A walk in the Grisons

by F. Barham Zincke

So for yourselves ye drag not ploughs, ye steers;

So for yourselves ye build not nests, ye birds.—Virgil.

August 18.—Down at 5 A.M.; but as the people of the house are not yet accustomed to such hours, did not get away till six. A good deal of linen that was in the washerwoman’s hands had been left out during the night on the roadside rails in front of the inn. Here it is taken for granted that every peasant, and that every one, too, who passes along the road, and it is one of the most frequented roads of the country, is an honest man. Of course they are honest, because almost every one has property, or expects to have it, and has been brought up among those who have it. The instincts, therefore, which property engenders have become universal. These instincts, where the properties are small, are industry, frugality, forethought, and honesty. Some years ago, while travelling in the East, I had collected for my friends at home a bundle of walking-sticks, made from the mid-rib of the palm leaf, the olive wood of Jerusalem, and the balsam of the Jordan. Wherever I had gone I had left the bundle about unheeded, knowing that no one would meddle with it. Where a woman may go unmolested through lonely ways, with several gold coins conspicuously displayed on her head, there cannot be much disposition to pilfer. It was dark, when on my return to England, I landed at Southampton. My luggage had to be taken by the dock servants from the quay of the dock to the custom-house, only a few yards. In those first few yards on English soil, half-a-dozen of the best sticks were stolen. In the custom-house I called the attention of the dock people to this inferiority in our English civilization; and with some emphasis dwelt on the words stolen and thief. I was informed that my language was actionable; and that it would be taken down in writing, if only I would be so good as to repeat it. This I had no objection to do, if only the writer would head his notes with the dicta, that the man who endeavours to screen a thief is as bad as the thief; and that if the property stolen has been entrusted to the safe keeping of the thief, and he, and those whose servant he is, are paid for protecting it, the theft is of an aggravated kind. Of course no more was said about taking down in writing my estimate of the occurrence. The sight this morning of the linen which had been left out all night by the roadside brought that little matter back to my recollection, and led me to infer that there must be some condition in the arrangements of society at Trafoi, as there had been in the East, which worked effectively in favour of honesty, while there must have been something at Southampton that worked in the opposite direction.

The walk down the Stelvio below Trafoi was not altogether lacking in distinctiveness of feature, as must be the case with every mountain-bounded valley, and indeed with every object in nature. What most arrests attention here is some little peculiarity in the manner in which the mountain summits have been weathered away, and the decay of the rock brought down to form the lower slopes now occupied by forests, and by the bottom lands which man has reclaimed for grass. About Trafoi, and for some way below it, you are able to look into the forests on the flank of the mountain on the opposite side of the stream. You see there that many decaying trunks of pines strew the ground. They were thrown down by storms, or fell through age, and no one thought it worth his while to remove them, and bring them across the stream. The people, then, are few, and the pines are plentiful. This led us to discuss the question, whether it was on the cards that Trafoi should become another Pontresina. I was disposed to hold that it would. We can see no reason why the stream of tourists that has now reached Pontresina should not flow further. Trafoi comes next. What brought it to Pontresina is present here to bring it on to Trafoi. Here is a great snowfield, and a grand view of it: mighty summits, more or less difficult of access and ascent; and a better climate, for it admits of the growth of potatoes, and even of cabbages; and the Tyrol is open to you by the Vintschgau in much the same way as the eastern Grisons are from Pontresina by the Engadin. Its turn then, I think, will come, unless some better point of view can be found in the circumference of the Ortler group, and which shall be at the same time easily accessible. Indeed, even now all that is wanted is the construction of a carriage road over the Stretta and Foscagno Passes to save the long round by Tirano on the south, or by Martinsbruck on the north. I am, therefore, disposed to think that the purchase of land at Trafoi would prove a good investment. I saw that the line for a road over the Foscagno was already staked out. The special advantages of Pontresina are the sense of space about it, which you have not here at Trafoi, and that it is not only accessible itself but that also much is accessible from it. Should the stream, however, reach Trafoi, we may be sure that charges will not remain at the moderate level at which I found them, both there and at Santa Maria.

At last our valley of Trafoi, which had been trending north, debouched into the valley of the Adige, the direction of which at this point is from west to east. Had we descended it on the right, it would have brought us to Meran and Botzen. But as I now had to begin to set my face homewards we took the road to the left up the valley. Our destination was Tauffers. The day was very warm, and there was little air; we now, therefore, began to regret the hour that had been lost at starting. Between the point at which we left the Stelvio road and Glurns are two villages. We stopped at the inn of the first of the two for a glass of Austrian beer. I do not know whether the Austrian excise, plus the cost of carriage, would justify the price asked, or whether the lady of the house was demoralized by the unwonted apparition of an Englishman, it being supposed popularly, that every Englishman has a gold mine in his pocket; she did, however, demand, and received, one franc and forty cents for two glasses, each of which contained not much more than half a pint. Glurns, which is walled and fortified in the old style, is the chief town hereabouts. A little beyond it you come to a scene which has a curious effect. You are turning round the foot of the mountain on your left; but if you will look up the valley of the Adige beyond Glurns, you will see a perfectly smooth, broad grass expanse, descending gradually towards you. It may be somewhat less than a mile wide, and two miles or more long. It is impossible for you to see it without thinking of a glacier; indeed it is very like the one we saw yesterday, flowing down from Monte Cristallo towards the summit of the Stelvio. If it were buried in snow you would probably take it for a glacier. Of course the site of this grand breadth of prairie was in old time formed by glacier action: but it is strange that the glacier should have formed it so precisely after its own image. Another peculiarity of this prairie is that it is totally unbacked by either near or distant mountains. All along its further side the sky line is the grass line. I never saw this before in Alpine scenery. Everywhere else whether you look up, or down, an expanse of grass land, mountains close the view, and supply the sky line.

Some two miles from Tauffers we passed through a short-turfed cow-pasture, with thinly scattered small larch, and thickly scattered small fragments of rock. It was several hundred acres in extent. Its whole surface was blue with the flower spikes of a small species of Veronica. Christian, who is somewhat observant of plants, was unacquainted with it. This shows that the climate is here very different from what it is in the neighbourhood of Pontresina, of course in the direction of being warmer and drier. This field of blue supported an observation I had previously made that I know of no country—we were now again close to the Swiss frontier—in which there are so many flowers as in Switzerland of this colour, both as regards the number of species and of individuals. The preponderance of blue is certainly not the rule on the limestone hills that stand round about Jerusalem, and which are remarkable in spring for abundance of flowers, nor is it in any other mountain region with which I am acquainted.

Our road was now again on the ascent; the sun was hot; the air was still; and perhaps the Austrian beer aggravated the effects of the ascent and of the heat. Tauffers, contrary to what we had expected, was not yet in sight; and so our then state of body and mind suggested to us the thought that the Teufel had taken away Tauffers. At last, however, it came in sight, and this expression of our discomfort was no longer tenable. Still the ascent continued, and the heat became more aggravating; and though we plodded on we got no nearer to it. It was clear now that Tauffers was the Teufel. Even the sight of its three churches did not dissipate this supposition; for we were disposed to be cynical, and so they only reminded us of the saying, of course the result of the experience of mankind, that ‘the nearer the church the farther from heaven.’ The village, therefore, which has the greatest number must be the farthest off of all. Our suppositions and cynicism were not abandoned when we had entered Tauffers, and on applying at the White Cross, which the Austrian Preventive official at Trafoi had strongly recommended to us, had found that their only bedroom was engaged for the night. These are small jests, but they were at the time enough to laugh at, and lightened the way.

There was, however, another inn in the place, the Lamb, and that, fortunately, was both a better house and had all its accommodation at our disposal. We were shown upstairs to the reception-room. It was evident that it had not been used for some days, for the table and benches were covered with a thick stratum of long undisturbed dust. This, as the windows were closed, and are seldom opened, their purpose being to admit light, and not also air, must have required a long time for its deposition. The woman of the house, with an infant in her arms, and radiant with good-nature, and the desire to do all she could for her guests, swept off the dust with her apron. The first question was of course the old standing question of all wayfarers. What could be had for dinner? We did not care whether it was bifteck, or côtelettes de mouton. The radiancy was extinguished. It was as if a rosy dawn had been suddenly overcast by dark clouds. These viands were unknown in Tauffers. Having failed in this reconnaissance, we fell back on what we deemed must always be in this part of the world a secure position: she could, then, let us have some dried beef. In Tauffers that also was unknown. Things began to look serious. There was nothing to fall back upon; and so we must now take our chance, from which, however, we could not see exactly what was to be expected. We, therefore, gave the good woman a carte blanche: let us have whatever could be had for keeping body and soul together in Tauffers. This seemed to reassure her. She began to enumerate the best resources, the luxuries, of the place. We might have macaroni soup. Very well! We might have a salad with eggs. Excellent! A pause. Could we have bread and butter? We might have the bread but not the butter. There was no butter in Tauffers. None? None: but she would send off a despatch to the alpe, and perhaps might get us some for supper. At all events she could let us have some cheese? She could: but it would be only meagre cheese. There was no fat cheese in the place. Well, then, let us have for dinner the macaroni soup, the salad and eggs, the bread and the meagre cheese; and let us have all these viands as soon as possible. Yes, yes. We should have them all in half an hour.

More than an hour having passed, and there being no symptoms even that the table would ever be prepared for receiving the dinner, we again summoned the good woman to ask the cause of the delay. Had she to wait till the macaroni was made, or till her hens had laid the eggs? No! no! She had lost the key of the linen chest, and had been an hour looking for it: but now she would break the lock. This we peremptorily forbade. To-morrow it would be all the same to us that we had dined to-day, as we had dined often before, and might often again in the future, without a table-cloth and napkins. But the loss of the lock would to the good woman be an abiding loss: for such places have no locksmiths; and the franc, or so, a new lock would cost, is in Tauffers something considerable. Like the good man of Livigno, she regarded our reasoning as sophistical. It was the voice of the Tempter, endeavouring to persuade her to do what her conscience told her was wrong. The sacrifice must be made. And so it was: for a few minutes afterwards she re-entered the room with the indispensable linen, and began to lay the cloth, smoothing it down with a touch and air that implied that she knew its value, and how much it had just cost her.

The dinner soon followed. First the soup. After one has been out for six and a half hours in a hot sun, and has withal begun to feel a little fagged, any warm liquid, that can be swallowed without offence to the palate, seems comfortable. Fatigue makes one shrink from anything cold, from an instinct of the system that it would rather not make the effort to bring the cold draught up to the temperature of the body. We were, therefore, not rigid critics of the gastronomic merits, or demerits, of this macaroni soup. It was enough that it was comforting; as it certainly was to the good woman to find that we had so far approved of it, as to have emptied the basin. Like the soup at Peist, it would probably on analysis have yielded no evidence that meat of any kind had in any way entered into its composition. Of what, then, had it been made? I believe of the same ingredients; that is to say, it was a broth of herbs, enriched with spices, among which mace predominated, and thickened with vermicelli and flat macaroni. And now the pièce de résistance, the salad, was placed on the table, supported with twelve hard-boiled eggs. The lettuce was crisp and good, and the oil with which it was profusely dressed, was not rancid. I managed to dispose of three of the eggs. I could go no further. Christian placed himself outside the remaining nine. For this, though he had been encouraged to complete the achievement, he thought some apologies necessary. Guides, he remarked deprecatingly, always had good appetites. Apologies, I told him, were quite unnecessary, for his dinner had to sustain the porter as well as the guide. And this justification of his appetite I made him understand was not invented for the occasion, but was the result of the long and hard experience of a poor woman, who having had to provide daily bread for eight small children, had explained to me that, though there were only eight mouths to feed, yet in fact, as each child had two natures, his growing nature, and his natural nature, she had to feed daily sixteen natures. This put Christian quite at his ease. It did even more, for it made him feel how superior his bachelor condition was to that of the poor sixteen-natures-weighted woman. As to the meagre cheese, it tasted like nothing in particular: not even much like cheese. The bread was white, and not yet sufficiently old to have become a petrifaction.