“A daring leader is a dangerous thing.”
Euripides.
On July 10, Croz and I went to Sierre, in the Valais, viâ the Col de Balme, the Col de la Forclaz, and Martigny. The Swiss side of the Forclaz is not creditable to Switzerland. The path from Martigny to the summit has undergone successive improvements in these latter years; but mendicants permanently disfigure it.
We passed many tired pedestrians toiling up this oven, persecuted by trains of parasitic children. These children swarm there like maggots in a rotten cheese. They carry baskets of fruit with which to plague the weary tourist. They flit around him like flies; they thrust the fruit in his face; they pester him with their pertinacity. Beware of them!—taste, touch not their fruit. In the eyes of these children, each peach, each grape, is worth a prince’s ransom. It is to no purpose to be angry; it is like flapping wasps—they only buzz the more. Whatever you do, or whatever you say, the end will be the same. “Give me something,” is the alpha and omega of all their addresses. They learn the phrase, it is said, before they are taught the alphabet. It is in all their mouths. From the tiny toddler up to the maiden of sixteen, there is nothing heard but one universal chorus of—“Give me something; will you have the goodness to give me something?”
From Sierre we went up the Val d’Anniviers to Zinal, to join our former companions, Moore and Almer. Moore was ambitious to discover a shorter way from Zinal to Zermatt than the two [pg 194]passes which were known.[145] He had shown to me, upon Dufour’s map, that a direct line, connecting the two places, passed exactly over the depression between the Zinal-Rothhorn and the Schallhorn. He was confident that a passage could be effected over this depression, and was sanguine that it would (in consequence of its directness) prove to be a quicker route than the circuitous ones over the Triftjoch and the Col Durand.
He was awaiting us, and we immediately proceeded up the valley, and across the foot of the Zinal glacier to the Arpitetta Alp, where a chalet was supposed to exist in which we might pass the night. We found it at length,[146] but it was not equal to our expectations. It was not one of those fine timbered chalets, with huge overhanging eaves, covered with pious sentences carved in unintelligible characters. It was a hovel, growing, as it were, out of the hill-side; roofed with rough slabs of slaty stone; without a door or window; surrounded by quagmires of ordure, and dirt of every description.
A foul native invited us to enter. The interior was dark; and, when our eyes became accustomed to the gloom, we saw that our palace was in plan about 15 by 20 feet; on one side it was scarcely five feet high, and on the other was nearly seven. On this side there was a raised platform, about six feet wide, littered with dirty straw and still dirtier sheepskins. This was the bedroom. The remainder of the width of the apartment was the parlour. The rest was the factory. Cheese was the article which was being fabricated, and the foul native was engaged in its manufacture. He was garnished behind with a regular cowherd’s one-legged stool, which gave him a queer, uncanny look when it was elevated in the air as he bent over into his tub; for the making of his cheese required him to blow into a tub for ten minutes at a [pg 195]time. He then squatted on his stool to gain breath, and took a few whiffs at a short pipe; after which he blew away more vigorously than before. We were told that this procedure was necessary. It appeared to us to be nasty. It accounts, perhaps, for the flavour possessed by certain Swiss cheeses.
Big, black, and leaden-coloured clouds rolled up from Zinal, and met in combat on the Moming glacier with others which descended from the Rothhorn. Down came the rain in torrents, and crash went the thunder. The herd-boys hurried under shelter, for the frightened cattle needed no driving, and tore spontaneously down the Alp as if running a steeple-chase. Men, cows, pigs, sheep, and goats forgot their mutual animosities, and rushed to the only refuge on the mountain. The spell was broken which had bound the elements for some weeks past, and the cirque from the Weisshorn to Lo Besso was the theatre in which they spent their fury.
A sullen morning succeeded an angry night. We were undecided in our council whether to advance or to return down the valley. Good seemed likely to overpower bad; so, at 5.40, we left the chalet en route for our pass [amidst the most encouraging assurances from all the people on the Alp that we need not distress ourselves about the weather, as it was not possible to get to the point at which we were aiming].[147]
Our course led us at first over ordinary mountain slopes, and then over a flat expanse of glacier. Before this was quitted, it was needful to determine the exact line which was to be taken. We were divided betwixt two opinions. I advocated that a course should be steered due south, and that the upper plateau of the Moming glacier should be attained by making a great detour to our right. This was negatived without a division. Almer declared in favour of making for some rocks to the south-west of the Schallhorn, and attaining the upper plateau of the glacier by mounting them. Croz advised a middle course, up some very [pg 196]steep and broken glacier. Croz’s route seemed likely to turn out to be impracticable, because much step-cutting would be required upon it. Almer’s rocks did not look good; they were, possibly, unassailable. I thought both routes were bad, and declined to vote for either of them. Moore hesitated, Almer gave way, and Croz’s route was adopted.