“President of the S. C. L.”
Looking across the Rhone valley to the Dent du Midi, a rift in the hills can be seen through the blue haze: that is the Val d’Illiez, whither we must now turn our steps in order to gain Morgins and Champéry, tucked cosily away almost upon the frontier of Savoy. As we leave the sunny slopes of Leysin to take train for Aigle, there comes a striking demonstration of the healthful beneficence of snow when treated sanely. In the hot sunshine, upon the glistening snowfield, little children, boys and girls, wearing nothing but bathing-drawers, hat, and snowshoes, are ski-ing bravely, or are snowballing each other, boisterously happy in the stinging warmth of it all. They are the tiny patients of a doctor who is proving in miraculous fashion the health-giving power in Switzerland of what in England gives us the shivers and compels us to put on extra clothing. It is distinctly reminiscent of what snow can do for chilblains and frostbites—the glow of life that it imparts; but I must not be supposed to be advocating it as a general and pleasurable practice to be followed by all and sundry in the Alps in winter.
Once back at Aigle, we must take the little local railway that crosses the Rhone and lands us at the quiet market town of Monthey, in Valais, and at the foot of the Dent du Midi, whence an electric mountain railway will take us to Champéry. The fault about mountain railways connected with the railways of the plain is that you are apt to go right through to your destination, thus missing much that is of interest en route. This applies to Monthey; for all around this cigar-manufacturing bourg there is much that really repays a halt. So halt we will.
Passing through the marketplace and crossing the old covered wooden bridge spanning the Vièze—a swift little river hurrying to join the Rhone, and whose source is in the mountains beyond Champéry—and following the road which rises straight in front of us across steep chestnut-shaded slopes, we come to the delightful hamlet of Choëx, the elegant white steeple of whose small white church is so prominent a landmark from Bex. In spring and early summer this quiet retreat, perched high among the rolling woods at the base of the Dent du Midi, and with its broad view across the Rhone valley to Villars, Leysin, the Tour d’Aï, and the Diablerets, is very charming. There is here, too, a wonderful wealth of flowers beneath the chestnut trees and in the woods and fields; indeed the neighbourhood of Monthey is quite as interesting in this respect as is the neighbourhood of Bex, and it can produce certain gems that are strangers on the other side of the valley. Not far from the road at Fin du Bruit an ancient Druid’s altar has been discovered: great formidable rocks placed mysteriously as if on purpose, with an underground cavern beneath, containing, among other prehistoric objects, a stone coffin with a skeleton inside. Also in this subterranean chamber may be seen a crack that extends upwards in the rock to beneath the altar-rock above-ground, and some years ago I was told by the custodian that it was through this crack that the priests shouted up the messages of the gods to the assembled and trembling people. This may have been so, for it only follows the lines of the old Egyptian oracles; but unfortunately the tendency is to fake, or to supplement by the aid of plausible imagination, all that is authentic in such remains as these, particularly when a charge is made for viewing them. At any rate I believe I am right in saying that the stone-coffined skeleton, although genuinely prehistoric, was not discovered where it now lies, but in the quarries on the other side of Monthey. However, it is possible that the owner of this skeleton in life was one who worshipped in fear and trembling at this sacrificial altar; and it is a fascinating process to picture on these quiet, flowered slopes the quaking half-clad crowd, the human victim prone upon the great rock-slab, the white-bearded, white-robed priest with fanatic eye and gleaming knife upturned to the heavens—and all the awful ritual of those ancient heathen ceremonies.
And now we must push on to
MORGINS
Of course the orthodox way nowadays is to take the train to the village of Troistorrents and then to walk or drive to Morgins. Personally I prefer to walk from Monthey, as in days past, keeping to the old cobbled road as much as possible;[17] or, better still, mounting the woods and forest which rise immediately from the Pierre des Marmettes, and then crossing the high pastures leading eventually down upon Morgins. This latter route, although unusual, is preferable by far for those lovers of Nature who are eager to reap all they can from the delightful scenery. And then, all the time to the left, for nearly five miles, towers the glorious Dent du Midi with its seven peaks. I imagine that there is no more individual, graceful, and arresting mountain in the Alps of the whole wide world. Like the Matterhorn, it stands out, a living personality amid its neighbour mountains. As among the many and striking peaks at Zermatt the eye rests at once and all but always upon the Matterhorn, so among the many and striking peaks in this district of the Rhone valley does the eye immediately rest upon the Dent du Midi. One never tires of it. It is the first and the last upon which one gazes; it is the first and the last that one remembers afterwards throughout one’s days. Neither chocolate boxes nor picture postcards can dim its great appealing beauty. No telephote contortion of its exquisite proportions, in conjunction with an over-small Castle of Chillon, can destroy its repute and fascination. Whether it be seen in all its breadth from Montreux, Champéry, or Lac Champex, or as a single peak from Bex or St. Maurice, it is unique, inimitable. No wonder that it was Javelle’s first absorbing love; no wonder that Juste Olivier and Eugène Rambert were moved to voice its mastering charms; no wonder that, before these other wielders of poetic pens, Senancour made his home at its feet and wrote rhapsodically of it in his famous Obermann.
