A walk in the Grisons

by F. Barham Zincke

You continue the descent, and in due time come to the first village. You then understand more fully than before the value of the meagre-looking, steep, and rocky pastures. In the way of cultivated human food nothing even here can be attempted but potatoes. For anything else it is still too high, cold, and wet; and the few potatoes will at the best be very poor, small, watery, immature; and a frost may at any time prevent their reaching even these degrees of all but worthlessness. There must, however, be a beginning, and these industrious people are not slow in making it. A little lower down you come upon attempts at cultivating in sheltered places with good aspects rye and barley. It is now August, but here the rye and barley are not yet in bloom. They are still green and growing; the ear, however, has just got out of the stem: that is as yet all. If these crops should ever get so far as to be worth harvesting, you see lofty frames, like monster clothes-horses, with many bars, upon which the sheaves will be fastened to improve the poor peasants’ chances of drying and hardening the grain sufficiently for grinding. You will see, too, that these growers of rye and barley under difficulties are now busy in attempting to make hay under similar difficulties, and in a similar fashion. The mown grass is not spread out on the ground to dry; that would be too wet for such a purpose; but it also is arranged on frames, only of a different construction. Each is formed of a post rising about five feet above the ground, through which are passed two or three bars at right angles to each other. Each bar has two arms, and each arm projects from the post about three feet. On these arms the hay is loaded into a kind of cock, which has this arrangement of the post and bars for an internal skeleton. It is thus lifted off the damp ground, and is so held up throughout by the bars, or arms, as to be completely pervious to the air. In this way it is made in a ventilated cock; and when a fine day comes, the women come, and carry it home in large hempen sheets, and with joyful and thankful hearts: for are they not carrying home what will give their little ones milk in the long winter? And up here their little ones could not live without that milk.

As you approach Dissentis you see not only that the breadth of cultivable land has much increased, but also that you have descended into a more genial stratum of climate. Wheat, and even millet, have put in an appearance on the scene. Here, in favoured situations, I found the former so advanced that it seemed to be beginning to show symptoms of a disposition to change colour.

As two or three hours of daylight still remained I walked down the banks of the stream that descends from the Acletta valley, that I might see its junction with the Rhine, for here the Rhine, of course, occupies a prominent place in one’s thoughts, for has it not a prominent place in the history of the Roman, the French, and the German Empires, and in the history, too, of the greatest captain of each—the great Julius, the great Napoleon, and the great Moltke? Behind it, as a natural and national bulwark, and on its banks, the German people from the beginning of their known national existence, were growing to maturity, and organizing themselves. If the history of the white race be regarded as a whole, this Rhine stands out as the most historic of all its rivers. Much has directly resulted from its being what it is, and where it is. Its absence would have so modified the history of the race as to have brought about a state of things widely different from that of to-day. The stream I was now tracking down to it—one of the first threads from which, as it were from so many roving machines, its first strand is spun—has below the town cut out for about a mile or less a deep ravine bed, along the rocky channel of which it tumbles, and twists itself, in its haste to incorporate itself with the nascent trunk of the famous river. It seemed by its bluster and haste to be emphasizing its desire to become a part of it, and a participant in its renown. The actual junction was achieved a little beyond the ravine, in a more quiet style. The impetuous affluent is now no longer in a hurry, but will taste to the full the contentment of the consummation of the hitherto so eagerly sought union. At this point were several trout-fishers. Up then almost to its source this famous stream is rich in fish. Its banks will soon be rich with vineyards.

As I had loitered for some time on the banks of the young Rhine, and of its affluent, the evening was closing in when I returned to Dissentis. As I passed up the main street I overtook the female swineherd of the place bringing home for the night the pigs of Dissentis. There were four or five score of them. She herself brought up the procession that none might loiter behind. She had been tending them all day in the ravine just mentioned, which was incapable of cultivation, and on some stony irreclaimable waste land on the Rhine bank. Each porker knew his own home in the town. Some ran on in advance of the herd to get as soon as possible to the supper they knew would be ready for them. Some did not separate themselves from the herd till they had arrived at the familiar door. These more quiet-minded members of the herd probably had no expectation of a supper prepared for them, and were, therefore, still thinking of the grassy pasture from which they had just been driven off. The swine were followed, at no great interval, by the goats with stiffly distended udders. They, too, dispersed themselves in the same fashion, from the desire to be promptly relieved of their burden. After the goats, last of all, came the deliberately stepping, sober-minded cows. The tinkling of their bells was heard over the whole of the little town. In a few minutes the streets were cleared: every man, woman, and child appeared to have followed the animals into the houses to give them their supper, or to draw the milk from them, as the case might be; or at all events to bed them for the night. Thus do these hard-pressed peasants from their earliest years learn to treat their dumb associates kindly, almost as if they were members of the family, to the support of which they so largely contribute. There can be few people in Dissentis who do not begin, and end, each day in company with them. How familiar must they be with the ways and the wants of the egoistic pig, of the self-asserting, restless goat, and of the gentle, patient cow! The book of nature, too, is always open before them, and they are ever interested students of its pages. From hour to hour they observe the changes of the heavens, and consider what they import, for to them they import a great deal. How their little crops, too, are looking they note day by day, for the time that will be allowed for bringing them to maturity will be so short, that the loss of sunshine for a few days causes some anxious thoughts. This dependence upon, and close contact with, nature is a large ingredient in their education.

August 3.—Opposite to my hotel was the public fountain of Dissentis. The functions of a Swiss fountain resemble those of an Eastern well. To it come daily all the women of the village for the water they will require for their families. It has, however, other uses besides that of supplying the water that will be needed within the house. The linen, the milk vessels, and the cooking utensils of the village are for the most part washed at the fountain, for it would be hard work to carry home all the water that might be wanted for these purposes. Here, too, the daily news of the village is discussed, and put into circulation. This morning there was a stranger seated on the bench in front of the Hotel de la Poste, observing those who came to the Dissentis fountain. As to their personal appearance, it was evident that the hard work and poor fare of many generations had not dwarfed the race, for those who came were generally above what we should regard as the middle height. Their features, however, as might have been expected, were somewhat hard. Their dress was sombre: they are not a people who much affect colour. Their coiffure was simple: upon it not much time or care had been bestowed. Their chaussure at this early hour was with most of them that of nature. In their manner there was not much of liveliness, not, I suppose, because that would have been deemed unbecoming in public, but probably because they might not have been disposed to it. The hardness of their lives must bring with it some hardness of manner. These good women had already been up some hours, milking the cows and goats, and providing their husbands’ and children’s breakfasts; and this might have taken out of them some of that freshness of feeling that would have been in keeping with the freshness of the morning. They might, too, have been desirous of getting as quickly as possible to the hay-field, and the prospect of the hard work there awaiting them might have had something to do with making them grave and taciturn.

The telegraph bureau is on the ground floor of the hotel. Here the instrument, as is generally the case in Switzerland, was in charge of a young woman. What would the last generation in the valley, or the abbots and monks of their forefathers’ time, have thought of a young woman of Dissentis earning her livelihood by keeping Dissentis in instantaneous communication with all Europe, the new world, and the antipodes? When the locomotive and marine engine were invented man began to move to and fro upon the earth. This movement, however, is still only at its beginning. When the electric telegraph was invented all the world was enabled to converse with all the world. This conversation, too, is still only at its beginning. And yet it is to these two agencies that we must attribute the rapidity with which events march in these times. But as this rapidity is so great at the beginning what are we to suppose that it will be a century hence? This is what no man can imagine. The astounding character of the last war in Europe was due to the railway and the telegraph. Whatever at this moment most engrosses attention, and agitates thought, as for instance the organization of the working classes, the rapid combined action of the leaders of aggressive Ultramontanism, and even the recent development in ‘leaps and bounds’ of the commerce of the world, are mainly due to the same causes. And if one of these causes is more potent than the other, it is that all the world can now converse with all the world, because it is this that in these days enables for any purpose a whole kingdom, a whole continent, or the whole world, to organize itself. We may compare the rapidity with which these inventions have been turned to account with the snail’s pace at which letters, the most fruitful of all human inventions, have been manifesting their powers and uses. For how many thousands of years have they been working for the overthrow of ignorance, superstition, and injustice! It is true that in this work mighty advances have been made: yet when we survey the whole field we see that hitherto only so much has been done as to give assurance that a great deal more will be achieved in the future. What has been accomplished gives us ground for the hope that it is but a glimpse of what is to come. They have done, or at all events have rendered possible the doing of, almost all that has been done for us. What we notice is that it seems to have been done so slowly. Perhaps the electric telegraph by collecting and disseminating intelligence, and enabling people everywhere to converse with each other, is destined to lighten this reproach of letters, that they have not been so rapidly or widely fruitful as might have been expected.

At Dissentis the magician who manipulated this instrument of instantaneous communication with all the world, was a little body, very little, with very gentle voice and manner. By the side of the instrument she was working had been placed a bouquet of flowers, white marguerites, and red geraniums, with a carnation or two—a flower you see everywhere in Switzerland, generally in a pot, or box at the châlet window, for the Swiss are as fond of it, and tend it as lovingly, as the modern Greeks. These flowers much brightened the aspect of things, and took off from their office look. On my asking for a billet for the 10.30 A.M. diligence for Coire, the little body filled it in, and handed it to me made out in my proper name. The traveller, presuming on a previous conversation, commented upon this. ‘Now I see that you are in every respect a little Fairy. You know everything.’

Little Fairy. ‘It is that in these days little Fairies must learn to read, and yesterday evening your sac was left for some time in my bureau.’

Traveller. ‘Yes. But in learning to read letters they have not forgotten their old skill in reading what is meant by a present of flowers.’

Little Fairy. ‘Flowers fade, and so sometimes does their meaning.’