XIII
According to what we had said in our Zermatt letter, if the boys had not rejoined us by the morning of August 11th, we would continue over the Gemmi Pass and back to Grindelwald by ourselves.
We talked over the pros and cons, but could see no reason for changing this. We could not figure out any explanation for their not having caught up with us, if they had made an effort to do so. The thirty-two or three miles down grade on a good road, was a long day’s walk, especially in view of the heat of the last part, but it was by no means prohibitive. We had walked almost as far several times ourselves, and the young men always gave us to understand that they had plenty of reserve strength which our style of walking made no drafts on. The only inference seemed to be that they had stayed quietly in Zermatt and sent home for money. We therefore felt that we had been abandoned, so we cast the ungrateful wretches from our minds and started forth.
Strange to say, although deprived of the stimulus of masculine walking, we kept nearer to the Baedeker time schedule this day than we had ever done before. He allows three and a half hours for the walk from Leuk to Leuk Baden, which we made in four.
It was rather warm all the way, for our rise in altitude was just about balanced by the advance towards midday. For a long time we were looking down into the Rhone valley and across to the mountains on the other side, then we struck north towards the divide, and the foothills closed up behind us.
We reached Leuk Baden about half-past eleven, got our lunch in a restaurant that offered us a little table on a second-story balcony overhanging the main street, visited the baths, which were at that hour deserted, and continued on our way. We felt a mild curiosity to see the patrons of the baths disporting themselves in the pools, but not enough to keep us until the afternoon bathing hour.
The thermal establishments are large, though rather dingy. Besides many corridors of private baths, there is the great common pool, where everybody taking the cure is supposed to disport himself or herself for several hours morning and afternoon standing up to the chin in water, while the public gazes from a balcony. These rendezvous are said to be very animated, with plenty of talking and singing. There are also little trays floating around on which tea or other refreshments can be served, or books, or writing materials placed. Why, in such prolonged promiscuous soaking, the afflicted do not interchange microbes and emerge with three or four diseases instead of one, I do not pretend to say.
There is something peculiarly unattractive about skin diseases (which is what the Leuk springs are used for) even if you call them cutaneous disorders, and Belle Soeur and I gathered our garments particularly close around us all the time we were there and avoided touching things. It was partly because of this creepy, crawly feeling that we did not wait for the bathing hour, and partly because we did not know how long it might take us to climb the three-thousand-foot rock wall between us and the pass. Baedeker says two and a half hours, and if it took us twice that time, we would need the whole afternoon. It did not look like a place where one would care to be caught after dark.
I do not suppose there is anything quite like the Gemmi Pass anywhere. The cliff is absolutely vertical. It looks as if you could let down a bucket by a rope from the top and pull it up full of water without spilling. The Cantons of Berne and Valais built the path up it way back in 1736-41, and a very excellent path it is, all hewn out of the solid rock and winding back and forth in steep zigzags or round and round like a spiral staircase. Baedeker says the path is five feet wide. I should have put it at nearer three. But certainly it is wide enough for entire safety, though a person inclined to dizziness would not enjoy the look downward. The grade was so steep that our feet were bent upwards in an acute angle to the axis of the leg, and the little-used muscles involved ached for days afterwards.