‘Perhaps.’ For she knew of a neighbour who might have a cow at home in the village. All the rest were on the alpe.
In about half an hour the meagre cheese, dried beef, and milk were set before us, for I saw that in such a house it would be better that I should invite the circumnavigator to take his meals with me: it would be soothing to his Australian sense of the dignity of man, and would save trouble to the good people. I afterwards came to a similar conclusion with respect to the second bed in my bedroom, for I could not suppose that there was any other room in the house available for guests to sleep in.
As to the meagre cheese, and dried beef, during the following three weeks, as must be the case with every pedestrian through the by ways of the Grisons, I had many opportunities of weighing their merits and demerits, undisturbed by any simultaneous consideration of other comestibles. The meagre cheese is made of skimmed milk in places where a market can be found for butter. Peist sells its butter at Coire; and so the good people of the place, and their few visitors, have to content themselves with cheese from which the butter has been extracted. It is not positively bad; but this negation of badness is its only merit. The dried beef is a production of the Grisons, for which they are indebted to their climate. At the altitude of their valleys, the air is so dry that for nine months out of the twelve meat has no tendency to decomposition. Availing themselves of this favourable condition they kill in the autumn the beef and pork they will require in the ensuing year. It is slightly salted and hung up to dry. Nothing more is done to it, except eating it. In three or four months time it is not only dried, but also cooked, that is to say the air has given it all the cooking it will ever receive. It has become as dry and hard as a board, and internally of the colour of an old mahogany table. Externally there is nothing to suggest the idea of meat; it is covered with cobwebs, dust and mould, and is undistinguishable from fragments of the mummies of the sacred bulls taken from the catacombs of the Serapeum at Memphis. When your host brings from his cellar the leg of the mummy of a Grison cow, shrunk to the dimensions of the human limb, and tells you that it is to be your dinner, you are disposed to advise him to take it to the trustees of the British Museum. He is, however, about to prepare some for your repast, and you watch the process with curiosity. It is a very simple one: the material is cut across the grain with a very sharp knife in shavings no thicker than writing-paper. Were it cut the length of the fibre it would be as unmanageable in the mouth as a piece of whipcord, or a fiddle-string. Curiosity again, somewhat stimulated by necessity, for the only alternative is the meagre cheese, at last impels you, with many misgivings, and after much deliberation, to carry one of the shavings to your mouth. After a week or two’s experience you will begin to think that it is not badly flavoured, nor unusually repugnant to the process of digestion.
It was not, however, my first essay in dining on mummy beef which brought me to this negative estimate of its qualities. My dinner, therefore, to-day was but a frugal one. While its remains were being removed, our host, to whom in some way or other our arrival had been communicated, entered the room, and seating himself on a chair which he had placed in the middle of it, lighted his pipe, as a preliminary to conversation. This presented an opportunity for inquiring whether the resources of the village could be made to supply a supper that might in some degree compensate for the shortcomings of the dinner. To every question a decided negative was returned. There was, however, one suggestion the good man could make. A neighbour had a hen; she might not be unwilling to part with the creature for a proper consideration; and there would be time to make it into something for supper. I was horrified. I looked on the author of the suggestion, seated in the middle of the room, in his blouse and with his pipe in his mouth, as an ogre, and who, besides being an ogre himself, was offensively taking me for a brother ogre. That this unprepared hen, the pet of the children, and the familiar acquaintance of all the village, should have its days, and its career, too, of usefulness, cut short; that it should be put into the pot before the life was well out of it, merely to make a very doubtful addition to my supper! The blood of the poor bird would be upon me. The first mouthful would choke me; and that would be only what I had deserved. I peremptorily forbad the repetition of so shocking a proposal.
It was now the daughter’s turn, and her suggestion was soup and a salad. This was a delightful suggestion; and there could be no doubt but that the soup and salad would at seven o’clock prove as good as the suggestion sounded charming. But of what was the soup to be made? Curiosity could not but be awakened, though I suppressed it for the present, thinking it better to give the soup that proof which a pudding is known to require. In due time the opportunity came for applying this proof: but all that it enables me to say unhesitatingly is—this I say only to those who can participate in what was my own curiosity—that herbs, onions, spices, and milk were among the ingredients. I even lean to the opinion that nothing more had been put into the pot. First, because these were all the elements of the composition I could detect, either by the eye or palate; and next because there was nothing else in the village that could have been added except mummy beef, and I cannot believe that these frugal people would for a moment have entertained the thought of expending any of their little store of that precious material for such a purpose. No: I believe that it was rigidly a potage of herbs; and that there was in it no element that would have disqualified it for being placed, at their great annual festival, before the President of the Vegetarian Society.
The beds and bedroom were as clean as one could wish. The basins were coloured pie-dishes; the goblets were black wine bottles. At five o’clock the next morning we found that the goodnatured contriver of the soup had managed to procure some butter from the alpe for our breakfast. The coffee was quite up to the usual hotel mark. The bill for dinner, supper, bed, and breakfast for two persons was 2s. 8d.; that there may be no mistake, 3 francs 20 cents.
August 4.—At Langwies, where the new char-road ended, the path for the first time began to descend towards the valley bottom, which was reached a little further on. In some places beyond Langwies the horse-track was quite overgrown with long grass and nettles. This indicated how little the Pass of the Strela is used. The scenery had now begun to assume a new aspect. Up to this time an unusual amount of bright green grass, and of dark green pine, had been universal. We were now approaching the head of the valley, and the grass was assuming the more sober green of upland pasture, while the forests became less vigorous in growth, and less profuse in foliage. The rock, too, where exposed to view, was no longer dark crumbly slate, but had become of a hard compact texture, and of a gray tint. At last the stream was reached, but not crossed; for after keeping upon its northern bank for a short distance, we had to turn our backs to it, and to ascend a grassy glade with forest on either side. The eastern direction, however, was soon resumed, which soon carried us beyond the last trees. After a time we had to cross a swollen stream on the trunk of an unsquared pine, the wooden bridge having been carried away two days back. Then passing some Alpine châlets, and skirting a lofty mountain, both on the left, over good Alpine pasture, we reached the head water of the Plessur. For stepping across this, upon the stones which form its bed, you must yourself select a spot, for just hereabouts there cannot be said to be any pathway. Immediately beyond the stream you begin the last ascent. Here a good path, over rock-strewn, and unusually flowery turf, conducts you up a steep ascent, that for half an hour will shrewdly try your lungs and legs. By that time you will have reached the top of the Pass of the Strela. You will now have lifted yourself nearly 6,000 feet above Coire, and will be at an elevation of nearly 8,000. Grand, naked, rocky summits, free from weather stains, will rise some thousand feet higher on your right and left. At first your way lies over a good expanse of turfy plateau, with some precipitous rock-faced ravines on the right and on the left. Before you is a troubled sea of mighty ridges and multiform summits, many capped and streaked with snow. Everything is in strong contrast to the somewhat monotonous green of the two long ranges of the Schanfiggthal. A little advance brings to your feet the long valley of Davos, 3,000 feet below you. At its head, to your left, you look down on the blue-green surface of the glassy Davoser see. On a quiet cloudless day you marvel at its reflection of the aerial azure. The mountains stand round about it, and the woods come down to its margin, except on the side nearest to you, where the prairies of the valley reach up to it. Amid them is the little town of Davos Dörfli. Somewhat further down the valley, which soon spreads out to a goodly expanse of softest tinted grass is the larger town of Davos am Platz, covering much space, for its houses are much dispersed. With that full before you, you no longer care to keep to the horse track, but taking the cattle tracks down the alpe, which carry you through a fine old larch forest, you again strike the regular path just before you enter the town. For a moment, if you have come from the Schanfiggthal, you will feel some surprise at finding so many good houses, so many large hotels, so considerable a town, and so excellent a road, in such a place. The Kurhaus is an enormous establishment. Being repelled by its name, and not attracted by its size, I went on to the hotel Rhätia, at the further, or southern end of the town, having passed some other hotels by the way. It was now twelve o’clock, and as the table d’hôte hour was near at hand, I stayed there for dinner. Chairs were set for 116 guests. The landlord told me that among them all were but three English parties. German was the only language I heard spoken. My experience has brought me to the conclusion that where this is the case the table is more bountifully provided, and the charges are less, than in hotels that are frequented chiefly by English and Americans. Germans will not submit to be badly served, or to be overcharged. Englishmen are generally indisposed to assert their rights in matters of this kind. And if they had the disposition, they seldom have sufficient command of the language to enable them to wrangle glibly with hotel authorities.
The contrast between the valley I had left and the valley I had now entered, as I have just said, was great; but still greater was the contrast between the human life of the one and of the other. There was an awning along the south side of the hotel. At one end of this, where it was of considerable depth, the seats were arranged in a square: this part of the space, now that dinner was over, was occupied by ladies and children. The other end, where there was only a single bench against the wall, was assigned to the gentlemen, who, as they took their after-dinner cigar, were conversing upon the condition of Europe, and other questions of the day. In the road was a constant succession of parties, departing, some on foot, and some in chars, for an afternoon excursion. The contentment of rest after exertion, aided by the narcotic leaf, disposed to dreaminess, and would not allow present objects quite to overpower and obliterate recent impressions. The bloused landlord of Peist, with his short pipe in his mouth, and his good-natured daughter, who had earned their three francs and twenty cents with so much unaffected kindly attention, and the villagers, who during the long winter meet to spin in each other’s houses, that they may effect some little savings of firing and lights, and at the same time have a little talk about the affairs of the village, their world, would not be displaced from my thoughts. Each order of impressions somewhat deprived the other of reality. Each became a concurrent dream, or the two together formed themselves into a single confused dream. The fantoccini figures of the one story jostled those of the other story for possession of the stage in the brain. For the time one felt no longer as an actor in life, but merely as a spectator of life. Human concerns became a spectacle, which only suggested evanescent fragments of half-formed thought.