And statued pinnacles, as mute as they.
“How faintly flushed, how phantom fair
Was Monte Rosa hanging there
A thousand shadowy-penciled valleys
And snowy dells in the golden air.”
I had a pensive longing to spend the whole summer among this giant Brotherhood of peaks, making excursions to one after another—provided the weather allowed. From each summit, from each col and shoulder, there would be a different aspect of mountain scenery; different cloud-effects; different sunsets; different risks and different escapes. I do not know how many chances there are of putting hundred franc notes into the pockets of guides. But the zest of discovery is gone; all climbing now is only imitation and repetition, and it is of no use to regret the old days or to repine because one must turn one’s back on the possibilities of adventure.
We returned as we came. As the train stopped at Stalden Will told me of a wonderful excursion he had enjoyed the preceding year. He and two German friends of his, one a professor, the other a doctor, had walked up to Saas-Fee and ascended the Allalinhorn.
“We had to go down, before we went up,” said Will. “There is a bridge which crosses the Matter-Visp, and after getting to the other side we followed up through the Saastal by a path which gives you the most enchanting pictures of tumbling water-falls. We spent the night at Saas-Grund and the next morning early reached Saas-Fee, which, I think, affords one of the finest views in Switzerland. The glacier called the Fee is perfectly surrounded with magnificent peaks—I can’t remember half of them; but they are all from ten to thirteen thousand feet high. The Alphubel is over fourteen thousand. We took guides and went up the Allalinhorn. There were six of us roped together and it was over snow all the way. The pass is nearly twelve thousand feet up, and cold. But the view from the rounded summit well repaid us for our pains. Directly across, so that one could almost leap it, is the jagged peak of the Rimpfischhorn, its black dorsal fin sticking out of the dazzling snow as ugly, though not so prominently uprising, as the Matterhorn. Switzerland,” he added, “for a little country has more ups and downs in it than any other in the world.”
At Visp our Moto was waiting for us. Some of the people whom we met did not believe that we had been permitted to ascend the Rhône valley, as it had been at one time closed to motor-cars. But either the report of what the French are doing to attract wealthy travellers by building La route des Alpes wholly in French territory from Paris to Nice or a realization of the direct loss of patronage caused by illiberal motor-laws has changed some of the interpretations of them. In parts of Switzerland it is perfectly justifiable to shut automobiles out. Where the roads are narrow and are used largely by pedestrians or for driving cattle and there is real danger it is probably for the interest of the many for the few to be subjected to restraint. Even the hotel-keepers of the Grisons and of the Bernese Oberland agree that more are benefited by excluding motor-cars than by admitting them, for there are a thousand that go by horses or on foot to every hundred that come in automobiles.