Ragatz commences on this side with a monster hotel. Between a large orchard, which you reach first, and this hotel is a road which brings you in three or four hundred yards to the road from the town to the gorge of Pfäffers, at the very mouth of which Ragatz stands on the beginning of the level ground. It was still early, and so, without stopping at Ragatz, I went straight up the gorge. From Ragatz to the old baths is a distance of two and a half miles, and an ascent of somewhat more than five hundred feet. The road is good, though it must have been very costly to construct, and must be so to maintain. The side on which it is excavated and built is not so precipitous as the other, which is generally sheer cliff from five to eight hundred feet high. All the way along, the Tamina is rushing by and tumbling down before you. You see that it is wearing away its rocky bed; and you can see no evidence, nor imagine any reason, why you should not suppose that it was the same stream that in the same manner cut out the whole of the ravine. If sufficient time be given, it is as easy to cut out eight hundred feet as eight. The perpendicular face of the cliff which looks to the east does not at all stand in the way of this conclusion. Of course the rapidly descending water was disposed to take a straight line, and even, if diverted from the straight line, to work back to it as soon as possible. And then it would naturally cut down its channel perpendicularly, because, as it would be flowing rapidly, it would keep its cutting tools, the bits of rock and the sand it was carrying along, at work in the middle of the stream. If you throw anything into a confined mill-race, you will see that it does not grate along the sides, but, as it sinks, is forced into the middle, and swept along the middle, of the stream, there being a pressure on it from both sides. The natural tendency, therefore, is that the erosion of a rapid stream would be both straight and perpendicular. You see this in all the gorges where the water is now, or has at former times been, flowing rapidly. Only one point remains, Why is the face of the gorge which looks to the west less perpendicular than that face which looks to the east? This also may be explained. The afternoon sun shines with sufficient force on the western-looking cliff to melt the snow on its summit, and some little way down. As soon as the sun is withdrawn the water from the melted snow may be recongealed. These alternations of thawing and freezing are a cause that is at work every spring to disintegrate the rock on the side that faces west. This cause is not at work on the side that faces east; that, therefore, remains perpendicular. The other side, however, which is acted on by this cause, has receded a little, and become somewhat inclined. Had there been no frosts, there would have been no weathering of this side, which would then have remained throughout, with the exception of the few places where little lateral streams enter the gorge from this side, as perpendicular as the other side. The rain also being generally on the west-looking side, helps to bring down the disintegrated rubble, and dislodged rocks, to the bottom of the gorge, where the Tamina immediately, if it cannot sweep them away, begins to wear them away.
As to the Baths of Pfäffers, those I mean near the head of the gorge: while at a second breakfast there at 9.30 I thought the appearance of the servants did not say much for the salubrity of the place. They looked fleshless, bloodless, nerveless. But this was no more than you might expect to see in people who had been living for two or three months in so damp and deep a hole. The owner of the establishment ought to change his servants every Saturday night, otherwise they will, or at all events they ought to, scare away his visitors; their pale and emaciated faces are so many finger-posts, on which is written the word dangerous. No breath of air can reach the house. If the stagnation of the air is what in ordinary valleys produces goîtres, what must its stagnation in this wet gorge be capable of producing? If the exterior of the house were not frequently rewhite-washed it would, I suppose, be covered with the lichens and moss, and such like damp growths as you may see on the wall by its side. It may, however, be argued that the actual baths must be a prophylactic against rheumatism, because many of those who have been here a week are still able to walk away.
I spent four hours at Ragatz. It is a loosely put together place, consisting very much of large hotels in the style of Interlaken. The interstices, as it is rapidly increasing in population, will probably soon be filled up. The water of Pfäffers is brought down to the town in a wooden pipe two and a half miles long. This water and the gorge are the sources of the prosperity of Ragatz. As to Pfäffers, it is worth seeing. As to the water it may possibly do no harm to drink it. It issues from the rock at a temperature of about a hundred degrees. This appears to be its only peculiarity; at all events it smells and tastes, we are told, like any other water. No one seemed to know what, if any, therapeutic ingredients it possesses, or what are the maladies in the treatment of which it may be held to be efficacious. These, however, are not the only ways in which it may be regarded. If it can give any sufferer an excuse for hope, so far well, unless it should prevent his having recourse at the same time to some other rational treatment of his ailment. Or if it give an excuse to some for leaving too fast, or too slow, a home, and to others for withdrawing themselves from overwork, for a time, that also may be set down to the credit side of the account.
In the evening I went by rail to Coire. As I passed along the broad valley of the Rhine, I saw several mountains cut down almost as perpendicularly as the gorge at Pfäffers. To the thought, though of course not to the unthinking eye, the valley is more impressive than the gorge. Here mountains have been planed down by old world glaciers, and cut through by still existing streams, to such an extent as to form a valley in places two miles wide. The face of many of the mountains is still a precipice. In many the precipice at the top has been slanted back by the weather, and the chips falling to the bottom have continued the incline in the form of a long talus, which still remains only because in all the centuries that have passed since the chips began to accumulate, the stream has never been working on that side. These are grander operations, and they contain more elements of interest to the thought, than the narrow ravine of Pfäffers.
August 23.—At Coire I had got back to a point already passed in my outward course. Among the guests of the hotel, who were taking an early breakfast to be in time for the early diligence, was a German of the Hercynian forest type. There was an item in his bill of which he did not approve. At the sight of this entry his wrath kindled in a moment. He was not satisfied with assailing the waiters, he must have the manager before him. The manager came. The grievance was detailed with much emphasis. Its enormity was dwelt upon. But the manager was not taken by surprise. He was as firm as a rock, and with a surface as incapable of being ruffled. Again the Teuton returned to the assault. Again the manager received it unmoved. How the conflict ended cannot be recorded, for at this point I left the room.
This German was not more irascible than two of our young compatriots, their ages might have been between twenty-five and thirty, whom I had lately met, were impassive. I sat opposite to them at supper. To each other they had hardly a word to say. Observing this I addressed to them an occasional remark or two. Their replies, however, were seldom more than monosyllabic. They were as indisposed to talk to a stranger as to each other. The next day I sat for several hours in the diligence with them. During the whole of that time, the least taciturn of the two only twice uttered a word. Looking at his watch, which was ostensibly his chief employment, he announced to his companion that it was nine o’clock. Some time later, while we were changing horses, he looked out of the window, and announced in tones expressive of interest suddenly awakened, that a supplément was being got ready. I heard the sound of his more taciturn companion’s voice but once. A Swiss gentleman, who was seated opposite to him, endeavoured to direct his attention to a very celebrated mountain which happened at the moment to be in sight. ‘Oh!’ was his reply, but it was addressed not so much to the gentleman who had just spoken to him as to vacancy, ‘oh! we have had enough of walking.’ Of course exhibitions of this kind are no evidence of a national inferiority in natural gifts. They do, however, suggest a suspicion of the inadequacy of our eight-parts-of-speech system of education. To these two young gentlemen nature may have been not less bountiful in her gifts, or, if the German observation that nature has given to Germans industry, but to Englishmen genius, be true, may have been even more bountiful, than to most men; and if so, then the fault may not have been so much in them, as in the system to which they had presumably been sacrificed: possibly they had not been fairly dealt with. The improbability of any other conclusion arises from this, that if their state of mind was not natural, and we can hardly regard it as natural, it must have been produced artificially.
At Dissentis, too, which I reached this day at 1 P.M., I was still on old ground. My object in stopping here was to get a porter for a walk by the Lukmanier road, the Uomo Pass, Altanca, and Val Bedretto to the Gries glacier, with the descent from which into the Rhone Valley at Ulrichen my excursion would end. As soon as I had reached Dissentis I requested the manager of the hotel to get me the best guide in the place, asking him so to interpret best as to give intelligence a prominent place in his estimate: because what I wanted was not merely a two-legged pack-horse, but a man with whom it would also be pleasant to carry on a conversation of four days’ duration. He knew, he said, exactly what I wanted, and a man who would completely meet my requirements—a man in every respect good, but in respect of intelligence exceptionally good. This was promising; so the possessor of these good qualities was summoned forthwith, and it was agreed that we should, at 3 P.M., start for Perdatsch, ten and a half miles on the way to the Lukmanier, which would be enough for an evening walk. The man’s get-up was elaborate for a guide; and there was a jauntiness in his manner, and, as it struck me, an expression of wiliness in his eye, which suggested to me the thought that it would be as well to put the agreement between us into black and white; and this I accordingly did. He returned half an hour later than the time fixed for starting. We had not got clear of the village before he had informed me that he regarded priests as canaille of the first class. Such was his form of the superlative of that already vigorous superlative of contempt. Why, I asked, did he give them this pre-eminent position? Because, he replied, they did no work at all, and lived better than he did. The fact was that he did not recognize, because he could not understand, that there was any kind of work in the world, except manual labour. He then passed on to the landlords of hotels, the only well-to-do class he was acquainted with in his own neighbourhood, and included them in the same category: they too were canaille. In their case, however, he did not add his superlative suffix. The real reason of his dislike to them appeared to be that they had more capital than himself; for he had only enough to keep a small shop, while they had enough to keep hotels. Of course I could only infer that, as I was unfortunately, or rather heinously, able to pay him for accompanying me, he was regarding me at that moment in the same light, and referring me to the same class. All this was soon explained. He had lately returned from Paris, where he had been at the time of the siege and of the commune; and if he was not an actually affiliated member of the Internationale, he was at all events in opinions and sympathy a communist of the first class. This was not quite the kind of man I should have myself chosen; but still there he was by my side, and must remain there for some days. There was, therefore, nothing to be done now but to make the best of a bad bargain. I had at all events an opportunity for studying at leisure the kind of stuff of which not of course all communists must be, but of which it is not unlikely that some are, made.
For the first six miles, that is as far as Platta, our way was along the new road, which is being made from Dissentis by the Lukmanier to Olivone. It is a grand piece of mountain road-making, as may be understood from there being eleven tunnels in the first four miles. This will also indicate the nature of the ravine, which necessitates such work for the road that traverses it. The stream below the road is the Mittel Rhein, which at Dissentis joins the Vorder Rhein—the main headwater of the Rhine. These new roads, of which so many are being constructed in Switzerland, are, I was told, made at the cost partly of the respective cantons, and partly of the Confederation. This is as it should be, for they are not of local advantage only, but are also indispensable for the general prosperity of the country. Of course there can be no internal or external exchange of commodities, and no human circulation either of natives or of foreigners without roads; and exactly in proportion as roads are multiplied and improved, are these advantages extended. No people see this more clearly than the Swiss. These are questions which their practical lives and practical education enable them to understand readily and thoroughly. They are, therefore, always adding to, and improving their means of communication. And, as far as I know, there is not in the country a road for the use of which a toll is charged: for to their apprehension a toll would be a contradiction of the very purpose for which the road was made. It was made to facilitate communication; and the toll by making communication dearer, has the same effect in discouraging it that needlessly severe gradients, or unnecessary circuits of many miles, or a shockingly bad condition of the roadway itself would have. For this reason, that is to say, because they see distinctly what is the object of having roads, they make them as well as they can be made, keep them in as good repair as possible, and make the use of them perfectly free to all.
The scenery is interesting at first in the ravine, and not the less so afterwards, when you have emerged from the ravine, and have entered on something more valley-like, with the mountains standing somewhat back, and with openings in them to allow you some glimpses of snowy summits. These, however, were matters about which the communist felt no interest. All that he would here talk about was the profligacy of the government in making the roads. The local and the general government were equally culpable, for each raised its funds by taxation. It was the people who paid for it all. Roads and everything else, were only excuses for extracting money from them. It was vain to argue that the roads were made for the people, and were for them a necessity; that they increased their resources; enabled many to live well who had lived miserably before; and increased the opportunities and comforts of all. Probably it was just in this that the sting of the road lay: because for those who had land it raised the value of their property, and enlarged the opportunities of innkeepers and such like folk. The wound this inflicted on the feelings could not be salved by the fact, that while the road did hurt to no one, it must in their proportion have benefited even the smallest tradesmen, for it created a demand for what they had to sell by bringing buyers, while it also enabled them to get from a distance, and more cheaply than before, the commodities in which they dealt. Through such helps and facilities many petty tradesmen had become far more flourishing than they were formerly. Of course there would have been no objection to this last effect. Had it stood by itself it would have been approved of. But, then, the movement had not stopped at this point, but had also benefited innkeepers, and some other such Tritons; indeed, had made them Tritons, and that was intolerable.