A SIGN-POST
But then, crossing the Alps alone was practically unknown, although only on the Mt. Cenis route were professional guides employed as a matter of course. These guides had their own special name, "marrons" and a special function, to "ramasser" the traveller on his way to France, down the slope between the summit of the pass and Lanslebourg, when it was covered with frozen snow. The traveller took his seat in a rush-seated chair on runners; one "marron" in front and one behind. The one in front had a strap round his chest fastened to the chair; he took a few steps, and the chair did the rest; if the direction became amiss or the pace too furious, the "marron" behind the chair guided or checked it with an alpenstock. The distance was a league; the time fifteen minutes. Going towards Italy you would have found fifty or sixty persons coming to meet you at Lanslebourg, hat in hand, offering their services as "marrons" or as horse-owners. Dismounting, one would have held the bridle, one the stirrup, one yourself. Two or three struggle for the privilege of taking your horse to the stable and your trunk to your room, but the latter privilege is not one to be granted lightly; it was not in sound only that "marron" resembled "larron." The traveller's own horse was sent on after being shod with calkins, and he himself followed in one of the sledges, used in ascents, litter-fashion, by four "marrons," who carried it, two at a time, turn and turn about; glasses to protect the eyes from the snow-light formed part of the stock-in-trade of the local pedlars.
At the top would be found "La Chapelle des Transis," the wayfarers' mortuary, not empty probably; in March 1578 it contained fifteen bodies.[107] After heavy snowfalls the monks of the neighbouring hospice of St. Nicolas used to send out search parties; corpses discovered were examined for proofs of orthodoxy, beads, for instance, failing which the bodies were left to the beasts of prey.
During this period the Mt. Cenis route came to be used more exclusively for passing between France and Italy than had previously been the case, doubtless as a result of the transference of the capital of Savoy from Chambéry to Turin in 1559, between which towns this route was the most direct. Yet notwithstanding that travellers note here, and here alone, that the population on either side of the pass had no other means of livelihood than by ministering to travellers, the most frequented route must be considered the Brenner. It was the only one which wheeled traffic could pass, though even there the waggon had to be kept from falling off the road "by force of men's shoulders," according to Moryson.
Of the experiences to be met with in crossing an Alpine pass other than the Brenner, there is no better account than that which the Infanta Clara Eugenia wrote home concerning the St. Gothard. Even before reaching Bellinzona the luggage carts had to be exchanged for mules. And at Bellinzona, too, she notes that there was not a woman without an enormous goitre; and, indeed, the frequency with which travellers remark on the number of those afflicted in this way leaves no doubt but that the disease was far more prevalent then than now. It was generally accepted that the cause lay in the water, but one old resident, at least, disbelieved this, since he had one himself, although, as he told a tourist, he had never drunk water in his life. The worst of the Infanta's journey occupied the four days after leaving Bellinzona; the way so narrow that a horse could scarcely walk and the litters had continually to be taken off the mules and transferred to men. This narrow path, of course, lay always with the mountain-side high above it and a precipice and a river below. The ladies' litters were by no means according to royal standards; just four poles and a linen seat, from which the royal legs dangled; but she rode most of the way, feeling no fear of anything but the "snow-bridges," two of which had to be crossed. On the farther side there was the "Devil's Bridge" to pass also, or, as she names it, "Hell Bridge"; which now does not even exist; twenty paces long above the Reuss, so far above that the river was out of sight, although the rush of it resounded so loudly that she could not hear herself speak. The whole road had been specially prepared for her passage, and among the preparations was the erecting of railings along "Hell Bridge"; in the ordinary way there were none, the wind being so strong in the narrow gorge as always to sweep them away very soon. He who passed by the St. Gothard under ordinary conditions, and the Furka, too, wore gloves and boots studded with nails to preserve his hold; and the average Alpine bridge answered to the description which Cellini gives of those he found on the Simplon route, a few tree-trunks laid down. Another Italian going home that way says the last bridge was thirty feet by two and bent in the middle; he crossed it at night, coming as it did among the "last four leagues"(?) between the summit and Domodossola, all of which he and his traversed in pitch-darkness among precipices, the foremost calling at intervals "Ave Maria" and the hindmost answering "Gratiâ plena."
Most travellers rode horses or mules where they could, and led, or crawled with them, the rest of the way; but sledges were also in use, in which case, Moryson was told, "it sometimes happens the sledge whereon the passenger sits is cast out of the way and hangs down in a most deep valley with the passenger's head downward. Woe be to him, then, if he let his hold go, or the harness tying the sledge to the horse should break." Moryson himself had only passed by the Bernina and the Brenner, the former of which seems to have ranked third in order of popularity in spite of the track being no more than a yard wide in places. The Splügen was used as often, perhaps, but when the two St. Bernards and the Gemmi have been added to the list, there is an end of those frequented by tourists. One used the San Marco and Sir Henry Wotton another, which cannot now be identified, when the ordinary ones were shut against him by plague. But for an instance of some one keeping to the coast between France and Italy, it seems necessary to go back to Beatis in 1518, a man whose narrative is obviously trustworthy; yet, after mentioning that it was so dangerous that few rode, he adds what may sound incredible except in his own words. "Ben vero che questo Camino è di sorte Che in tale giornata di XV miglia solamente le bestie se besognarno ferrare quactro et cinque volte." For all practical purposes, moreover, the mountains near Grenoble must be considered as part of the Alps, lying, as they did, across the route of all who crossed Mt. Cenis, and being no less fearful than any of the Alpine passes themselves. At one point, nearest Aiguebelette, horses and mules were specially trained for the ascent and descent, holes having been cut in the rock which made the way more practicable for animals accustomed to them, but almost impossible to any others, unless riderless.
Elsewhere, wherever mountains have to be traversed, similar conditions prevailed. Near Spalato, it is true, the path was railed in some distance, the only railings of the kind in Europe, apparently; but near Mt. Olympus one looked over the edge of the precipice he had to ride along and saw carcasses of horses, caught as they fell, or fallen, to warn him to be careful. Says one who knew both, the road over Pen-maen-mawr in these days was more fearful than any Alpine way. As for Spain, there were quite a number of main roads which allowed nothing more than single file here and there: the pass into Castile on the road from Bayonne, for instance, and another between Granada and Cartagena, on entering which it was customary for travellers to tighten their belts and say an "Ave Maria" for those who had lost their lives thereabouts. Above San Sebastian ten men might hold the road against an army and no beasts but mules could be trusted on it, nor on the pass from France into Aragon, so steep that no man was safe there; while south of Santander, according to Sir Richard Wynn, for two leagues the road was two feet broad and one hundred perpendicular fathoms above the river.
Neither were the efforts thus entailed brightened by the idea of mountaineering as a form of pleasure. Probably the only recorded climb undertaken during this period with no other object than that of getting to the top is the ascent of "Les Jumelles," the highest peak near Pau, an ascent known to us through De Thou. One M. de Candale started at four o'clock one May morning in the first half of the sixteenth century. Before half-way was reached, his younger companions were on the way down; they had come in their shirts and found the cold too much for them; M. de Candale was wearing a fur coat. At half-way the last trace of a human being was left behind, but he and some peasants reached the top with the help of ladders and grappling-irons and took measurements. It is characteristic enough of the age that De Thou's comments on the calculated height are a comparison with the reckonings of Apuleius and Plutarch concerning Olympus, which they considered the highest mountain in the world. Mediæval opinion put Mt. Sinai first, probably because that was the only mountain a mediæval Christian ever tried to get to the top of, a process of reasoning which may be traced in the guesses of these travellers, and in local opinion, as to which was the highest of the Alps; it is always one of those past which they endeavoured to make their way, St. Gothard or St. Bernard, for which they claim preëminence. Another fashion of reckoning is to calculate, not perpendicularly, but according to the apparent length of the way, which makes Mt. Quarantana "six miles high"; while one traveller has a unit of measurement entirely his own, a mountain being to him so many "towers" high, the tower in question being the belfry of Malines, his native place.