been erected by the guides. You find there
wood and wraps, with pans for warming food,
and shelter from the sudden storm. A few
years more, and what is now a lonely hut will
be a pleasant, populous inn.

A man in search of food and fuel gains some
ledge, and caps it with his hut and fence. The
scrub is fired around him, and the tarns are
drained of their abundant ooze. As Nature owns
her master, she retires before him step by step.
The glacier drips and wastes, the snow-fields melt
to mist, the larches creep beyond his axe, and plum
and walnut flourish where those larches lately grew.



20 THE SWITZERS.

Not long ago, you found the firs and larches at
Sierre, in Canton Valais ; now you have to seek
for them at Brieg. A vine will sprout to-day
where pines would hardly cling some years ago.
At Pontresina com is grown ; at Chiamut com is
also grown ; and yet the lower of these alpine
hamlets stands as high above the sea as Cader
Idris would be piled upon the head of Skiddaw.
Two hundred years since Rigi was an un-
known solitude. Old writers never name this
mountain, though its beauty was the same in
olden times as now ; from base to kulm a
dream of scenic and botanic wealth ; with snowy
ridge and slope above, with oleander, fig, and
balsam near the water edge. At Vitznau, in the
first week of October, when the Btirgen-stock
and Ennet-hom are white with winter, grapes are
hanging from the frames, and flowers and fruits
are in Sicilian wealth and waste. On shelves
of rock grow walnuts, and above them fir and
larch. At Kaltbad there are ferns ; and over Kalt-
bad sloping grassy alps ; and then a stretch of
snow-field to the kulm, with its unrivalled view
of mountain, lake, and plain. Yet all this beauty
is for man a thing of yesterday. The first who
mentions Eigi was a seeker after rare and lovely



PEOPLING THE ALPS. 21

plants. He only wandered at her base and by
the edges of her shining lakes. He left the Schei-
deck and the kulm alone, as heights too poor for
him to name. Some cattle, straying up the hill,
drew shepherds after them, when huts were built
for shelter, and a citizen of Arth, a hamlet on
Lake Zug, erected for these lonely men the Chapel
of Our Lady in the Snow. This chapel of Our
Lady made the Rigi famous ; for miraculous cures
were heard of far and wide ; and pilgrims came
from Altdorf and Luzem to pray for health. A
flight of thirteen stages as on Carmel led from
Unteres Dachli to Our Lady's shrine ; at every
stage a pilgrim knelt and prayed, and took in
mountain air, and felt himself a better man. In
time, the cloisters, and the hospice, and the chapel
of St. Malchus, were erected on the Rigi slopes ;
but years on years elapsed before a hut was built
for travellers near the kulm. Not until 1848 had
any one the courage to erect an inn. This inn
was but a small affair, and yet the landlord's
neighbours thought him mad. His house was
much enlarged in 1856 ; and fifteen years later
we are driving railway engines almost to the
chapel of Our Lady in the Snow.

' You mark,' observes the Engineer, * how we



22 THE SWITZEBS.

are climbing up. No sooner is that railway engine
up the Rigi than a plan is laid for throwing it
across the ridge, and down the other face, to
Goldau, with a branch to Arth. Five years ago
the passage from Luzern to Meyringen was by
a bridle-path across the Briinig ; now there is a
mountain-road, with busy traffic, and a scatter
of good houses to the highest woods. But we
are not content with such a road. We mean to
have a railway line across the Briinig pass, and
perhaps a branch to that black lake in which,
according to the legend, Pilate drowned himself
Already surveys have been made ; a year hence
men will be at work with spade and pole ; and
in a httle while the iron horses will be tearing
past Brienz and Unterseen for Thun. You know
the Schynige Platte below the Faul-hom, with
its famous glimpse of Lauterbrunnen and the
Grindenwald. It is a level higher than the Bigi-
kulm. Among my papers are the plans for a
new railway to the summit of this Platte, and
surveys for a branch hne to the Faul-horn !
Three years hence that line wiU be at work.'

'Ah me!' sighs Sister Agnes, shrinking from
the Engineer, whom she is ready to regard as
one possessed, 'we kick this dust about our



PEOPLING THE ALPS. 23

feet and fancy we are taking heaven by storm !
More fit that we should fall upon our faces and
confess our sins !'

' You nurse the spirit of your pilgrimage,' I
venture to remark.

* Do not,' she says, with downcast eyes, ' be-
lieve that all of us are mad with this vain pride
of life. Some souls are found, even yet, who
will not sell their birthright in the future hea-
vens for such a mess of herbs. A short time
hence will be our Festival <^ the Bosary. Come
over into Canton Schwyz, and meet the pilgrims
at Our Lady's Shrine.'

' In no long time,' retorts the Engineer as
fervent in his science as the Sister in her faith
* our ridges will be pierced, our lakelets will be i
drained At three great centres we are tapping
through the granite walls ; the Splugen, the
Lukmanier, the St. Gothard ; in a dozen years
the railway trains will roll from Hamburg and
Vienna through these mountains on their way
to Rome. Here rims the road from London to
Brindisi, Cairo, and the Indian seas. A straight
line drawn from London to Bologna passes
through the hospice of St. Gothard, and a bee
line is the pathway for an iron horse. Already



24 THE SWITZERS.

we are turning to our lakes in search of land.
Before the Dutch drew Haarlem, we had drained
the floods from Linth and Giswyl, and had won
five hundred acres from the lake of Lungem. We
have a scheme for lowering the too high levels of
the Jura lakes, arresting inundations of the Aar,
and bringing the vast marsh of Seeland under
spade and plough. Five million francs are voted
for this purpose by the League. But local jealousies
step in. Each Canton and each Commune has
some petty cause to serve ; but some dark night
a flood will drown them into reason, and a
hundred thousand acres will be gained. Our
lakes should yield a million acres. Leman might
be lowered one-third. Such lakes as Sarnen,
Sempach, Lowertz, Greifen, may be drained away.'
' Your science figures out the work of ages.'
* Pardon me, of years. Why, men now living
knew a time when there was not one road for
wheels across these alps. It is not easy even yet to
keep an open road upon the Furka, which is higher
than the Gemmi and St. Gothard passes ; for
the snow lies deep about this chalet till the
end of June. Some seasons it is later : in the
middle of July this year the depth was twenty
feet. These sheds, from which the shales are



PEOPLING THE ALPS. 25

carried once a-week, are but of yesterday. Not
long since you could walk from Oberwald, in the
Rhone valley, to Re Alp in the Reuss valley, and
scarcely find a shelter from the storm. A dismal
hut stood near the glacier now it is a good hotel
but not a second house was to be seen. The
refuge near the Tiefen glacier was not built, and
now you have a road from Brieg to Chur, across
the Furka and the Ober Alp, with an hotel at
every turn/

' You put your engineer before the monk,' says
Sister Agnes ; * yet methinks the saints came up
into these heights before the men of science found
their way.'

* My sister, you are right,' replies the Engineer ;
' for Gothard was a saint, and Carlo Borromeo was
a saint.'

The early monks were engineers, path-finders,
inn-keepers, and guides. The hunters who came
up erected huts of refuge, like the huts on
Zermatt now the hut of logs or stones, without
a keeper, lending you a shelter from the sudden
storm, the darkening night, and the bewildering
snow, but nothing more no fire, no food, no
rest, no help. Some monk comes up, intent on
flying from himself and from the world. He



26 THE SWITZERS.

lights a j&re, prepares a couch, and brings in
stores of bread. The refuge is a hospice, and
the keeper is a holy man. What then? Some
helper in his kitchen, with an eye to gain, erects
a shed outside the walls, provides more dainty
fare and lodging, and invites the passer-by to
taste his food and test his beds. The hospice is
an inn. We find these several stages on the
summit of St. Gothard, where the refuge, hos-
pice, and hotel stand side by side. Some refuges
may pass at once into the stage of inns. Below
the Tiefen glacier, stands a refuge, where you
groom your horse and drink good Veltner wine.
A man has come to live there who is not a saint,
and in another season he may offer you a dinner
and a bed. A few miles farther down you find
a hospice at Re Alp, in which live Father Hugo '
and a troop of girls. That house is called a
hospice : but in wane and waiting-maids you
might mistake it for a merry country inn.

' This Father Hugo,' laughs the Bernese,
* is our Friar Tuck. Your fine old Capuchins are
dying off; their trade is passing into other
hands. The dogs have had their day.'

The Sister drops her head and tells her beads.

At first this climbing up is hard, but men



PEOPLING THE ALPS. 27

get used to what is hard, and when their spirits
are in tune, the task is easier than it seemed
at first. When Bahnat clomb Mont Blanc the
effort all but killed him. Every step he took
was strange ; the unseen perils chilled his veins ;
and when he came down, sore and scorched, he
sank into his bed. The doctor roused him by a
word. He, too, would scale the mountain. Bal-
mat rose at once, drew on his boots, and faced
the danger with a hghtened heart. Next year
De Saussure followed, with a village in his
wake ; and after them came all the world, who
filled the valley with their presence, up to Col
de Balme. The Montanvert, the Fl^g^re, and
the Mer de Glace, grew famous. Sheds were
raised, and guides were trained, to serve the
climbers. Near the Montanvert one Blair, a
Scotchman, built that hut, from which the poet
Gothe looked upon the Sea of Ice. Not only
Chamounix, but SaJlanches, Servoz, and Argen-
ti^re, feel the shock of a new life. Schools,
churches, and hotels spring up. Each col and
glacier has a separate inn. The Tete Noir is
rounded ; the Hotel de Cascade is opened ; and
the gorge of the Trient bridged. New tracks are
opened up Mont Blanc, and a descent is found



28 THE SWITZERS.

towards Italy. Young damsels clamber to the
top, and now the feat is little but a jest and
show. A frame of planks was taken to the
Grands Mulets not eighteen years ago. It was
supposed to be a feat ; and now there is a scatter
of stone houses on the several roads ; one house
on the Aiguille du Goiiter ; two houses on the
Grands Mulets; inns at Pavilion, La Balma,
Chapin, Mottet ; chalets at Ferret, Forclaz, and
the AUee Blanche.

'It is a fight for life,' the Bernese man of
science cries ; ' but men have won it, and will win
it to the end. In no long time there will be inns
at Grands Mulets, and in a hundred years the
summit of Mont Blanc may be a town.'



29



CHAPTER IV.

THE FIGHT FOR LIFE.

This fight for life is not uiifrequently conducted
to the death. Man cannot climb so high, but
some great charge of wrath seems hanging over
him ; a beetling crag, a stream of stones, a
cataract of ice, a moving field of snow ; and
higher yet than these wild demons of the earth,
those still more ruthless spirits of the air the
flash that rends his roof, the wind that strips
his trees, the flood that drowns his land.

Against each messenger of ill, a man must
hold a separate watch the avalanche, the light-
ning, and the deluge ; and must learn to brave
each danger when it comes, alike by flush of noon
and in the dead of night.

' When we have won a field from natiure,' says
the Engineer, * we carefully entrench the ground,
and try to hold what we have gained against her,



30 THE SWITZERS.

even though she hurls her avalanches on our
heads.'

' Your science tells you how to cope with
avalanches V

' For the most part yes. But in these moun-
tains, men are so perverse ! By right no ava-
lanche should ever fall on thorpe and field. If
such an evil comes upon us, it is much our
fault ; but people who believe in saints and not
in science take no trouble to protect themselves
against the sliding weight. They leave their
safety to the saints, and winter takes them in
her shroud of snow.'

'They leave themselves defenceless by their
want of thought in cutting down the pines V

' The man who breaks his flail to boil his kettle
is a sage compared to men like those of Selva,
Cumiasca, and a hundred hamlets in these Celtic
alps. These peasants burn the props that shore
their house. In cutting down the pine- woods,
they entreat the avalanche to crush them. Think
of Selva buried in the snow three several times
and every time by her own act and deed.'

Midway from Ober Alp to Sedrun, in the Fore
Rhine valley, lies this thorpe of Selva ; an ItaHan
village, as the name implies ; a group of thirty



THE FIGHT FOR LIFE. 31

houses, more or less ; a small white chapel nestling
in the cKff ; a scratch of green stuff growing in the
flints ; a strip of pasture running by the stream ;
and hanging overhead a fringe of firs. Above
the village, towers the Milez Alp, sheer up into
the air a thousand feet. This Milez is connected
with the Crispalt, an enormous field of snow,
from which the dry and granulous flakes roll
down in streams. The village houses, built of
logs, are strongly knit, and every shingle on the
roof is weighted with a sUce of rock.

A crisp and lightsome people dwell in Selva ;
rustics of Italian type, with ruddy flesh, dark hair,
and tawny hands ; a folk who read no books, who
see no papers, and who boast no arts, excepting
how to feed their kine and press their cheese, to
sing their village songs and dance at village feasts.
You find in Selva as in every other Commune
schools and books ; but these things are exotics in
the land. The schools are poor, the books are
lives of saints. The Pater has his office, and some
patriot in a bigger hut may have a copy of Pro-
fessor Condrau's journal, the Gazetta E-omonscha.
Condraus journal, printed in the neighbouring
town of Dissentis, is dear to Celtic patriots ;
for the Professor sets himself to show that the



32 . THE SWITZERS.

Teutonic Switzer is a sort of Kindli-fresser, who
devours the children of his fellow Celts. No
other books and papers trouble the repose of
Selva ; for these southern people are not weighted
with much care of life. They only want to eat
and drink, to court and wed, to feel the love of
wife and child, to hear that God is with them,
and to sleep at last among their sires. Their ways
are old-world ways. They never miss an office
in their church. They speak that peasant Latin
which was heard in the Campagna ere Augustus
reigned in Rome. Their houses have a rustic
reek, their thoroughfares a southern grime. Not
only in their swarthy fronts and flashing eyes,
but in their jewelled ears, both men and women
have a menace and a memory of those ancient
homes, from which they came into these alps as
masters of the world.

These men of Selva love their valley with a
languid and abiding love. The strips of grass
are scant ; the hauls of trout are rare ; the
sheaves of grain are few. The valley is too
narrow for much grass, the flood too rapid for
much trout, the country-side too damp and lofty
for much com. For Selva, low as she may look
if you peer down upon her from the Ober Alp,



THE FIGHT FOR LIFE. 33

stands higher in the list of hills than Snowdon
would be with Ben Nevis on her back. But
still these Celtic rustics, with their ancient
farming skill, contrive to coax from her ungrate-
ful soil some golden sheaves. A patch of ground
is chosen with a southern face ; a troop of
yoimgsters pick it clear of stones ; a bank of
scrub and logs is made to wall it up ; and when
the seed is thrown into the soil, a groyne of slabs
and stones is thrown along the higher rim,
but slant-wise from the alpine scarp (as we in
in England groyne the sea), to turn all floods of
rain and rolling earth and stones aside- The
shoots are never high, the ears are never full ;
but when the air grows chill at noon they cut
the stalks and tie them up on frames of wood
to dry. Com ripens fast when it is cut.

A brisk and antique race, with Celtic fire and
indolence, these rustics would be poor and merry
on their lofty perch, were not the Milez alp
and Crispalt horn above them, charged with
seas of snow and ice. They live beneath these
wintry ledges as their countrymen near Naples
Hve beneath the fiery cones. A heavy fall of
snow is doom. The shoulder of the alp gets
overcharged; the lower edge gives way; the upper

D



34 THE SWITZERS.

crest obeys the slide ; and then the great white
Death comes down on roof-tree, chapel, field, and
flock.

'Why don't you quit the thorpe ?' you ask
a peasant who has seen his hut destroyed three
several times.

* We cannot quit the spot,' he says r ' it is
our home ; the land is ours ; where should we
find another place?'

' The world is wide, this valley of the Rhine
is long. There must be other alps to graze;'

' But none like Selva. Here we live in peace.
We keep our laws and customs ; speak our
native tongue, and have no fear of chop and
change. If we go down to Trons we meet the
Germans ; if we go to Ilanz we shall find the
heretics. We stick to Selva while she sticks
to us.'

* But you have sometimes thought of changing
quarters?'

' Only once ; and only part of us were minded
to remove. I was a youngish man ; my lad, now
driving yonder team, was in his crib ; but old men
who could speak of things ere I was born, all
said it was the biggest slide of snow yet seen
at Selva. All our cottages were crushed. Our



THE FIGHT FOR LIFE. 35

church was buried in the snow, and nearly all
our goats and cows were swept into the Rhine.
No lives were lost, for we had notice of the
fall in time ; but everything except our lives
was gone. When we could venture to the wreck,
we stood upon a field of snow. We dug into
the heap by chance, for no one knew exactly
where his cottage lay. All marks had perished
in that common grave. At last we found the
church, and then we opened out our trenches
right and left. It was a trying task; for as
we cut our lanes the sides fell in and blocked us
up. But worse was yet in store for us. In spring
the snow began to melt by day, and freeze again
by night. The surface soon became one sheet
of ice. Our hamlet was a glacier, with the drip
and rot of ice above whatever of our house-
hold stuff had not been crushed and spoiled.
When we could count our loss, some restless
people said we must remove from Selva, seek
a home elsewhere, and leave our grounds as
pastures. Nay, they sent to Chur and Bern,
and begged for leave to go their ways. For
once the Bernese folk were right ; they said we
must remain at Selva, and the younger men were
glad to find it so.'



36 THE SWITZERS.

' Then you rebuilt your houses 1 '
'Roughly, as you see; but still they serve.
The wind gets through the slits and cracks, but
peasants cannot live in palaces. We raised our
little church. "We planted on this alp yon hedge
of pines, and put up prayers to Mary and the
Saints. Since then we have been spared.'

His tale is true, excepting as to why the
peasants would not move, and how the planting
of the Milez alp was done. So soon as news of
that great avalanche came to Bern, an engineer
was sent to see the ruins and report upon their
cause. That cause was but too clear ; the rustics
had been cutting down the pines, each woodman
for himself, until the screen of forest was too
weak to hold the weight of snow. The Federal
Council put no veto on the plan for settHng in
another place ; the Council had no power to stop
them if they wished to go ; but, like so many
Communes in these Celtic alps, they came with
cap in hand for money, and the Federal Council
could not satisfy their greed. When they had
brought this ruin on their fields, they asked the
Government to turn their losses into gains. To
go elsewhere they wanted such and such round
sums. The Commune said it was too poor to



THE FIGHT FOR LIFE. 37

move ; the Canton that it was too poor to help.
An engineer, who came from Bern to look at
the affair, reported that the Federal Council
might contribute so and so. The Selvians
would not take so small a gift ; they built
their houses frailer than before ; and then the
Federal Council planted this new pine-wood on
the Milez alp. Siace then the village has been
safe ; and every Selvian thinks he owes that
safety to his saints.

Below us, in the Rhone valley, on the road
from Oberwald to Ulrichen, stands the thorpe
of Obergestelen, which has suffered more than
Selva in the upper Bhine. The place has
often been destroyed by snow-slides, storms
of rain, and atmospheric fires. Two days ago
a peasant pointed out to me a grave in which
are laid the ashes of eighty-four persons, male
and female, killed by one avalanche in a single
night. Three years ago, this village was con-
sumed by fire. It was a hot September after-
noon ; the men were on the mountains with
their herds ; some women and the children
only were at home. A sultry mist lay on the
thorpe, from which a cloud of smoke was seen



38 THE SWITZERS.

to rise. The herdsmen hurried down the slopes ;
but now a liot wind rose and drove the flames
across the narrow streets. In two hours all
was over. Out of sixty-eight houses and a
hundred and twelve out- buildings only three were
saved. The church was charred and rent ; the
sheds in which the peasants dwelt were cinders ;
and the village streets and gardens made a desert.
Hardly any one had a roof-tree under which
to lay his head. Some wandered wildly to and
fro. One body went to Ulrichen, a second
marched on Oberwald. These sought relief at
Rekingen, and those at Goschinen and Miinster.
Others threw themselves among the ruins of
their homes ; and two poor creatures sat them
down in their dismay and died.

Yet Obergestelen is rebuilt once more. And
not as Selva is rebuilt a little frailer than
before. She is rebuilt of rock. A man of science
came to see the wreck ; his science told him
that her only safety lay in stone ; and Ober-
gestelen, now laid out in streets, with houses
built of stone, is free in future from all fear
of fire.

' Teutonic,' nods the Engineer ; ' Obergestelen



THE FIGHT FOR LIFE. 39

is Teutonic Selva is B-omonsch ;' and having
given this hint, he smiles, as though the last
word on that subject has been said.
'Ave Maria!' sighs the Nun.



40



CHAPTER V.

RAIN AND ROCKS.

A FLOOD of rain may tiy men's natures on these
heights more sternly than a slide of snow, and
even than an atmospheric fire. An avalanche,
a conflagration, overwhelms a single thorpe ;
such floods of rain as drench these central alps
may sweep a hundred miles of valley bare of
house and tree.

One night, three years ago, a few days after
the great fire which lapped up Obergestelen,
the gates of heaven were opened on this moun-
tain ridge. It was a Sunday night. The day
had been of sultry warmth, and all the summer
had been strangely hot. No snow lay near the
Furka. Slopes that commonly retain their white-
ness through the year were, brown and bare.
The Siedeln glacier shrank behind the Furka
horn ; the foot of the Rhone glacier was a shoal
of earth and sand ; in all the lateral gulleys



RAIN AND ROCKS. 41

there were becks and falls ; and never, in the
memory of men, had such a melting of the
permanent ice been known. Not once, but
many times, the Bhone had broken through
her dykes. The Reuss, the Rhine, and the
Ticino had been swollen, and dams constructed
in these rivers had been loosened in a hundred
joints. At length the clouds discharged their
burden on the earth.

A flash a roll of thunder and the rain
came pattering on the rocks. Descending from
the Furka, from the Thierberg, from the Tiefen
glacier, the waters leapt into the road at Re Alp,
drowned the fields at Hospenthal, destroyed the
roads and water -works at Andermatt, and,
gathering fury as they roared past Teufelstein,
smote the strong town of Amstag, where the
Kastelen drops into the Reuss. A blow, the
dyke gave way. The waters surged into the
garden, sucked through walls, and washed out
herbs and fruit-trees with the soil in which they
grew. A house began to float. The inmates
cried for help ; but night and storm were round
them, with a roar of falling rain, of hurrying
floods, of crashing forests, and of parting roofs ;