In an hour from Wasen I reached Göschenen. Here the aspect of things becomes what you might have been expecting in a great and famous pass. All the way up from Am Stag the valley of the Reuss had been narrowing and hardening: and now a break in its western wall forms the Göschenen Thal. You see the snow-field of the Damma, and the eastern glacier-shed of the Damma, of the Galen, and of the Rhone-Stock; on the other or western side of which is the vast Rhone glacier. Here, as in Alpine, and as indeed in all scenes, thought aids in deepening the interest of what is at the moment before your eyes. As I looked around I felt as the spider feels in the centre of its web. Along one thread, sensitive to thought, I passed by the arrowy Rhone to the sunny Middle sea, through thrifty Switzers, and light-hearted Frenchmen. Along another by the vine-clad Rhine to the stormy North Sea, through studious Germans and plodding Hollanders. Along a third attached to the next mountain a few miles further on, by the way of the Ticino, Lago Maggiore, and the Po, through many cities of the quickwitted Italian, cities of ancient renown in the wealthy field of teeming Lombardy, to the gusty Adriatic, and its lovely Queen, whose glories have not yet all departed.
No sooner have you passed through Göschenen than Schöllinen takes up, and advances, the interest of the spectacle. The gorge now becomes narrower, more precipitous, more iron-faced. Here it is that you come upon the mouth of the tunnel that is being bored beneath St. Gothard for fifteen miles, from Schöllinen to Airolo, all in granite, with Andermatt and St. Gothard above it. You are walking on the carriage road, a grand work completed thirty years back. The old horse-road it superseded is close on your right. On its margin, on your left, is the long line of iron tubing, of sufficient diameter for a man to crawl through, which brings from a higher level the water power that is being used in the excavation of the tunnel for the modern railway, that will supersede the carriage-road, as that in its turn had superseded the horse-road. Our world is large and busy, but the world in which our children will play their part will be larger and busier.
You cut off a few zigzags. The way becomes more precipitous, narrower, more iron-faced; and you find yourself, a few minutes beyond Schöllinen, on the Devil’s bridge. Black granite rises in sheer cliffs, mountain-high above you. The Reuss thunders seventy-five feet below the arch on which you are standing. You are wet with the spray. A sense of personal nothingness, of annihilation, comes over you. You feel as a shrimp might between the jaws of a whale.
The granite appears absolutely naked; but a closer inspection shows you a few humble Alpine plants in such crannies and crevices as their roots could find a hold in, together with a little mould from decayed lichens to feed upon. And, here and there, but never rising more than a few inches above the storm-swept surface, you will make out a Pinus pumilio, or two, but of so weather-worn, and weather-stained, and snow-crushed an aspect as to be thoroughly toned-down to the dark granite. How bravely and obstinately does life struggle to maintain itself amidst all this wrath and desolation! It will have the whole world. It will not submit to exclusion anywhere. Even up here, though so nipped, and starved, and frozen; so snow-smothered, and storm-torn, it will not shrink for asserting its universal right.
You pass through a tunnel, excavated in the perpendicular granite, which here overhangs the dashing, dinning Reuss on your right. As you step out of the tunnel the broad grass-clad expanse of Urseren Thal is before you: Andermatt at the near side; Hospenthal, two miles off, on the far side. All grass between. The mountain slopes, too, around are all in this livery of soft green. Where else did one ever see such a contrast, and so unexpected! Behind you the ruthless granite and eternal snow: before you the sheen of a smooth lawn, with these busy little communities nestling in its bosom. No one, who comes along this way, on foot, on a bright sunny day, as this was, will ever forget this contrast.
At the St. Gothard Hotel, at Andermatt, I came up with my sac, which I had sent on in the morning from Am Stag by an empty return carriage. I here also found a telegram from my wife—she was at Pontresina—which told me that she could not be at Andermatt till the evening of the twelfth. To-day was the seventh. Nothing, therefore, could be clearer—it was obvious in a moment—that the best thing for me to do was to go on at once to Como, to breathe for some hours the air of Italy, and to gladden my eyes with an Italian scene; returning early on the eleventh, so that I might devote a part of that day, and the whole of the next, to such inquiries as I might wish to make at Andermatt and Hospenthal. I had left Ammer behind at Schöllinen, where he had fallen in with an old friend. On his arrival, about half an hour after mine, I announced to him my resolve; and told him we should be off at 4 o’clock. It was now 1. This would give him time to get his dinner, visit his acquaintances in the place, and consume as many pipes, and thin, long, black, Swiss cigars as he pleased; for it appeared to be his custom when tired of the one to take to the other. Being of that conservative turn of mind which is averse to changes of plan, as well as of anything else; and, too, being now of the age, when exertion begins to be no longer pleasing for its own sake, he seemed to think that it was hardly worth while to leave Switzerland for so short a time. At the appointed hour, however, we were again under weigh; and at 6h. 40m. had reached the Hotel on the summit of the Pass. The books give 24 miles for this day’s tramp: but this, from the time we took to do it, and the ease with which it was done, I think beyond the true distance.
From Andermatt you walk through the level mead of Urseren to Hospenthal, 2¼ miles. The grass of course is carefully cultivated, for the whole dependence of the people is on their cows and horses. Andermatt and Hospenthal are towns of horses rather than of men, for here the two great trunk lines of communication from east, along the Alps, to west, and from north, across the Alps, to south, bisect each other at right angles. It is a central point for much traffic, and so a great many horses are needed. It is fortunate that there is so much grass here, for one cannot tell what would be done without it. With the exception of some patches of potatoes, chiefly on the sunny foot of the mountain on the opposite side of this great Alpine prairie, everything that you see is grass. At Hospenthal you cross the Reuss, and again begin to ascend. The mountains are not precipitous and craggy, but somewhat rounded, as if their asperities had been planed off in the glacial epoch. On them are no trees; only Alpine pasture all the way, gradually deteriorating as you ascend. To one fresh from the Devil’s bridge (I wish it had a better name), and the Urseren Thal, these mountains are full of contrast and interest. Three such scenes in a single walk make it a memorable one. Sometimes you are far above the Reuss, sometimes it is close alongside of you. Sometimes the cows are below you in a deep valley, sometimes above you on a mountain flank. At last, not very far from the summit, you cross the Reuss for the last time, by a bridge which is the boundary, on the road, between the Cantons of Uri and Ticino. It is, hereabouts, a small stream, not far from its source in a small mountain lake hard by; but what would not one give to have such a small stream passing one’s door at home—so clear, so pebbly, so cool, so lively, so murmurous. For the latter part of the way the snow was often, in large masses, by the roadside. There was more of it still lingering on the mountains this year than usual, because there had been a late spring with heavy snow storms. The Hotel, nearly 7,000 feet above the sea, is on the summit of the col, in a deep depression, surrounded by blackish-gray, jagged, naked peaks, with snow in the interstices and ravines. But even here animal life is far from wanting; for in the dark tarn, on the edge of which the Hotel stands, and which is sufficiently deep not to be frozen to the bottom, fish are to be found. There is another and shallower tarn close by without fish. In front of the Hotel is some expanse of grass, a part of the summer pasture of the summit, which maintains for two months 200 cows.
CHAPTER V.
VAL TREMOLA—AIROLO—DAZIO GRANDE—FAIDO—BODIO—BELLINZONA—LOCARNO—LUGANO—BELLAGGIO—COMO.
O Italy, how beautiful thou art!—Rogers.