What a life does this imply! What a weary winter! What dreary confinement to the small comfortless house, with the snow piled up to the windows of the first floor, month after month! How must the returning warmth of the sun, and the first glimpses of the green grass be hailed! How must every hour of the few days of their little summer be prized! In that brief space they have to provision the garrison of each home for the ensuing nine months. Their chief care is for their hay, the one store upon which ultimately the lives of all, both man and beast, depend. We may be sure they do not lose an hour of daylight. It is fortunate they cannot cut their grass by moonlight. If they could, there would be some probability of their working themselves to death. They could not cut it by moonlight, because, though thick enough on the ground, much of it is only a few inches long—not longer than what I have often seen the mowers leaving behind them in English meadows. You see no waste of that kind here, for these careful people mow very smooth, and very near the ground. And then they know that their few days of possible summer are always more or less abridged by summer snow-storms. How then must they be rejoiced in their hearts when two or three bright, breezy days come together, and enable them to get up what had been previously cut! How heavily are they weighted in the race they have to run for their lives against time!
Where the cow, a little aided by the goat, is the one great means of support, the humblest family cannot exist with less than five or six. They ought, indeed, to have not less than seven. Milk and cheese are their mainstay, with on high days and holidays a shred or two of mummy beef, or pork. Everything else they eat, or drink, or that they clothe themselves with, or use in any way, must come indirectly from the same source; that is to say, every family must every year sell one cow (the price last year was twenty napoleons), and a young bullock or two, and what cheese they can spare, to purchase with the proceeds rye or maize flour, potatoes, brandy, coffee, hemp, wool, tools, and whatever else they may require. Even the few pigs they keep can be turned to some account only by the aid of the cow. No kind of grain, or of roots, can be had for this purpose. When summer, therefore, has come, piggy must follow the cow up into the high pasture, where the cheese is to be made. The whey, that will be expressed from the curd, will be his share. Upon this he will thrive moderately. When he will descend from the mountains with some little weight of flesh upon him, he will be taking his last walk. He is about to pass into the mummy condition. But how will those that are to be retained for stock be kept during the winter? For several months there will be nothing for them to graze upon, and not one mouthful of anything convertible into human food will be available for them. Every pedestrian in Switzerland will have observed in front of the mountain cheese châlets, where the cows have for generations passed their summer nights, and often, too, by the side of the cow-houses in the villages, beds of a large-leafed Alpine dock. Where the accumulations of centuries from the cows have made the soil too fat and greasy for grass, this plant luxuriates. It delights in rankness. It also affects moist places, as does in this country its congener, the water dock. The leaves, and leaf-stalks of this dock, these careful people collect in summer, and having scalded them, seasoned with a sprinkling of salt, nettle-tops are sometimes added, the mess is tubbed or barrelled, for the winter. This is the pig’s winter food; his sour krout. His daily meal of it is served to him warm. That the Swiss pigs have to ascend and descend the mountains together with the cows accounts for their form. They are large-framed, and clean-limbed; they have a long back, and long, bony legs. If built at all like our pigs, they would be unable to do their long journeys, and their climbing. In colour they are generally more or less, sometimes entirely, of a rusty chesnut.
There had, then, been much to do, and there had not been much time for doing it. There was the wood for fuel and for repairs that had been felled in the previous winter, and that had to be brought in before the hay was made. And there was the turf, too, that had to be stored; and that also had been dug before the hay was made, that every hour of sunshine might be utilized for drying it, and for making the hay—the precious hay, to which everything must be subordinated, for upon it everything depends. And that, too, after many delays and anxieties, has at last been won, and is now safe under cover. The whey-fed old sow, or the full-grown hog in about the condition they would be with us when put up to fatten, and the old cow now past milk, have returned home for desiccation. The cows, whose day is not yet done, are being comfortably housed. The rye and maize flour, the potatoes, the brandy, the coffee, the hemp and wool for the women to spin and weave, are all being provided as expeditiously as possible. But time is running these preparations hard, even if it does not show a-head of them, for the snow has already fallen so deep that the ground will be no more seen by the peasants of Ober Aversthal till next year. The long dreadful winter is again upon them.
CHAPTER VII.
JUF—THE FORCELLINA—THE SEPTIMER—CASACCIA.
Yet still e’en here content can spread a charm,
Redress the clime, and all its rage disarm.
Tho’ poor the peasant’s hut, his feast tho’ small,
He sees his little lot the lot of all.—Goldsmith.
August 9.—Up at 5 A.M., but nothing could be done out o’ doors. The only difference from yesterday afternoon was that the amount of the rain had diminished while that of the snow and sleet had increased. The downfall of one or other was incessant. Such is Cresta in the dog days. The good man of the house, however, was of opinion—the circumnavigator did not present himself and his opinion till past seven—that the weather would improve before midday. At ten his prognostications were verified, and we started for Casaccia by way of the Forcellina and the Septimer. Every one yesterday, and this morning, recommended us to go to the Engadin by the way of Stalla on the Julier, as the shorter and easier route. But as I was not due till midday to-morrow at Pontresina, where I was to meet my wife, and the little boy of my two former Months in Switzerland, there was plenty of time, if only the weather would permit, for the grander Pass of the Forcellina, the old paved road of the Septimer, and the Maloja, all of which I wished to see; the shortness, therefore, and easiness of the alternative route were only deterrent considerations.
The valley immediately beyond Cresta begins to widen and flatten its bottom prairie land. We walked over the grass rejoicing in the returning gleams of sunshine; and all the more because we knew how deeply every soul around us was stirred by the same feelings, for did not those warm rays of light mean well-being for their families during the long arctic winter that was already not far off? These first gleams, however, were shockingly short-lived, for before we had reached Pürt, the first village beyond Cresta, the sleet had again returned, and we were driven to take refuge in a large hay-grange, which it was pleasant to find nearly full of new hay. Upon this we sat for some twenty minutes, noting, through the open door, the women of the place scouring their wooden milk vessels, and setting their small white meagre cheeses on the window sills to consolidate. Each piece was about the shape, size, and colour of a marmalade gallipot. The sleet having nearly exhausted itself, a second start was made. As we went along we counted a herd of about fifty cows on the lower flank of the opposite range. Among them was a large flock of crows; on our side we saw a pair of hawks, and a pair of choughs. The feathered fauna of the Grisons is to the eye of the pedestrian far more abundant both in species and in individuals than that of Central, or of Western Switzerland. We passed through two more villages, and as many more scuds of sleet, and at midday reached Juf, the last village of Oberland Aversthal, and the highest village in Europe that is inhabited throughout the year.