So ended our dinner to the satisfaction of all concerned; perhaps to that of the good woman most of all, who, seeing how her soup, and salad, and eggs had been dealt with, could not refrain from an announcement of her hope of being able to get the butter by supper time. As soon as we had taken possession of the room, I had opened the window. I now leaned out of it to see what from this point could be seen of Tauffers. Our inn was on what might be called the place of Tauffers. Opposite to it was the public fountain; and beyond that a large house. It was now four in the afternoon. The village is far from small, and must contain about 500 inhabitants. Several ploughs, drawn by cows, or bullocks, of a diminutive breed, were returning from their daily tasks. For the human toilers, however, the day’s work was far from done, for a continued succession of little carts, full of manure, each containing at most what might have been put into four or five wheelbarrows, was going out to the fields. Every now and then a woman would pass with an enormous bundle of hay in a hempen sheet on her head, or shoulders. The woman of the large house opposite was in the road, cutting the trunks of some long cembras with a cross-cut saw into klafter lengths (six feet), aided by a sturdy little boy as her mate. When the cutting was completed, the pieces were carried by the two, and piled up against the outer wall of the house, facing the street. This is done universally, for though the fuel is thus left in the street, there are no dishonest people to pilfer it. This woman’s house was a large one, and would require here an establishment of two or three servants, and an income of 300l. or 400l. a year. But I was told that the family that occupied it had no servants; indeed, that there was not a domestic servant in the place; that every family in Tauffers did its own work; and that the family in the big house had not 60l. a year to spend.
Behind the big house, and just above the town, for as things go in these parts it is more than a village, is a strange-looking mountain. It is of an equally sharp incline from top to bottom, smooth on the surface, without rocks or trees, and only half clothed with a very threadbare vegetation; this half clothing being as even as the underlying soil which shows through it. The vegetation, then, being poor, and the soil pale, the general colouring is not grass green, but a kind of celadine. In the evening I went some way up it to see of what its soil and vegetation consisted. The soil was of a much disintegrated gritty kind of rock; but as the disintegration hardly proceeded beyond the point of grit, no turf could be formed upon it, for the rainwater that did not run down its steep incline, ran through it, as through a sieve. And that, of course, that ran down over such a surface would take with it any mould that there might have been an incipient attempt to accumulate. This decided the character of the vegetation. No plant could maintain itself on such a station, unless it had good roots for holding on, was able also to do with very little moisture, and to live all the while on a diet as simple and meagre as that which was supporting the inhabitants of the neighbouring town. The species were mostly veronicas, pinks, sedums, and saxifrages. The majority of them, therefore, were such as are on a close inspection conspicuous for their flowers. Almost the only grass was an agrostis which affects poor and dry stations. These plants were nowhere continuous. Each seemed to require, or had at all events received from the grace of circumstances, some elbowroom. The vegetation, then, of the mountain belonged to the class of things that improve on a near acquaintance, for when you were upon it you found that it was decked with a great variety of very bright, though humble, flowers. I was sorry to see that an attempt had been made to plant a part of the mountain with cembras. The little plants had been set each in a little hole, and were only a few inches high. One can hardly believe that in a century they will be many more feet. But should they ever rise above the ground, which as yet they show no disposition to do, their presence will destroy the singular character of the mountain.
The first stage of the ascent brings you to a church: I suppose the pilgrimage church of Tauffers, for it is very common in this part of the world to find a church on an eminence, at a little distance off, to climb up to which, and attend its services on certain days, and at certain seasons, or for certain classes, or for certain objects, is a meritorious act, which will secure some special favour from some local saint, or some saint that respects the locality, or whom the locality respects. On reaching this church, I found that it stood on a little excavated and levelled platform, a kind of niche, on the shoulder of the mountain. On this little stage the water could hang longer than on the declivity, and there was besides the water that came off the roof of the building. This had encouraged the grass immediately around it, and up to its walls, to grow vigorously. While walking round it, to get a view of a ruined castle beyond it, I came suddenly on a little girl upon her knees, intently employed in chopping the long grass with a sickle-shaped knife, and depositing the handfuls in an old cloth. Not another soul was in sight, or within hailing. She appeared to be about 9 years of age. It was evening. The sun was low, and the valley was in shade; but, here was this little body, not playing with her fellows at the end of the day, not looking out for her father’s return from his labours, but labouring hard herself, far from home, and all alone. The evening, which brings rest to all, and the mother to her child, had not brought rest to this little premature grass-cutter, and had separated her from her mother. As I came down the mountain, half an hour later, when the remains of light were fast retiring before the brown shades of approaching night, I overtook on the path the little body, with her burden, as big as herself, on her head. This bundle of coarse grass was to be made into hay, and added to the store of winter provender for the goats and cows of the family.
Such is the training of life for all in Tauffers. Nature intended it to be hard, but not so hard as the crimes and follies of man have made it. Half of this little body’s evening task, and half of the daily and yearly toil of every man, woman, and child in Tauffers is lost to them. They have to task themselves with the toil; and then half the fruits of the toil is snatched from the hands of the toilers, and sent to Vienna to support 1,000,000 men in arms, for which a second tax in flesh and blood is levied on poor Tauffers, and to pay the bondholders of a debt incurred through the profitless, and futile attempts of Austria to maintain a hateful dominion in Italy, and a shadowy and impossible hegemony in northern Germany.
On the mountain above the church you get a good view of this broad interesting valley—up and down. You see how much land there is available for cultivation, and how carefully it is cultivated, and what a large population it is supporting. Several villages are in sight, and you will be able to count a hundred houses in Tauffers, which lies at your feet. The view is more diversified than one coming from the Grisons will have lately seen. It has much land in corn as well as in grass. The expanse is sufficiently broad to give you the idea of its being a substantial component part of the scene, and not merely a little strip reclaimed from the foot of the mountains. It is in itself something considerable, and in the general effects of the view can hold its own against them. The mountains, too, right and left, and before you, are grand; the latter ending against the sky in the snowy summits about the Stelvio. At this point also you are not far from the three old ruined castles of Tauffers. As I looked at them, I thought that if we could recover the details of their day, we should find that the civilized exactions of a modern empire are not greater—perhaps they may be more all-pervading, though we will not be positive even on that point—than were the rude exactions of mediæval local oppressors. The old Baron, like the modern Kaiser, appealed to the sense of glory, but whoever it might have been that was glorified, it was no more then, than it is now, the poor peasant. And there was then, as now, a claim for personal loyalty, in return for protection; but then, as now, it was a protection that was very costly to those who were supposed to be protected. So wags the world. One unsatisfactory condition is exchanged for another that does not give satisfaction. But, throughout, men are dreaming of, and hoping and striving for, something better. And dreams, and hopes, and efforts have hitherto been the salt of life.
As I re-entered the village I passed a châlet surrounded by grass. On the grass, in front of the house, were spread out to bleach three pieces of coarse hempen linen, the winter labours of, I suppose, three families. They were of varying lengths. I paced them, as I passed, and found that the longest measured about fifty yards. The differences in length indicated, perhaps, not so much differences in industry, for here all are industrious to the best of their ability, as differences in the opportunities for this kind of work, and in the number of hands, in the families to which the pieces respectively belonged. Considering how slowly the shuttle advances in the hand-loom, I wondered that any human being could have the patience to weave these fifty yards of linen, and hoped that the time would come when the rewards of labour would in these valleys be such as to enable these poor women to withdraw from this old-world monotonous form of labour; and when among them, as among all people claiming to be civilized, all the coarser kinds of labour, which task not the intelligence, but only the hands and muscles, of men, and still more if of women, will be delegated to iron and steam.
And now we had returned to the hotel; for, as it was getting late, Christian had gone out to the mountain to fetch me in for supper. The good woman set before us the coffee, the milk, the cheese, the bread, and last of all another platter, with ‘Behold the butter!’ She was duly thanked; and afterwards assured that the world could show none better, and that the merits of the coffee and of the milk were equally indisputable. While we were at supper three German pedestrians came in. They were on their way to Bormio by the Umbrail Pass. They took the other end of the long table, and in time their supper was served. They had no coffee, but instead of it, the same kind of soup we had had at dinner. The salad and eggs were not reproduced. Our dinner, possibly, had caused a dearth of the latter. Instead of the white wheaten bread, with which we had been served, they had black rye-bread.
August 19.—Left Tauffers at 5 A.M. Our destination for the day was Tarasp in the Engadin; the way was up the Val Avigna over the Cruschetta, the Pass of the Scarljöchl, and then by the Scarlthal. The morning was bright and frosty with the air from the north. After ascending for two hours, all the way through forest, to my surprise we came on an irrigated meadow of about four acres. It could belong only to Tauffers, for there had been no gaps in the mountains all the way up. So far then, had these industrious people gone, and up so rough a way, to level and irrigate this little bit of land. Every stone had been cleared from it. It was as smooth as a lawn. The channel, too, for bringing the water to it, though not long, had not been easy to construct. I imagined them toiling up to their work, and then bringing down the hay along the rocky pathway they had made for this purpose, and for bringing down timber; and then in imagination I saw the Austrian tax-collector seize upon, and carry off, half the produce of their labour. It would have been a cruel misfortune, if, after they had had all the trouble of making their meadow and road, an earthquake had swallowed up, or a slip from the mountain had buried, just half of their meadow. But in that case the first loss would have been all. There would have been no more labour expended on the swallowed up, or buried half. That would have been bad; but what the government does is worse. It obliges them, year after year, to keep up, to irrigate, and to make the hay upon, this half, and to bring it down to Tauffers; and then it takes it all away from them. And this is to go on for ever.
We had now got beyond the forest, and, therefore, looked back for the Ortler: and there was its perfectly-shaped dome, rising above the mountains that form the eastern boundary of the Munsterthal, not to any great height above them, but still a conspicuous and noble object—a symmetrical dome of purest snow. Of course the higher up we advanced, the loftier to us the dome would become. Forty minutes further on, just below the last rise to the summit of the Pass, we came upon another surprise in the form of a second prairie. We were now nearly three hours from Tauffers, and as the forest had ended with the first prairie, the road had been continued up to this point exclusively for the sake of the second: this last part of it, however, had not been difficult to make for it was over Alpine pasture, and only required the removal of rocks and stones in the lines the rullies would take in going to and fro. The moral of the sight was that when people work upon their own land and in that sense for themselves, they work with a will, which will take no denial, and which will not even be discouraged by the claims of a government to go shares with them in the fruit of their labours. This prairie was larger than the one lower down. Like that it had been carefully levelled and irrigated; though, of course, as the elevation was much greater, the hay was not so good: it was, in fact, not so grassy, being largely compounded of non-gramineous plants. From the same cause its growth was shorter, and it came later to maturity. This was August 19, and the last load was, as we passed by, being laid on the little rully on which it was to be taken down to Tauffers. The man who was loading it, was working alone. He was a spare weather-beaten veteran.