ACROSS THE ALPS.
Brieg, Switzerland, July 7, 1905.
“Beyond the Alps lies Italy” with all of its art and history and fleas. After a day on Lake Lugano and Lake Maggiore, where the two countries of Italy and Switzerland meet, and where the customs officers examined our baggage three times in the course of a trip around the water, we crossed the Alps, among which we had been for two days, and are now in the oldest republic on earth, Switzerland. We came over the Simplon Pass in a stage-coach and not through a tunnel, as we could have done. The Simplon Pass is historic and picturesque. As soon as the tunnel is completed, which has been seven years in building, the railroad train will rush through the mountains and the stage-coach will be an old fogy luxury. But the way to go over the Alps for pleasure and observation is not to take a tunnel train, but ride over on the outside of a coach with five horses and see the panorama as you pass by. After a fortnight spent among the great works of man, cathedrals, coliseums and galleries, one day was enough in the Simplon to prove that Nature is still ahead. The great amphitheatres of the mountains, the magnificent stage-settings of forest and peak, left the coliseum and the forum far behind. The changing hues of the slopes, now gradual and now precipitate, sometimes bare and sometimes covered with pasture and vineyard or forest, were in colors which even the old masters could not equal. It was an all-day drive over a fine road, through narrow gulches, alongside rushing rivers, under waterfalls of melted snow, finally through the snow itself, and then down, almost sliding, with the coach-wheels locked so they were like runners, into the quaint little town of Brieg.
The road over the Simplon was built by Napoleon. All over the map of Europe you will see such monuments to the name of the great emperor. I do not give Napoleon much credit for the job, as it was a military necessity to him. He had to keep an army in Italy and always be on the lookout for his enemies there, so he ordered the Simplon Pass, up to the time only a trail, to be provided with a macadamized road, and it was done. I have seen so many of such roads in Europe that I would be willing to support Napoleon for road overseer or street commissioner any time. The road was completed in 1807, and the tunnel under the Pass will be finished in 1906. It is sixteen miles long, large enough for a double track, and has been constructed from both ends at the same time. To my mind it is a great engineering feat to start two small holes in a mountain, sixteen miles apart, and figure so accurately that those holes will meet some place in the center over a mile from the daylight on top. I suppose it looks easy to the engineer who knows how, but it is miraculous to me. A good many lives have been lost and a lot of money spent on this tunnel, but those are the sacrifices the world demands before it will move on.
The road over the Pass is forty-five miles long. Soon after starting, all agriculture disappeared, except vineyards and pasture. The vineyards continued almost up to the snow. Wherever there was enough ground there were vines, and in many places the mountain-side was terraced and in the made land the vines were growing profusely. Literally speaking, there are mountains of vineyards in northern Italy and in Switzerland.
Cattle-raising in the Alps is done in small herds and is mostly on the Swiss side. The stock looks smooth and fine. Along with a drove of cows are always a few goats. In the early summer the herdsmen drive the animals up the paths and trails to the little patches of rich pasture, where they feed until fall, neither man nor beast coming down until driven by the cold. I saw cattle pasturing on the mountain-side where it was so steep it seemed they must have feet like flies or they would tumble down. Of course the animals inherit the mountain knowledge, and I suppose they don’t know there is such a thing as a level meadow. Here and there men and women would be cutting grass with a scythe, spreading the hay out to dry, and then actually rolling it down the mountain-side. Like all people who live in mountainous countries, the Swiss herdsmen along the Simplon looked intelligent, cheerful and poor.