The crystal streams, silvery lakes, and smiling valleys, have reflected their beauty in many a maiden’s face. True, these daughters of the forest wear no high-heeled boots nor Paris bonnets, but they are beautiful, nevertheless. I think Johnson will not soon forget a girl whom we met in a Swiss chalet where we stayed a few nights ago. And who can blame him? She was eighteen years of age, of medium height, and had a faultless figure. She had a Grecian face, smooth features, fair complexion, large brown eyes, and flowing auburn hair. A radiant smile wreathed her innocent face. She looked at Johnson. He looked at her. Neither one spoke. Neither one could speak so the other could understand. But what is the use of words
“When each warm wish springs mutual from the heart,
And thought meets thought ere from the lips it part,
When love is liberty, and nature law?”
That night Johnson came to our room claiming that he was ill. When I inquired as to the nature of his trouble, he said he did not know what it was. He did not know whether he had the rash, whooping-cough, measles, small-pox, or cholera; but he had something, and had it bad. Whereupon I applied a flaxseed poultice to the back of his neck. Next morning found him convalescent, though not entirely relieved. I see from history that such occurrences were common in the middle ages.
We have now been in Switzerland forty days. It has been forty days of hard work, and yet forty days of intense delight. We have walked nearly six hundred miles, and the last mile was stepped off with as much ease as the first mile. The last step had in it the same elasticity and firmness as the first. My youth was renewed like the eagle’s. I constantly felt like mounting on the wings of rejoicing, and gliding over the country as a disembodied spirit.
In some places, the angles we made in ascending and descending were not less than sixty to seventy-five degrees! One time, when nightfall came, I was thoroughly tired—completely exhausted. Pain trembled in every limb. My knees denied their office. Hearty supper, warm footbath, bed, oblivion! Strange as it may appear, the next day was spent, not in walking but in reading history.
In our Alpine experiences, we walked from Switzerland into France and back again; over Napoleon’s famous Alpine pass from Switzerland into Italy and back. One time, while crossing the Alps without a guide, we lost our way. For several hours we wandered around—we knew not whither. All at once the clouds dropped down upon us, and with the clouds there came a blinding snow-storm. It seemed as if we would freeze. I knew we could not survive the cold till morning. I thought, “Is it possible that this white snow is to be my winding-sheet, and some rocky chasm my lonely grave?” Just before dark, our hearts were gladdened by the sight of six men not far away. We called to them. Across the fields of snow, the cold wind brought their cheering reply. The men, clad in fur and wrapped in black gowns, proved to be Augustine monks, who keep the St. Bernard Hospice. They took us with them to the Hospice which was only two miles away. On reaching there, Johnson and I were almost frozen. We were soon seated by a glowing fire, and were comfortably shielded from the cutting wind and falling snow during that memorable night above the clouds.
HOSPICE IN THE ALPS.
We spent some time with the monks of the Hospice. This noble institution has been standing nearly a thousand years. It is in the heart of the mountains—the highest winter habitation in the Alps. Snow falls here nine months in the year. The Hospice is kept by eighteen or twenty Augustine monks, whose sole business is to search for, assist and rescue, Alpine travelers who have lost their way in the snow. We saw here about a dozen of the famous St. Bernard dogs. They are, by all odds, the largest and finest dogs I have seen. They are thoroughly trained to assist the monks in their work. In the morning, when they are let out of the house where they have been locked during the night, the dogs seem wild with delight. They go bounding through the snow in every direction. With fore feet on some huge bowlder, and heads high in the air, they sniff the cold mountain breeze, and off they go again. For miles around, they search the mountains for travelers who, on account of cold and snow, have fallen by the wayside. In this way these philanthropic monks and their noble dogs have saved many lives.
It is impossible at the Hospice to dig graves in the rock and snow and ice, so they have a “dead house” where the bodies which are found in the snow are placed and kept. The atmosphere is so pure and intensely cold that decomposition takes place very slowly. There are about fifty bodies in the dead house now, the last two having been placed there about eighteen months ago. I went into this house, and I really believe that if I had ever known the two persons last placed there, I could have recognized them then. Any traveler is kindly received by the monks and entertained for the night without any charge. Each visitor is expected, however, to “drop something in the box.” Napoleon once stopped here, and hundreds of his soldiers, as they passed over the mountains with the cannon, partook of the hospitality of the monks. Afterwards, the great Frenchman sent one of his generals here to be buried, that he might have the Alps as a monument.