Part 8 (1/2)
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 gra.s.s in a wilderness of rocks, or broken up by precipices. Some great gra.s.sy 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 above Thierfehd in the Todi 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 question lies in a hollow of the hills, with terraced slopes rising like an amphitheatre from a gra.s.sy hollow, only accessible from below by a giddy path. There would be gra.s.s enough here for many cattle if the path could be cheaply improved.
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's hut has fallen to decay. Only a fragment of one of its walls was left when I pa.s.sed 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 gra.s.sy 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 pa.s.sage 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 pa.s.sage 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 b.u.t.ter, serac, 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 of suns.h.i.+ne. But, as a rule, these discomforts infest only a very small area, and it is enough to pa.s.s beyond that to escape them.
Now that the throng of climbers is so great near the fas.h.i.+onable 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 a.s.sociating with the folk whose lives are pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.s 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--a foretaste 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 pa.s.ses in the Alps makes that change less considerable and by so much the less salutary.
[Ill.u.s.tration: 56. 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 Murren 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 cla.s.ses 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 is very different. One is wild and gloomy; the other gay and brilliant. One has to be sought; the other summons you from afar.
[Ill.u.s.tration: 57. EVENING IN ZERMATT. The promenade after dinner--a scene more reminiscent of Earl's Court than the ”heart of the Alpine world.”]
The high gra.s.sy 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 Tasch 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 gra.s.sy 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 gra.s.s-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 ahead of the cattle, the gra.s.s 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.
[Ill.u.s.tration: 58. 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 gra.s.s, 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 are shut out, and the vision is limited by enclosing slopes or walls of shattered rock, where snow lies late in c.h.i.n.ks 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 gra.s.s 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 gra.s.s-covered surfaces. Far different are they from mere low level fields which long ploughing has invested with a continuous curvature like that of a _neve_ basin. The gra.s.sy alps possess a complex accidentation 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 gra.s.s. How many shelves and islands gra.s.s 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, accomplis.h.i.+ng no expedition, no walk even that can be identified, yet finding everywhere something to look at, some entertainment for the disenc.u.mbered 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 mult.i.tudinous, that it is almost impossible to indicate them in a brief s.p.a.ce. 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 the thoughts are turned towards this belt of the mountains! It forms a stage in the ascent and again in the descent of every peak and pa.s.s; and it is the special arena for the ”off-day.”
[Ill.u.s.tration: 59. LOOKING DOWN THE VAL FORMAZZA FROM TOSA.]
My own keenest enjoyments of the open alps are a.s.sociated with two examples, not, I fear, very widely known--the Fontanella alp above Valtournanche, and the alp over which one descends from Rutor towards La Thuille. Both may be described as staged or terraced alps. They lie on a series of shelves, separated from one another by walls or steep descents. For aught I know, they may be dull to ascend; but to descend they are of marvellous beauty. This beauty is greatly enhanced by the waters that fall in cascades from step to step, and lie in pools, or race along over the successive flats. The waters and the meadows form foreground to the loveliest distances. There are undulations and slopes of green in front; green slopes to right and left; and then the sight leaps across a blue valley to the opposite woods and upper hillsides crowned with rocky crests, above which other ridges rise and peaks appear, till far away soars some snowy giant into the serene sky. In the descent we must turn this way and that--now facing a waterfall, now going down some recondite gully, now down some outward-looking slope.
And always, presently, comes the flat meadow on a lower shelf, and the call to tarry upon it and look back at the waterfall, or sit beside the torrent, or watch the reflections in a quiet pool. There are several examples of these lovely staged alps in Ticino, as you go down from the Basodino towards Bignasco. Wherever you find them they are fascinating.
They always seem greener on the flats than any other alp. Their picturesqueness has in it an element of the scenic. The arrangement seems to have been made for effect.
There is another kind of far-commanding open alp, that all mountaineers must often have enjoyed. It is a long, relatively narrow slope or level of high pasture that lies horizontally between two cliffs or rocky belts. Such an alp lies above Zermatt to the south-westward, along the foot of the Unter Gabelhorn, round which it curves, so that as you walk along it your direction gradually changes from about south to west. It begins high up on the flank of the Zermatt valley, and it is carried round into the valley of Z'mutt, always at the same high level.
There is no lovelier walk in that fine neighbourhood than this; for the foreground is always a slope dropping away to an invisible cliff at your feet, so that the eye constantly enjoys a delightful visual leap across the neighbouring valley to the great pyramid of the Matterhorn, or the more distant snowy range that ends in Monte Rosa.
[Ill.u.s.tration: 60. IN THE VAL BAVONA. River Bed filled by avalanche.
Basodino in the distance.]