If then any lady beginner in Alpinism shall have been brought here by a desire to add to her Alpine mementos these two plants (I left them undisturbed), gathered after such a walk, and on such a spot; she will find, after she has secured her mementos, that what she has next to do is to effect her descent into the Val del Fain. The first stage of the descent will be found somewhat steep, and very incoherent. We, having done this piece, and reached the turf-grown side of the mountain, instead of continuing straight down into the valley below, along the bottom of which lies the path to the Bernina House (not the Hospice), descended the flank of the long mountain diagonally from the point where we first came out on its side all the way to the Bernina House. It is worth while to take the Val del Fain in this fashion, because, although it may give you somewhat rougher work, the added amount of rougher work will be repaid tenfold by the astonishing variety of beautiful flowers you will see on the mountain flank. The stations, as botanists call them, vary much, the ground being sometimes wet, and sometimes dry, sometimes good and deep, and sometimes shallow and stony. Indeed, this valley is celebrated for its flowers; and I am acquainted with no other in which they may be found in greater variety and profusion. As we approached the Bernina House—about half a mile from it—the air was loaded with perfume. The Edelweiss abounds on these ridges. Some days back, my two unprofessional Pontresina guides had found many specimens of it up the valley, only at a point further up than we were to-day. While we were at dinner at the Bernina House our professional guide ascended in search of it the dark cliffs at the back of the house, beyond the stream, and was not long in returning with a large bouquet.
The dinner just mentioned we had earned, for we had been on the move since 5 A.M., and in that time had ascended the Piz Languard, and crossed La Pischa. Nor was the dinner unequal to such antecedents; for it consisted of trout, beefsteaks, Poschiavo potatoes, Valtelline wine, omelette aux confitures, a compote of pears, and cream at discretion. The charge for this for three persons, was 9 francs, 20 cents. I give these particulars because it is a kind of ingratitude, when you have been treated well at an inn, not to have a word to say upon the subject. After you have paid your bill, the only way in which you can encourage well-doing of this kind, and make a return for the good services by which you have been benefited, is to make them known.
We now set our faces towards Pontresina—somewhat more than 5 miles distant. Our way lay along the excellent Bernina post-road. At about a mile, or a little more, from the inn we were abreast of the falls of the Bernina. As the rest of the party knew the road well, having this summer, and last, made many excursions along it, I here left them to find their way home, while I diverged from the road to see the falls, and to get a near view of the lower part of the Morteratsch glacier. As to the falls: the rocks over and upon which the stream tumbles being in unusually large blocks and slabs, and of a dark colour, and the tumbling water being much broken, and in consequence very white, and the overhanging larch being of a tender green, make them a favourite bit with painters, and on this sunny day there were several easels beside them. As to the glacier: it has a very distinctive character. The point of view from which I was now looking at it was a rock just above the last trees on the mountain side. Here it has the appearance of descending by a rapid and short course (in fact, however, it has a descent of 7 miles), from the snow-clad ridges above you, which, as seen from this point, do not appear of commanding elevation, nor do they present any very distinguishing features. The characteristics of the glacier are its breadth and massiveness. At the point I took for viewing it, its eastern half was hid from sight by an enormous central moraine. As I afterwards saw from the road this enormous moraine assumed on the lower part of the glacier the form of a Brobdingnagian Ray or Skate, with its tail upwards, and its broad shoulders just reaching to the termination of the glacier. As you continue your contemplation of the scene, you may fancy that you are taking in at a few glances the whole life and history of the glacier, from its first beginnings on those heights, throughout its course opposite to where you are seated, and down to its termination at the head of the small filled-up lake you crossed, as you were coming up through the wood below you. As to its termination at the head of the old filled-up lake, that alone is well worth turning out of the road to see; for this is not a glacier which thins out, and dies away feebly, as the fashion of some is, but is one of those which end grandly and abruptly: few, indeed, more so, for it emphasizes the conclusion of its course with perpendicular ice-cliffs some 200, or more, feet high. This near view I have been speaking of must necessarily be very incomplete, but you will to some extent be able to supplement its incompleteness by what you will see of the glacier from the road, and by the general survey of it you will take from the top of the Piz Languard.
I got back to Pontresina at 5 P.M., having been out twelve hours. This may seem a long day to those who are killing themselves by their sedentary habits. But if a lady, and a child who had not yet numbered as many years as these hours, could go through it without suffering that amount of fatigue which is implied by the expression of ‘being knocked up,’ we may be sure that a great many of those who might pronounce it beyond their powers, would be very well able to do it; and would be all the better for a month’s excursion, which would give them such a day once a week. Such a month every year might perhaps add a dozen years to their lives, and enable them to do each year a great deal more than they will ever otherwise be equal to, and to do it better.
Our guide of this day was a young man by trade a carpenter. He told us that it was his intention, in accordance with the Grison custom, to go abroad for some years. His plans were already arranged. At the end of the summer he was to start for Chicago, where he understood that a great deal of building was going on. He hoped that he should be able to make and save some money, and, while so employed, to learn English; with which money and language he further hoped in some half dozen years to return to Pontresina. How strangely do things come about, and combine! Here we have a Grison peasant going to the New World to learn English, and a fire in a town on the border of Lake Michigan, at a spot where, in the memory of people still living, the buffalo quenched his thirst, creating for him an opening for going. But, then, this peasant can read and write, and so can his neighbours: had it been otherwise, he never would have comprehended the advantages, or imagined the possibility, of his learning English; and never would have known anything about Chicago, and its fires; much less have been able to plan how he might turn the possibilities of the place to his own account. And this is only a particular instance of a wide general fact. The whole world is now in a very practical sense becoming the stage for the activity of all who are capable of doing its work; and in every field those who are better qualified will push aside those who are not so well qualified. For a long time this has been exemplified by the Scotch. Scotchmen were to be found not only in every large town in England, but in India, China, the West Indies, and more or less all over the world. So is it now beginning to be with the Germans. They are spreading themselves over the whole of the commercial world. They are to be found in this country, and in all countries, wherever any business is to be transacted. The reason is again the same. Germany is not favoured by nature with a rich soil, with any great variety of produce, or with good harbours: what is giving its people so large a share in the business of the world is that they have endeavoured to fit themselves for it. And in these days of general intercommunication, and of inexhaustible supplies of capital, nations follow the same rule as individuals. The nation that has become better qualified than others for producing anything the world requires, will take the place of those who have not kept themselves up to the mark. If its people have the other requisite qualifications they will never find any difficulty about commanding the requisite capital; for it is they who will be able to employ it most profitably, and it is for profitable employment that capital exists. All the world is now open to all the world, and the principle of the selection of the fittest, which Mr. Darwin tells us rules among plants and the lower animals, will assign its place to each nation, as it does to a great, and ever increasing, extent to individuals. If it be a law of nature, it must be universal and without exemptions.
At Pontresina everybody complains of the dearness of everything. The hotel-keepers endeavour to persuade the grumblers among their guests that this comes of its being a place that produces nothing but milk and a scanty allowance of fuel. This is not the cause of the high prices. London, which has to provide for a million more mouths than the whole of the Swiss Confederation, does not produce even the milk and the fuel. Much of its bread is brought from California, Oregon, and the Antipodes. Much of its meat comes from Scotland and the Continent; and so with everything it consumes. The supplies, however, of Pontresina are drawn from central Switzerland and northern Italy—no great distances. I saw in its long street hucksters’ carts, which had been dragged up from the Valtellina and the Bregaglia by the wretched animals then between the shafts. These carts were full of the most perishable kinds of fruit, which were being retailed by the men who had brought them, and who would soon be back again with another venture of the same kind: here, as everywhere else in the world, whatever is wanted is sure to come. The true reason of the high prices is one which would not sound well in the mouths of those who are naturally, and not reprehensibly, profiting by them: it is that scores of people more than the hotels can accommodate, apply for accommodation every day in the season. For every bedroom there are many applicants of this kind. The one, therefore, to whom it is assigned, is glad to have it, as each of the rejected applicants would have been, at rather a high price. It is the same with guides, horses, and carriages; the people who are anxious to secure them are out of all proportion to the supply. Every market is practically a kind of auction; and at an auction no one thinks it wrong that there should be much competition, or that there should be little. Here we have much competition, in consequence of the supply being very much in arrear of the demand. This is a matter which time will set right. President Saratz’s new hotel, to be opened next year, will do a little towards trimming the balance. It will be under the management of his son, whom he kept in London for two years to learn English, and to make him a Master of Arts in hotel-keeping. The Charing Cross Hotel was the college in which he pursued these studies.
I have already mentioned that I saw this year more birds in the Grisons than I had ever seen before elsewhere in Switzerland. To those who take an interest in ornithology, the President will readily show a collection of the birds of the canton, made by himself. He has well set-up specimens of a great many species. As might be expected from the altitude of the valleys our English species do not figure largely among them. He has besides, in a room in the basement of his house, two living specimens of the noble rock eagle—the Stein Orteler. These, I believe, he intends to add to his collection as soon as they shall have attained their full adult plumage. In his younger days he was a successful chamois-hunter, and he has preserved the heads of more than thirty of these antelopes as trophies of his prowess.
But to go back for a moment to the high prices now ruling at Pontresina. They press hard on the peasants. None of them have, or ever had, superfluities enough of cheese, and of potatoes and rye-flour purchased with their surplus cheese, the fruits of very hard work, and a bare sufficiency of fuel, with no margin for reduction in anything, was pretty well all that in the general distribution of the good things of this world fell to them. And now the prices of these necessaries of life, and of the few other things they may be obliged to purchase, have been greatly raised against them, first by the general rise of prices everywhere, and then by the local causes of a great increase in the permanent population of the neighbourhood, and of the large summer influx of visitors, who are, as respects the peasants, merely a flight of locusts, that in their passage eat up everything. As, then, a Pontresina peasant, after maintaining his family from the produce of his little plot of ground, can have very little surplus to sell, it is evident that, if he cannot make his house fit for lodging visitors, or obtain some share in the new, highly-paid summer employments, his life must be much harder than it was before. To him that the world now comes to Pontresina is the reverse of a gain.
CHAPTER X.
EXCEPTIONAL GERMANS—THE BERNINA HOUSE—THE HEUTHAL—LIVIGNO—LAPLAND AT LIVIGNO—‘MINE HOST.’
To please his pleasure.—Thomson.