August 20.—My plan for to-day was to walk over the Fluela Pass from Süs in the Engadin to Davos Dörfli, a little place at the head of the Davosthal, just below the summit of the ridge, which in nature separates the Davosthal from, though by road it connects it with, the Prätigäu. I had to turn out at 4 A.M., that I might have time to get breakfast, and to walk to Tarasp for the 5.10 diligence from Schuls, which was to take me to Süs. Süs I reached at 7.40. Several villages, some of them almost little towns, were passed by the way. The combinations of mountains, woods, villages, reclaimed land, a good road often constructed in difficult places, and all the time by your side a full stream, worthy of being one of the main head waters of the Danube, were enough to maintain the interest of a drive of two hours and a half.
Now that, having left Süs, I was on the road absolutely alone—for that could not have been said of my position yesterday evening with sixty Teutons under the same roof, to dine and sup with at the same table—and alone, too, for the whole day, but, however, with something to see and to do, I was no longer disposed to feel like a lone wanderer far from home. The world seemed a home, and a glorious home, full of objects in every direction that had plenty to say, and were very good company. For the first two hours the valley is narrow, not quite of the ravine kind, but still generally with very little grass, and sometimes with none at all. When at this distance from Süs you are just getting clear of the forest, the dreariness and desolateness of the scene begin to be felt. You are high above the brawling stream; you see its foamy line, but cannot make out its movement, nor hear its brawling. Summits scarred with dark cliffs are right and left of you. Before you, and, if you look back, behind you also, are summits capped with snow. The snowy summits before you are those of Piz Vadred, from which you see descending the great Grialetsch glacier. Between that and you is a singularly dead looking grayish valley. You think that there is no indication of man’s presence here, except the road on which you are walking. A few steps, however, further on bring into sight a châlet in the bottom. The singularly dead-looking grayish valley does, then, maintain for two or three months in the year a herd of cows. You had been thinking that its produce could not go much beyond lichens and mosses. You go a little further, and come upon another châlet, that of the alpe of the next higher level, which carries you up to the summit of the Pass. But the cows and herdsmen are this day out of sight. You see nothing moving. Rocks and snow alone attract your attention. You pass a forbidding looking stream; dark, chilly, gruff. It is snarling at you, and telling you to be gone. As you get to the further end of the long lozenge-shaped amphitheatre, which conducts you to the summit of the Pass, with the Fluela Weisshorn on your right, and the Schwarzhorn on your left, the snow-patches begin to cross the road. On the actual summit the road is on a level, with a small lake on either hand. The raised viaduct separates, and their respective colours distinguish, the two. That on your left being fed by water coming direct from the near glaciers is a lake of milk. That on your right is so crystal-clear that you might take it for mountain air liquefied.
Just beyond these two contrasted lakes was a small hotel. I felt, however, no inclination to exchange the glorious day and scene outside for the interior of a small room; and so with a salute to the landlord, who was standing at his door to offer me the hospitality of his house—under such circumstances the salute seemed almost a kind of mockery—I continued my way on. The scene, as is usual on reaching the top of a Pass, was now totally different from what I had lately been noting. The immediate entourage was of a darker rock, and the mountain tops were green and rounded. The road for the first mile, or so, seemed to be along the arc of the segment of a circle. In a spirit of speculation I took to the scattered rocks along the chord of the segment. Among the rocks were many pools of water of marvellous transparency. Every stain and scratch on the rocks at the bottom of the water was as distinct as if there had been no water at all, indeed they might have been more distinct, for as seen under the water they had the appearance of having been brought out by varnish. This water, too, was so pure and fresh for drinking, that a draught of it made me think that I had never drank water before, and could not hope ever to drink it again. As I regained the road I was overtaken by the diligence, which I had left at Süs, preparing to start, three hours previously.
One welcomes the return of the first trees. It is good to be in the zone above the trees. It is good also to find yourself returning to the zone of trees. The first you come upon tell you they have a hard time of it. You interpret their stunted form and irregular growth, and their crooked, broken branches as so many accusations brought against the cold long winters, and the cruel storms, and the summer frosts, whose assaults they have had to sustain. They are maimed, and scarred veterans who from their youth up have lived in the midst of war’s alarms and injuries, but who will not yet be driven from the field. Their reappearance, too, reminds you that, in respect of the effects of the landscape, they stand in the same relation to the grassy turf that the mountains do to the plains. They feed the eye of man, and furnish his mind with ideas and images. Without them vegetation would have no more interest than the earth’s surface would have without the mountains. Each, too, has its place in the working arrangements of the general scheme; the mountains in those of the world-organism, and the trees in those of organized life.
With these thoughts I passed the little inn of Tschuggen, five miles below the summit. About a mile and a quarter below Tschuggen, and a little above the inn of the Alpen Rose, I called my midday halt. I took my position among some clean slabs and fragments of a slaty-coloured glistening rock, a few paces above the road, and on the right side of it. I was here sheltered by a wood of larch from the north wind, which was cold at midday. As I looked towards Tschuggen, up the way I had been descending, a snow-topped pyramid, perhaps the Schwarzhorn, bounded the view. Then looking across, instead of up, the road, the mountain of the opposite side rose near and steeply. It was a big mountain, but not of the naked rocky order, for its flank, full in view before me, was pretty well covered with a vestment of vegetation. In this, the predominant element was a sedum now profusely in flower, which made yellow the predominant colour of the vestment. Just below me, on the other side of the road, and somewhat below the road, was a châlet, surrounded by little grass patches, wherever the land could be levelled, from the road down to the valley bottom, out of which rose, immediately beyond the little stream of the valley, the yellow-vested mountain. The family, that lived in the châlet, were alertly at work spreading, or carrying, their little parcels of hay. Old and young, all appeared to be together in the field. As I watched the labours of this busily employed family I thought their position not unlike that of the first trees I had just seen some miles above. Like them, and from the same causes, they had to sustain the struggle for life against great difficulties. In the contemplation, however, of their industry there was something to suggest the thought that their hard days were not rendered additionally hard by the discontent and the vice, which are seen and felt wherever life is maintained on easier conditions.
From this halt an hour and a half of pleasant walking brought me to Davos Dörfli, a well situated village in a broad expanse of grass land at the foot of the Davoser see. It is only a mile and a half from Davos am Platz, at which I had dined on my descent from the Strela seventeen days back. My way then lay to the south. I had since made a round I was disposed to think worth the time. To-morrow I was to set my face north for the Prätigäu.
When you are walking, and the more so if you are alone, you are disposed to note the changing aspects of the weather. Here, then, are the observations that were made on this day. At 4 A.M. at Tarasp there was an unbroken canopy of cloud: but it was not low down the mountain sides. At 6 the summits that were lofty enough for snow were standing clear; but the lesser summits were still shrouded with clouds. At 8 most of these had disappeared. From 9 till 12 only thin streaks and flecks of cloud high above all the summits. The definition of every mountain ridge and pinnacle against the deep blue was now very remarkable. At 12 clouds began to form on the tops of the mountains, and spreading widely to a considerable extent obscured the blue. At 4 these formed solid masses, and the sky was much more obscured. At 6 the clouds sunk low down on the mountain sides, so as to shut out the view. The wind was northerly all day. In the early morning it had been so cold from Tarasp to Süs as to make the banquette of the diligence not altogether pleasant. Near Süs I saw potato-patches by the road side that had been blackened at the extremities of the haulm by frost. Throughout the day, even when for some hours I was walking up hill with the sun on the road, the air was fresh and crisp. I have already mentioned that on the previous evening at Tarasp it had been disagreeably cold. This evening at Davos Dörfli I again saw potato haulm that had been injured by frost. Not, then, taking this day as a sample of the climate, for its merits were too much above the average for that, but taking it as a sample of a fine day, almost the best kind of day the climate has to show, we may say that in summer on some days, for some hours, the climate is pleasant. The mornings and evenings, when the weather is fine, that is to say when the wind is from the north, are too cold. In the fine hours of the fine days the sense of enjoyment from a sense of penetrating freshness, and of penetrating warmth, is very delightful.
August 21.—Had been assured last night that coffee would be ready at 5 this morning. This promise was a case of deception prepense, for there had been no intention of letting me have it till half an hour later, when eight or ten Germans, who were to leave at 6, would have their breakfast served. On these occasions it is of no manner of use to complain, or to give yourself the trouble of showing in any way your dissatisfaction; or rather it is better not to allow yourself to feel any dissatisfaction at all. The master of the hotel is master of the situation. And in a place like Davos Dörfli, where there is only one moderately good hotel, the rule of its master is a despotism, untempered by any effectual competition. Here again, as at Tarasp, I found the hotel full of Germans, and of German-speaking Swiss; and, as a consequence, the table well supplied, and the charges moderate. At both of these places I had been reminded of three portions of cold meat I had ordered at Pontresina. To give the particulars—they consisted of six circular pieces, each of them of the diameter of a florin, and no thicker than a well-worn three-penny. For this the charge was about equal to the weight of the pieces in francs. Such doings would be impossible at Tarasp, or at the Dörfli of Davos, or at the Platz of that ilk.
At 5.45, then, I got under weigh. My road for the Prätigäu lay at first along the level shore of the Davoser see for about a mile, and then for about a mile or so more up a gentle rise of some hundred or two feet in all to the Davoser Kulm, which from this side seems rather to connect than to separate the two valleys. Though, indeed, you afterwards find that the one you are bound for is a considerable way down on the opposite side. About a mile below the summit I descended into a cloud, and walked in it for about five miles, that is down to Klosters. I heard a stream at times, but did not see it; and the books say that I passed a lake, but I know no more of it than what is said in the books. All that I saw was the road, and the mist-shrouded trees by the roadside, from which abundant drops were falling. Not a breath was stirring, and it was very chilly. The altitudes were from 5,300 feet on the Kulm to 4,000 at Klosters. I might as well have been on a November morning in the Essex marshes, or in the Lincolnshire fens. Just above Klosters, without any intimation of the coming change, I stepped out of the cloud. There before me, a little below, were the four villages that form the commune. Many of their houses were goodly structures of stone. Around the villages was a large expanse of good land. This first glimpse of the Prätigäu was worthy of its reputation of being one of the best cultivated valleys in Switzerland, which, arising out of, and taken in connexion with, their system of land tenure, is what accounts for its large population of 10,000 souls. It was for the sake of the contrasts its high cultivation and its populousness would offer to what I had seen in the valleys I had lately been wandering through, that I was here to-day. The altitude and climate of most of them restricted the industry of the inhabitants to the cultivation of grass; and this in its turn was a great restriction on the number of the inhabitants.