And that brings me to another broken idol. I had always heard of a Swiss “chalet,” and had supposed it was an artistic, smart-looking house perched up on a peak for everybody to see. A real Swiss chalet is a half dugout in a valley, built of stone and whitewashed once, in which the family lives upstairs and the cattle spend the winter in the basement, never going out until the springtime comes. Now I can see the economy, the advantages and the necessity of a Swiss “chalet,” but I can’t see anything beautiful or poetic, for such qualities are not present. I had the same experience with an Italian “villa,” which I found by observation was usually a plain-appearing stone house built around a court, inhabited by Italians, goats and chickens, and principally remembered by the noisome odor.
I have done some touring in the Rocky Mountains, and I was curious to see what difference there would be between the Rockies and the Alps,—both having peaks of about the same height, and each forming the backbone of a continent. The Alps have more snow than the Rockies. All of the peaks are snow-covered and the gulches of snow run far down the mountain-side here in July. Only an occasional peak in Colorado has snow, and then only a little, not enough to call it “snow-covered.” To my mind the Rockies are more grandly picturesque. The sides of the Alps are cultivated and covered with vines, dotted with pasture and cattle nearly up to the timber-line. The Rockies are still as nature left them, more stern and desolate, awe-inspiring and effective. The Alps do not look like the Rockies, except in height and steepness. The foliage of the trees is not the same, and the Alps have a tamer appearance than the American range. A town in the Rockies is out of harmony with the scenery. A village in the Alps adds to the beauty. Perhaps I do not make myself clear, but there is a great difference, and I think the Rockies are far ahead from a mountain standpoint.
Switzerland has no language of its own. The Swiss have four distinct languages, and the people of one part of the country do not understand the other. In some of the cantons (corresponding to our states) the language is French, in some German, in some Italian, and in some a composite speech based on the Latin and called “the Romance language.” Remember, this is a country of about the same area (15,000 miles) as the Seventh Congressional district of Kansas, but also remember it is cut up by the mountains into natural divisions which are hard to overcome. I am getting used to hearing one language in one town and another in the next across an imaginary line. But four kinds of talk within a little country like Switzerland is going to be hard to contend with.
Right at the top of the Simplon Pass among the snows that never entirely melt is a “hospice,” maintained for generations by an order of monks and devoted to taking care of poor travelers or relieving those in distress or who lose their way. On every pass between Switzerland and Italy there is such a hospice. The monks have the great St. Bernard dogs (named from the St. Bernard Pass, a little distance away), and when the snows get deep the dogs do much of the work of rescue. I had heard of these great institutions since boyhood, and wondered if they would turn out badly when actually seen. But they are all right, and their good work has not been exaggerated in the thrilling stories in which they have figured.
There are many very large and very picturesque waterfalls, many more than in the Rockies. The constantly melting snow keeps them running, and it is not uncommon to see the water tumbling or jumping down a sheer descent of two hundred to five hundred feet. I would like to take a few waterfalls of that kind back to Kansas and put them up in the sand-hills. I offered an Italian gentleman on the coach who spoke some English to trade him 160 acres of western Kansas land for a good first-class waterfall. Almost fifteen minutes after I made the proposition he laughed. It doesn’t do any good to be funny with people who don’t know your language.