Part 5 (1/2)
So firm a hold on the British imagination has this sport of creeping over slippery ice-ma.s.ses and fly-crawling along the face of precipices in pursuit of peaks, that the Swiss Alps do not give sufficient scope for their energies. Ascents of the Andes and the Himalayas are attempted. Every year quite a number of travellers cross to Canada to encounter the dangers of the Rockies and the Selkirks there. To far-off New Zealand the Alpinists go; and I have encountered in Sydney an enthusiastic English lady who had climbed peaks in all corners of the earth and had come to Australia for the conquest of the Australian Alps. On learning of their contemptible height, and that it was possible to drive up to their very summit in a carriage, she took the first boat away, convinced that a country without dangerous mountain-climbing was utterly unworthy of any attention.
What is the chief charm of this mountain-climbing? The joy of the scenery? The exaltation of the keen high air? These are factors no doubt, but not essential nor even the chief factors. The chief appeal it makes is to the joy of combat and the pride of achievement. Some of the peaks which once were difficult have now been made easy: funicular railways run to spots which were once inaccessible except to keen mountaineers. These spots the mountain-climber shuns. It is not the wish to see the dawn from this peak or the sunset from that point which spurs him on, but the sense of danger and difficulty to be overcome, the urging of his human pride to show that he can conquer the obstacles which Nature has put in his path.
The motive of the mountain-climber is one that lends itself easily to ridicule. But _au fond_ it is the motive of human progress, the spirit which spurs man on to explore the sea, and the depths beneath the sea; the land, and the air above the land. And perhaps there comes to the climber a keener, finer sense of the beauties of the scenery which he has come to see with so much effort and danger. So Sir Martin Conway (_The Alps_, A. & C. Black) insists, describing dawn on the Alps as it comes to the ”active mountaineer, keenly awake, with the blood alive within him and a day of hopes ahead.” He writes:
[Ill.u.s.tration: WINTER SUNRISE IN THE ENGADINE--CRESTA: CELERINA AND SAMADEN.]
The night is dying. Her rich darks and whites grow pallid. Each moment a layer of darkness peels off. The sky turns blue before one knows it: the rocks grow brown: there is blue in the creva.s.ses, and green upon the swards--all low-toned yet distinct. Faint puffs of warm air come, we know not whence, touch our faces, and are gone. The lantern has been extinguished; we stride out more freely; the day awakens within us also.
Now is displayed in all its magnificence the daily drama of the dawn. While the mists yet lie cold and grey in the deep valleys, they glow against the eastern horizon, where all the spectrum is slowly uprolled, more and more fiery beneath, as it tends to red, and cut off below by the jagged outline of countless peaks, looking tiny, away off there on the margin of the world. Low floating cloudlets turn to molten gold. The horizon flames along all its fretted eastern edge, a narrow band of lambent light, a smokeless crimson fire. The belt of colour grows broader; it swamps and dyes the cloudlets crimson.
Long pink streamers of soft light strike up from where the sun is presently to appear. The great moment is at hand. All eyes rove around the view. At last some near high peak salutes the day; its summit glowing like a live coal drawn from a furnace.
Another catches the light and yet another. The glory spreads downwards, turning from pink to gold, and from gold to pure daylight, and then--lo! the sun himself upon the horizon! a point of blinding light, soon changing to the full round orb.
The day has come, and the long shadows gather in their skirts and prepare to flee away.
Before such enthusiasm who dares to urge that the Alpine dawn may be as well seen from a point to which the railway will take you? Or that the climber's penalty before the dawn is night in a hut which has but elementary ventilation to counteract the fumes of lamps, stoves, and steaming clothes? Going to the Alps, climb most certainly if you can climb. But supposing want of ability or inclination to climb, it is yet possible to enjoy most of their beauties.
CHAPTER IX
NATURAL BEAUTIES OF SWITZERLAND
Yes, it is not necessary to join a climbing party to enjoy the scenery of Switzerland. No place in the world offers greater facilities to the sedentary tourist. There are railways and diligence routes almost everywhere; and in places, too, there are still retreats for the quiet pedestrian who wishes neither to undertake sensational climbs nor to be carried by railway, but loves quiet paths by hill and lake and forest, taking Longfellow's advice:
I heard the distant waters dash, I saw the current whirl and flash, And richly, by the blue lake's silver beach, The woods were bending with a silent reach.
Then o'er the vale, with gentle swell, The music of the village bell Came sweetly to the echo-giving hills....
If thou wouldst read a lesson, that will keep Thy heart from fainting and thy soul from sleep, Go to the woods and hills! No tears Dim the sweet look that Nature wears.
It has to be admitted sadly that these opportunities for quiet rambles become rarer with each year as mountain railways are multiplied, and roads supplant the old shepherd paths. But still they exist in some districts of Switzerland, and the conveniences offered to the walker by the public services of the country prove that the Swiss wisely appreciate the value of the patronage of this cla.s.s of tourist. The roads and paths are wonderfully well sign-posted, and in places where there is a great tangle of paths the device has been adopted of putting vari-coloured marks to indicate different routes. Thus going out from a centre, one walk will be marked by black marks on trees, rocks, and fences, another by yellow, another by red, and so on. But best of all are the few districts still left where there are mountain paths with no trace at all of tourist traffic, along which you must find your way by diligent inquiry, by frequent reference to the map, and always with caution against being tangled up hopelessly in some wild valley.
The Federal post office offers useful service to the walker. You may send on your personal luggage by parcel post very cheaply, and thus walk with very little impedimenta. The happy experience of one tourist was that he walked right across Switzerland, never carried more than seven pounds of luggage on his back, and never wanted a change of clothes in the evening, so reliable was the parcel post system.
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE SCHIAHORN. ”The chalets are like fairy houses or toys.”]
Mendelssohn has sung the beauty of Swiss paths:
How beautiful are these paths! This Canton de Vaud is the most beautiful of the countries that I know. If G.o.d should grant me a long old age, this is where I should wish to spend it. What excellent people! What bright expressions on their faces! What charming views! When one returns from Italy one almost melts into tears at the sight of this corner of the world, in which so many good and honest people are still to be met. There are no beggars here, no surly functionaries--nothing but smiling countenances! I thank G.o.d for having let me see so many beautiful sights.
He wrote of a time preceding the modern tourist rush to Switzerland.
But such delights can still be had, away from the more popular resorts. In the Zermatt district the walking is particularly good, for it has not yet been ”developed” at the call of the crowding hordes of tourists. The paths have not been broadened into roads and spoilt in the process, and old-fas.h.i.+oned inns have not been replaced by palace hotels. Summer, of course, is the chief walking season, but there are many paths in some of the lower districts possible in the winter.
Certainly those who go to the winter resorts for the sports should make a point of breaking away now and again from skating rink and toboggan run for a quiet prowl along some solitary path, to enjoy in solitude, or in the company of a dear friend, the calm joy of an Alpine sunset such as Mr. Symonds describes:
While the west grows momentarily more pale the eastern heavens flush with afterglow, suffuse their s.p.a.ces with pink and violet. Daffodil and tenderest emerald intermingle: and these colours spread until the West again has rose and primrose and sapphire wonderfully blent, and from the burning skies a light is cast upon the valley--a phantom light, less real, more like the hues of molten gems that were the stationary flames of sunset. Venus and the moon, meanwhile, are silvery clear. Then the whole illumination fades like magic.... There is hardly any colour except the blue of sky and shadow. Everything is traced in vanis.h.i.+ng tints, pa.s.sing from the almost amber of the distant sunlight through glittering white into pale grey and brighter blues and deep ethereal azure. The pines stand in black platoons upon the hillsides, with a tinge of red or orange on their sable. Some carry ma.s.ses of snow. Others have shaken their plumes free. The chalets are like fairy houses or toys; waist-deep in stores of winter fuel, with their mellow tones of madder and umber relieved against the white, with the fantastic icicles and folds of snow depending from their eaves, or curled like coverlids from roof and window-sill, they are far more picturesque than in the summer. Colour, wherever it is found, whether in these cottages or in a block of serpentine by the roadside, or in the golden bulrush-blades by the lake sh.o.r.e, takes more than double value. It is shed upon the pallid landscape like a spiritual and transparent veil. Most beautiful of all are the sweeping lines of pure untroubled snow, fold over fold of undulating softness, billowing along the skirts of the peaked hills. There is no conveying the charm of immaterial, aerial, lucid beauty, the feeling of purity and aloofness from sordid things, conveyed by the fine touch on all our senses of light, colour, form, and air, and motion, and rare tinkling sound. The enchantment is like a spirit mood of Sh.e.l.ley's lyric verse.
[Ill.u.s.tration: A MOUNTAIN PATH, GRINDELWALD.]
To the tourist who contemplates a first visit to Switzerland, and can give but little time to the country--making the visit, let us suppose, as part of a European tour,--perhaps the best centre of interest is Lucerne. There he may enjoy at the outset all the characteristic charms of Swiss scenery--the beautiful lakes, the meadows, and orchards stretching up from the blue waters to the hills, the great mountains of Rigi, Pilatus (said by an ancient myth to have been the refuge of the despairing Pontius Pilate), and the Stansenhorn. There, too, may be found the delight of the Alpine pine forests and of the Alpine flowers. There, too, are splendid survivals of the picturesque life of medieval Switzerland. And, as the Swiss gate of the St.