“In the Alps one finds even at this day, certainly in the remoter regions, a primitive, natural, pastoral life, while the natives of the Jura are quicker to take up industries and are broader-minded. One could hardly imagine a native of an Alpine valley interesting himself in politics. The Alpine herdsman looks down on the world; but the man of the Jura might even belong to a labour-union! It has been well said that just as in the Middle Ages, the common people of the Jura were under feudal lords, so, up to the present time, the manufacturers have controlled a large part of their time and their work, even of their lives. But the natives of the Alps never submitted to any such tyranny.
“I remember reading somewhere that the Alps gallop, as it were, with their heads erect far over the earth, while the Jura Mountains march peacefully along, noiselessly and unboundingly, to follow their career in a graceful and courteous fashion, but without any sublime éclat. The Jura shows a simplicity, and spreads out distinctly and, as it were, prudently, offering nothing unexpected, exuberant, mad or magnificently useless, but, rather, a well-regulated behaviour, a calm and dignified, but somewhat gloomy, austerity, a cold and melancholy air.—Don’t you think that is pretty good?—
ALPINE HERDSMEN.
“This same lover of mountains finds even the snow different. On the Jura it falls on dark-green firs and pines and, mingling with the dreary foliage, gives forth only a sad and cautious half-smile. But in the Alps the white snow makes the mountains joyous. He compares it to a virginal mantle, embroidered with green and azure. When the morning has, for them, brought on the early day, they seem to sing gaily their reveille and their youth; a hymn of light floats high in the air above their heads and finds an echo of joy and of love in the hearts of mortals. In the evening they smoke like incense and, bending under the circling sky, they then offer a strangely fascinating image of prayer and of melancholy. From afar the Jura listens, and, like a dreamer, pursuing his way, plunges into the darkness.”
I may as well say, here and now, that a month later we carried out the plan of climbing Le Grammont, (which, of course, means the Great Mountain). We went to Vouvry and first admired the exquisite view where the pretty church, as it were, guides the eye up to the mountains, and contemplated the canal which the descendants of that fine old “robber-baron,” Kaspar Stockalper, who claimed the right to dominate the trade over the Simplon and guarded it by a body of seventy men, built to connect with the Rhône, though it remains unfinished. Then we easily followed the trail to the mountain-top. We chose a day which promised to be remarkably clear, and it fulfilled its promise. Words fail, and must always fail, to describe that panorama of splendour which includes the aerial heights of Mont Blanc and the Jungfrau to the south, the whole extent of the lake and the tamer peaks of the Jura to the north, and a rolling sea of petrified and frozen billows in every direction.
When one speaks of Switzerland one instinctively thinks of Mont Blanc, and it seems an unfair advantage which France has taken to keep possession of Savoy, which used to belong to Switzerland, and the crown of the Swiss Alps. History has made strange partitions of territories; but the more one sees of Switzerland the more one wonders that it could have ever become a united country, composed as it is of isolated valleys, separated by lofty mountain-walls, intercommunicable only by treacherous passes. That same dividing construction of the country was the ruin of Greece, where each little province or city, set by itself and developing various qualities of character, was opposed in ideals and ambitions to every other.
It is curious, too, that the general notion that the Swiss are peculiarly liberty-loving should be based on a legend. Probably no other country in the world ever furnished so many mercenaries. But it is now one united country and largely freed from the crushing burden of rampant militarism.
It was a fine view also we had from the top of Le Grammont, overlooking the delta of the Rhône, which, from the height of nearly twenty-two hundred meters, lay below us. We could see how it was building the level marsh land into the lake. Perhaps some day the débris from the mountains will quite fill up the gulf. It is amazing how much material is brought down in the course of a single year, even by a single freshet. We could see, also, the confining walls of the dykes which, together with breakwaters, form what is called la correction du Rhône, preventing any riotous behaviour of that torrent when the floods sweep over the plain. The disreputable exploits of the river, before it was thus tamed and disciplined, explain why the region back of Villeneuve, regarded as desolate and uncultivated, is or has been compared to the vineyard-laden and fertile slopes of the Jorat.