FURGGEN GLACIER ICEFALLFurggjoch at top of picture.
FURGGEN GLACIER ICEFALL
Furggjoch at top of picture.
Alpine glaciers are of the medium type, lying as they do half-way between the Arctic and tropical extremes. They have not the rapid flow of the Arctic nor the dry rigidity of the tropical sort. Their walls are not silent as in the Central Andes, nor thundered over by continual avalanches like those of the upper Baltoro. They are of medium size also. In a single day almost any of them may be ascended from snout to snow-field,and descended again. To explore their remotest recesses no elaborately equipped expedition is required. Yet they are large enough to be imposing, and penetrate deep enough into the heart of the hills to isolate their votaries completely from the world of human habitation. It is to this medium quality that the Alps owe much of their charm. This, too, it is that makes them an almost perfect mountain play-ground. Were they but a little smaller, how much they would lose that is most precious! Were they larger, how many persons that now can afford the cost and the strength to explore them would have to linger at their gates wistfully looking in. In area, too, they are large enough for grandeur and yet small enough for easy access. No part of them is beyond the range of a summer holiday, yet a commanding view of them is as apparently limitless as is the view from the greatest Asiatic peaks which, thus far, have been climbed. They are the only range of snow-mountains in the world thus blessed with moderation.
It is for this reason that the Alpine climber so soon acquires an understanding of glaciers as units. A novice, after a single year's Alpineexperience, can talk easily and with understanding of all the parts of a glacier. It takes twenty seasons to know them well, but the foundations of knowledge can be laid in one. The modern tendency amongst climbers is to devote their main attention to rock-scrambling; but those who have spent the best years of their life amongst mountains, generally end by giving their hearts to glaciers and the high regions of snow. The best advice that can be given to a young climber is, "Learn to know glaciers." They offer the strongest contrast to the ordinary surroundings of life. They present the most varied phenomena. They most readily impress the imagination. They are the vital element, the living inhabitants of the high world.
THE GLETSCHERHORN FROM THE PAVILION, HOTEL CATHREIN, CLOSE TO CONCORDIA HUTOne of the finest situations for views of the ice-world where no climbing is required.
THE GLETSCHERHORN FROM THE PAVILION, HOTEL CATHREIN, CLOSE TO CONCORDIA HUT
One of the finest situations for views of the ice-world where no climbing is required.
If elsewhere I have praised the charms of contrast, of passing from low to high, from fertile to barren, let me here exalt another method. Who that has tried it will not agree that it is likewise well, sometimes, to hide oneself in the very heart of the upper snows, and there dwell for a while apart from the haunts of men? Formerly this was difficult to accomplish, but now, in the Alps at any rate, it is easy; for well-found high-level huts are many. Such, for instance, is theBecher Refuge, planted in the midst of the Tirolese Übelthal glacier, or the Kürsinger Hut, on the north slope of the Gross Venediger. Settled in either of these, you are in the midst of the high snowy world. Thenévésare within a stone's throw, and the final peaks may be gained by a morning's walk. The Concordia Hut (now Hôtel, I believe) is similarly situated; whilst the hut on the top of the Signal Kuppe of Monte Rosa is yet more highly elevated. It is easy to spend a day or two in any of these huts, and so to pass before the eyes the whole daily drama as it is played upon the heights. So easy is it, that one wonders why more mountain-lovers do not avail themselves of the opportunity. The drawback, of course, is that such a hut is a centre of human activity. You forsake the hordes of men below, only to join a colony above. Solitude in these places is not to be had except in bad weather.
There is one way, and one only, by which fully to experience the long emotion of a dweller in the heights: it is to camp out. Few, indeed, are they who have tried it in the Alps. Some have slept in a tent on the mountain-side before a great climb; but they are fewer now than a score of years ago. It is not, however, to such brief lodging I refer;but to a settlement made and victualled for several days. Mr. Whymper, I believe, is one of the few English climbers who has spent many days together with a tent at high altitudes in the Alps, and he has not published any notice of his experiences. It is a thing I have long wished to do, knowing so well the charms of such life in other mountain regions.
From a high-planted camp you can climb if you must, but you can also enjoy yourself without climbing. To awake on a fine morning in the midst of the snow-fields and see the coming of day at leisure, with no preparations to be made for immediate departure; then to watch the sun climb aloft and flood the depths of the valleys with its glory; to spend the whole day at leisure in the vicinity of your tent, strolling now to look into some bergschrund, now to scramble on to some neighbouring point of rock, returning at intervals to dine, or read some pleasant book, or to sketch in the shadow of the tent;—that is the way to let the mountain-glory sink in. My climbing days on the heights have left me pleasant memories enough, but the high-level days of idleness have been more delightful, even when they were days of storm and driving snow.
THE TRUGBERGLooking up the Aletsch glacier from corner of Märjelen See.
THE TRUGBERG
Looking up the Aletsch glacier from corner of Märjelen See.
To be in the midst of a storm at a high altitude is a wonderful experience, which all climbers pass through sooner or later; but it is an uncomfortable experience. When you are camping-out high up you can enjoy a storm far more easily. I have sat warmly in my sleeping-bag and looked out for hours through a chink of the tent-door, fascinated to watch the whirling of the snow and to listen to the wild music of the gale. It is not the fine weather alone that is fair. There is a yet grander glory in the storms. What can be more superb than to watch the oncoming of such a visitant, to see the white valleys and dark precipices swallowed up in the night of its embrace, to feel the power of its might and the volume of its onrush, and to see and feel all this with the sense of security such as a limpet may be conceived to feel in the presence of waves breaking upon it? Who would not wish to spend a few hours in the Eddystone Lighthouse in the midst of a December gale? That would surely be worth while; like standing beneath the Falls of Niagara.
Equally wonderful is it when the winds are still and a white fog envelops your little camp. Then you know what it is like to be alone. Above, around, and below all is impalpable whiteness. You might be floating in the air on a bit of snow-carpet for all the eye can tellyou to the contrary. Never is silence more emphatic, not even in the darkest hour of the night. The ear strains with listening and hears only the pulsations of the heart, till some distant falling stone or rumbling avalanche, some crack of a new-forming crevasse, some slight shifting of a near snow-bed, sends a shiver through the air. And then, perhaps, there is a writhing in the mist and shortly forms emerge. You cannot tell at first whether they are tiny objects near at hand or remote masses. Under such circumstances I have mistaken a little fragment of paper drifting along the snow for a polar bear! Presently avenues of clearness open up to close again. Finally, the mist grows thin and glittering, the sunshine penetrates it, there is a moment of scorching heat, and lo! all is clear, and the great world around is perfectly revealed.
PALLANZA—SUNSET
PALLANZA—SUNSET
What beauty there is in the great snow-fields that wearied waders through their soft envelope are in no condition to appreciate! For to be seen at their grandest they must be seen in the full glare of mid-daylight, when details are swallowed up in radiant, all-enveloping splendour. Every oneknows the glory of overpowering sound. For that orchestras are enlarged and choruses increased in number. Who that has heard the full-throated music of ten thousand men, singing as one, will forget the majesty of that voluminous sonorance? The thunder of great guns is used, by common consent, to express the salutations of a people. What is true of sound is also true of light. Great views are ennobled by the splendour of full sunshine. There is an indescribable charm about desert sunrises and sunsets, but the glory of the desert is greatest at noon when the sunshine seems to swallow up the world and almost to hide it in excess of brightness. As with the deserts so is it with the snow-fields. When the eye can barely suffer to rest on them, they are most impressive. If there be specks of dust upon the snow, they disappear then from vision. With the brightness comes perfect purity, and the very idea of possible contamination vanishes away.
Reference has been made above to the beauty of linear form presented by many mountains projected against the sky. The great snow-fields have a beauty of surface form, a delicacy and perfection of modelling, far more remarkable. The graceful outline of a rock-peak, such as theMatterhorn, is, after all, a conception based upon a fact. The actual outline is a line elaborately jagged, which the eye converts into a continuous curve by purposely neglecting to observe the small indentations. But the curvature of anévéis often apparently perfect. Its slight imperfections are too small for the eye to see even when they are looked for. Where it curves over, the outline of its edge is as delicate as any line that can be fashioned by the most elaborate artifice. No razor's edge is apparently more true. So also are the surfaces, in the perfection of their rise and fall. Not more perfect are the heavings of the last dying swell on a calming tropical ocean. But the swelling of the snows is still, and can be watched from dawn to eve with the incredibly delicate shades upon it that change with the hours yet never grow coarse, only towards the day's end they become blue and bluer, till the pink lights of sunset melt against them before the pallor of night comes on.
KRANZBERG—ROTTHALHORN—AND JUNGFRAU: SUNSET
KRANZBERG—ROTTHALHORN—AND JUNGFRAU: SUNSET
The details of the snow-fields are few, except when the surface is forced to break up by submerged inequalities of the glacier's bed. Thennévéice-falls are formed, which are far more majestic than the ice-falls of the middle region(such as that of the Col du Géant). The high ice-falls are always deeply covered with recent snow, and the broken white mantle upon the tumbled chaos produces mysterious hollows and gives rise to long fringes of glittering icicles not elsewhere in summer to be seen. To gaze into a crevasse in such a situation is to look into a veritable fairy's grotto, where the recesses are bluer and the walls more white than the memory ever avails to recall, and where the icicles seem to be hung for the very purpose of sublime decoration. Glimpses of such sights are often granted to the mere climber as he hastily scrambles over a bergschrund by an insecure snow-bridge; but he has no time to stop for half an hour and let his fancy play truant in the depths. To do that, one must be living aloft, with all the day to spend as one pleases, no peak to attain and return from, within short time-limits, and no companions to say "Hurry up."
Perhaps these pages may have the good fortune to inspire some mountain-lover with the wish to camp out aloft. A suggestion may, therefore, not be out of place. Let the intending high-level resident choose the situation of his camp with care. It must be out of the way of excursionists,or he will be invaded by continual visitors, who will expect entertainment and will thus deplete his stores and spoil his solitude. It ought not, however, to be difficult of access, or the problem of revictualling will be complicated and expensive. Such a camp should consist of two tents—one of them for guides or porters. The traveller's tent should be solid, and should possess a double roof or fly, so that it may be occupied with comfort in the hot hours of the day. It should be so firmly planted that no gale can overthrow it. Its furniture should be sufficient for comfort. Do not plan to move on from day to day, but settle down for a week or more at one spot, where there are rocks for a tent platform, and short scrambles that can be safely undertaken alone. Let the snow-field be near also, a snow-field that can be traversed onski, and do not forget to take theskiwith you, nor fear that you will not be able to use them on fairly level ground without previous practice. Keep a man with you to fetch water and do the rough cooking, so that all your time may be your own to enjoy to the full a rare opportunity which may not come again.
The middle region of the glaciers is the region best known to the votaries of the Alps, becauseit is the most accessible from the popular hotels. This middle region may be defined as limited by the snow-line above and the tree-level below. It is therefore larger towards the end of the season as the snow-line is pushed up by the melting of the winter snows. On the Aletsch glacier it roughly corresponds with the stretch between the Belalp and the Concordia; on the Gorner glacier with the corresponding stretch between the Riffelhorn and the foot of Monte Rosa. Its characteristic features are the open crevasses and the flowing or standing water on the surface of the ice. This is the place to come to for glacier picnics. It is the paradise of the moderate walker or the superannuated mountaineer. It is a safe region for the experienced to wander over alone, and for the inexperienced to visit with experts. You can start late and be back early. You need not venture forth before the weather has declared its intentions. Hence it is the popular glacier belt, and its beauties are best known and most widely appreciated.
If it lacks the aloofness and romance of thenévés, it possesses ample charms of its own. The impressive silence of the heights is here replaced by a chorus of the voices of many waters. Thelarge simplicity and sweeping forms of the snow-fields give way here to a multiplicity of detailed forms that require time to appreciate and understand. Every step in this area yields a new wonder, a fresh incident, another surprise. All around is continual change as you go along. There is no end to the features that demand and reward your attention. No wonder that glacier wandering at this level should be so popular an amusement.
What is its principal and characteristic charm? Undoubtedly the water, and the phenomena to which it gives rise. To begin with, there are the streams, small and great. The little trickles, that creep between the lumps of the uneven surface and deepen the furrow dividing them. They flow and unite together like the veins of a leaf, thus giving rise to larger arteries, and these by their union to yet larger. Thus the main drainage torrents are formed, which, on great Arctic and Himalayan glaciers, become veritable rivers, impossible to be leapt over or forded. The beds of these torrents are blue in colour and like transparent glass in aspect—a lovely contrast with the general surface of the glacier. For that is made white by the innumerable fissures that penetrate its surface,due to the dissolvent effect of the sun's heat, from which the icy water protects the bed of a stream. It is a favourite pastime to sit beside such a torrent and watch the water flow by between its white banks, one in bright sunshine, the other, perhaps, in shadow, with the blue ribbon of transparent ice between them and crystalline water scampering along with an aspect of joy in freedom.
But there is a grim fate in store for it not far ahead. It must make haste to laugh in the sunshine while it can, and to display its short-lived clearness. Next time we see it, it will be thick and unclean with sediment, and far below in the valleys where men live and work. Little, however, does it seem to care as it hurries and dances along, and throws up its little glittering, splashing hands into the air. We follow it downward, and soon hear a musical booming not far away, like the note of a deep organ pipe. It is amoulinor pot-hole, a cylindrical perforation of the glacier into which the torrent leaps, and where it disappears, to flow thenceforward in darkness along the rocky bed of the glacier, till it reappears at the snout into the open valley.
Even lovelier than the streams are the pools on thesurface of a glacier, when they have a clean floor unsoiled by moraine or sandy deposit. These pools are sometimes of large dimensions. They, too, have blue basins with white edges. Looked down upon from a distance, they appear like great sapphire eyes gazing at the heavens. Seldom, if ever, in the Alps are such pools found in thenévéregion; to behold them there, one must go to Arctic glaciers, of which they form one of the chief glories. If the lakes on the Gorner glacier do not equal those for purity or perfection of contrast between untainted blue and unsullied white, they are none the less most lovely. Sometimes a lake may be found not on but beside a glacier, where the ice forms one bank and the mountain another. Such are the Märjelen See by the Great Aletsch, and the little-visited lake at the west foot of Monte Rosa. On these you may see floating or stranded masses of ice, and perchance find one that has recently turned over, displaying its blue part that was before submerged.
MÄRJELEN SEE AND GREAT ALETSCH GLACIERWinter ice not yet melted on the lake.
MÄRJELEN SEE AND GREAT ALETSCH GLACIER
Winter ice not yet melted on the lake.
Now and again, if you look for them, you will find crevasses filled with water, whose depth renders up a yet bluer tone than can elsewhere be met with in the regions of ice. Perhaps, at one end the crevasse will be roofed over, andthere you may gaze into the deep shadow and find the blue deepen almost to black. If you drop in a stone, you may hear the bubbles come rippling up and the wavelets lapping against the sides. If the roof be thin enough, a hole may be made in it with the ice-axe, and a beam of sunshine admitted which will increase the scale of the harmony in blue. Well do I remember one glorious pool of water, roofed over with a dome of ice, through which the sunshine glimmered. At one side was a natural portal, at the other a window. Two or three white blocks of ice floated on the water, and its uneven depths were of all tones from sky-blue to black; but that was in Spitsbergen, where glacier details are far lovelier than the Alps can show.
But the middle glacier region, the region of what is fantastically called the "dry glacier," presents other charms than those of water. Note, for example, the brilliance of its surface and the peculiarity of its texture. It consists of an infinite multitude of loosely compacted rounded fragments of ice with a little water soaking down between them. If you watch it closely, you will see that the moving water makes a shimmering in the cracks between the ice-fragments. You will alsoobserve that the blue of the solid ice below the skin of fragments appears dimly through the white, and the least tap with an ice-axe to scrape away the surface reveals it clearly. Each little fragment of ice has a separate glitter of its own, so that the whole surface sparkles with a frosted radiance. It is not the same at dawn after a cold night, for then there is no water between the fragments, but all is hard and solid. No sooner, however, does the sun shine upon them, than the bonds are released and the ice-crystals begin to break up with a gentle tinkling sound and little flashes of light reflected from tiny wet mirror-surfaces. One can spend hours watching these small phenomena as happily as gazing upon the great mountains themselves. Size is a relative term. The biggest mountain in relation to the earth is no greater than is one of these small ice-fragments in relation to a glacier. Reduce the scale in imagination and the smallest object may be endowed with grandeur, for all such conceptions are subjective.
The open crevasses that are never far away on the dry glacier are full of beauties. It is not easy to tire of peering down into them. Sometimes one may be found into which a man armed with an ice-axe may effect a descent. He will not staythere long, for the depths are cold. Once I was able not only to descend into a crevasse but to follow it beyond its open part into the very substance of the glacier. It was a weird place, good to see but not good to remain in, and I was glad to return to sunshine very soon.
The moraines and scattered stones that are frequently encountered on the dry glacier are more interesting than beautiful. It is well to make the acquaintance of the medial moraines and to scramble over them, first for the wider view that one gets from the top, and next in order to realise their dimensions, always larger than one expects. Seen from a distance medial moraines look smaller than they are. The eye must be educated to realise their true dimensions. When that has been accomplished, the great scale of the glacier that carries them can be felt, but not before.
There is generally a breeze blowing over a dry glacier, so that when the pleasant luncheon-hour arrives, a sheltered spot must be sought out, one open to the sun and protected against the breeze, with good water near at hand, and stones of convenient dimensions for seats and tables. Experienced wanderers will detect such spots far sooner than novices. It is with them as with goodcamping grounds: they are not easy to identify at a glance, but they are well worth hunting out.
So also is it with points suitable for photography. A dry glacier is full of details for a camera, and yet how few good photographs does one see taken at this level among the mountains, unless they be distant views. Nowhere are there better foregrounds to be discovered; yet when they are looked for, how hard it is to find them. The composition is generally faulty in the inexperienced amateur's picture. But those who are experienced in the art seem to find suitable foregrounds everywhere. It is the result of much taking thought.
Generally it happens that the return from a day's glacier wandering leads up the hillside along the margin, so that as we ascend, the area of our adventures spreads itself out below, and the eye can range over the whole of it at once. We look for the place where we lunched, for the broad streams with difficulty crossed, for the large pools we looked down into. They are not often discoverable. What looked so important near at hand has shrunk to an insignificant unidentifiable detail. The river is one of hundreds of the same kind. The pools are innumerable. Themoraine stretches along for miles, and one of its mounds seems like another. We thus begin to realise the size of the great icy expanse. Our track over it has revealed but little of the multitude of sights there are to see. We have but glanced at a few samples out of countless thousands. Were we to return on the morrow we could not retrace our steps, nor find again the objects we saw to-day. For a moment the grand scale of the glacier imposes itself upon us, but before night has gone we shall have forgotten it. Only by coming again and yet again does it gradually sink into our understandings and become a part of the habit of thought with which we approach the Alps.
ITis to be feared that the reader, whose persistence has availed to carry him thus far through the adventure of this book, may bring an accusation against me, on the ground that each form and type of scenery, as in its turn it has come to be discussed, has been described in language of too superlative praise, as though it and it alone were pre-eminent above all other Alpine forms and types. Let me forthwith confess that the accusation is well founded; for the fact is that, whether the attention be turned upon peaks of rock or domes of snow, upon cliffs or aiguilles, upon snow-fields or ice-falls, upon passes, alps, or valleys, the kind under immediate consideration always seems the finest, the central type and the most beautiful. We quit the valleys for the high snows in search of beauty. From the heights we return to the valleys on the samequest. Everywhere we may find it, and to find it is all we need ask; for it is like pure gold, whereof no fragment is intrinsically more precious than another. Each new-found nugget seems for the moment best of all.
THE CASTLE OF ZÄHRINGEN-KYBURG, THUN
THE CASTLE OF ZÄHRINGEN-KYBURG, THUN
Beauty is not the prerogative of any zone or level of the mountains more than of any other. It is of different kinds in different regions, but not of different degrees. Some kinds may appeal to one man more than other kinds, but these in their turn will be preferred by a man of different disposition, and neither can boast that his taste is superior. Youthful vigour may find the keen consciousness of beauty most readily arising after difficulties have been overcome. Age may feel its sense of beauty deadened by toil. In neither case is the power of appreciation to be regarded as a test of the quality of the beauty perceived; it is merely an indication of the character of the person perceiving it.
The normal Alpine climber is more sensitive to the beauty of the high regions than to the beauty of low levels. Nor is the fact surprising. He values that which he wins by toil, as is the natural habit of man. Yet he will by no means deny that there are beauties of the valleys andthe middle regions, though he may freely confess that they appeal to him less powerfully. But even he, lying upon some high pasture or in the borders of a wood on some off-day, when the sun shines brightly and the peaks that he knows and loves look down upon him through a clear atmosphere, will realise consciously enough the fascination of the scene. The beauty of the middle region, however, stands in need of no apology, of no lengthy recommendation, for this is the region which the ordinary traveller most frequents and specially associates with his Alpine ramblings. The valleys are the home of the tripper; the alpine pastures, of the tourist; the snows, of the climber. Each class perhaps looks down upon the one below, but each is well rewarded and may rest content with what it receives.
The grassy region between the belt of forest and the snows is known in Switzerland as the alps or high pastures, and it is from these "alps" that the great mountain range of Central Europe takes its name. An alp is essentially a summer grazing ground. It is the locality of cattle and horses, sheep and goats. A high Alpine village without an alp is an exceptional place. The normal village needs an alp for its equipment as much asit needs fields and woodland. The fact that there is an alp for summer grazing enables the grass lands at lower levels to be used as hay-fields; thus a supply of winter feed for the cattle is procured. Hay is also cut on some of the lower alps, but that is an exceptional use.
The easily accessible alps are grazed by cattle. Highest alps whither cattle cannot go, or where frequent precipices surround the beasts with danger, are reserved for sheep and goats. Goat-alps are sometimes islands in the midst of glaciers, as, for instance, those at the foot of the Breithorn and the Twins along the south side of the main Gorner Glacier. Oftenest the alps grazed by sheep and goats are high up in the immediate vicinity of the snow-line, little patches of grass in a wilderness of rocks, or broken up by precipices. Some great grassy places at the ordinary cattle-alp level are so isolated by rock-walls that cattle cannot be taken to them with safety. Large flocks of sheep will then be found there. Such, for example, is the Muttenalp[3]above Thierfehd in the Tödi district, which is grazed by some 1500 or 2000 sheep. A single shepherd looks after them, and is almost entirely cut off from the lower world throughout the long summer months. The alp in questionlies in a hollow of the hills, with terraced slopes rising like an amphitheatre from a grassy hollow, only accessible from below by a giddy path. There would be grass enough here for many cattle if the path could be cheaply improved.
[3]NOTE TO PAGE 229.—Mr. Coolidge informs me that the Muttenalp belongs, not to the Thierfehd, but to Brigels in the Grisons, and is reached over the Kisten Pass. That is why the path down to the Linththal is so bad.
Nothing in the Alps is more lonely and forlorn in aspect than are these high shepherds' huts. They are always wretchedly built. The lads or men that occupy them are the poorest of their village and the worst clad. In an alp where cheese is made there is plenty of work to fill every hour of the day; but a shepherd who lives aloft and does not have to drive his flock back to the village every day, finds time hanging heavily on his hands, and acquires a forlorn expression that matches his attire, his surroundings, and the miserable weather which so often envelops him. Those of us who climbed among out-of-the-way parts of the Alps in the seventies or earlier often had to take shelter for the night in shepherds' huts, and very uncomfortable they were. But modern climbers hardly know that such refuges exist.
One such hut I well remember at the head of the Ridnaunthal in Tirol. Now there are no less than three luxurious climbers' huts built beside or near the glacier further up. The old shepherd'shut has fallen to decay. Only a fragment of one of its walls was left when I passed the place recently. Modern comforts, however, are not all clear gain. To sleep a night in the old upper Agels alp was not a comfortable experience, but it had its recompenses. The rough stone-built cabin was perfectly in harmony of aspect with its surroundings, as a club-hut is not. Built out of the stones that lay around, its crannies stuffed with moss, its roof formed of slabs and sods, it seemed a part of the mountain landscape, a natural growth rather than an artificial structure. A philosopher, ignorant of the conditions of life there, might have argued that the hut had been invested with an intentional protective coloration and form. The hut was hard to find, hard even to see when you were looking straight that way. It stood in a gorge upon a sloping grassy shelf, clutching a dark rock-cliff, as though it feared to slide down and tumble over into the roaring torrent. There was another dark cliff over against it, and the gorge curved round, so that you could not see far, either up or down. Everywhere the dark rock-cliffs shut it in, and only the minimum of sky was visible overhead, as it were poised on cliffs. There was always a bitter wind blowing when I was there,and always the river roaring, and its spray rising to the door of the hut like a wet cloud.
The entry was by a low and narrow door, and there was a tiny window beside it. A little passage or track led from the door down the room to the fire at the far end, where cheese was made of goat's milk. On one side of the passage was a bed of hay, retained by a board. On the other were some shelves fastened against the wall. The door did not fit, and the walls were full of holes through which the wind whistled. It was indeed a wretched shelter; but we slept well enough within it, rolled up in our wraps. The hospitality of the simple peasant was as hearty, his welcome as warm, as his means were exiguous. No one sleeps in these goat-herd huts any more. Climbers have provided better accommodation for themselves, but in so doing they have lost that intimate touch with the life of the mountain-dwellers which a former generation learned to enjoy.
When now we speak of alps, it is the cattle alps that are generally intended and understood. These cattle alps are of all sizes and descriptions, large and small, relatively high planted or relatively low. Some, like Moser's alp above Randa, belong to an individual and afford grazing only for a few beasts;but most are the property of the commune and are worked co-operatively for the benefit of all the cattle-owners who may wish to send their cows aloft to graze. Most alps are divided into two levels, a lower and a higher. The cattle are driven to the lower alp for the beginning and end of the summer season, to the higher for the middle weeks. Every such alp must be supplied with the necessary buildings for the accommodation of the herdsmen and cheese-makers, and generally for the cattle also, though in some parts of Switzerland the cattle are left out in the open throughout the whole summer season. Pigs are usually kept at a cattle alp to consume the refuse of the whey. An old woman once told me that pigs are "the fourth child of milk," the other three being butter, sérac, and cheese. What with the coming and going of the cattle, the pigs, and the herdsmen, the milking at dawn and eve, and the cheese-making that follows, a cattle alp is a very busy place. Some are better equipped than others, but in almost all one finds a shake-down on hay, a fire, and good shelter against all possible inclemencies of the weather. The immediate neighbourhood of the huts is liable to be dirty, especially when there are pigs, and at certain seasons there is a plague of flies in the hot hours ofsunshine. But, as a rule, these discomforts infest only a very small area, and it is enough to pass beyond that to escape them.
Now that the throng of climbers is so great near the fashionable centres, cattle alps are unsuited to accommodate them, and club-huts or even hotels have been built for their service. Yet even now a climber who quits the beaten track often has an opportunity of spending a night under the conditions which were universal in the days of the Alpine explorers. To climb the mountains without associating with the folk whose lives are passed upon their lower slopes is to lose half the pleasure of mountaineering, as I shall attempt to prove in the next chapter. Valley-life is not widely different from life in the plains. It is the life on the alps that is characteristic of the mountain-dweller. There the peasant learns sureness of foot. There he grows familiar with the aspect of the high peaks and the glaciers. There, as the years pass by, he becomes differentiated from the man of the plains. No one can really acquire the mountain-spirit who has had no contact with the people of the alps. That spirit does not reside in the club-huts, one of which is already in telephonic communication with a Stock Exchange—aforetaste of what the future will bring to others. The great charm and recreative power of mountain-wandering arose from the fact that the climber cut himself off from the life of the Cities of the Plain and exchanged it for the life of the hillside. He came into communication with another set of men, with other habits, other ideals. Each year that passes in the Alps makes that change less considerable and by so much the less salutary.
CHALETS AND CHURCH. RIEDERALP
CHALETS AND CHURCH. RIEDERALP
The crowd of holiday visitors to Switzerland tends to settle in the high pasture region more than was the habit thirty years ago. Formerly hotels flourished in the valley-bottoms, in villages or close to them. Now they are built with ever-increasing frequency upon the alps. The Riffel and Mürren led the way. Such hotels now exist by dozens, and more are built every year. Round Zermatt there are smaller or larger inns, about 3000 feet higher than the village, in many directions. But to live in one of these high hotels is yet to live the normal life of hotel-frequenting man. The scenery is changed, but not the human medium. It is the inevitable consequence of Alpine vulgarisation which drives the true lover of nature and of the freedom of simple life further afield.
To know what the high pastures are really like,what kind of a foreground they naturally provide for an outlook on the world of mountains, you must not go to the modern Triftalp inn or the Schwarz See, but rather to such unspoiled places as the alps of Veglia or of By, both glorious expanses of wide pasturage, which no crowd as yet has attempted to invade, or is likely to attempt, thanks to their situations, remote from the great tripping highways. There you may obtain simple accommodation for a few fine days, and wander as you please over the undulating meadows, with no sound to break the stillness save the rustling of the breeze, the laughter of the waters, and the musical clang of cow-bells more or less remote.
It would be easy to divide the alps into many classes and to discourse of their characters from many points of view, but there are two main kinds of high pastures, differentiated from one another by their situations, which will naturally occur to every lover of mountains. One kind covers the floor and lower slopes of some high-planted valley; the other lies on some open shelf or convex curving mountain-knee. The first sort is recondite; the other displays itself to the world and commands extensive views. The impression they produce isvery different. One is wild and gloomy; the other gay and brilliant. One has to be sought; the other summons you from afar.
EVENING IN ZERMATTThe promenade after dinner—a scene more reminiscent of Earl's Court than the "heart of the Alpine world."
EVENING IN ZERMATT
The promenade after dinner—a scene more reminiscent of Earl's Court than the "heart of the Alpine world."
The high grassy valleys are not so common as the knees, nor do I at this moment recall one of them that is likely to be known by the general run of my readers, though there are plenty scattered about in all sorts of corners of the Alpine range. Perhaps the Täsch alp will do for type, though compared with many it is relatively open and accessible. There are better examples near the Dent du Midi, which may be more widely known than I imagine. The ascent to such an alp may lie straight up the valley, first through the forest, afterwards through glades and grassy openings, often of singular loveliness. At last you come to the stunted and scattered outliers of the forest, pathetic trees all crooked and misformed, bending away from the habitual wind and stretching forth angular arms after it as it hurries by. When these are left behind, the open grass-land spreads before and around you, seamed with radiating paths, that start away as with a most definite intention, but soon divide and subdivide, leading in fact nowhither.
If it is early in the season and you are aheadof the cattle, the grass may be relatively tall and the flowers countless in number and variety. You will wade not ankle-but knee-deep in them, and the air will be filled with delicious perfume. Then indeed it is good to wander at this level. It is essentially the level for wandering. You may go as well in one direction as another. The views are in every direction and from every place. There are no points to ascend, no goals to reach. Now it is a fold of the ground, some little hollow with a pool, that attracts the eye; now it is an outcrop of rock; now some gap ahead filled by a snow-peak; now some downward vista of forest or valley. Anywhere you may find entertainment. Anywhere you may be tempted to sit down and gaze around.
BERN FROM THE NORTH-WESTSpire of Cathedral against the dimly seen mountains of the Bernese Oberland
BERN FROM THE NORTH-WEST
Spire of Cathedral against the dimly seen mountains of the Bernese Oberland
The higher you go the shorter becomes the grass, but it is all the more succulent. As the season advances the flowers fade. But the alp nevertheless retains its charm. The kind of alp now specially under consideration, the hollow sequestered high pasture, is often round some corner, cut off from distant and especially from downward views. Perhaps a portion of a snowy peak can be seen over a shoulder of the surrounding foreground. Oftenest even the snows areshut out, and the vision is limited by enclosing slopes or walls of shattered rock, where snow lies late in chinks and crannies. Such places have a wild and at first sight a forbidding aspect. But we grow to appreciate them and find delight in them as the novelty wears off. They have the dignity, the solemnity of solitude. Such elements of beauty as they possess are simple. They do not overwhelm the imagination by imposing shapes, nor astonish and puzzle it by complexities of colouring. Such places are best seen in dull weather when distant views are not to be had, and the eye has to take its pleasure in gazing upon what is near at hand. Then the brown rocks emerging from the grass and embroidered with lichens have their chance. In some places, where water habitually trickles over them, they are quite black and glossy. After all, there is variety enough of colour to be found about them, if one takes the trouble to look. Moreover, how much entertainment is to be found in the really intricate modelling of the grass-covered surfaces. Far different are they from mere low level fields which long ploughing has invested with a continuous curvature like that of anévébasin. The grassy alps possess a complexaccidentation of form. They bend and curve with an exhaustless variety. They burst, as it were like a breaking wave, against the rocks that perforate the grass. How many shelves and islands grass covers among the rocks! What picturesque corners it makes! What sheltered nooks! What attractive camping grounds! What charming sites for picnics, aloof from the ways of the crowd! In these remote and solitary places it is charming to while away the hours of an idle day, seeing nothing that has name or fame, following no track, accomplishing no expedition, no walk even that can be identified, yet finding everywhere something to look at, some entertainment for the disencumbered mind.
It is, however, the high and open alps, lying on the slopes or laps of the great hills, that are the favourite places with visitors of all sorts. Here the variety is so great, the opportunities of enjoyment are so many, the possible beauties so multitudinous, that it is almost impossible to indicate them in a brief space. Who that has climbed much, or merely wandered much, through Alpine regions has not an exhaustless store of memories of these open, far-commanding alps? What a variety of reminiscences arise when thethoughts are turned towards this belt of the mountains! It forms a stage in the ascent and again in the descent of every peak and pass; and it is the special arena for the "off-day."