A walk in the Grisons

by F. Barham Zincke

From the first to the second village the road reascended a little. This brought me again almost to the level of the cloud, and here the position of the road placed a long reach of the valley before me. The effect was strange, and such as I do not recollect ever to have seen elsewhere. The stratum of cloud just roofed the valley. To the eye it was a flat roof, both on the upper, and on the lower, sides. As I looked forward the eye traversed the valley, below the roof, just as it might a long gallery. The cloud-roof was at an uniform level, resting on the mountains right and left, but of course the valley below it fell away as it advanced in its descent. I cannot say how many miles I saw down the valley under this roof. Though from my point of view it appeared perfectly continuous, and without holes or fissures, such could not have been the case, as was evident from there being several patches of sunlight in the valley. These patches of sunlight were poured in through fissures or holes in the cloud-roof, that is to say through skylights in it, and they not only gave a strange and unwonted effect of light and shade in the valley—the unlighted, which was the greater part, showing of a dark gloomy green, and the lighted patches of a bright golden green—but also enabled one to see under the roof to a great distance.

On turning round to look back in the direction by which I had reached Klosters, I saw another curious effect of cloud. The valley all about Klosters was clear and bright. Somewhat above this visible, sun-lit, lower expanse began the masses of cloud I had passed through in descending. As I was just below these clouds, and looking up at them through the opening over the neighbourhood of Klosters, in the area of which opening I was standing, they hid from me the whole mighty mass of Piz Buin—it is 10,700 feet high—except just the snowy summit. None of the supports of the summit were seen or suggested. While I looked at it, it disappeared and reappeared, again and again, as the vast stratum of cloud moved on, or rose, or sunk a little. Of course the head of Piz Buin was very far above my stratum of cloud, but as I was close to it, and looking up at it, it was enough to intercept all but the summit, which every now and then it did intercept. As the snowy summit appeared and disappeared, it seemed as if it was not the cloud but the summit that was moving; for was it not at one moment peering down into the valley, and the next moment withdrawing itself? The effect was most unnatural. The unsubstantial fleeting cloud became the solid and fixed, and the top of the mountain which stands fast for ever the floating, object.

A further acquaintance with the Prätigäu confirmed the first impression. I have nowhere seen a richer green, or more of it, or a more pleasing, I might almost say a more wonderful, combination of woodland, grass, corn, and fruit trees, or more numerous villages, or so many scattered châlets. Of course there is not much of this kind in the grassy elevated valleys I had lately been traversing; indeed, I had seen nothing of the kind since I had left Coire on the third of the month; and what you see here is far in advance of what you can see in the neighbourhood of Coire, with the exception of the vineyards. The bottom of the valley is well cultivated. As you ascend to a higher zone the fruit trees are gradually replaced by forest trees, and the garden ground by grass, the châlets, however, still continuing. When the amount of population is recalled all this can be imagined almost without its being seen. The amount of cultivable land, almost all of it made land, is of course the first condition. The next is the altitude of the valley which ranges from about 2,000 feet at Grüsch to about 4,000 at Klosters; and then its direction, which is such as to give it protection from the northerly winds, and to expose one side to the midday sun, while its length is raked both by the morning and evening sun. These physical conditions, however, would not count for much were they not accompanied by certain human conditions. Every man of these 10,000 souls, in proportion to his ability, turns to the best possible account every square foot of his land, and every ray of sunshine that falls upon it, because he and his family will get the whole benefit of his thought and labour. They clear the ground, and dig it deep, and enrich it all they can, because it is their own ground. They plant, and they tend what they plant carefully, because they, and not others, will get the fruit of what they plant and tend. Herein lies the motive of their industry.

Neither, however, this motive, nor the terrain nature and the course of events have placed at their disposal, would be of any avail were it not for the presence of another condition, which has been entirely overlooked by those who advocate in the press, and on the platform, the system of peasant proprietorship. This other condition is knowledge—the knowledge of all that is required for supporting a family throughout the whole of the twelve months, the knowledge of how all these things are to be produced from two or three acres of land, and the knowledge of how each article is to be kept in store, and when used to be used most advantageously. These are the particulars of what is very far from being a simple problem. It is, in fact, the most complicated form in which the problem of how life is to be sustained is submitted to any portion of the human family. In comparison with it the form in which the same problem is submitted to our agricultural labourer is simplicity itself. He has nothing to do but to take from his employer’s hand on Saturday evening the regulation wages of the neighbourhood, and to transfer them to the hand of the village shopkeeper for all that he will want during the next seven days. Add to this that the law has established for his behoof a national benefit society, which will provide for him in sickness, and in old age, and which will not forsake him even when he has shuffled off this mortal coil, for it will supply the coffin in which he will be carried to his grave;[1] and then we shall be able not quite to see, but to get a glimpse of, how completely his life is a school for the non-attainment of this knowledge. In precisely the same fashion, and to precisely the same result, domestic service will have acted on the mind of his wife. They have both been thoroughly and most efficiently trained not to have the knowledge, and the habits of mind, a peasant proprietor must have, if he is to live as a peasant proprietor. I think it may be safely asserted that out of our agricultural labourers not one in 10,000 has this knowledge, and that not one out of 1,000 is, as things now are with that class, of the mental stuff which would enable him to attain to this knowledge; for it is a kind of knowledge which is the result of the accumulated experience and training of many generations. It is not the knowledge of how to live as a market-gardener, or as a small farmer: they live by selling and buying: but the knowledge of how to produce from a little bit of land what will directly, and without the intervention of much buying and selling, support a family. The main support of the family is to be the produce of their own labour applied to their own land. This is a most special kind of knowledge. It involves a multiplicity of calculations and considerations. It is as special as, and far more complicated than, that required for enabling an Esquimaux family to live within the arctic circle. To be carried out successfully it requires the hearty single-minded devotion to the work in hand of every day of the life of every member of the family, that work varying much from day to day. If an acre or two, or two or three acres, of land were given to an English agricultural labourer, it would never occur to him to turn it to this account. He would only think of making it a petty farm, or a market-garden. This is what, whenever he chances to get hold of a bit of land, he invariably does. He has not the kind of knowledge which is requisite for enabling him to entertain the idea of peasant proprietorship, that is of maintaining his family by the direct produce of the two or three acres. That would require an amount of forethought, forbearance, hard work, helpfulness, and above all of varied knowledge, of which he is quite incapable of so much as forming any adequate conception.

[1] See [note] at the end of the volume.

Now turn your attention for a few moments to the Prätigäu peasant proprietor. He has no wages to receive. Wages in this connexion mean in one word all that is requisite for supporting life. They include everything. Nothing is omitted from them. He has to find all these requisites by another road, and in another fashion. He has no village shop to procure for him, and to keep in store for him, all the articles that he will want. Pretty nearly everything that he and his family will require for the twelve months he has to procure from his small plot of land. This will require all the ingenuity, forethought, and industry a man is capable of. Consider what it implies. He will have to produce every article himself, to keep it in store himself, and to make it go as far as contrivance and frugality can. His house, too, is his own, and he has to take the same care of it as of everything else. There is no one but himself to repair it. The same remark applies to his fuel, every stick of which represents so much of his own labour, and to his clothes, which represent so much of the labour of the family. The wife, too, must be as great an adept in this kind of knowledge as the husband. They were both brought up in its traditions, and were trained to it from their earliest years. Every day of their lives they have under the pressure of a quite inexorable necessity been perfecting themselves in its practice. All their neighbours are employed in the same way. There is nothing going on among them that diverts attention to anything else.

If these Prätigäu peasants were transferred to this country, they could do in England what they do in the Prätigäu. If 10,000 of our peasantry were transferred to the Prätigäu, and put in possession of the existing houses, and of the land, and of every appliance needed for cultivating it, the only result would be universal starvation. Simply because they would not have the knowledge, and habits of mind, requisite for enabling each family to live from its little plot of land. The land would be the same; the motives for turning it to account would be the same; but the moral and intellectual conditions would be wanting. These conditions, then, must not be omitted in answering the question of what it is that has made this valley a garden that is maintaining its 10,000 gardeners.

In old times it may have been held by some half dozen mailed lords. The ruins of the castles of several of these old oppressors may still be seen in the valley. Of one we are told that the peasants took it with clubs and stakes; the wall with which the lord of another barred the lower ravine is still standing. One object of this wall was that it might enable him to levy imposts on the necessaries of life, in order that his own life might be more affluent at the cost of the poor. Such a state of things may have its picturesque side; but who would not very much prefer to see the valley as it is, the garden of 10,000 gardeners? Or in these days we can imagine its becoming a Chamois preserve. But again, I suppose most people would prefer to see it remain as it is, the garden of 10,000 gardeners. We know of nothing better in this world than men and women; and when the men and women are intelligent, industrious, honest, and can, under very difficult conditions, steer their course clear of the rocks and quicksands of pauperism, then, although they may be deficient in the refinements which culture may confer on those who have wealth and leisure, still they are in many valuable and attractive qualities far above large classes that we in this country wot of. But be this as it may, the average human heart is more pleasingly touched by the picture of their hard and humble labours than by that of the mailed Baron and his dependents, or of the Chamois preserver, and his Chamois. Probably they have as brave hearts as the Baron and his dependents had: at all events their fathers drove them off with sticks and stones, and even the women of Schiersch in 1622 showed such heroism in assisting their husbands to repel their Austrian invaders, that the men of Schiersch have since that day conceded to the women of Schiersch the honour of receiving the sacrament first. And, too, probably they are as much disposed to respect humanity, and to help those that need, and to do to others as they would that others should do to them, as the imaginary Chamois preserver would be.

A little above Kublis on the pebbly borders of a torrent, down the flank of a mountain, where it was impossible to retain soil enough for cultivation of any kind, for the occasional rushes of storm water would sweep from the surface anything soluble or tender, I found the coarse shingle dotted with hazel, and briar roses, and barberry, and much of this open thicket almost smothered with the wild clematis then in flower. This vegetation again reminded me of how completely I had this morning changed the climate. Where I had been of late nothing of this could have been seen. A few hours ago, in leaving Davos Dörfli, I had passed frost-blackened potato haulm; and for three weeks I had not had much to look upon, in the way of vegetation, besides pine woods and grass. What I now saw prepared me for the advent on the scene of the broad glazed leaf and feathery arrow of the maize.

A mile or so below Kublis the green valley is suddenly contracted into a rock-bound and wooded ravine, which has in the bottom no more space than is sufficient for the blustering Lanquart and the road. Whatever good land is hereabouts must be high above you on the top of the ravine. This ravine ends at Frederis Au, a kind of watering-place, some little way off from the road. Here you again come on good bottom land, some of it under maize. A little further on, the stream is again compressed between high rocky banks.