A walk in the Grisons

by F. Barham Zincke

And in his mind recorded it with love.—Wordsworth.

August 11.—At 8.30 A.M. got under weigh for the Roseg glacier, piloted by my two new guides. The morning was bright, the air quiet and fresh, and everything level to their wish that what they had to show might be seen to the best advantage. As you turn your back on Pontresina, and cross the rocky channel of the Bernina Bach, which carries off the outflow of the eastern and northern sides of the Bernina group, you command the upward view of the valley of the Roseg. It is not of the narrow ravine kind, but has some little space of wooded bottom, generally open enough to afford a little pasturage. You are 6,000 feet above the sea; the forest, therefore, is composed of larch and cembra. On either side are grand mountains. The western is steeper than the eastern wall, and is still in the morning sun. The eye ranges over the valley to rest on the great snow-field at its head, which commences its rise at a distance from you of six miles. It is of the purest white, and this is not to any great extent scarred and broken by protruding rocks and summits, for the naked rock faces of its ridges look not in this, but in the opposite, or southern, direction. It closes the head of the valley, and is a wide field that satisfies the eye with its amplitude of expansion, its pure white, and its majestic rise to the sky-line.

A walk of five miles through the forest brings you to a little plain, which is evidently the site of an old lake long since filled up with glacier débris. At the near end of this is a little inn, kept by a little Frenchman, who will talk to you about the empire, the commune, and the republic, but with some reserve. At the further end, about half a mile off, is the foot of the glacier. My guides, in the exercise of a wise discretion, did not take me upon the glacier itself, but by a path along the flank of Piz Corvatsch, for about a mile or more, to a very commanding position, a little beyond the châlet of the alpe. This point, which is sufficiently above the glacier, is opposite to a dark protruding eminence in it, yclept Agagliouls, below which its two main ice-streams meet. And here, like the Lord Thomas and fair Annet of the ballad we sat a while on a hill. They sat all day; and when night was come, and sun was set, they had not talked their fill. We, not having the excuse they had for being forgetful of time, after half an hour began to retrace our steps, though we had hardly looked our fill. Still we had looked enough to be able to carry away with us a mental picture, that might be recalled at will, of the topography and aspects of the grand scene—the widespread uptilted snowfield, and its component parts, and the named summits, and their relations to each other, and respective effects on the whole, and upon the glacier in particular, which is the outcome of the whole. A peculiarity of this scene is its bounded completeness. It does not in any direction suggest the infinite, as it might if you were on a central, or commanding eminence, with snowy heights all around you, reaching away to distant horizons. It has near, definite boundaries. You seem to take in the whole of it, when it is looked at from our to-day’s point of observation; and when looked at from Pontresina, as all other objects are there excluded from your view, the effect is almost that of a picture set in a frame. One marked feature of the scene, from our point of observation on Piz Corvatsch, is the lofty, precipitous, slate-coloured, couloir-streaked Piz Tschierva, with its dark hanging glaciers. It bounds our snowfield on the north.

As we returned we made a requisition for our dinner on the resources of the expatriated Parisian, the victim of political instability. It was verging towards evening, when, after a day of pleasant loitering, we again found ourselves at Pontresina. The greater part of the evening I spent in a long discussion with the head of one of the old patroon families of what was once New Amsterdam, and is now New York, on the suitableness, or the reverse, of the principle of free trade to the present industrial condition of the United States. Of course the logic of neither had any effect on the other.

August 12.—Out at a few minutes before 5 A.M. We contemplated the ascent of the Piz Languard, and whatever else the day might admit of our doing. The masons and carpenters employed in building on our side of the road a large new hotel, and on the opposite side a dépendance to the existing hotel, were already seated around on pieces of timber, and heaps of stones, waiting for the moment when they were to commence the labours of the day. The horse that was to carry the little man as far as the foot of the cone, and the guide we had engaged for the day, arrived as we were emerging from the door of President Saratz’s house, in which we had been so fortunate as to obtain our lodgings, and we were started by the clock of the church across the street striking the hour. Upper Pontresina was soon passed by our taking a short cut up to the forest through a prairie or two, from which the hay had just been carried. The ascent may be roughly divided into three stages, each requiring about an hour. The first is through the forest, and is somewhat toilsome. The second lies beyond the trees, and is about an hour more of open, rocky, bleak, not steep Alpine pasture, along and up the valley of the Languard. Then an hour of stiff climbing up the cone by a grandly irregular mountain staircase. Here steps have been made in the rock, here slabs of rock have been fixed for steps, here an impracticable rock so barred the way that the path had to take half the circuit of it before the staircase could again ascend. All this is on a perfectly naked, precipitously steep incline—truly the side of a mountain cone.

The summit which is sufficiently level affords standing and sitting space for perhaps half a dozen parties. There might have been as many upon it before we left it. It is composed of huge blocks and slabs of rock tossed together in disorder, but so as to give many natural seats, and some shelter from wind.

But what of the view? On this morning it was not seen to the most advantage. There were clouds rising from many of the valleys; and these, though they were neither continuous, nor fixed, interfered much with the view, for they obliged us to watch for an opportunity for seeing all that was to be seen in any direction, and made it throughout impossible to see the whole panorama connectedly at a single glance round. In time, however, we managed to see the whole in detail, so as to be able to put it together in the mind. The view takes its character very much from that of the region. It is the peculiarity of this region, as compared with other great mountain districts of Switzerland, that, while the mountain tops are not so lofty as elsewhere, the valleys are far loftier. For instance, the Finster-Aarhorn rises to an altitude of 14,026 feet, Monte Rosa of 15,364, Mont Blanc of 15,781, but the Piz Bernina, the loftiest of the surrounding heights, rises only to an altitude of 13,294. And if the small group to which the Piz Bernina belongs be excepted, the height of but few of the summits of the encircling ranges is greater than the 10,715 of the Piz Languard itself, that is to say of your point of view. And as to the valleys: while Interlaken is depressed to 1,863 feet, Brieg to 2,244, and Chamouni to 3,445, St. Moritz and Campfer, the only points in the valley of the Engadin visible from our observatory, do not descend below 6,000 feet. Here, therefore, we have to look at a ring of lower mountains springing from a far higher level. The consequence of this is that they have not sufficient altitude to develop any very marked peculiarities of form. This will be seen at a glance by comparing any part of the panorama of this view with any other: the two will resemble each other very closely. And if the whole view be compared with that from the Gorner Grat, the Eggischhorn, or the Rigi, its general sameness will be again perceived. What we here have is a multitude of apparently small summits, a large proportion of which are snow-capped, but none of which are distinctly featured; and they all appear to be at about our own level. The effect is almost the same as that of an agitated sea, the waves of which are of about the same height, and many of them crested with foaming white. The only exception to this is the Bernina group close by, into which you look: but even here the summits which stand out of the snowfield appear to have no striking varieties of form. There are no Wetterhorns and Shrekhorns, and Finster-Aarhorns, no Weisshorns and Matterhorns among them. What in this group is really grand, and which we saw well to-day, is that the whole of the snowfield that is visible from right to left, and from above, converges to the Morterasch glacier. There is in this the unity of a picture. It is held up to you who are on the Piz Languard, to be looked at, just as a picture might be, and just at the right distance for taking in the details of such a picture. It has the completeness, limitation and definiteness, which, from this side, belong to views of this group. And, too, its pure field of unsullied white, contrasts well with the dark rusty brown of the cliffs and ravines immediately around and below you, which are themselves one of the most striking and interesting features of this view from the Piz Languard. They are the foreground, and have an impressive and awe-inspiring aspect. Beyond them, all round the horizon, excepting the Bernina group, is the ocean of petrified waves, many crested with petrified foam. Just in one place an opening enables you to look down on St. Moritz and Campfer, the only point in the vast panorama, at which you can find a trace of man, and of his works—all the rest is but mountain summits innumerable, a world to the utmost horizon of rock and snow.

In descending the cone, you may find near the foot of it a low inconspicuous signboard, not two feet out of the ground, as if it had been intended that it should escape observation. On it is inscribed the word Bormio. The little man, who, during his stay at Pontresina, had been constructing in his mind a map of the neighbourhood, knew very well what this meant. It pointed in the direction of the Pischa Pass to the Val del Fain. There below us, to the left, was the Western spur of the snowfield of the Pass; and snow appears to have an irresistible attraction for youthful minds, as it has also for feminine in the Alps. A debate, therefore, instantly commenced whether it would not be better to take to the snow. In this debate I did not join, in order that the other members of the party might decide for themselves according to their own wishes, and their own estimates of their own powers. I had, however, no doubt of what the decision would be. It took but a little moment to arrive at it; and then we turned our backs on Pontresina, and made for the snow. First we had to get to the bottom of the valley: that was quickly done; and then to ascend it to the snow over blocks and fragments of rock, each of which was as clean as if it had been boiled in caustic lye. They were also so tightly jammed together, that you might walk a hundred yards, or more, upon them without one slipping, or so much as moving, under your feet. How came they to be of so clean a surface, and so tightly fixed together? They are clean because there is little up here to soil them—no dirt, no dust; and being buried deeply in winter and spring under the snow, there is not much chance for lichens to form upon them; and whatever soil, or stain, might commence to adhere to them, is washed away when the snow is melting in the spring. And as to their being so firmly fixed together, I believe that is a consequence of their being every year rammed together by a rammer, that has to a London paviour’s the ratio of Nasmyth’s steam-hammer to a blacksmith’s. And this rammer that is brought into operation here is that of the avalanches that break away from the overhanging heights. They fall on these streams and beds of fragments of rock with hundred ton blows, compressing and jamming them together, when the blow is direct, and, when they slide, sweeping off the pieces that cannot be infixed in the compacted mass.

After the clean macadamized rocks came the snow: first about three-quarters of a mile of gradual ascent; and then, when the actual Pass was reached, a steep incline of snow up the mountain on the right, and on the left a more level field on a lower stage. The two were separated by a kind of ridge of snow about 250 yards long. A slip from this to the lower stage would have been easy, and might have been serious: there was, however, footing enough on the ridge, if only you would look where you were going to set your foot, and not at the lower snowfield. From this we stepped off to a glacier on our right; the glacier of the Val del Fain, or Heuthal. It is of no great length, and is uncrevassed, but has rather too great an incline for direct descent: we, therefore, took it diagonally. The stream from the glacier is not seen to issue from it, but as you walk over the stream of rocks, that continues the stream of ice, you hear the stream of water rushing by beneath your feet. The books I see say that this is a Pass for experienced mountaineers; I should rather say that, when it is as it was this day, it is a charming bit for lady beginners, who have got so far as to know that they can, under not very trying circumstances, trust to their feet and heads.

Having left the glacier you find yourself in a depressed area of some little extent surrounded with jagged summits, on which, wherever it can find a lodgment, snow is resting. The central area is not flat, but composed of knolls and pools. As we were standing on one of these knolls—it had a flattened top—noticing how hard, and cold, and dead, was everything around us, we espied at our feet, growing here and there on the scaly rubble on which we were treading, several plants of the Aretia Glacialis. To find unexpectedly upon such a surface, and with such surroundings, so charming a form of life could not but give a little thrill of pleasure. Each plant was a compact round patch of mossy foliage, singularly even and smooth, and firmly set together, perhaps half an inch high, and two or three inches in diameter. Out of this little green cushion stood up about a dozen, or more, little pearl-coloured stars, not in one cluster, or in several, but each star singly on its own stem. The pearl-coloured stars were interspersed with some that were of a waxy white. The pearl-colour was the hue of youth, freshness, and vigour; the white told of age and incipient decay. This discovery led to our looking about for something more; and our search was rewarded, for on the next knoll we found several tufts—that is the shape it assumes up here—of the golden dwarf Papaver Pyrenaicum. These two lovely plants did not on this day waste their beauty on the desolate scene. Their flowers are now gone, and they are themselves buried in snow; but what they were on that August day still lives in the mind. The little pearly stars, and the golden cups, have still an existence. Their form and colour, now that they are creatures of the brain, are the same as they were while they were expanded on the shaly knoll, protruded through the snow, on the top of the Pischa, quickened by the warmth, and drinking in the light, of the sun that was smiling on them. There, too, in the brain, they must have some substance, for creatures of the brain must be of the substance of the brain. The difference is that now they exist in another medium, and are cognisable by another sense; but in that new medium they still have their original form and colour, and still possess the power of giving pleasure.