A walk in the Grisons

by F. Barham Zincke

The school of Oberland Aversthal is held in his house. A large room on the ground-floor has been fitted up for this purpose. Considering how poor the peasants are, I was surprised at the excellence of the fittings. The room had double windows, and an excellent stove, which was of such dimensions that I was at a loss to imagine how it could have ever been brought up the valley. There were good desks and benches, master’s desk and blackboard. In short, the apparatus was as good as could be wished. All this is accounted for by remembering that, though it is provided by the peasants, it is provided for their own children. Every family in the valley has a strong personal interest in the school; and this concentration of personal interest upon the school-room issues in its being the best furnished room in the commune. And as the minister is the master, we may suppose that the teaching and tone of the school is correspondingly good. Of course here, as elsewhere in these parts, the school is open only during the winter months, which, however, at an altitude of 6,400 feet, that of the schoolroom—Juf is some hundreds of feet higher—must comprise nine months of the year.

Off the schoolroom was the guests’ chamber, whose wants had been taken into account in the construction of the house. In this everything was brightly clean. It contained two beds, and about a dozen volumes in German. Behind these two rooms was the hall, or store-room, of the house. Above the school-room was the sitting-room. On either side of this was a bed-room. Behind these were some small rooms, in one of which my porter was berthed.

The Canton had been desirous that a road should be constructed through the valley to connect either the Upper Engadin, or Casaccia, below the Maloja, with the Splügen road; and with a view to this the preliminary surveys had been made. The proposal, however, was so distasteful to the peasants, that it had been withdrawn for the present. This reminded one of the opposition that was made to the Great Western Railway by the authorities of a famous University; an opposition which has left its mark on the railway map of England, for it diverted the railway from its intended course, both to the cost of the shareholders and to the inconvenience of the University. The unlettered ignorance of the peasants of Oberland Aversthal has come to the same conclusion as did the learned Doctors of Oxford. They both alike argued, we are no part of the world; the world is wicked, and will invade us; we are no match for the world. Fortunately not. The result in the case of Overland Aversthal will be what it was in the case of the famous University. The wicked world will in the end have its way, and the opponents of the wicked world will come to acknowledge that it is not a bad way, and that they are none the worse for accommodating themselves to it: in fact, that they are themselves a part of the world, and cannot do without it.

One little matter I noticed this morning cannot but work in the direction of opening the eyes of these naturally conservative peasants to their true interests. Some time after we had entered the valley—it was at about 7 A.M.—we met a walking postman with a bulky bag on his back. There was much in that bag. It contained the wants, the hopes, the schemes, the feelings of Unterland and Oberland Aversthal. At about the corresponding hour in the evening, as I was looking from the Pasteur’s window at the aspect of things in the rain, I saw the same man arrive on his return journey. He had on his back the same bag. In it he had now brought back the reciprocation of that terrible outside world to the wants, hopes, schemes, and feelings of the valley. All this only means that these good people have dealings with, and friends in, that terrible world, dealings without which they could not possibly exist, and friends who are very dear to them, and affection for whom constitutes a large ingredient of their inner life. Every family must every year sell a cow, and a young bullock or two, and so much cheese, to buy coffee, and brandy, and scythes, and many other things it cannot do without; and arrangements for these sales and purchases are made through the post; and every family may have a relative seeking a livelihood in the outside world, some far enough off in it, and it does them good to hear of that relative’s welfare. Well, if it is desirable that these transactions, and this intelligence, should be facilitated by the walking postman, would it not be desirable that they should be still further facilitated by a good road? It would, practically, enhance the price they would get for their young bullocks, and surplus cows and cheese, and lessen the price of the coffee, the brandy, the scythes, and their other necessary purchases. It would, too, increase the value of every klafter of land in the valley. And it would bring many travellers into the valley, in catering for whom some money might be made. Some of them would get a better living, than any of them get now, by acting as guides and porters. They would see more of the world, and the world would see more of them; and just as the world would be the better for knowing something of Aversthal, so would its good people be the better for knowing something of the world. No one of them would now wish to go back to the ante-post times. The silent, but inevitable action of the post will lead on to the road; and then no one will wish to go back to the ante-road times.

But the above-mentioned bag, full of such beneficent magic, for it was magic that disclosed to every family what their hearts were yearning to know, and what their business required, was not on this afternoon the whole of the walking postman’s load. There was also on his back an osier basket for our host. He had made preparations for its reception; but the chubby little fellow, who had conducted us to his father’s house, was the first to announce its arrival. He and his father were soon out in the rain, opening it carefully so as not either to injure the basket, or rudely to shake its contents, I should have said its inmates, for on raising the lid there were revealed to their delighted eyes three geese—three live geese. A little enclosure had been got ready for them, to which they were forthwith transferred, the good man carrying two, and the chubby little fellow the third. They already had half-a-dozen chickens: the only ones I saw in the village, or, indeed, in the valley. This, then, was a great and interesting addition to the live stock of Oberland Aversthal; though now, on recalling the conditions of the place, I cannot imagine how they were to be kept through the winter, or, indeed, how they were to be kept at any time out of harm’s way: for they needs must sooner or later get down to the Bach, from which there would not be much chance of their coming back alive, as they would probably, in their first attempt to navigate it, be dashed to death against the rocks. But whatever might be the issue of the experiment, the good opinion of our host I was already disposed to form was further strengthened on my finding that he was fond of tending animals. It was, too, an experiment that might, I wish I could say must, add to the companions and the resources—there is a little jar in that word resources—of his neighbours, whose lives up here above the clouds are somewhat wanting in objects of ordinary earthly interest.

The Romansch-speaking damsel was setting the table for supper at the time when this new form of animal life arrived at Cresta. The Pasteur’s half dozen fowls hearing the stir outside came forth from the shed, in which they had taken refuge from the rain, to see what it was all about. They were of a small breed, for it costs too much to keep large fowls in a place where their maize has to be brought a day’s journey on a man’s back. I chipped off a few crumbs from a roll that had just been placed on the table—they were detached with difficulty—and threw them down from the window. The proud little cock—it was a proceeding we must all many a time have observed—took a piece up with his beak, but instead of swallowing it—what self-restraint! summoned his seraglio for the delicious morsels, depositing before the first arrival the one that was in his beak. That surely, the thought flashed upon me—for at Cresta one sees things in a new light—is not instinct; or if it is, then the ordinary definition of instinct ought to be somewhat enlarged. It is self-denial, politeness, policy, gratitude, affection. Whether it looks to the past, or to the future, there is something wonderfully human about it. It is true that all chanticleers do this; but if they do not understand now, which is what I do not believe, then their progenitors must have once understood, so this supposition only removes the fact some steps back, that under the conditions of their position, that is under the relations in which they were standing to their seraglios, it was the right thing to do. The conditions and relations of the position must have been understood, and what under them was profitable and becoming must have been seen. Either then, for that is our conclusion, reason is less mechanical in them, or else more mechanical in ourselves, than is generally supposed; or, to put it in another way, their reason and ours are more closely akin than is generally supposed.

But the arrival of the geese by the post carries us back to our argument that the post is a preparation for the at present much dreaded road. Will not these good people some day come to see that if it is advantageous to have a path that admits of the postman bringing to them three geese in a basket, and other such things, that it would be more advantageous to have a road that would admit of the diligence post, or the carrier’s cart, bringing them many other things they want, but which are beyond the carrying power of the postman? This is a question we may be sure will occur to them, and be discussed, in their long winters; and, too, we may be sure that the young people, who will have been brought up by the minister in the well-appointed school the old people are maintaining, will upon this subject for the most part be of a different way of thinking from the old people.

As to the supper, (the preparations for which supplied us with those crumbs, the grateful, or judicious, appropriation of which made us wish to improve our knowledge of what we call instinct,) it was the same as our dinner had been with the addition of butter, and the substitution of coffee for Valtelline wine. The meat was again the mummy beef with which I had first become acquainted at Peist. To this was now added mummy ham. The bread had been baked at Silva Plana in the Engadin, and was a month old. It was the petrified fossil of bread. No traces of moisture remained in it, and it was as hard to masticate as it had been to cut. Those who know what are the habits of Swiss swine in summer, when kept on the mountains about the châlets where the cows pass the night, will not be able to bring themselves to touch pig in any form in Switzerland. As therefore I was obliged to reject the mummy ham, and had not yet discovered the merits of mummy beef, I dined on bread and cheese and wine, and supped on bread and cheese and coffee. Not so, however, the circumnavigator. At dinner I had been somewhat shocked at the vigour of his appetite, for he left nothing on the table; and now at supper, seeing that the same process was being repeated, and knowing how hard those comestibles had been to come at in this part of the world, and seeing also that the good Pasteur had set before us what he must have supposed would have left a large margin for discretion, I rose from the table in a way to intimate to my companion that I thought it time for him to do the same. He would not, however, take the hint. I, therefore, reminded him that these things were hard to come by up here, and that I had no doubt but that they were in consequence used frugally, and wound up my little speech with the dictum that enough was better than too much. My facts, however, reflections, and platitudes had no other effect than that of extracting from my voracious attendant the remark, that he always began to suspect that he was not all right when he found that he could not feed well. I could not help retorting, ‘Then just now you must have the satisfaction of feeling that you are unusually well.’ But this, like what had preceded it, glanced off from his thick skin, for he continued doggedly at work, till there was not left on the table a crumb of anything, of beef, ham, cheese, butter, sugar, or bread, wherefrom to draw any further sanitary inferences. I now poured out on him the last dregs of my disgust by telling him that it was fortunate for him that he had not to live up here, for if so he would have few opportunities through life for ascertaining the state of his health. It would have had a pleasant flavour of revenge, if I could have made him pay his own shot for this supper; but from that he knew that he was safe, because if for any reason—my reason in this case was the wish to save our host some trouble—you bid your man take his meals with you, you must of course pay for both.

Besides his experiment in live stock, the good man was making one in gardening. He had enclosed a little space, about half-a-dozen yards square, facing to the south, and had sown in it white beet, the leaf-stalks of which are eaten, cabbages, turnips, and lettuce. This was his first summer at Cresta, and so he had lost no time in endeavouring to ascertain how far the sun could help him in this matter. But on this, the 8th day of August, the prospect of success was far from encouraging. The turnips showed no tuberous tendencies, and had formed each but a few small leaves. The foliage of the cabbages and lettuces was in much the same condition. The peculiarities of growth in those plants could still be known to his neighbours only by what they might have seen in that much dreaded outside world. A little might be expected from the white-stalked beet; but as there was only a fortnight more for the continuance of the experiment, and it was even then snowing, I cannot think that it will be repeated next year. Or if so, it will not be for the sake of any contributions the little garden may be expected to make to the Pasteur’s table, but for the sake of his recollections of the world below to which he once belonged. The thought, however, crossed my mind that this little garden had been made not so much as an experiment, but in the hope of pleasing his sick wife by exhibiting to her its products.

The fact is that nothing can be grown here but grass, for Cresta is some way beyond the last cembra on its side of the valley; and if one of these highest-climbing of Swiss conifers could be coaxed into living on such a spot—I saw a stunted oldish-looking dwarf of the kind in the lower part of the village—it would require a century to overtop the châlets. No human food, therefore, can be produced except what is supplied by the goats and cows. Here everything is transmuted grass. No tribe of wandering Tartars ever lived so exclusively on their flocks and herds. Not a potato, not a stem of hemp, can be grown. Nature has been far more bountiful to the most hard pressed Kirgishes. Their steppes are a Paradise of fertility and variety compared to Cresta. Indeed we must go somewhere near the Arctic zone to find a parallel to its climate; and even that will not do, for Iceland will not give it, because there a few turnips and potatoes, of the size of walnuts, may be grown. For what we are in search of we must go beyond Iceland, and enter the arctic circle, and perhaps at last the latitude that presents an equivalent to its altitude may be found in Lapland.