Of all places that suggest Chaos, a poor bare beginning of things, that place is the desolate spot in which the Hinter Rhine takes its rise. It is called Paradise, and if ever man required to cheer himself with a euphemism, it might be here. From Splügen to Hinterrhein extends a flat tract of country on every inch of which nature has left an impression as of exhausted powers. And yet, under those external marks of sterility, lurks the beginning of a great thing, the Rhine, its fruitful valleys, its grandeur, its world-renowned towns. You may “tail” behind a post-horse from Splügen to Hinterrhein for an hour in the gathering dusk, and wonder whether the next moment will not drop you over the edge of the world.
But a comfortable inn will open its homely rooms. You will tumble among children learning their lessons around the stove. A place will be made for you beside the young mother with her youngest hanging at her breast. The father will walk in with the proud gait of him who bears himself with grace and kindness in his sense of manly power.
“Crossing the Bernardino,” he says, “to-morrow, alone!”
“Why not? I am on ski; the post-sleigh does its service in all weathers.”
“Yes, but two men go together with the sledge and the horses.”
Indeed, I saw them the next day. I left at a reasonably late hour, and they left still later, catching me up along the flat. Then I passed them up the slope. They took all the windings, I cut across. It was a terribly bleak day. The wind blew the snow in wreaths, and these laid themselves across the old hard wreaths. Sleigh and horses cut through them, throwing out the two men. They rose again, and got back into their seat to cut through the next wreath. This time the sleigh was overturned. The horses—harnessed tandem fashion—plunged, reared upon their sinking hind-quarters, ploughing the snow with their breasts, while their hoofs pawed about for a footing. Then they came off with a rush, once more taking the sledge through. It was a long, narrow sleigh, just wide enough to hold two men, with the mail bags boxed in behind them—more like a torpedo than anything else.
It seemed impossible to distinguish the causeway under the wreaths of snow, in the snow dust blown up by the wind and with strips of fog flying and curling about. Yet the horses kept to the winter track, and all that plunging and kicking was the ordinary business of every day. The Cantonieri stationed from league to league in stone sheds all along the pass, kept guard in the worst places, and came out with spade and shovel to expedite the mail.
I saw all that, hovering about like a stormy petrel, unable to make out whether my hoverings were looked upon as of bad or good augury. I expect the latter, for if there is a gift that mountaineers seldom lack, it is that of jovial good humour. To talk and exchange impressions would not be the question, till we might “foregather” in Bernardino village, where horses would be changed and men might rest. But long before the mail came down I was swinging through the empty village, between its deserted hotels, leaving the storm behind me and opening my coat to the sun-rays that brought the snow down in trickles from the roofs.
On and on I went, staying at last my course on the edge of a wood above Mesocco. There I sat on the corner of a stone wall, riding it as a lady’s saddle, with one ski dangling and the other hanging down as a stirrup, lost in contemplation. The contrast was so complete, so wonderful, knotting together as it were in one bow the most opposite aspects of nature.