BERN FROM THE NORTH-WEST
Spire of Cathedral against the dimly seen mountains of the Bernese Oberland
The higher you go the shorter becomes the grass, but it is all the more succulent. As the season advances the flowers fade. But the alp nevertheless retains its charm. The kind of alp now specially under consideration, the hollow sequestered high pasture, is often round some corner, cut off from distant and especially from downward views. Perhaps a portion of a snowy peak can be seen over a shoulder of the surrounding foreground. Oftenest even the snows are shut out, and the vision is limited by enclosing slopes or walls of shattered rock, where snow lies late in chinks and crannies. Such places have a wild and at first sight a forbidding aspect. But we grow to appreciate them and find delight in them as the novelty wears off. They have the dignity, the solemnity of solitude. Such elements of beauty as they possess are simple. They do not overwhelm the imagination by imposing shapes, nor astonish and puzzle it by complexities of colouring. Such places are best seen in dull weather when distant views are not to be had, and the eye has to take its pleasure in gazing upon what is near at hand. Then the brown rocks emerging from the grass and embroidered with lichens have their chance. In some places, where water habitually trickles over them, they are quite black and glossy. After all, there is variety enough of colour to be found about them, if one takes the trouble to look. Moreover, how much entertainment is to be found in the really intricate modelling of the grass-covered surfaces. Far different are they from mere low level fields which long ploughing has invested with a continuous curvature like that of a névé basin. The grassy alps possess a complex accidentation of form. They bend and curve with an exhaustless variety. They burst, as it were like a breaking wave, against the rocks that perforate the grass. How many shelves and islands grass covers among the rocks! What picturesque corners it makes! What sheltered nooks! What attractive camping grounds! What charming sites for picnics, aloof from the ways of the crowd! In these remote and solitary places it is charming to while away the hours of an idle day, seeing nothing that has name or fame, following no track, accomplishing no expedition, no walk even that can be identified, yet finding everywhere something to look at, some entertainment for the disencumbered mind.
It is, however, the high and open alps, lying on the slopes or laps of the great hills, that are the favourite places with visitors of all sorts. Here the variety is so great, the opportunities of enjoyment are so many, the possible beauties so multitudinous, that it is almost impossible to indicate them in a brief space. Who that has climbed much, or merely wandered much, through Alpine regions has not an exhaustless store of memories of these open, far-commanding alps? What a variety of reminiscences arise when the thoughts are turned towards this belt of the mountains! It forms a stage in the ascent and again in the descent of every peak and pass; and it is the special arena for the "off-day."
LOOKING DOWN THE VAL FORMAZZA FROM TOSA
My own keenest enjoyments of the open alps are associated with two examples, not, I fear, very widely known—the Fontanella alp above Valtournanche, and the alp over which one descends from Rutor towards La Thuille. Both may be described as staged or terraced alps. They lie on a series of shelves, separated from one another by walls or steep descents. For aught I know, they may be dull to ascend; but to descend they are of marvellous beauty. This beauty is greatly enhanced by the waters that fall in cascades from step to step, and lie in pools, or race along over the successive flats. The waters and the meadows form foreground to the loveliest distances. There are undulations and slopes of green in front; green slopes to right and left; and then the sight leaps across a blue valley to the opposite woods and upper hillsides crowned with rocky crests, above which other ridges rise and peaks appear, till far away soars some snowy giant into the serene sky. In the descent we must turn this way and that—now facing a waterfall, now going down some recondite gully, now down some outward-looking slope. And always, presently, comes the flat meadow on a lower shelf, and the call to tarry upon it and look back at the waterfall, or sit beside the torrent, or watch the reflections in a quiet pool. There are several examples of these lovely staged alps in Ticino, as you go down from the Basodino towards Bignasco. Wherever you find them they are fascinating. They always seem greener on the flats than any other alp. Their picturesqueness has in it an element of the scenic. The arrangement seems to have been made for effect.
There is another kind of far-commanding open alp, that all mountaineers must often have enjoyed. It is a long, relatively narrow slope or level of high pasture that lies horizontally between two cliffs or rocky belts. Such an alp lies above Zermatt to the south-westward, along the foot of the Unter Gabelhorn, round which it curves, so that as you walk along it your direction gradually changes from about south to west. It begins high up on the flank of the Zermatt valley, and it is carried round into the valley of Z'mutt, always at the same high level. There is no lovelier walk in that fine neighbourhood than this; for the foreground is always a slope dropping away to an invisible cliff at your feet, so that the eye constantly enjoys a delightful visual leap across the neighbouring valley to the great pyramid of the Matterhorn, or the more distant snowy range that ends in Monte Rosa.
IN THE VAL BAVONA