Up, up! still up! across the little sparkling runlets, tumbling head over heels in their hurry to see what sort of a world the valley below might be;—up! over masses of rock, ankle-deep in rich brown moss, bejewelled with strawberries and cowberries, garlanded with raspberries, twisting and straggling out of their crevices, covered with rich ripe fruit;—up! over bits of open turf, green as emeralds, set in pure white gravel, sparkling like a thousand diamonds;—up! through tangled masses of fallen pines, their bleaching stumps standing out like the masts of great wrecks—terrible marks of the course of the avalanche wind!—up! through one short bit more of pine-wood, over the split fir fence, and into the little mountain meadow, smiling in the level sunlight, with its bright stream tinkling merrily through it, its scattering boulders, and wooden sennhutt, with the cows and goats clustered round it, standing ready to be milked,—one of the latter, by the bye, instantly charges me, and has to be repelled by my alpenstock, bayonet fashion,—while all around, the sweet breath of the cows mingles deliciously with the aromatic fragrance of the pine forest, and the rich scent of the black orchis and wild thyme.
Seat yourself on that wooden milking-stool by the door—(beware! it has but one leg, and is "kittle to guide")—after a hearty shake of the hand from that grey old giant of a herdsman, and enjoy yourself.
"Joseph, what's i' the fardel? Turn out your traps, and let us see what 'provaunt' you have got." A mighty mass of cold boiled mutton, an infinity of little drabs of rye-bread, the size of one's hand, and as hard as flints; and—what is that thou art extracting with such a grin on thy manly countenance, as if thou hadst found the best joke in Europe, tied up in the corner of the bag?
A quart bottle of corn-brandy!—I simper, the grey herdsman simpers, and Joseph simpers most of all, as if he was conscious of having done a monstrous clever thing, but was modest. "Schnaps at six in the morning!—hardly correct," say I.
Joseph thinks that it is apt to make one thirsty (it certainly always appears to have that effect upon him); and the grey herdsman shakes his head, and smacks his lips dubiously, as if he were not quite certain, but would rather like to try.
"Well, just one thimbleful, Joseph, 'just to kill the larvæ, ye ken.' Ah! you don't understand, it is a mountain excuse, too. Never mind—hand us the becher."
Here we breakfasted luxuriously, eking out our store with sour milk and crumbly new white cheese from the sennhutt. The grey herdsman eyes me intently, and longs to know what manner of man I am. I take pity on his thirst for knowledge. "Ein Englander?"—I am his friend for life! He has heard of the 30,000l. sent over in the French war-time, and his nephew has seen the letter in a glass-case at Innspruck. "And I want to shoot chamois?" He looks almost sorrowfully at me, but I have gone too far to retreat, and am very valiant. "Yes, there are three up about the Wildgrad Kögle." That is enough, Adé Andre! Pack up, Joseph, Forward!
Stop a bit, let us load here; we may stumble on something shootable. I am soon ready; but loading with Joseph is a very solemn affair, not to be undertaken lightly, or finished in a hurry.
First, he takes a dose of stuff out of a cow's horn, which I, in my ignorance, suppose to be very badly made No. 7 shot. A small quantity of this he places in the pan of his rifle, and crushes with the handle of his knife, the rest he pours down the barrel, and I perceive that it is powder; then he looks up and down, round and about—what the deuce is he after? Is he cockney enough to be going to flash off his rifle, and afraid of some one hearing him? No, there he has it—a bunch of grey moss, "baum haar," as he calls it, from that blasted pine. Wonder again; what in the name of goodness is he going to do with that? Use it as a pocket-handkerchief? I do not believe he carries one; at any rate, if he does, he only uses that pattern said by the Fliegende Blätter to be so popular amongst the Gallician deputies of the Paul's-Kirche Parliament. No,—wrong again; he carefully pulls it to pieces, and making it into a round ball, rams it down upon the powder; and a most excellent dodge it is. Colonel Hawker has only re-discovered an old secret, or, more likely, learnt it on the shores of the Bodensee; then the greased patch and the ball, and all is ready. On we go!
After leaving the meadow, we entered again into the pine forest, which gradually became more open, the trees more stunted and fantastic, and their long straggling arms clothed more and more as we ascended with the ash-grey baumhaar; dead trees and thunder-riven stumps became frequent, rotting in and into the black bog mould, which gives a scanty root-hold to the blushing alpen-rose. Soon we leave the trees behind us altogether; nothing but wild chaotic masses of gravel and stones, tossed and heaped one on the other, by the fierce avalanche—the very rocks grey and crumbling with age; here and there patches of black bog, with little oases of emerald green turf perched in their centre, the black orchis growing thick upon them, and perfuming the air yards around.