August 13.—After breakfast walked to St. Moritz to replenish the fisc. As English sovereigns were reckoned at twenty-five francs only—the Swiss Post-office allows twenty cents more per sovereign on money orders from England—I did not understand, nor have I since learnt, why I was asked to pay for the transaction the little commission of two francs and a half.
Having returned to Pontresina I went to the Post bureau to despatch some heavy luggage to Lausanne. In the middle of the business, while the clerk was engaged in weighing the pieces, a German pushed his way through the crowd, and interrupting the business in hand, without a word of apology, took possession of the clerk. I once saw at Interlaken another gentleman of the same nationality act in precisely the same fashion. The action exactly corresponded—the comparison must be excused for the sake of its illustrative aptness—to that of a pig, who having come up to the feeding-trough a little late, instantly knocks aside those who are already in possession, and setting his forefeet in the dish, gulps down all he can. The German pig, however, goes further than this, for he plants himself lengthways in the narrow dish, so that the first comers who have been knocked aside, can have no more till he is satisfied. On both of these occasions the clerk submitted without remonstrance. I have also seen managers of hotels accept with equal meekness German animadversions long and loud on items in their bills, which I cannot but suppose they would have resented had they come from Frenchmen or Englishmen. Why this difference? Is it because the Swiss are used to this kind of Tudesque violence? Has much experience taught them at last that there is nothing for it but to wait till the storm has exhausted itself? Or is it because they are afraid of it? And, then, of these barbarians; as all the world knows that Germans are for the most part easy, good-natured, reasonable people, to what class do they belong? Are they junkers? Or are they specimens of the Allemanic variety of the nouveaux riches? Do they belong to the shopocracy, or to the Bureaucracy, or to the barrack? Do they come from Berlin, or from the Hercynian Forest?
This was my last day at Pontresina. My little guide had now to return to the college of Lausanne, where he would have to put in his appearance on the 15th. It was now the 13th. He, therefore, and his mother, must leave to-night by the 4 A.M. diligence. I would join them at Lausanne, but at present it was too soon for me to return; and so I determined to go by some cross-country way to the Stelvio and to the Ortler; and when I had reached Trafoi to think about where I would go next. My own idea for the start was to take the lakes Nero and Bianco on the way to Poschiavo; and then by Val di Campo, and Val Viola, to get to Bormio. But Christian Grass, a name well known in Pontresina, whom I had engaged to accompany me, was quite sure that I should find more to interest me if I went by the way of the Stretta to Livigno, and thence over M. della Neve, and by Isolaccia, to Bormio. I was easily persuaded, for so that we went I cared little what way we went. I knew we could not go a bad way. His advice was, that I should send on my sac to the Bernina House, by the Post this afternoon, and walk there in the evening; and then, at 6 A.M. to-morrow, by which hour he would himself, having slept at home, arrive from Pontresina, start for Livigno. As this was what I had myself thought would be best, so soon as the Livigno route had been decided on, I showed my confidence in him by telling him I would act on his advice.
About an hour before dark I reached the Bernina House. There is a bit of wet ground, three or four acres in extent, between the House and the Bernina Bach. It is completely levelled for cutting; but, as it is swampy, it grows hardly anything but the large-leafed dock, and other kinds of marsh-weeds. Still its produce is of much use in a country where there is no straw for littering cows, and horses. I now found in it a gang of ten men at work, cutting the weeds. Those who in these parts mow for wages, are generally Italians; the native men being employed on their own land, and in waiting in one way or another on travellers; or, which comprises a considerable proportion of the young men, have gone abroad for a time to seek their fortune. The pay of these itinerant haymakers, was, I found, two francs, seventy cents a day. As they live almost exclusively on polenta, they are able to save the greater part of their wages. I asked one of them what they did in winter. ‘We go home,’ he replied, ‘and sleep like the marmots.’
A heavy shower drove me from the field into the house for the rest of the evening, for it soon became continuous rain without any intermission of the patter against the window. Under these circumstances, the landlady, who was also a not inconsiderable landlord proved a host as well as an obliging hostess. She was never long together out of the room, always having something fresh to tell about herself, the people, the country, the summer and winter traffic of the road, or something or other. The House is her own property. She has also between thirty and forty thousand klafters of prairie, or grass land levelled and irrigated for mowing, and fourteen cows. Fourteen hundred klafters are about equal to an English acre. I have already mentioned, as we found yesterday, that the good woman treats her guests well in respect both of what she gives them, and of what she takes from them. The bedrooms, of which there are six, are small but clean. They are over the stabling, on the opposite side of the way.
August 14.—It rained all night. At 6 A.M. Christian Grass, true to time, arrived. At 10.15 the rain having subsided to a drizzle, we started for Livigno. Our road lay up the Heuthal. We had been out half an hour when the sun finished off the attenuating clouds, and we had a most charming day for our walk. The marmots before us, and right and left of us on the mountain sides, had come out from their earths to salute, in their fashion, the return of ‘the God of gladness.’ Their sharp short cries we heard all around us. ‘That,’ said Christian, ‘is the barometer of fine weather; as the descent of the chamois from the mountain tops is of a coming storm.’ Who would not have thought well of the man who put local observation in such a form?
If one can be pleased with a long treeless valley, marvellously full of flowers (though, indeed, they abound more on the high flanks than in the bottom, where the path lies), and with mountains that are neither covered with snow, nor very rugged, he will be more than satisfied with his five miles’ walk through the Heuthal. All throughout it that admits of being mown is assigned in lots to the burgers of Pontresina, for hay-making: the rest is good Alpine summer pasture. Of course, as in every Swiss valley, the music of a hurrying stream accompanies you all the way. Near the further end of it, you come on a little shallow tarn. ‘What,’ you ask, ‘has created this tarn in this place?’ Something must have excavated it. It seems itself to put the question to you; ‘can you tell how I came here?’ As I looked up to the mountain that overhung it, that seemed to give the answer. From its top down to the little tarn there was a steep side, in fact an unchecked slide, if reckoned vertically, of 2,000 feet. What enormous masses, then, of snow, must at times, probably every year, drop down to this very spot! Their momentum must be suddenly checked, and expended, just where the little tarn is. The expenditure of such a force must have an effect. The little tarn is the effect. Whatever in the soil is compressible must be compressed, and whatever is expressible must be driven out, by the blow. This is what the mountain seemed to say in explanation of the existence of the tarn. ‘It is my work,’ quoth the mountain; ‘I excavated it.’
A little beyond the tarn, and on the same level with it, you suddenly, without any preparation, find yourself on the top of a lofty mountain, with a deep valley at your feet. In fact for the last five miles you have been walking up the western declivity of this mountain, without perceiving it, or giving it a thought, and latterly, without being aware of it, you have been walking on its summit; and now in a moment, you come to the brow of the summit, and the eastern side of the mountain, all but, as it seems to you now you are looking down, a mountain-deep precipice, is at your feet. One step more you think would roll you down to the bottom of it. You slept last night at a height of 6,735 feet. You are now on the summit of the Pass, at a height of 8,143 feet. So gradual, through your five miles’ walk up the valley, has been your ascent. The peaks right and left of you are 2,000 feet higher, and the sight of them had assisted in keeping the true character of your position out of your thoughts. There in the deep valley of the Spöl below you, into which you now have to descend, lies your way to Livigno. The valley is at right angles to what has hitherto been the direction of your path.
Having got down to the valley we selected a halting place just above the stream of the Spöl, and below the brow of its bank. Here we were in the sun, but out of the wind; and having seated ourselves on the turf, with rocks for footstools, we spent three-quarters of an hour about what we called our dinner. We had breakfasted early, and had walked just enough to make us hungry. It was a very pleasant three-quarters of an hour. There was the bright, warm sun, the pleasant sensations of its brightness and warmth enhanced by the recollection of the cold, wet morning; there was the green valley before us, with a herd of cows grazing near, and a party of salt carriers returning with their asses to Poschiavo; there were the naked drab-coloured mountain-tops, three, or more, thousand feet above us; there was the motion and the music of the lively crystal stream, as it hurried by over its rocky channel at our feet, near enough to enable us to dip from it without rising, what we wanted for diluting and cooling our wine, that we might take it in long draughts; and then there was for me the conversation of a companion, who I knew was intelligent, and who also, I had every reason to believe, was a man of good faith.