The roadway found scant footing in the upper ranges, and burrowed its way through several tunnels. High above one of them a glacier sent down a roaring torrent sheer over the route, and through an opening in the outer wall of the sub-torrential gallery one could reach out and touch the foaming stream as it plunged into the abyss far below.
Light clouds, that had obscured the sterile peaks during the last hours of the ascent, all but caused me to pass unnoticed the hospice of St. Bernard that marks the summit. I stepped inside to write a postal to the world below, and turned out again into a drizzling rain that soon became a steady downpour. But the kilometers that had been so long in the morning fairly raced by on the downward journey, and a few hours brought me to the frontier.
As if fearful of losing sovereignty over a foot of her territory, Italy has set a guard-house exactly over the boundary line, amid wild rocks and gorges. A watchful soldier stepped out into the storm and hailed me while several yards of Switzerland still lay between us:
“Any tobacco or cigars?”
I fished out a half-used package of Swiss tobacco, wet and mushy. The officer waved a deprecatory hand.
“What’s this?” he demanded, tapping the pocket that held my kodak.
“A picture machine,” I explained, showing an edge of the apparatus.
“Bene, buona sera,” cried the officer, as he ran for his shelter.
At nightfall I splashed into the scraggy village of Iselle. From a yawning hole in the mountainside poured forth a regiment of laborers who scurried towards a long row of improvised shanties, hanging, on the edge of nothing, over a rushing mountain river. Having once been a “mud-mucker” in my own land, I followed after, and struck up several acquaintanceships over the evening macaroni. The band was engaged in boring a tunnel, thirteen miles in length, from Brieg to Iselle. With its completion the Simplon tourist will avoid the splendid scenery of the pass; the stage-coaches will be consigned to the scrap-heaps they should long since have adorned; and an hour, robbed of sunshine and pure air, will separate Italy from the valley of the Rhône. Then will the transalpine voyager degenerate into the subalpine passenger.