We remained in Switzerland from the 19th June to the 11th September, nearly three months; and as I wish to notice our movements in it, for the most part in well-beaten paths, merely by way of connection, I shall do so very briefly. We had decided to spend another winter in the Riviera, and with a view to this to pass the remainder of the summer in Switzerland, and thereafter cross over France to Pau and Biarritz, to spend there the period intervening, till it should be time to move onwards to Mentone.
The Swiss village of Splugen has a southern exposure, and lies very picturesquely with its church on the slope and top of a little eminence, at an altitude of 4757 feet above the sea, overlooking a valley out of which lofty mountains raise their heads, one of them to the north behind the village itself. Pine forests are planted on the slopes, affording, no doubt, a little shelter from the cold north winds. Like all such places, it looks best at a little distance; and, approaching it from the opposite hill, it seemed a pretty village of wooden houses, built in the Swiss chalet style, and therefore quite a change from the Italian houses to which our eyes had been for the last few months accustomed. The accommodation was primitive. We were lodged in a large wooden hotel. The temperature, too, and the aspect of everything was changed. We had bidden adieu to the heat of Italy, and found it much colder upon the northern side of the mountains. This produced an accident which was annoying to me, and created a good deal of after trouble, as in winding up my watch at night the chain gave way, I presume, owing to the jump from great heat to frosty cold to which it had been subjected. The attempt I afterwards made in Switzerland to get it repaired only made matters worse, and the ultimate repair at home costly. One would almost require to carry a spare watch in travelling among these localities. We had time to see a little of Splugen in the evening. The fields were literally covered with bright flowers, tempting us to pluck many handfuls. Although standing so high, the valley does not give one the impression of its great elevation.
Before eight o’clock next morning, we started for Coire. Down and down we drove by the banks of the roaring and foaming Rhine, the road and river being beautifully wooded. The drive was most charming. At every mile the river got larger, while the mountains reared their heads above, to heights varying from 8,000 to 11,000 feet. In about two hours’ time we reached the Via Mala, where the mountains or rocks converge, and the river dashes far below, in some places nearly hidden by the pines thickly set upon the precipitous banks, wherever they can obtain a footing. At one time the pass may have been a dangerous one; but now, although it be still impressive, the road is good, and there is nothing to fear, notwithstanding the cliffs rise perpendicularly to a great height, higher even than they appear to do. Yet, were a mass of rock to loosen and fall, and block up the road or tear it away, it would be decidedly awkward for persons passing. The gorge, at which you look straight up and straight down, is well seen from a bridge, where a man was ready to plump a big stone into the torrent far down in the depths below. Everybody walks through the pass; the most indifferent to grand effects could hardly sit still in his carriage. I suppose it is possible to get to some safe place near the water, as photographs have been taken looking up to the bridge; and so seen, it appears perched high above, over steep and even impending rocks, which, save for a tree here and there, are smooth and bare, and form a narrow, ugly, perilous cleft, through which the river flows at the bottom.
Emerging from the pass, and just out of it, we reached the clean and tidy but shadeless village of Thusis, which lay basking in the hot sun, though not so hot as we had had it at Lake Como. There is a good hotel here, but one might well dispense in such places with men-waiters, black coats, and white ties. From the garden of the hotel, an excellent view is had of the entrance to the pass. Here we rested two and a half hours, and then drove on to Coire by the banks of the Rhine, looking up to the lofty mountains with their snowy tops, and across a well-wooded landscape. At Coire there is a railway to Zurich, by which we had intended to proceed; but, arranging with the driver, he took us on to Ragatz, about two hours farther, where we arrived at half-past five, the last half hour being in a thunderstorm. It had been down hill the whole way since we left Splugen in the morning, and the horses, notwithstanding the fatigues of the preceding day, went briskly along, and apparently returned next morning; for it is not the habit of the owners of these Swiss conveyances, if they can help it, to give their horses a day’s rest after excessive fatigue. We enjoyed our three days’ drive amazingly, through scenery alternately grand, wild and desolate, or beautiful and romantic. A more pleasant excursion could not be planned; but to be enjoyed, it requires to be taken in the way we did. One has not the same freedom in travelling by diligence, and besides it goes on night and day, and passes through the best of the scenery in the dark.
Ragatz lies a little beyond the range of the usual tourists’ track, and we had not ourselves visited it before. It is very charmingly situated, at the entrance of the Gorge of Pfäffers, in a valley up from that of the Rhine flow, and hemmed in by high, bold mountains, which, from the Ragatz side, look like immense walls, on whose higher slopes some patches of snow were then visible. The village is small and spotlessly clean, externally at least, and the Hotel Quellenhoff, a large new comfortable house, has grounds attached to it which afford pleasant retreats and walks. It is, however, a somewhat noisy establishment, being one of those Continental watering-places where a band of music, paid for by a daily tax on each visitor, plays morning and night to the accompaniment of out-door drinking. We found the house full of Germans, and having one or two distinguished visitors, among whom were the King of Saxony and Count Arnim. In the public breakfast room we found one morning four Germans smoking at a table—a disgusting piece of rudeness which is sometimes experienced in Switzerland. In the grounds there are a kursaal, where the band plays, a newsroom, and a book-seller’s stall—all under one roof; and in another neat range of buildings, shops for the sale of Swiss and other articles, a fountain flowing with Pfäffers water, and baths of the same.
The walk up the Pfäffers Gorge is very interesting. Crossing a rustic wooden bridge over a deep rapid torrent, not very wide, however, the road at once begins to lead into a confined valley, the rocks or hills on either side rising steeply, and leaving room only for the river and the road by its side, with an occasional widening. It is well wooded all along, the pine trees affording shelter to some extent from the sun when it penetrates, as it does in certain positions. The seclusion is alluring, but it is not altogether free from danger. At one place my daughter ran up a bank, and came flying back to say that she had found a snake moving in the grass at her feet. An older person, less observant, would in all likelihood have trod upon it.[44] As we proceeded, the mountains seemed to rise higher and higher overhead; and, about two and a half miles from Ragatz, the rocks approach still closer, and a large hotel, seemingly very much out of place, greets the eye. Here tickets are procured for entrance to the gorge itself. It is effected through the hotel to a wooden gallery resting on a ledge cut out of the rock, which impends at a by no means assuring acute angle immediately overhead, and even some way beyond the shaky platform. Looking down the abyss, the water is seen below flowing still and deep and fast through the narrow cleft; and this cleft rises high, as we can see the rocks appearing to all but touch above, while one side inclines to the other with an apparent appalling desire to embrace. It looks as if an earthquake had split up the rock, and as if another shock might at once and for ever close it up again. It is a damp, gloomy sort of cavern, till one reaches the part where the hot spring escapes from the rocks, one half of it flowing into the river in a huge spout, and the remainder being carried in a long pipe to Ragatz to supply the baths there. We entered by a door into a cave in the rock, a distance of probably 50 or 60 feet, pitch dark, hot, and vaporous, where we had given us a little of the hot water to drink, not disagreeable to the taste. Afraid of chill, we left in time to get back to Ragatz ere the road should be in shade.
We should have stayed at Ragatz with pleasure for at least a week, but, expecting letters at Lucerne, remained only three nights. Leaving the hotel at half-past eight, we had a tedious journey, as we did not arrive at Lucerne (only about 76 miles distant by rail) till four o’clock, the railway passing through a very pretty country, well wooded and watered, stopping at every station by the way, and for an hour at the town of Zurich. Leaving in sunshine, we were again unfortunate enough to arrive at Lucerne in heavy rain, which, with previous falls, had caused the lake to overflow its banks.
We spent three nights at Lucerne, and had rain great part of the time. We were fortunate, however, to obtain, on the Tuesday, a charming sunny day to cross the lake and proceed by diligence to Interlachen by the Brunig Pass. The steamboat left the quay at Lucerne at 10.10 for Alpnacht, and we did not get to Interlachen till about 8 p.m., having had, however, two long halts by the way to enable the passengers to dine or obtain refreshment and to rest the horses. We had the interior of the diligence to ourselves, and, though objecting at first to the closeness, it afforded cover from the sun, then in full power. The other passengers were accommodated in other and open carriages. The sail and drive are both beautiful; the sunset upon the Jungfrau awaiting our arrival was one of the finest we enjoyed while at Interlachen, tinting the snow with a shining glow of bright red light, which gradually left the lower parts till the shade ascended to the summit; and then the whole mountain was as if dead, but it shortly after returned to life in the like ruddy hue of the after-glow,—a beautiful effect we did not often afterwards witness.