The Engadine

by Spencer C. Musson

A former denizen of the Alps whose successful re-establishment has been hailed with universal acclamation is the lordly ibex, or, as Engadiners call it, the Capricorn (bouquetin, steinbock). Throughout Switzerland there is a sentiment of romance connected with this stately goat, who for over three centuries has had only an heraldic existence in his ancient fastnesses; his imperially horned head is the emblem of the canton, and swings as sign of innumerable inns; he capers amid thistles on the seal of the commune of Zernez and prances rampant on either side of armorial devices frescoed on the walls of old houses. In 1920 seven young Capricorn were let loose in the Cluoza-Spol section, and their number has increased in spite of foreign marauders, but here we are on delicate ground, and it is well to emulate the diplomatic reticence of the Federal authorities. The stock is to be reinforced this year by a pair from the Zoological Gardens at Interlaken.

The Park started with a good stock of chamois of several types and some deer, and more have flocked to it as the good news of a sanctuary was passed round in ways that man knows not; in fact deer may be said to have taken possession of the S-charl district. Marmots abound, and will still more abound. Moreover, affiliated to the Park, the only patch of it on the left of the Inn is a sanctuary established for the droll little rodents on the Godgod slopes between S-chanf and Capella well back in last century. During the construction of the railway the Italian workmen wrought sad havoc among them with snares, which they had become too confiding to avoid; but they have since regained their paradise, and the discreet wanderer may watch their engaging antics at work and play. Their surplus progeny is no doubt making its own Verbindungsgebiet with the Park.

It must not be supposed, from what has been said, that the great reserve is a forbidding region of interest only to the naturalist. It is replete with charm and full of a variety that blends in wide harmonies, or surprises with sudden contrasts; a region of still forest sanctuaries, of wild ravines and savage gorges, of eager streams flashing white in cascades and torrents or rushing green and smooth in deep-worn beds; of many-hued rocks piled in chaotic ruin or set in mazy labyrinths or strewn splintered on the slopes; lonely tarns shine on emerald uplands or sleep in stony wildernesses; the lofty lawns are starred with flowers and sentinelled with immemorial trees; in sequestered dells rivulets wind and whisper amid blossoming herbage, or creep and croon in leafy coverts; great grey stones dream under the hoary trees of Druidic glades; a land of pristine seclusion, of gracious solitudes, of high, silent places where earth and heaven seem to meet. And over all plays the wizardry of the clear mountain air and the fleeting mountain weather, weaving a glamour of shifting splendour and gloom over peak and vale, stream and forest, lighting the landscape into a prodigal enchantment of detail or wrapping it in mystery and portent.

In common with all who are interested in the National Park, I am greatly indebted to Dr. Stefan Brunies, Secretary and Treasurer of the Heimatschutz, who has made the subject his own in various delightful books replete with nature- and folk-lore. Therein are given a number of itineraries for exploring the Park and studying its plants, birds, and beasts, in all which the wanderer will find Dr. Brunies an invaluable and entertaining companion.

S-chanf is, he thinks, the best starting-point for traversing the Park. Crossing the Inn by the Livigno road, a path on the left crosses the Varusch stream and follows up its right bank to Alp Purcher. Here, on the left, a path enters the Park, and runs up the Alp Müschauns under the chasmed heights of Piz Esan; on the steep grassy slopes below them the practised eye will seldom fail to locate chamois browsing. Passing on the right a long narrow tarn fed by a tongue of glacier we reach a low saddle that leads into the appropriately named Val Sassa, in the steep screes of which the path is lost till it reappears on the broad valley floor, where, crossing a wooden bridge, we find, ensconced in dense forest, the Cluoza blockhouse.

Here are eight beds and supplementary sleeping accommodation on hay; the warder supplies meals at a fixed tariff. Chamois, and now and then deer, may be marked on the slopes above, where salt-licks have been placed for their delectation. Any wayfarer may pass two nights at the blockhouse in the heart of the great reserve; for a longer stay authority must be obtained from the Naturschutzkommission at Bale.

We commence next day's walk by mounting steeply on the east to the Murter Alp, a plateau of flowery pasture buttressed round with precipices. Here we have a survey of the upper Val Cluoza and its three savage head-valleys: Diavel, Sassa, and Valetta. Descending eastward to the old sheep-pastures of Laschaida, we come to the first outposts of forests, hoary, battered larch, which, as the path drops steeply down, gradually give place to fir. At the bottom we emerge on the pastures of Praspol by the turbid Spol, one of the largest tributaries of the Inn, rich in trout, and a last refuge of the hard-bested otter, who can now live and multiply there in peace, doubtless giving a wide berth to the right bank for the two miles along which the Spol forms the Park boundary. It will be interesting to note if fish do the same; the right of fishing from this bank is reserved to the commune of Zernez. We may cross the stream by the Punt Praspol, leaving the Park for a while, or we may take on the right a lonely and bewitching forest path that runs above the left bank of the Spol, crosses it by the Punt Purif, and descends to the point where, half an hour below Fuorn, the post-road re-enters the Park.

Those not in a hurry will do well to spread this walk, with digressions that will readily suggest themselves, over the second day, passing the night at Fuorn. If pressed for time, however, an early start from the blockhouse will enable good walkers to get on to S-charl or Tarasp. A quarter of an hour above Fuorn on the road to the Pass, by the second bridge, which crosses a gully, a footpath on the left through the forest brings us into the Val del Botsch, abounding in chamois, and ascends steeply to the Fuorcletta, a low saddle between towering dolomite peaks. Looking back as we ascend is an ever-widening prospect of serried summits and savage gorges. Very striking, too, as we thread the stony trough, is the contrast between the stark desolation around and the soft rich hues of the Lower Engadine, with a crowded host of peaks rising behind and about them. The path then leaves the Park, and is for a while in the Verbindungsgebiet, descending to Alp Plavna, turning to the left, ascending, and re-entering the Park at the pleasant col of Sur il Foss; then descending the Val Minger, it strikes the Clemgia a couple of miles below the lone, forest-begirt hamlet of S-charl. The once busy iron-smelting village has dwindled to a dozen houses with their little church on a holm of the rushing Clemgia. The name of the secular Jurada forest on the left records an ancient reserve banned to axe and saw as a protection from avalanches. To the south the wild and beautiful valley is closed by the snow-flecked dolomite peaks of the Pisoc. A half-day's walk down the right bank of the stream, along the eastern edge of the Park, takes us by the Clemgia Gorge to Tarasp.

'The course of nature' as exhibited in such experiments as the Swiss National Park irresistibly calls to mind the headlong history of the world during the ten years that have passed since its inauguration. The teaching of nature had been studiously assimilated by a great nation to which the world is deeply indebted in every field of thought, science, and research; it was made the basis of their national policy, and put in practice with every resource of skill and deliberation. The results have been catastrophic, and would seem to show that when man became a social being—and we may perhaps extend the statement to all society, however inchoate, from the pack and the herd to the hive and the ant-heap—he entered a new plane of evolution, and that those who would apply to it the crude methods of selection that operated in more primitive and individual stages are fighting against the stars in their courses.