How poor are they that have not patience!—Shakespeare.
The cigar mentioned at the close of the last chapter had come to an end. This brought me to the question of where I would go next? Where and how? Had I stood alone in the world, that is to say, on this afternoon at Davos am Platz, without having to consider the incapacities and wishes of so uncertain an instrument as my neophyte porter, I should by whatever conveyance might have offered have sent my belongings some dozen miles down the valley, and have followed them on foot. Now, however, I was tied to him, and there were symptoms that he was not disposed for any more work to-day. First he had in the morning complained much of the ascent of the Strela; and again when we had arrived at Davos am Platz, I had told him that we would have a halt of two hours, and would then decide on what was to be done with the rest of the day: but he had allowed nearly three hours to pass before his reappearance. This I interpreted to mean that he wished to shorten the afternoon’s work as much as possible; or, if he could so manage it, to prevent anything at all being undertaken in the afternoon. These, then, were disturbing elements in the question: if I were to proceed on foot, he might be somewhat crippled for future work, or demoralized from a consciousness that his devices had been seen through and thwarted. I decided, therefore, to go on that evening to Alveneu Bad, 16¹⁄₂ miles, by char. We soon found that at this time of day our inquiries were too late: all the public vehicular resources of the place had been taken up by the numerous afternoon excursionists. I then bethought myself of trying its private resources in this matter. In this, by the assistance of the porter of the Kurhaus, I was successful; and at 5 P.M. we started for Alveneu Bad in the private carriage of one of the magnates of the little town. The carriage and harness were quite new, and the horse was, evidently, well cared for. The good man and his wife stood by to see the departure of their lately acquired turn-out, and to impress to the last on the driver the necessity of care and caution. When we had been gone about half an hour, a passing shower drifted down the valley. I hoped that those drops did not reach as far as Davos am Platz, that they might not be felt by the anxious old couple, though I was sure that even in that case their hearts would revive within them when they thought of the 22 francs they were to receive to-morrow morning.
There is a new and excellent post-road all the way to the Bad which is on the new Albula road. This new Davos road is a continuation of that of the Prätigäu. It is carried at first along smooth prairies, backed by lofty wooded mountains. The stream by its side is the Landwasser, which as it drains many valleys has a considerable volume of water. At last the mountains close in, and completely squeeze out the prairies. There is then no more room for the road, which is, therefore, at this point carried up and over the mountain on the right bank of the Landwasser to Wiesen. Beyond Wiesen the road runs along the mountain flanks above, and some way back from, the Landwasser. This gives you commanding views of the ranges and summits to your left between the parallel valleys of Davos and the Engadin. The scene is impressive. Below you is the deep valley of the Landwasser. Towards the bottom on the opposite side are bright green prairies and dull green pine woods; these are overtopped by lofty mountains, streaked by long deep slaty-coloured couloirs from top to bottom. Other mountains, behind these, seen through gaps, after showing a zone of black rock, were capped with snow from which the rays of the western sun were now gleaming. One in particular appeared to invite climbing, for its zone of black rock slanted up with what seemed to be a practicable slope to the snowy summit: of course, however, till a trial has been made one can only speak of such appearances as possibilities. In several places along the valley the new road, though only just completed, had already led to the erection of new houses and hotels. This will go on everywhere in Switzerland; and by the time all the available sites are occupied there, tourists will have begun to flood the Tyrol and overflow into the Carpathians.
Our horse was willing, and the driver not unwilling, and so we reached the Bad before dark. I found here about fifty people just seated down to supper. I was told that they were chiefly Swiss, many of them from the eastern cantons. Family parties, in which the middle-aged element largely entered, were in preponderance. It was evident that they had much to say to each other; and saying this probably did them as much good as drinking the waters.
August 6.—Having been delayed three quarters of an hour by the dilatoriness, or the scheming, of the circumnavigator, did not get under weigh till 5.45. As we left the house a funeral was passing the door. To us this might seem an early and a cold hour for taking a deceased relative to his last earthly resting place. We might almost feel as if there was in such an arrangement something hurried, some impatience, an unfair curtailment of his last glimpse of the sun. But, then, it reduces to a minimum the demand which the ceremony must make on the working hours of the mourners’ day. We were now on the Albula road. It here skirts the stream of the Albula, which our late companion, the Landwasser had now joined. In a little more than an hour, Tiefenkasten was reached, where the Oberhalbstein Rhine enters the Albula. In an hour more we were on the bridge of Solis. Upon this part of the road we crossed a long array of diligences and chars. They were from Thusis, which had been reached from Reichenau on the Coire-Andermatt road, or by the Splügen; and were on their way to the Engadin by the route either of the Albula, or of the Julier.
At the bridge of Solis you cross the Albula, chafing and fretting below you at a depth of 250 feet. From this point you enter on the new Schyn-strasse, a grand piece of road, and similar in character to its neighbour, the Via Mala of the Splügen route. For three miles, or more, it is grooved out, or built upon the side of a narrow deep ravine, several hundred feet above the rushing, tumbling Albula, and with several times as many hundred feet above the road; sheer and sharply shelving precipices below and above; and with the corresponding opposite parallel side of the ravine closely confronting you, to demonstrate to you how utterly impracticable was the construction of the road along which you are walking with unusual ease, for it has throughout been engineered, with scarcely any gradients, on one general level. Of course a road of this kind must have some tunnels, and, in places where it is crossed by couloirs, galleries to protect it from being occasionally buried, or carried away; and its bridges must be made capable of withstanding storm-swollen torrents. Some will think it worth while to give a passing glance at these bridges to see what were the difficulties the engineer had to contend with, and the dangers he had to provide against. In one place I saw that provision had been made below a bridge, to prevent the torrent from deepening its bed back to the bridge in any direction except at right angles to a line drawn across the centre of the arch of the bridge, because a deviation from this line to the right, or left, would have destroyed the foundation of one or other of the piers of the bridge. A torrent towards the western end of the Strasse had cut the strata of rock over which it fell into a somewhat regular flight of steps. The layers of rock were two or three feet thick, and each was cut down perpendicularly by the stream, some three or four feet in advance of the one which was above it. So almost down to the bridge, where the stream entirely disappeared, in consequence of the stratification having here been abruptly tilted into an inclination that was not far from perpendicular; and here the torrent had formed for itself a channel by eroding only one of the layers of rock, and that to such a depth that the layers on our right completely overlapped and concealed the stream which had been carried down some way below in the eroded layer.
The ravine of the Schyn nowhere admits of any kind of cultivation, not even of an occasional patch of grass. Pines are its only produce. Among these I saw towards its western extremity many fine specimens of the silver fir, which I had nowhere previously noticed. I do not see why the Douglas pine, one of the most rapid in growth, and valuable as timber, of all the conifers, should not be grown largely in Switzerland. Some of its moist and sheltered valleys would seem to be the very stations that might in every respect be exactly suited for it. It has been proved that it will grow rapidly in such places. In this, as in many other ravines, a track for removing the trees that have been felled below the road, is out of the question. If, therefore, they are to be used for fuel, they are cut into pieces, six feet in length, and pitched into the torrent, which transports them rapidly to their destination. Fuel that has been torrent-borne in this way may readily be distinguished, as it stands piled against the walls of the houses, by the manner in which the ends of the pieces have been bruised and frayed. If, however, what has been felled is to be used as timber for building, the length required would make it impossible to float it down such narrow, rocky, and tortuous streams. In this case winter must be waited for, and when it has frozen the torrent, and buried it beneath the snow, the hardy and industrious peasants avail themselves of the temporary pathway nature has provided, and haul their timber along it. But these winter pathways are not free from danger, for it sometimes happens that a rock, detached by the frost from an overhanging summit, falls on those who are at work below.
As you descend from the Schyn to Thusis everything is changed. You again find yourself among prairies, fruit trees, and scattered dwellings. A broad green valley lies before you expanding to the right and left, in which are the towns of Sils and Thusis; and beyond the valley is lifted up the broad shelving expanse of the eastern side of the Heinzenberg, a wide, unbroken expanse of trees and prairies, enlivened with many villages, and innumerable detached châlets. You see that every rood of it is turned to the best account, and that it is on the spot supporting a large and industrious population.
As you descend you pass the still solid remains of an old castle on the right, perched on a cliff overlooking the Albula. Another is above you on the mountain side. At the foot of the descent you reach the little town of Sils, separated by three-quarters of a mile of bottom land from Thusis, which you see on the first rise of the opposite bank, beyond the Hinter-Rhein, the stream of the valley. A third old castle, that of Hohen Rhätien, looks down on Thusis from the brow of a cliff, 400 feet above the stream, on what is still your side of the valley. As you cross the bridge, on its up stream side you see the Rhine rushing beneath it in a flood of whitish green. Immediately below the bridge the inky Nolla, more inky than the Tyne at Newcastle, its blackness is that of the skin of an unfledged rook, pitches its torrent of defilement into the whitish green stream. You feel that this is an act of disrespect to a main branch of so famous a river. Two hundred, or so, yards further on you pass a second bridge, that of the Nolla itself. You now see above the bridge what a vast amount of small black shaly débris, the cause of its inkiness, this stream brings down in its course from the summits of the Heinzenberg, and of the Piz Beverin. You had also just noticed some acres of this dark débris outspread on the broad, and now dry, sides of the channel below the Rhine bridge. The Nolla, then, you will remember as a kind of natural ink factory; and may think, too, that it has been pouring forth its torrent of ink from a date long anterior to the Chinese or Egyptian manufacture of the pigment.