On seeing, this evening, in the reading-room of the Volta, a file of the ‘Times’ down to the 6th, I was amused at recalling that for some days I had been suffering under a complete deprivation of this necessary of English life, without having once given the loss a thought.
August 10.—At 7. A.M. attended mass at the Cathedral. The service reminded me of a question, which some years ago occurred to me in the Cathedral of Montreal—What is there in this service which can lead any one to suppose that it is edifying to man, or pleasing to the Almighty? The men of Como, we may infer, are of opinion that it is not edifying, or they have some reason for refusing to be edified by it, for certainly there were not half-a-dozen of them in the Cathedral. The women, too, of whom almost exclusively the congregation was formed, were, again almost exclusively, from the lower classes. I was on this occasion horrified (for I offer to the reader everything at all worthy of notice, but this incident very unwillingly) at seeing the officiating priest, in the midst of the service, expectorate on the floor, and a few minutes afterwards repeat the offensive act. The assistant priest took the contagion, and followed his example. As, however, in matters of this kind, practice and feeling are conventional, I, probably, was the only person present whom the act shocked.
After the storm of last night the day was bright and fresh. I was due at Andermatt to-morrow; and, as we have so often heard with respect to political questions, there were three courses open to me. I might return to Bellinzona by Lago Maggiore, which would so far have been new ground. This, however, I rejected, because I wished to see Lago Maggiore in a more leisurely manner. Or I might, by way of the Splugen, reach Andermatt late on Monday night. This also I rejected, because the Splugen appeared to belong to a district I wished to reserve intact for another day. Or, finally, I might, throughout, retrace my steps: and this was what I did. Nor was I dissatisfied with my decision; for I found that a second sight of the lake of Como, and of its lovely shores, was almost as pleasing and interesting as the first had been, though the two were separated by the interval but of a single night. It is a sight of which you feel that you can hardly have enough. The surprising number of towns that embroider the margin, and which are almost everywhere, all along, connected by villas, is in itself a pleasing sight. They show how near you are to Milan, and to many other wealthy cities, the dwellers in which are glad to exchange for a time the dust and dirt, the heat, the moil and toil, of city life for some months of quiet in a scene where Nature has done all she could to make quiet soothing, and remedial for damages and overstrains of either body or mind. It is a sanitarium, provided by kindly and provident Nature, for the exhausted and injured powers of the mental workers of Europe. Here is space enough for all; and all the space good, for the direction of the lake is mainly from north to south; every part, therefore, of each shore gets daily enough light and warmth, and not too much; one side being cool in the morning, and the other in the evening. The lake, too, being 30 miles in length, has, with the addition of the branch to Lecco, more than a hundred miles of shore: a hundred miles of its embroidered border of towns and villas; and of gardens, terraces, and pleasure grounds. The water, also, being only between one and two miles across, your opposite neighbours are within visiting distance by row-boat. And, now, steam has brought within visiting distance the inhabitants of all the towns, and of all the villas, throughout the whole hundred miles. And, then, this blue highway, and its charming margin, are set in a frame of most varied and picturesque mountains, with the purest and freshest air for you to breathe; with the richest vegetation to delight your eyes; and all canopied by the clearest and brightest azure. And this within an hour of Milan; and no city of northern Italy, if distance be measured by time, far off; and, when the tunnel under St. Gothard shall be completed, northern Europe brought close: and the sojourner, though on the shore of Como, yet, all the while, by the aid of the telegraph, at home.
As I descended Monte Cenere I was on the look out for the glimpse I had had, yesterday morning, of the head of Maggiore. But in these matters there is often a wide difference between evening and morning. The sun was now to the west of the mountains, behind Locarno. The lake was no longer blue, but hazy. The same haze shrouded Locarno, and its environs. Everything that had given life and interest to the scene then, was veiled from sight now. Its present aspect was too dull and dead even for imagination to work upon. The disappointment was just that so common in human lives, when, where we look for a garden of roses, we find desolation.
CHAPTER VI.
BELLINZONA—AIROLO—ST. GOTHARD—ANDERMATT—THE OBERALP ALPE.
Thought is the slave of life, and life time’s fool. Shakespeare.
At Bellinzona I wished to take a carriage and pair to Airolo, but in this extortionate place I could not hear of one for less than 75 francs. Probably 50 would have been gladly taken; but I was not in the humour for higgling, and so I went by diligence for 9 francs, 50 centimes, with the same for Ammer. As I got a place in the coupé, the diligence was as comfortable as, perhaps more so than, a private carriage would have been at night. I was saved, too, the possible troubles of long unnecessary halts, and overcharged bonne-main. We left Bellinzona at 10 P.M.
August 11.—I knew nothing of what passed from that time, till I was woke in the gray dawn, some way above Faido, just below the lower bridge of Dazio Grande, by a shock, which shivered the glass before me. This was caused by our diligence having come into collision with the down one from Flüelen over the Pass. The two diligences had got locked together; and it was some time before they could be disengaged, as the wheelers were unable to back such lumbering machines. The collision had been the doing of a young gray in our team, the off-horse of our three leaders. Though the middle horse of the three was an old hand, and—like the trained elephant, harnessed with the wild one, to teach him how to be tame, and to do his work quietly—did all he could to keep our unruly youngster straight, one of his jibs, just at the moment of crossing, diverted the vehicle an inch or two from its course: hence the mishap. He was punished quite enough for this escapade; for as soon as the diligences were got clear of each other, we were put into a gallop, and the offender was flogged all the way up the gorge: he resenting the whip with kicking and jibbing, always to the near side; and his tutor and trainer always steadily pushing him back. When we had got above the ravine, on to the level ground, the flogging and galloping was kept up pretty well all the way to Airolo. This I suppose is the fashion in which refractory young blood is tamed for Alpine roads. The diligence horses are strong bony animals, and are well kept; but they must have a hard and dreary life of it. One sympathized with the objections of young blood to begin such a life: but, then, the choice is between it and, perhaps, something worse.
It was just 6 A.M. when we reached Airolo. Here we left the diligence, and were glad to get once more upon our legs. By taking a highly speculative way over the steep grassy hill above Airolo, which proved a successful speculation, and by cutting off, as we had done in the descent, all the zigzags of the Val Tremola, we reached the Hotel on the summit of the Pass at 8. Here we breakfasted. At 9 we were again on the road. At 11.30 we were again at Andermatt, in our former quarters at the St. Gothard Hotel. Here I found a letter awaiting my return, in which I was given to understand that my wife and step-son would arrive from Pontresina to-morrow evening; that the following day would be spent in rest, and in such selection and condensation of the baggage of the trio, as the light marching order of an expeditionary party would require, and which might make it, should that be possible, not too much for a single porter; and that on the next, that is to say Thursday, morning, tents would be struck, and the march commenced. This gave to Andermatt an afternoon and two days. As I replaced the letter in its envelope, I said to myself, ‘If I had known this when at Como, I should not have left the Splugen for another day. Still it will stand over very well; and there is abundance here, at nearly 5,000 feet above the sea, to occupy one for twice two days and a half.’