A walk in the Grisons

by F. Barham Zincke

But these successful builders of big houses are not all the people; and we must not allow their big houses to hide from our view the small houses of these little towns, and the small people who live in them. All men have not the same gifts; and of those who have all do not exercise them alike and to like issues. Many may have had the enterprise without the heroical self-denial and patience, which in some cases may mean a narrow horizon and a hard heart, but which narrow horizon and hard heart were necessary for success in the case of such small traffickers. And some, too, may have had the self-denial and the patience in heroical degrees, and not been deficient either in the requisite enterprise, but yet were kept back from turning these qualities to good account by the goodness of their hearts. That may have kept them at home to provide for, and to tend, an aged parent in his chair-days; or an early affection may have influenced them to the same result. And so possibly there may be as good stuff, intellectually and morally, among those who have never left the village as among those who went forth into the world, and prospered. Chance, too, has a place in the affairs of men. Good fortune does not always mean good conduct, nor bad fortune bad conduct. Conduct that was both wise and good may have had ill-fortuned results. But we will set these cases aside, and ask if those who, because they stayed at home for good reasons, and so are now in no better condition than their fathers were, and those who went forth and prospered, find in any sense their rewards equal? Certainly not, if both of them measure, as the world does, all things by francs. Still each has his reward, and the reward of satisfied affections, and of a satisfied sense of duty, is great as it is felt at the moment, for at that time every consideration gives way to it; and it is great also in retrospect, which is the recalling of the feelings of that moment. We are glad, then, to witness the success of those who made the francs, and built the stone houses, and to talk with them of their experiences of the world in which the francs were made; but this does not diminish our respect for those who stayed at home, and who will live, and toil, and die in the same small wooden châlets in which their fathers lived, and toiled, and died. Indeed, our respect for them, and even our disposition to like them, are rather increased by the sight of the big mansions of the lemonade, and bon-bon, and coffee and confectionery lords.

So much in explanation of the big houses we find not only in the Engadin, but more or less in all the Grison valleys. We now come to the valley itself. The sun on this day was unclouded; but we were on the road from the Maloja to St. Moritz; these words, therefore, must not be taken to mean what they would stand for had they been said of a drive from Bath to Bristol. We all know what a cloudless day is here in the middle of August: in the Upper Engadin it is not quite the same sort of thing. With respect to what meets the eye: there is no trace of haze; the definition of every mountain and glacier outline is sharp and clear; the luminous blue is not blue, or luminous, in our subdued fashion; and even the greens and grays of the mountains are hardly less green and gray quite up to the distant sky-line. There is little toning down. Distance only blends the local variegation into an uniform colour. You cannot make out the variegation of the flowery turf, of the lichen-painted rock, and of the glancing foliage and shaded trunks of the forest, on account of the distance: that is all. The distance as it were fuses together the smaller differences; and then it puts a varnish over the whole: the clear bright air is the varnish. Then as to the appeal this diaphanous rarefied air makes to the sense of feeling: though, indeed, it is not air; that is a word that here would mislead; it is a celestial ether; and so with the sun, though it is hot, what you feel is not heat; it is a permeating, invigorating, life-creating warmth; this warmth, then, which the sun imparts to this ether, pervades your lungs, your heart, and reaches to your very bones. It makes you conscious of a lighter, and of a quicker life than you ever felt before. Like the air of the desert it so rapidly, so instantaneously evaporates the imperceptible perspiration that the skin beneath your clothes as well as that of your face develops a new sensation. It has ceased to be merely a tough, half-dead integument, whose function is just to protect you from external rubs. As the flower expands to the light, and turns to it, from the satisfaction it has in absorbing it, so your skin has become sensitive to this ether, and feels the delight of being in contact with it. And a third sense has yet to be gladdened. Up here it is now the middle of hay harvest, and the air is pervaded with the fragrance of the new hay. And you are all the way passing by, or through, pine-forests, and the bright sun is constantly raising into the air from their trunks, branches, and leaves myriad molecules of their resinous exudations; and this perfume also is wafted to you.

And then the scene has its peculiar features. In these twelve miles you pass four lakes; the small lake of the Maloja summit, the Silser see, four and a half miles long, the Silva Planer see somewhat longer, and that of St. Moritz about a mile in length. Thus, throughout almost all the way, you are driving along this chain of lakes, on a road a little above them. Of the colour of these mountain lakes our English home-trained eyes know nothing. It must be seen to be understood. It is of the blue of the sky, only a shade less deep, and with some slight admixture of green. You wonder what the trout that live in them can find to live upon in water so pure, and which, in truth, is not water, but the lymph of the celestial depths—heaven’s azure liquefied. Everyone feels the charm of water as an addition to the scene: but such lakes as these, which are not of water, but of some less earthly fluid, how great is the charm they add to this scene! And the more so, if you have come upon them suddenly after some days of trudging and toiling in the mountains, where the eyes were wearied, almost wounded, with the continual recurrence of pinnacles and precipices, rocks and ravines, nothing but what was hard, dark, jagged, and torn. The impressions of sombreness, ruggedness, and terror that had of late been stamped on your brain, and seemed to be in it like things that were alive, are now laid to rest by the sight of the smooth blue: its effects are soothing and healing.

Another peculiarity of this road is the number of glaciers and snow summits that are seen from it. Of these, too, as it is with the blue lakes, you are hardly ever out of sight. You come abreast of a lateral valley; and as you look up it you see at its head a mighty glacier, the view of which seems so complete that you think you can make out its whole course, that is to say its whole life, from the snowfield out of which it is compacted, and by which it is forced on, till at last it issues, in another form, from its own mouth. Or a range before you recedes a little, or becomes depressed a little, and you see at this point a mighty snow-capped giant from behind peering over into the valley; and you feel the current of crisp air that is flowing down into the valley from the glacier, or from the giant’s head—the breath of the glacier, or of the giant. And in the twelve miles you pass as many towns as you do lakes; one for every three miles: all clean, and flourishing: and not a dilapidated hovel in a land where nothing is grown but grass, and where there are nine months of winter and three of cold, with the exception of a few such days as was to-day! This absence of visible poverty adds much to the sense of satisfaction with which you contemplate the scene. Nature here has made it difficult for man to live upon his fellow man, for a man, under the conditions here imposed upon him, can hardly do more than support himself. Of course three-fourths of the population might be cleared off, and half the quantity of cattle maintained; but that is not the turn things took here. Every man, excepting the capitalists we have already spoken of, and no one grudges them their hard-earned accumulations, which besides do good to some, and no harm to anyone, everyone, excepting them, must work hard to live; but to live here by his hard work a man must himself have the fruits of it.

The direction in which the stream by your side is flowing is often an ingredient in the thought of the wanderer among these mountains of central Europe. ‘This stream,’ he says to himself, ‘is hurrying to join the Po, or the Rhine, or the Rhone.’ On this day I said to myself, ‘These charming lakes are among the head Waters of the Danube.’ The little stream we passed as it came racing down from Monte Lunghino into the Silser see is the furthest urn of the Inn. This makes you feel that you have passed into another region. The continent is now inclining in another direction. The Danube, and the Black Sea for a time become the goal of your thoughts of this kind. In this respect Lunghino along the eastern roots of which I was now passing, and the opposite side of which I had traversed yesterday, is pre-eminent, for it contains the diffluent urns of three great historic rivers, the Rhine, the Po, and the Danube; of the Rhine by giving birth to one of the feeders of the Oberhalbstein stream, of the Po by giving birth to a feeder of the Maira, which joins the Adda as it is on the point of entering the lake of Como, and of the Danube by giving birth to the actual head water of the Inn.

A little more than a mile before you reach St. Moritz, you look down on the old monster Kurhaus, and a new and more monstrous one nearly completed. They are upon the alluvial flat at the head of the lake. As I saw by my side a patch or two of potatoes smitten by summer frosts, I thought it strange that any people, possessed of free agency, especially invalids, could be found to descend into, and to stay in, such a place. With what ice-cold vapour must the evaporation from that alluvial bottom load the air so soon in the afternoon as the sun is off the ground, and down there they cannot have much of him! And how cutting must the cold wind be down there! Is there anything that can compensate for these evils? I doubt much whether mineral waters can that sometimes are in fashion, and sometimes are forsaken. But there will always be plenty of people who will try anything of this kind, and there will always be some who will endeavour to persuade people to resort to such supposed remedies. One would like to know what is the proportion of people who go to these places a second time, not for the sake of the society they expect to find at them, but for the sake of the waters; and whether the proportion of actual cures is much greater than of the cures effected by touching the bones, or the old clothes, of some supposed saint. If after two or three weeks at such a place as this a man finds himself no worse than when he reached it, he may infer that after all his system is not so far enfeebled but that air, exercise, and diet may do something for him.

The above wayside remark is made subject to correction from those who thoroughly understand these subjects. There is, however, another way of looking at this charming lake, with the green forest that descends to it from the opposite mountain, and beyond the lake the valley opening up to Pontresina, and with the long varied vistas up and down the main valley, and with the little town of St. Moritz, perched on its niche on the mountain side, close before you. There is so much variety, so many objects, so much colour, and everything is so clear and fresh, and so bright in the sunshine, that you can hardly think the scene belongs to the same world as you are accustomed to at home. It hardly looks real, the difference is so great. It looks like something got up to please and astonish you, and in this it quite succeeds.

We reached the Post bureau of St. Moritz at 11.30, and started at once for Pontresina, the Australian having shouldered my sac, or—to be accurate—having taken it in his hand, for from a feeling of self-respect he would never shoulder it in a town, lest this method of carrying it might lead to the degrading inference that he was a professional. The walk was a pleasant one of about four miles down to and across the Inn, along the lake side, and through woods and meadows. I was just in time to save my engagement. Of course everybody knows that time was made for slaves, but sometimes it is pleasant to be punctual, for instance when a long business, subject throughout to a variety of circumstances, has been brought to a close at a prearranged moment, for then you may fancy that it is you who are master of time and of yourself.

As I parted with the Australian he was sufficiently professional to ask for more than he had agreed to serve me for plus the present I added to the agreement. This demand I did not decline to comply with, for had I not now reached my destination for the time with some treasure of memorable sights and of pleasant thoughts for myself, and how could our journeyings benefit him except in this way of francs? And why by withstanding his request for more should I ruffle my companion, or be ruffled myself? Besides, too, in our last four miles I had begun to think him less burdensome, or more tolerable, than he had appeared to me at any time previously. In those four miles he had again, as he had frequently done on other occasions (but as now I was about to see him no more the incongruity seemed rather amusing than shocking) called the ravines gullies, the forest bush, my sac the swag, and the glaciers—how horrible, but how explicable in such a circumnavigator—the icebergs! And so after all we parted amicably, as it is best that people should, and with reciprocal expressions of good wishes for each other’s welfare.

Pontresina consists of a long narrow street. At its northern extremity, by which those arriving from the Engadin enter it, the first building you pass is one of its two large hotels. The other is at its southern extremity. A few hundred yards beyond this is a second little town, Upper Pontresina, with its hotel. The two will soon be united into one long unbroken street of about a mile in length. This street is crowded at most hours of the day. There are people returning from their forenoon excursions, and others starting for their afternoon excursions. People arriving from, or leaving for the near towns of the Engadin, or from or for Italy by the Bernina Pass. After the early dinner, which had regulated my movements throughout the forenoon, and indeed for some days back, my wife and her little boy took me in hand, to introduce me to the sights of the place. ‘There is the Roseg valley, and the Roseg glacier, with such and such peaks above it.’ These could be seen from Pontresina. ‘We will take you there to-morrow. This afternoon we will go along the main valley, and give you a look at the Morterasch.’ And that was what they did. The road, like the street, only in a less degree, was alive with parties coming and going, for it is not only the way to the Morterasch and Bernina, but also the route to Italy by Poschiavo and Tirano. The evening was closing in when we returned to Pontresina. The crowd in the single street had now in the neighbourhood of the Post bureau become almost a block. In the crowd I met an Englishman I had seen in the morning at Casaccia. His air was distracted. He had been for some time in search of a place to shelter him for the night, but was everywhere told the same story, that his search would be hopeless: even every landing and passage in every private house, where a shake-down could be placed, was already bespoken.