A walk in the Grisons

by F. Barham Zincke

As this is undeservedly a not much frequented way, I will give some particulars of it. It begins in a pine wood with the Averser Bach, or Averser Rhein as it is more grandiloquently sometimes styled, blustering by on your left over its rocky bed in no inconsiderable volume. After a time you cross to its opposite bank. The stream has now, in correspondence with the increasing grade of the ascent, become more rapid and noisy. The rocks, too, over which it tumbles having become larger—some of them are large tables of rock—give occasion for several small waterfalls. There are lofty mountains by the side of your path, and others still loftier are at times visible in the distance. Sometimes your path lies over the outspread rock-fragments brought down the mountain side by storm torrents. You see that it would be bad to be caught here while such work was going on, for you would have but little chance of keeping your feet against the descending stream of commingled rocks and water. After this the valley widens into prairies, upon which are a few châlets. This is the village of Ausser Ferrera. Beyond this the path, still on the right bank, takes you through a stretch of pine wood, which again terminates in prairies. This time the expanse is larger; and here is Inner Ferrera, or Canicül. You now have to recross to the left bank, and to ascend through a pine wood, which continues as far as Campsut. Along this part of the way the scene is often grandly hard and rugged. The near and distant mountains are mighty masses. The iron-faced precipices awe you. The stream is impatient to get away from them. At about a third of this stage of the way we had to cross, not much above the stream, some steep inclines of freshly brought down mountain rubbish, which had in some places buried, in others carried away, the path. This brought us down quite to the level of the stream, where its course describes a curve round the end of a lofty precipitous mountain. We were on the inner side of the curve. Here nature had given no space for a path, and so it had to be formed partly by excavation, and partly by the construction of a narrow wooden roadway supported on king-posts and struts, just out of the reach of floods. On the opposite side of the Bach, in the precipitous face of the mountain wall, which formed the outer side of the curve of the stream here described, was a deep ravine: to form it the mountain wall had been as it were split in two, or rent asunder. Through this ravine poured the Starlera Bach. As soon as we had rounded the curve, being still not many yards distant from the Starlera ravine and its torrent, we came on a corresponding ravine and torrent on our side—those of the Val de Lei. We crossed them by a wooden bridge. Beyond the bridge is a little level space of three or four yards square. Standing here the scene was singularly impressive. The only sound was that of the three torrents rushing together. The only sight that of the three deep, steep, ravines they were rushing down, each torrent between two lofty precipitous mountains. Three troubled streams, and six iron-faced lines of mountain precipices, and the little space of unfathomable blue above: these were all. Had I been alone, or had there been with me one who possessed an inner sense capable of being touched by such a scene, I would gladly have loitered at this point for some little time. The feeling that came over me was that which the desert engenders—that you have intruded on a scene not meant for man. There it is stillness, desolateness, absence of life; here it is mountains closing in around you, and torrents blustering by, and no place for anything else, that warn you off. The iron-faced precipices will advance a little closer, the torrents will rise a little higher, to resent your intrusion. I wished to surrender myself for a little time to the impressions of the moment, to commune a little with the genius loci. As it was, I was hurried through this home of the spirit of the Brocken, and still wonder the monster did not show himself, to make me understand that that was no place for such feeble creatures as the children of men.

Beyond this point we found that the road had again been carried away. A straight-sided gully had lately been cut through it to the depth of about eight feet. Four men were here at work making a cutting for the road down to the bottom of the newly-formed gully. In such a place it would have been of no use to refill the excavation, because the incoherent material used for this purpose would be carried away by the next rain. They had instead of this sunk the road to the bottom of the gully on the lower side. Up the perpendicular eight feet of the upper face, which they had not yet begun to make practicable, we had to climb by the aid of a few projecting roots. If our hold of the roots, or the roots’ hold of the soil, had failed—of course there was but slight chance of either of these possibilities occurring—we should have tumbled down about sixty feet into the Bach, for as the road was along the edge of a precipice, a fall from the face of the gully would have been a fall down the precipice also.

The path now in good repair, and on the descent, continued through pine woods, and in about an hour conducted us to an open grassy space, where we crossed the stream to the right bank. Here was the village of Campsut. We were now at an elevation of 5,000 feet, where nothing could be grown but grass. As we were entering the village, a little girl, of about ten years of age, a rosy brunette, who was running to join her friends in the hay-fields, almost came into collision with us. She was so confounded by this sudden rencontre with strangers, that for some little time she was unable to answer our questions. When we released her, she started off again like a wild animal that had been suddenly disturbed by a more than doubtful apparition. At the further end of Campsut we got a rare draught of milk. It was presented to us in a little circular wooden tub with two small handles formed by the projection of two of the staves. This milk was deliciously fresh and rich; and as to the little wooden tub, that was so spotlessly clean that it was a pleasure to look at it. The dame to whom we were indebted for this draught was above the common height, and, like the little girl, had remarkably good features, and a ruddy brown complexion. Hard work, rough weather, long winters, and simple fare, had had as yet their issue only in health and strength. I tarried over the tub of delicious milk, not only for its sake. A little talk with such a donor of such a draught was a pleasant interlude. The order and cleanliness of everything in the châlet showed that she had such ambition as Campsut admitted of.

Beyond Campsut a charming bit of smooth turf interspersed with large rocks, and detached larches, some little height above the brawling stream, with grand mountains right and left, and still grander mountains in front, brought us to Crot—a village of a few scattered châlets. You have to descend to the stream. Before you lies the sombre green, treeless Madriserthal, to be entered after crossing the stream by a bridge. Our way, however, was not across the stream up the Madriserthal; so just beyond Crot, having crossed the Bach of our own valley, we turned away from the Madriserthal, and ascended a steep, grassy slope on our left. This after a time became rocky, with, among the rocks, larches and cembras. Having reached the summit of this rise, with our Bach on our left, we advanced for some way, along the flank of the mountain, through an ancient open forest, and then crossed the stream, now in a ravine, by the second of two bridges, about a mile from Cresta. On the Cresta side of the ravine is no wood: at first only very rocky alpe, and then, when the village is reached, upland prairie. At about half a mile from the village we met a chubby little urchin of about ten years of age, with head and feet bare, clad in strong thick homespun of hemp and coarse woollen. He came up to us with an easy self-possessed air, knowing very well what we wanted, and announced that he was the son of the Pasteur, and would conduct us to his father’s house, which is for travellers the recognized inn of the place, as he is their recognized host.

It had been part of my Machiavelism for this day to take with us nothing to eat, in order to ensure our getting at all events as far as Cresta. The stratagem had been quite successful, for having stopped nowhere by the way, except for the tub of milk at Campsut, we reached Cresta at 11.30 A.M. And fortunate it was that we had started early, the result of the other successful little ruse I have already mentioned, and had had no delays on the road, for we had not been at Cresta half-an-hour when it began to rain, the rain being diversified only with snow for twenty-two hours.

During the afternoon there was no going outside the door. But there was enough within for an afternoon. First there was the Pasteur himself, a well-built man of about forty years of age. He wore coloured clothes, in which it was clear that he did much out o’door work. This, from the situation of Cresta, must have been restricted to cutting, fetching, and riving wood for fuel, and making hay. On Sundays, of course, his working clothes are exchanged for the clerical black and white, with the portentous collar and bands of the Swiss Reformed Church. He kept himself no cows, only goats. The goats, however, would require hay, and he could assist his neighbours, too, in making their hay. Cow’s milk, I suppose, can always be bought in such a place, where the number of cows must be great in proportion to that of the villagers. He spoke German, French, and Romansch, and was a man of observation, thought, and intelligence. He is also the schoolmaster of the Commune, which is that of Oberland Aversthal, which reaches from Crot to Juf, a place some way above Cresta. His pastoral duties, I understood, extended down the valley below Crot as far as Inner Ferrera, or Canicül. To these employments must be added, as I have already mentioned, that of entertaining such travellers as would prefer what he has to offer to what they would find at the little village inn.

The good man’s wife was not now visible. She had for some months been suffering from a serious illness, and had not yet seen a medical man; nor, whatever turn her illness might take, was there much chance of her seeing one, because it would require two days for one to come and return, St. Moritz in the Engadin being the nearest point from which assistance of this kind could be had. Here, therefore, medical advice and medicines can only be received through the post. The poor woman’s illness threw much of the work of the house upon him, in which, however, he was aided by a sturdy Romansch-speaking damsel.

Then there was the view from the window. This, from a height above the stream of about 500 feet, commanded the valley and the opposite range. The lower half of this range was covered with the open forest of cembra, a part of which we had passed through in the forenoon. Above the forest was Alpine pasture. All along the ridge the line that divided the forest from the pasture was perfectly straight: nowhere did the forest encroach on the grass, or the grass on the forest. On entering the forest above Crot we had seen some larch, but there was none, I believe, opposite to Cresta, nothing but cembra. Nor were there any young trees in the forest, though the old ones stood at such a distance from each other as to give sufficient pasturage for a herd of cows I could just make out as I stood at the window. I could also make out with a glass a flock of goats in the forest, and that accounted to me for the absence of young trees. I had often observed that the goat cannot kill the young spruce, of which the forests generally consist. Of course they bite off the new terminals of the leader, and of the laterals, but not quite to the bottom of the new wood. The terminals, therefore, of the laterals, though bitten back every year, still gain an inch or two every year; and as this makes the plant grow into a very compact and bushy form, the time comes when the goat can no longer reach over the compact mass of laterals to bite off the terminal of the leader. That was only to be got at so long as its enemy could reach over to it. Every year the enemy is forced back a little; and so in a dozen or twenty years it is no longer able to reach it. The terminal of the leader then advances in safety, and a tree is quickly formed. All that has happened is, that it was delayed some years in making its start. But during this period of delay the roots were spreading far, and establishing themselves with a good hold of the ground; when, therefore, the start at last is made, the growth is very rapid. You may always distinguish the trees that had in their early days been kept back for a time in this way, for the lower part of their trunks, the three or four feet nearest the ground, are always crooked. This indicates how they had been maltreated by the goats. So it is with the ordinary pine of the Swiss forests. Of the cembras, however, I observed that they could not escape the goats in this way, or in any way; either because the bite of these animals is at once destructive to them, or because having been bitten back they have not the power of forming a compact bush, and so of rising eventually out of harm’s way. At all events the goats kill the young trees of this species; and this will account for so many forests of cembra having died out, or now being in process of dying out. One would suppose that this cause of their destruction would be guarded against in these lofty Grison valleys, some of which are rendered habitable only by the supply of wood furnished by what remains of ancient forests of this species, which is the only Swiss conifer that grows at such heights. But in this valley of Oberland Aversthal there is some peat; its inhabitants, therefore, are not entirely dependent for fuel on their single forest of cembra opposite to Cresta. Their dependence, however, upon it for material for the construction of their houses is complete. When, therefore, their one forest shall have been consumed they must either take to building with stone, or abandon the valley as a place of residence.

It was interesting to watch the effects of the snow storms, which throughout this afternoon alternated with showers of rain, and will continue to do so till 10 A.M. to-morrow. On our side of the valley, which, as it faced the south, had been heated by the sun of the forenoon and of yesterday, the snow never lay on the ground. On the opposite side every fall of snow completely whitened the Alpine pasture above the forest, but rarely extended any way down into the forest; and on the few occasions when it did was very soon gone. When we left the place the following day all the pasture above the forest was white, but the turf between the trees was free from snow. Of course the ground beneath the trees is somewhat warmer than in the open, as every animal knows when it chooses its night’s resting-place; still the visible difference between the two suggested the questions of whether there is not what may be roughly regarded as a line for the snow that falls in summer, and whether it is this supposed line of summer-falling snow which defines the upper limit of the forest by preventing above that limit the germination of seeds or by killing the young plants in the tender stage of their first growth.

Of course there was a great deal of talk with our host. He was, naturally enough, glad to have some one to talk to—a feeling which his guest, as might be supposed, was ready to reciprocate. This was his second year at Cresta. This year, up to the date of my visit, several Germans, and two Americans, had stopped for a night at his house, but not one Englishman. His continuance in his present position depended in equal degrees on his parishioners’ good pleasure and on his own choice. The liberty of the two contracting parties was equal. They could bid him go, if so minded; and he, if so minded, could bid them look out for another Pasteur. Romansch he thought was dying out in the neighbourhood, being hard pressed by German on the north and to some extent by Italian on the south. As respects the schools there was a general leaning towards having German taught in them, on account of its superior utility for business purposes, even in places where the religious instruction is still given in Romansch.