffee, and boiled meat; everything about the table neat and clean, but with no pretense at pampering the appetite. You take whatever you please without money and without price. Should you care to pay your way, or care to help on the work of the Hospice, you can leave your mite, be it large or small, in a box near the door of the chapel. The guest-rooms are plain but comfortable—a few religious pictures on the walls; tall, old-fashioned bedsteads, with abundant feather-beds and warm blankets. For one night only all persons who come are welcome. The next day all alike, unless sick or crippled, must pass on.

There are about a dozen monks in the Hospice now, all of them young men, devoted to their work, and some of them at least intelligent and generously educated. The hard climate and the exposure of winter breaks down their health before they are old. When they become unable to carry on the duties of the Hospice, they are sent down the mountains to Martigny, while others come up to take their places. There are beautiful days in the summer-time, but no season of the year is free from severity. Even in July and August the ground is half the time white with snow. Terrible blasts sweep through the mountains; for the commonest summer shower in the valleys below is, in these heights, a raging snow-storm, and its snow-laden winds are never faced with impunity.

We visited the Hospice in July, 1890. We drove from Aosta up to Saint Rémy, a little village crowded in on the side of the mountain, where the pine-trees cease. The light rain which followed us out from Saint Rémy changed to snow as we came up the rocky slopes. By the time we reached the Hospice it became a blinding sleet. The ground was only whitened, so that the dogs who came barking to meet us had no need to dig us out from the drifts. In this they seemed disappointed, and barked again.

Once inside the walls, one cared not to go out. Many travelers came up the mountain that day. Among them were a man and his wife, Italian peasants, who had been over the mountains to spend a day or two with friends in some village on the Swiss side, and were now returning home. Man and woman were dressed in their peasants' best, and with them was a little girl, some four years old. The child carried a toy horse in her hands, the gift of some friend below. As they toiled up the steep path in the blinding snow, all of them thinly clad and dressed only for summer, they seemed chilled through and through, while the child was almost frozen. The monks came out to meet them, took the child in their arms, and brought her and her parents to the fire, covered her shoulders with a warm shawl, and, after feeding them, sent them down the mountain to their home in the valley, warmed and filled. This was a simple act, the easiest of all their many duties, but it was a very touching one. Such duties make up the simple round of their lives.

In the storms of winter the work of the Hospice takes a sterner cast. From November to May the gales are incessant. The snow piles up in billows, and in the whirling clouds all traces of human occupation are obliterated. There are many peasants and workingmen who go forth from Italy into Switzerland and France, and who wish to return home when their summer labors are over. To these the pass of the Great Saint Bernard is the only route which they can afford. The long railway rides and the great distances of the Simplon and the Saint Gotthard would mean the using up of their scanty earnings. If they go home at all, they must trust their lives to the storms and the monks, and take the path which leads by the Hospice. So they come over day after day, the winter long. No matter how great the storm, the dogs are on the watch. In the last winter, of the many who came, not one was lost.