The straight line to Rome is marked on my map by a dotted line ending in an arrow, and you will see that it was just my luck that it should cross slap over that knot or tangle of ranges where all the rivers spring. The problem was how to negotiate a passage from the valley of the Aar to one of the three Italian valleys, without departing too far from my straight line. To explain my track I must give the names of all the high passes between the valleys. That between A and C is called the Grimsel; that between B and C the Furka. That between D and C is the Gries Pass, that between F and C the Nufenen, and that between E and F is not the easy thing it looks on the map; indeed it is hardly a pass at all but a scramble over very high peaks, and it is called the Crystalline Mountain. Finally, on the far right of my map, you see a high passage between B and F. This is the famous St Gothard.
The straightest way of all was (1) over the Grimsel, then, the moment I got into the valley of the Rhone (2), up out of it again over the Nufenen, then the moment I was down into the valley of the Ticino (F), up out of it again (3) over the Crystalline to the valley of the Maggia (E). Once in the Maggia valley (the top of it is called the Val Bavona), it is a straight path for the lakes and Rome. There were also these advantages: that I should be in a place very rarely visited--all the guide-books are doubtful on it; that I should be going quite straight; that I should be accomplishing a feat, viz. the crossing of those high passes one after the other (and you must remember that over the Nufenen there is no road at all).
But every one I asked told me that thus early in the year (it was not the middle of June) I could not hope to scramble over the Crystalline. No one (they said) could do it and live. It was all ice and snow and cold mist and verglas, and the precipices were smooth--a man would never get across; so it was not worth while crossing the Nufenen Pass if I was to be balked at the Crystal, and I determined on the Gries Pass. I said to myself: 'I will go on over the Grimsel, and once in the valley of the Rhone, I will walk a mile or two down to where the Gries Pass opens, and I will go over it into Italy.' For the Gries Pass, though not quite in the straight line, had this advantage, that once over it you are really in Italy. In the Ticino valley or in the Val Bavona, though the people are as Italian as Catullus, yet politically they count as part of Switzerland; and therefore if you enter Italy thereby, you are not suddenly introduced to that country, but, as it were, inoculated, and led on by degrees, which is a pity. For good things should come suddenly,
119
THE GRIMSEL BEGINS
like the demise of that wicked man, Mr (deleted by the censor), who had oppressed the poor for some forty years, when he was shot dead from behind a hedge, and died in about the time it takes to boil an egg, and there was an end of him.
Having made myself quite clear that I had a formed plan to go over the Grimsel by the new road, then up over the Gries, where there is no road at all, and so down into the vale of the Tosa, and having calculated that on the morrow I should be in Italy, I started out from Brienz after eating a great meal, it being then about midday, and I having already, as you know, crossed the Brienzer Grat since dawn.
The task of that afternoon was more than I could properly undertake, nor did I fulfil it. From Brienz to the top of the Grimsel is, as the crow flies, quite twenty miles, and by the road a good twenty-seven. It is true I had only come from over the high hills; perhaps six miles in a straight line. But what a six miles! and all without food. Not certain, therefore, how much of the pass I could really do that day, but aiming at crossing it, like a fool, I went on up the first miles.
For an hour or more after Brienz the road runs round the base of and then away from a fine great rock. There is here an alluvial plain like a continuation of the lake, and the Aar runs through it, canalized and banked and straight, and at last the road also becomes straight. On either side rise gigantic cliffs enclosing the valley, and (on the day I passed there) going up into the clouds, which, though high, yet made a roof for the valley. From the great mountains on the left the noble rock jutted out alone and dominated the little plain; on the right the buttresses of the main Alps all stood in a row, and between them went whorls of vapour high, high up--just above the places where snow still clung to the slopes. These whorls made the utmost steeps more and more misty, till at last they were lost in a kind of great darkness, in which the last and highest banks of ice seemed to be swallowed up. I often stopped to gaze straight above me, and I marvelled at the silence.