A walk in the Grisons

by F. Barham Zincke

By flowers embellished, and by springs refreshed.

Wordsworth.

August 24.—Last night I had proposed that we should start this morning at 5—my usual hour for getting under weigh. But as my proposal appeared to be objectionable to the communist I withdrew it, and told him that we would breakfast at 5.45, and be off at 6. At 5.45, as I left my room, I saw that he was still asleep in his crib in the upper passage. While sitting down to breakfast I requested the landlord to make him get up. After breakfast I asked for the bill. The landlord left the room to make it out with the aid of his wife. As the room was very small, and they were only just beyond the open door, I could not but hear what passed. They agreed between them that the charge should be 4 francs. I then found that my man had descended the ladder, for I heard him suggest that they should write 5 francs. A little after 6 we got under weigh. Having crossed the stream of the Val Cristallina, and rounded the foot of M. Garviel, over large blocks of gneiss, we entered the long upper stage of the Val Medels. It is a grand valley about 6 miles in length. The only buildings it contains are the three small refuges of St. Gion, St. Gall, and Santa Maria. The ascent is gradual, for in the 6 miles you only rise about 1,000 feet—from 5,036 at Perdatsch to 6,243 at Santa Maria. There is no bottom land in it capable of being mown for hay. This results from the rocks, with which it is thickly strewn, being so large that they could not be removed for levelling the ground. Its lofty ranges stand some way back from each other. The concavity of the valley is grandly simple. The long lines of descent sweep down from the summits of the two ridges to meet in the stream of the Mittel Rhein. At first, and high up, the descent of these lines is steep, but all the way down the steepness is lessening, at an even rate of diminution, till they almost come to a level in the bottom at their point of contact. In this long open valley there are no trees, though we are told that the name Lukmanier (Lucus magnus) implies that there were once many. If ever it were so, their place has now been taken by tufts of dwarf alder, and of dwarf juniper, which rise only a foot or two from the ground, and at the lower part of the valley thickly stud the hillsides. The alder dies out after a time, but the juniper continues, though in ever lessening amount, to the further end. As this long valley is throughout pretty well turfed, it must be capable of maintaining during the few months it is free from snow, a great amount of stock. I saw in it some large flocks and herds.

My companion appeared to take no interest in the scene, or in the people; and this morning I was not disposed to take much interest in him, and so I left him very much to himself. At last he began of his own suggestion to talk about our fellow-traveller of last night, his thoughts still running on Paris. He wished to know whether I had discovered who our fellow-traveller was, or whether he had himself told me. Yes, I replied, he had told me that he was a Frenchman. ‘A Frenchman!’ he exclaimed; ‘he was an accursed Prussian spy. You could see it in his face. You could see it in his maps. You could see it in his being alone. He had been sent from Berlin to map the country, that the Prussians might know beforehand to what account the Lukmanier might be turned, should the Pass ever in any way be needed in any coming war. A Frenchman! What Frenchman ever could speak both German and English? But many Germans could speak both English and French. He was an accursed Prussian spy. The French it was who had gained all the glory of the late war. They had shown that they were the braver of the two people. They had not employed spies, nor had they trusted to gold.’ This was meant for England. ‘In the next war they would crush the accursed Prussians.’

And so we reached Santa Maria—a hospice which is much cleaner and more commodious inside than you would expect from the outside. I should not have entered it had not my miso-Prussian companion thought that his two hours’ walk had earned him a half hour’s halt and a chopine of wine. It was as fine a morning as nature could put together at this elevation. No ingredient required for the composition had been stinted. The sun was shining brightly. The air was fresh, and crisp; for its current, as is the rule on quiet mornings till about 9 o’clock, was down from the snowy tops around. When the valley after 9 A.M. begins to get heated, the current is reversed, and continues upward till about 4 or 5 P.M. In the sunshine the warmth felt like a kind of subtle ether, which permeated one’s whole system, for the moment you were out of it, you felt the want of it; and the moment you returned to it, you felt again, throughout your whole frame, the influence of the all-pervading fluid. I sat on a rock on the sunny side of the cheese-house, in front of the hospice. Immediately behind the hospice was the long flank of a greenish brown, and the snowy summit, of the Scopi, nearly 1,450 feet above me. Straight before me, twenty minutes off, was the summit of the Lukmanier Pass, only 250 feet higher than my seat. To the right, at the distance of an hour and a half, and 1,200 feet higher, was the Uomo Pass. It was a grand and impressive mountain scene. There was at the time in sight a party of Italians bringing bags of salt on their asses down the Lukmanier, and showing in the distance no bigger than mice. The salt was for distribution among the cheese-makers of this, and of the contiguous valleys. For how many centuries had salt travelled that way! What a large part had its traffic played in the early communications of mankind! How surely does what is wanted wear for itself a way. This commodity is bulky, and but little is to be gained by bringing it, and yet the supply has never failed. But here the days of the traffic in its present form are now numbered, for the new road is all staked out; and when it shall be made, these asses laden with salt will no longer come down the Lukmanier, accompanied by their shaggy owners. Salt, however, will be cheaper in V. Medels, and V. Cristallina, and the other valleys of this group of mountains. Some figures that now add a suggestion to the scene, will have disappeared from it; but human life will have become a little easier and better supplied, and that not in salt only, but in many other things besides.

Half an hour having passed with some discontent, though on the balance of the whole without much reason for it, we began the ascent of the Uomo. It would be worth walking up it were it only to see in some of the little rock basins of its stream, when you are about two-thirds of the way up, how wonderfully transparent water can become, or rather is before it has become charged in one way or another with extraneous matters. On reaching the summit you there find that the water cannot readily get away on account of the number of little depressions spread over the surface. Here, therefore, it is rather swampy. These depressions have, perhaps, been caused by the concussion of falling avalanches. Where the momentum of such masses in motion is arrested, some soil must be thrown out, and a depression formed, which same soil perhaps is again thrown back by the subsequent fall of other avalanches to the right or left. By action of this kind the whole surface may be kept in a swampy state. This swampy summit is a common watershed both for the Rhine and for the Po, so that you are uncertain whether the little pool before you will send its overflow to the North sea, or to the Adriatic, or divide it between the two.

On leaving the summit you turn to the right, your path at first being on the mid flank of the mountain which forms the northern range of the Val Piora, on which you now enter. Hitherto Piora has been known only for its cheese; but I am disposed to think that the day is coming, when it will have a place in the memories of the eye as well as of the palate. As you take your first glance down the valley, you see beyond it the grand group of the St. Gothard, standing up well before you, gray-sided, many-peaked, precipitous, and snowy, looking down on the lesser heights of the Val Canaria. As you descend the valley, you ask why its cheese should have become so famous? You find the answer beneath your feet. Its wholesome-looking turf is rooted in disintegrated limestone. If, then, it be true that good horses cannot be bred except on limestone pastures, and that even the human organism is the better for having, as we may say, been bred at second, or third hand upon them, through its vegetable and animal food, then we can understand how it comes about that the cheese of Piora takes high rank in the order of merit. I recollect having heard more than thirty years ago the Sir George Crewe of those days affirm, that when he left home he generally missed in the vegetables served at his dinner the flavour, which a dressing of lime imparted to the same sorts, when grown in his own garden at Calke Abbey. People then thought this fanciful; it was, however, an anticipation of what we are now told is demonstrable. He at all events would not have overlooked its limestone pastures in endeavouring to account for the merits of Piora cheese.

At what, till you reach it, appears to be the lower end of the valley, you find a small lake, with a village on its further shore. To the left of the lake, and somewhat above it, is one of the chief cheese-stores of Piora. It is a roomy stone structure, partially sunk in the ground, with the view of keeping its temperature equable. I cannot say how many cheeses I saw in it; but there were a great many, and they weighed about fifty pounds each, and their wholesale price was eighty cents a pound. From this point, bearing to the left, and descending to a lower level, you reach a second lake of a blue-green colour, about a mile in length. Its name is Ritom. You pass along its right-hand shore, at the bottom of a steep range, from which you see that rocks must frequently be detached in spring. At about the middle of the path along the lake is a second store for Piora cheese. The cheeses are made on the Alps, and are brought to these storehouses to mature. Here we again stopped. At both of these storehouses we found two men in charge. Our object now was to make inquiries about Altanca, a village on the northern ridge of the Val Leventina, where I proposed to spend the afternoon, and to stop for the night. I had been told at Dissentis, by a horse-dealer who frequented these valleys in the way of his business, that at Altanca the only person who undertook to provide accommodation for travellers was the Curé. As we were now drawing near to the place I thought that I might here get some definite information on this point. The head cheese-maker, to whom I addressed myself, might have sat for the model of a Hercules. I never saw a man who, I could have supposed, would in the days of clubs and spears have had a better chance in encounters with hundred-headed hydras, gigantic boars, and man-eating lions. His features, which were garnished by a thick, curly, black beard, though large, were not at all coarse, but only in fair proportion to his massive frame. To my inquiries about the capabilities of the Curé’s establishment, he replied that the Curé himself was old, and deaf, and that he had three sisters of about his own age residing with him. I noticed the indirectness of his reply, which left it to me to draw for myself from the particulars he had given whatever inferences I pleased, and thought that there was rather more of diplomacy in this than I should have expected in a mountain cow-herd. Taking it, however, to imply that an evening spent with the deaf old Curé and his three equæval sisters would not be a lively one, I asked him if he could put me in the way of finding something more promising. ‘I can commend to you,’ he replied, ‘a Parisienne.’ It was clear from his look, as well as from his confining himself to that single word, that he knew very well what were the ideas it called up in people’s minds—vivacity, as much as could be maintained at Altanca, good cookery, as far as the materials of Altanca admitted, and some mementos of a more embellished mode of life than was native to Altanca. Of course I was obliged to him, and would entrust myself to the Parisienne. On my offering him a glass of Scotch whisky, of which I had a flask with me, he saw that I was a Britisher, and replied in English. His story was that he had gone out to California as a digger, and there it was that he had picked up his modicum of French and English, and his knowledge of the world. After some years of digging, he had found that gold was no compensation for absence from his native mountains. Hercules in the garden of the Hesperides was pining for houseless and treeless Piora; and so he had returned, and become a cowherd once more on the borders of the blue lake, and at the foot of the craggy mountain. As I left him, I thought how much more tender his heart was than his hand, which I felt could have crushed mine almost as easily as it could an egg-shell.

At the foot of the lake I came upon an hotel in construction. It was nearly completed. There were at work upon it forty-six Italian masons and carpenters. The architect, and the future landlord, were present superintending and expediting the work. The old Curé, too, who had come up from Altanca, was seated on a rock close by, alone, watching its progress. Perhaps he was thinking that a new order of things was about to commence; that Altanca was about to be introduced to the world, and the world to Altanca; that the quietude of centuries was about to end; that troublous times might be coming: but if so that it would be his successor that would have to deal with them. Perhaps also the Curé of Altanca may have wondered where the fifty guests, who it is hoped will fill the fifty beds of this hotel, are to come from. Those, however, who are aware that there will be no difficulty in finding many fifties who are ready to come, will be rather disposed to ask how they are to get to the hotel? People hereabouts say, that when the road over the Lukmanier shall be completed, there will be taken in hand a branch from it over the Uomo, down the Piora, and by Altanca to Val Leventina. This is probable enough, for one improvement generally suggests, and leads on to others, which in fact it renders possible. The road, however, from this hotel by Altanca to Val Leventina will be a very difficult piece of engineering, for it will be down an unusually steep descent of 2,500 feet.

The existing horse-track from the hotel at the foot of the lake down to Altanca covers about half of these 2,500 feet. Though steep it is for the most part paved, and must have been a great undertaking for so small a community, for it comprises only twenty-five families; and all this was done to enable these poor villagers to send their cows up to the mountain pastures, and to bring down their produce. It was one more instance, and, though you have instances of it everywhere in Switzerland, a very striking one, of how much people will do, when they are working for themselves. The road was to be made, if it ever could be made, to enable them to send their own cows to their own pastures, and therefore it was that the arduous work was taken in hand, and carried through. In places the road is along the edge of a grand ravine, at the bottom of which is the stream that drains the lake into the Ticino. It has two very fine cascades. One of the mountains that rises above it is Hadrian’s tomb expanded into a mountain.