Those not in a hurry will do well to spread this walk, with digressions that will readily suggest themselves, over the second day, passing the night at Fuorn. If pressed for time, however, an early start from the blockhouse will enable good walkers to get on to S-charl or Tarasp. A quarter of an hour above Fuorn on the road to the Pass, by the second bridge, which crosses a gully, a footpath on the left through the forest brings us into the Val del Botsch, abounding in chamois, and ascends steeply to the Fuorcletta, a low saddle between towering dolomite peaks. Looking back as we ascend is an ever-widening prospect of serried summits and savage gorges. Very striking, too, as we thread the stony trough, is the contrast between the stark desolation around and the soft rich hues of the Lower Engadine, with a crowded host of peaks rising behind and about them. The path then leaves the Park, and is for a while in the Verbindungsgebiet, descending to Alp Plavna, turning to the left, ascending, and re-entering the Park at the pleasant col of Sur il Foss; then descending the Val Minger, it strikes the Clemgia a couple of miles below the lone, forest-begirt hamlet of S-charl. Theonce busy iron-smelting village has dwindled to a dozen houses with their little church on a holm of the rushing Clemgia. The name of the secular Jurada forest on the left records an ancient reserve banned to axe and saw as a protection from avalanches. To the south the wild and beautiful valley is closed by the snow-flecked dolomite peaks of the Pisoc. A half-day's walk down the right bank of the stream, along the eastern edge of the Park, takes us by the Clemgia Gorge to Tarasp.
'The course of nature' as exhibited in such experiments as the Swiss National Park irresistibly calls to mind the headlong history of the world during the ten years that have passed since its inauguration. The teaching of nature had been studiously assimilated by a great nation to which the world is deeply indebted in every field of thought, science, and research; it was made the basis of their national policy, and put in practice with every resource of skill and deliberation. The results have been catastrophic, and would seem to show that when man became a social being—and we may perhaps extend the statement to all society, however inchoate, from the pack and the herd to the hive and the ant-heap—he entered a new plane of evolution, and that those who would apply to it the crude methods of selection that operated in more primitive and individual stages are fighting against the stars in their courses.
Some such thoughts as these shaped themselves in my mind into the following lines in the second year of the war.
EVOLUTION
They said: Behold, battle is earth's high law,Turn where we will is ruthlessness and strife,Beast against beast, and plant with plant wage war,Through havoc only gain we ampler life.
The strong leaf ousts the weak leaf from the sun,Root strangles root in wrestle for the soil,Close-shelved in rock lie types whose race is run,Cast out in the eternal stress and moil.
Thus painfully, by force and guile and hate,From flaccid forms that lurked in primal ooze,Life, in advance from low to high estate,Ever the weak rejects, the strong doth choose.
Shall man alone shirk universal rule,And bind the peoples with his petty codesThat shield rank growth of weakling and of foolAnd crush the hero under caitiffs' loads?
Truth is a figment, charity a myth,Life gives its crowns to strength and craft and greed,Why should we weave, to stay our hands therewith,A moral net at variance with our need?
We will forswear the outworn, craven creedThat blessed the peacemakers and pure in heart,And take the lesson taught by beast and weedTo guide our feet in court and camp and mart.
And thus they placed their land all else above,Suckled their sons at iron paps of war,Made mock of honour and a God of love,Trampled on covenant and scoffed at law.
And God gave unto them their hearts' desire,And poured into their cup the wine they soughtThat turns the soul to stone, the brain to fire,And brings the centuries' slow work to naught.
Gave strong delusion to believe a lie,Gave them seared heart, sealed mind, and pervert sense,The straitened outlook of the earth-bound eyeThat sees no kingdom that is not from hence.
On from delusion to delusion hurled,They worked out madly to its utmost costThe doom on those whom, though they gain the world,It profits nothing, for their soul is lost.
The gain is futile and the world is smallThat can be bought by barter of the soul,A new time dawns and gleaming portents callFor fresh means, changed ideals, altered goal.
The attraction of the Alpine winter, which till lately was a pious cult of the elect, has become a common-place of advertisements and agencies. Every year a larger crowd gathers in what used to be considered frost-bound solitudes, and some new resort is opened for the Christmas holiday-maker. Among such resorts the Engadine, with its dry air, clear sky, and brilliant sunshine, takes a foremost place. At notime is it more lovely and enjoyable, more unlike the surroundings we have left at home, more recuperative to jaded denizens of the town. It would be difficult to find a gayer and busier scene than its frozen lakes and snow-clad slopes present in winter. Even the work that goes on partakes of the general exhilaration. Sleighs and toboggans replace carts and barrows, lightening the labour of man and beast, and adding a novel animation to transport and locomotion. Bound and buried though Nature be, the work of those who deal with her is by no means at a stand-still; the universal snow, instead of staying it, inaugurates a general transport system, converting rough mountain roads into smooth and facile descents; little more than guidance and gravitation is needed to bring the hay mown in summer and the timber felled in autumn from the distant uplands to the villages and homesteads where they should be. Nothing is more enjoyable than to take a passage down on a sleigh laden with hay or faggots, to rush through the keen air over glistening slopes, or along winding forest ways, or in the trough of steep gullies that centuries of similar traffic have cut through copse and wood; most admirable is the adroitness with which a practised mountaineer pilots his wayward and unwieldy craft, which, if once it 'take charge,' runs a mad career as fatal to its crew as to wayfarers in its path.
Sports are organized in the most business-likemanner, and are as cosmopolitan as the human crowd; northern and mountain lands in all quarters of the globe have contributed to them, and when the short sunny day is over, keen brilliant nights, carnival balls on the illuminated lakes, theatricals, dancing, and unlimited miscellaneous fooling prolong the strenuous enjoyment.
And then the setting of it all. The exceeding beauty and strangeness of the snow-clad earth, spotless and radiant, like a bride adorned for her husband, and the enchanting details that surround us, wander where we will. On every side cold and heat, wind and moisture, play fantastic tricks before high heaven, stereotyping cascades on the precipices, casing in crystal the swirls and falls of streamlets, draping cliffs and caves with iridescent fringe and lacework of ice. Snow decorates the sombre towers of pine and fir as with jewelled fleece, and bows to an added grace the pliant larch-limbs on which remnants of autumn foliage still linger in brushes of tawny gold; hoar-frost weaves fairy-like embroidery over twigs and leaves; shadows chequer the stainless ground with exquisite pencilling; all the familiar objects of wayside, croft and fell suffer a winter change into something rich and strange.
He who would see all this at its best and at his ease must take to skis, for the gift of which the Alps owe an incalculable debt to Norway. The introduction is comparatively recent, but the alacrity withwhich it has been taken up shows how thoroughly it met a want. Detachments of the Swiss army are exercised on skis every winter, and the citizen soldiers have taken the accomplishment back to their mountain homes, where it has been eagerly adopted. Children may be seen on home-made skis trooping to the often distant school, or having the time of their lives on slopes and plateaux.
Those who do not cultivate it as a spectacular sport may welcome ski-ing as a means of locomotion, enabling them to go to places otherwise inaccessible, to pass swiftly and lightly over snow in which unskied bipeds would flounder up to the knees, if not over the head. What matters it to the humble novice that his course seem but shambling and shuffling to the winner of cups and breaker of records. What is that to him as he brushes over the sparkling slopes and threads the cloistral hills? He will find himself on shining plateaux bathed in hazy light and walled in the shimmering distance with ethereal ramparts. He will pass into solemn depths of forest where the winding way is edged and arched with pines that stretch on either hand into illimitable aisles. Sometimes his path will lead him to a radiant sanctuary where Nature seems taking her winter rest in undisturbed repose; no breath of wind breaks the stillness, nor note of bird, nor human footfall; the earth as he ascends is transfigured with new and strange magnificence, the heaven deepens to a diviner blue and the shadows tomore mystic purple, the peaks close round and rise cathedral-like on every side: a cathedral vast and soaring, vaulted with unfathomable sky, piled and pinnacled, sculptured and wrought, beyond any architect's imagining, and clothed with light as with a garment.
Agnas, Las,33Aguagliouls,30Albriz, Piz,12Albula, Pass,10Alv, Lej,31Piz,30Anglican Church,16,25Architecture,21Ardez,40Assa, Val d',44
Badrutt Park,14Bears,49Bernina Falls,30Hospice,31Houses,31Pass,31Val,12,20,27-32Bevers,11Val,11Bishopric of Chur,42,43Bitabergo, Lago di,25Bregaglia, Val,26Brunies, Stefan,52
Calven,33Campell,15Camfer,17Capella,36Capricorn,50Cavloccio, Lago di,25Celerina,12Chalchaign,12Chamois,50Charnadura Gorge,12Chastè,23Chesa Gregori-Gilli,34Juvalta,35Planta,34Chiesa,22Chur,10Cluoza blockhouse,53Val,45,49,50Cresta,12Crusch,42
'Diavolezza Tour,'31Deer,50
Electricity,18Eren, Piz,11,50Eschia, Val,34Etruscan villages,40Evolution,55
Fedoz,22,24Fex, Val,22,24Finstermünz Pass,45Flaz,12Fontana Merla,33Ftan,40Fuorcla, Surlej,20
Gian, San,12Giarsun,28Godgod,51Guarda,40Guardaval,34Güerg, St.,36
Hartmann, Nichol,13,15,21Heimatschutz,13,36,52Horace,9,10Huxley,24
Ibex,50Inn River,12,17,20,25,37-39,44Islas, Las,35Isola,24
Julier Pass,19Piz,20Jurada Forest,53Juvalta, Anna,35
Kesch, Piz,34
Lagalb, Piz,30Lakes,17,27,33Language,9,10,35Lauguard, Piz,29Laret,28Lavin,40Linard, Piz,39Lunghino Lake,25Piz,26
Madulein,33Maira,26Malenco, Val,22Maloja,24Margna, Hôtel, St. Moritz,13Sils Baselgia,21Marmorè,23Marmots,50Marozzo, Val,26Martina, Punt,44Martinsbruck,44Moritz, St., 4Bad,15Dorf,13Morteratsch Glacier,29,30,32Muotlas Muraigl,29Muraigl, Punt,29Museum Engiadinais,15
Nair, Lej,30National Park,11,39,45Nietzsche,23
Ordlegna,25Ot Piz,39Otter,53
Padella, Piz,12Palü, Piz,12Pers, Glacier,31Planta,33,34Ponte,33Pontresina,12,28,32Poschiavo, Lago di,31Punt Ota,37
Ramuosch,43Raphael,14Roman Conquest,9Rosegg, Glacier,29
Samaden,11,12S-chanf,35Schaffberg,29S-charl,54Schlucht Promenade,28Segantini,14,29Sent,42Sgrischus, Lej,23Sils Baselgia,21Maria,12Silvaplana,9,18Sinestra, Val,42Sinuos-chel,37Skis,59Sondrio,22Spiert,22Spinas,40,42Springs,40,42Strada,44Sur-en,42Surlej, Fuorcla,20Susch,39
Tarasp,42,55Trout,20,23,53Tschanuf,42Tschlin,44Tuoi, Val,40
Val d' Assa,44Bermina,12,20,27Bevers,15Bregaglia,26Val Cluoza,45,49,50,53Eschia,32Fex,22,24Malenco,22Marozzo,26Sinestra,42Tuoi,40Valtelline,22Vulpera,41
Watershed of Alps,26Winter,36,57-61
Zernez,38,39Zuoz,33,34,36
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