Beyond this last upland prairie was the summer châlet for the alpe around, on the mountain flanks. At the back of the châlet was the natural rock staircase up to and over the Pass. When we got near the top the path lay over a stream of clean loose rock, with unfilled interstices, and beneath these, quite out of sight but well within hearing, was rushing along the stream of water, collected from the heights right and left. On the summit we stood for some minutes feeding our eyes with a farewell look at the noble Ortler. Its snowy dome now stood high above the black ridge of the Munsterthal mountains, which, as a base, with the two long ranges of the Val Avigna for its equal side-lines, formed at this point a long acute-angled triangle. At its apex on the Cruschetta we were standing.
The way was now down hill for four hours to Tarasp: at first over high Alpine pastures. Here we passed the ashes of a fire that had been kept up last night to scare away from the cattle a bear, which was supposed to be in the neighbourhood. After a time the pastures thinned out, and the path entered on a narrow gorge between precipitous fawn-coloured mountains. It then passed over a reach of pebbly débris, which the stream of the Clemgia had in times of flood washed clean. It was a scene of much desolation. ‘You see,’ said Christian, ‘how much more destructive in this country water is than fire can be. Fire may be arrested; and at the worst destroys only what can be replaced. But water cannot be arrested, and it destroys not only moveables and houses, but also the precious land itself, the source of all our wealth.’ As we passed through this scene of its destructive action, walking over the rocks, and rocky rubble it had brought down, and across the deep seams it had cut in these deposits, I felt that if one must be caught in a bad storm, there would be few places that would not be preferable for the encounter to such a gorge as this, where one would have about as much chance of escaping as a minnow has from the throat of a pike. As the gorge became still narrower the path was now obliged to leave the level of the torrent, and mount some way up the flank of the right hand mountain. This soon brought us into the forest; and, as the sun was bright, the air was incensed with the fragrant exhalations of the Scotch fir, which hereabouts was abundant. We were now about four miles from Tarasp. In front of us to the north-west, beyond the Engadin, many snowy summits were in sight. On the topmost point of each the sun had raised into the otherwise unbroken blue a cloud-banner. These cloud-banners were of very different forms, each appearing to retain its own form persistently. One was a cap of liberty; another a wide-spread oak; another an inverted pyramid attached to its mountain-top by its apex. At last after about four miles of the forest, its trees having now become larch, we got down to the level of the Engadin. Schuls was on the opposite bank; but instead of crossing the Inn to Schuls, we turned to the left, and having crossed the Clemgia, not far from its junction with the Inn, took up our quarters at, I believe, the Belvidere, the most southern of the numerous hotels of Vulpera, a hamlet of hotels, about half a mile from the Curhaus of Tarasp, which is an enormous establishment on the left bank of the Inn. It was 12.30 P.M. and we had been out seven and half hours without a halt.
As we had now got back to the Engadin Christian Grass’s engagement had terminated. He was to receive 15 francs a day, returning being paid for at the same rate as service. This is the regular market price at Pontresina for long engagements. It would not be so high were there more guides, or fewer tourists. You may sometimes hear those who have paid lower prices elsewhere speak of Pontresina guides as extortionate. This is a mistake. The higher and the lower prices are alike the market prices: only here the market is in favour of the guide, while in such a population as that of Meiringen it is in favour of the tourist. I was sorry to part with Christian, but my plans would not for the next three or four days require a porter; and as the wind was now northerly, and the weather seemed to have arranged itself for a period of ‘settled fine,’ he appeared to wish to get back to Pontresina for the chance of some twenty-five franc days on the glaciers. After dinner, then, having entrusted my belongings to the Post, which would now for a few days be my porter, I accompanied him, for he would forthwith commence his return home, as far as Tarasp. As I returned up hill to my hotel at Vulpera, a feeling came over me as though I had undergone a sudden transformation from a well enough contented tourist into a lone wanderer far from home. For the moment neither the thought of home, nor of wandering far from home, pleased. Life seemed a pilgrimage without an object. Of what use could it be to see the world? What pleasure was there in being where I was? Nor could I say to myself that I wished to be anywhere else. ‘Vanity of vanities, all is vanity and vexation of spirit.’ Such was the effect this evening of suddenly finding one’s self alone.
As I re-entered the hotel, some two hours later, its sixty German inmates were sitting down to a solid supper. At one o’clock I had seen them acquitting themselves like Germans in quelling the sacred rage of appetite: but now at six o’clock it had to be quelled again. No wonder that they were disposed to give the Tarasp waters a trial. The only thing to wonder at would have been that they had been made any the better by drinking them. I stood quite alone in being content, instead of the solid supper, with ‘a complete coffee.’ Probably some of the sixty thought me too far gone, or too poor a creature, for the waters to benefit.
Of course the Engadin is everywhere good. Here at Vulpera the mountains are bold and varied. One of the nearest—it is the one just before you as you stand at the door of the Belvidere—has a grand summit of massive jagged rock. Equal merit cannot be predicated of its climate at all times, or at any time for long together. In its three months of cold, the annual supplement to its nine months of winter, the south wind brings rain and snow, and the north wind brings frosty mornings, and disagreeably chilly evenings. So had it been this morning; and so was it now this evening: there was no sitting, or loitering about out of doors.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE LOWER ENGADIN—SÜS—THE FLUELA—DAVOS DÖRFLI—THE PRÄTIGÄU—SCHIERSCH—GRÜSCH.
Oh! this life
Is nobler than attending for a check,
Richer than doing nothing for a bauble,
Prouder than rustling in unpaid for silk.—Shakespeare.