Spencer C. Musson

“ The road up the valley from Silvaplana lies straitly between the left shore of the lake and the mountains that rise precipitously from it. Walkers will do well, after Camfer, to take the path that skirts the lakes on the right side of the valley, every step of which is beautiful. It leads now under shady trees, now over parklike or rock-strewn slopes; picks its way along precipitous hillsides, amid many-hued crags, set with steadfast-rooted pine and larch, festooned with red roses, inlaid with dwarf rhododendron, blue clematis, and countless lovely flowers ”

“ Population may one day be as congested in the beautiful highlands that are now the playground of the nations as in the great coal-basins. Happily the 'white coal,' as the Swiss call their water-power, deals more sympathetically with nature than the black. What a contrast to our factories and gasworks is this trim little building at Silvaplana, with its aqueduct of ruddy larch, and the fine cascade from the overflow of its reservoir. ”

“ Most persons know the place as a maddening babel. All day long trains, vans, and lesser vehicles discharge their close-packed occupants, and a stream of pedestrians pass through on their way up or down the valley. But one summer evening I arrived there from over the glacier after walking from early dawn; the last sightseer had gone; I had my supper at a little table on the greensward between the larch wood and the rushing stream, in front of me the majestic Piz Palvi, set on high in the lingering light like the great white throne of the Apocalypse ”

“ 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 ”

“ The sombre severity of Upper Engadine scenery is broken into a romantic variety of detail: austere masses of mountain give place to splintered peaks and ragged ridges, their sides are more furrowed, a luxuriant forest vegetation clothes their steeper slopes, and the meadows on the gentler slopes are more interspersed with tilth. ”

“ In the Child the difference is in an opposite sense; in both pictures there is the same wonderful suggestion of the awakening of the divine spirit amid the strange limitations of humanity, but here it is rather the human pathos than the divine power that holds our attention; there is less imperial moulding of brow and mouth, less profound mastery in the eyes: the eyes to which all things were open but which saw them now as man sees, appear contemplating with perplexed wonder the path that was to be trodden—he had known it all along, but it looked so different now. ”

“ A delightful place in which to pass a lazy hour or so is the narrow promontory of Chastè, which stretches half a mile into the lake in front of Sils Baselgia. Couched in springy undergrowth amid larch-clad rocks and patches of beflowered meadow, we are filled with a great content; the eye is satisfied with seeing and the ear with hearing ”

“ 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. ”

“ On the opposite side of the Val Fex is Marmorè, another fine point of view. An interesting continuation of this walk leads to the savage amphitheatre round the little Lej Sgrischus, 'the shuddering lake.' This lonely tarn, 8,695 feet above the sea, frozen for nine months of the year, abounds in trout, a striking instance of the hardiness of these redoubtable little fish. How they came there is a problem; if introduced by human enterprise it must have been centuries ago as the renting of the fish-take is of ancient date. ”

“ And over all plays the wizardry of the clear mountain air and the fleeting mountain weather, weaving a glamour of shifting splendour and gloom over peak and vale, stream and forest, lighting the landscape into a prodigal enchantment of detail or wrapping it in mystery and portent. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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 ”

“ We look down the whole chain of the lakes, seeming masses of turquoise in an emerald setting; on the right the Val Fex mounts to its glacier with crowded peaks beyond; on the left is the wild ravine of the Fedoz, the billowy ice-field at its head descending in {23} a crumpled and crevassed glacier, beyond which a host of rocky peaks ring round the abyss of blue haze that covers the steep descent into Italy. ”

“ To make a sanctuary where she shall have her way without let or hindrance amounts to keeping the ring for a free fight of flora and fauna, only the meddlesome hand of her supreme masterpiece—whom it is rather amusing we should exclude from our conception of nature—being ruled out. ”

“ Sportsmen, artists, naturalists, and whatnot find wherewithal to occupy them, while those who wish to lounge and dream, who are content for a while simply to exist, have environment to their hearts' content: sleeping lakes and leaping streams, slopes of pasture starred with flowers, solemn sanctuaries of forest, wildernesses filled with the large companionable loneliness of the hills. ”

“ In no part of Switzerland is there an equal area that could be given over to untrammelled natural agencies with so little social or economical derangement. It is wholly without permanent human habitation, there is no tillage and but little pasturage to be disestablished, while the hardly less important Fremdenindustrie has barely touched the hem of the great reserve, which boasts none of the {48} transcendent charm that has made the rest of Switzerland the playground of Europe ”

“ This forms the background of Plate IV., with the picturesque little chapel that stands on the steep meadow slope between the first and second reaches of the valley in the foreground. On either side of the glacier interesting passes lead to Chiesa in the beautiful Val Malenco, and thence down to Sondrio, the capital of the Valtelline; in a few hours we exchange ice-bound heights, sombre pines, and cautious, close-growing Alpine flora for umbrageous groves, trellised vines, and the luxurious breezes of the south. ”

“ Those who have followed up the Inn from the beautiful mountain-girt capital of Tirol, which is named from bridging it, will not willingly forgo a pilgrimage to the little Lago di Lunghino, which is its reputed source. It is an imposing cradle for a great river, lying under a sheer wall of rock that rises into stony spires. ”

“ 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 no {58} time 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. ”

“ Of course, the field of unsophisticated nature is not, when closely looked at, the peaceful paradise dreamed by the artless philosophy of a century ago. The beneficent mother pictured by sentimental idealists has been revealed to these latter days as a soulless monster, red in tooth and claw with ravin, working blindly under the impulsion of inexorable tendencies that know not truce nor ruth. ”

“ Though, following precedent elsewhere, the term 'reserve,' which was first employed for the sequestrated area, has officially given place to that of National Park, the former better expresses the aim of the scheme. The proposed object of such sequestration in other countries has been public enjoyment, but this is only incidentally an object of the Swiss enterprise, which is rather a great scientific experiment in the interplay of unimpeded natural agencies. Nature is to be given a free hand, and man, his hands {49} behind his back, will look on and see what she makes of it. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Sports are organized in the most business-like {59} manner, 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. ”

“ On the right below Ramuosch a fine waterfall marks the entrance to the pent, pine-clad Val d'Assa. In a cliff some two hours up is a stalactite cavern and a spring known as Fontana chi staina, 'the spring that stands still.' Its final channel is probably a natural siphon that empties a hidden reservoir three times a day, and ceases to flow while it is refilling.
In a fertile widening of the Inn Valley is the village of Strada and, perched high above, that of Tschlin. Dark woods clothe the right bank of the Inn, now swollen by the melting of many glaciers to a considerable stream. ”

“ In front the road winds up wooded slopes, and then climbs and cuts its way among the slate rocks of the romantic Finstermünz {45} Pass. On the left a new road drops down along the Swiss side of the Novella gorge to Alt Finstermünz, far below, where antiquated fortifications cling to the sheer cliffs, under which the straitened stream flows swift and deep. Old wooden bridges from either jealous bank meet in the vaulted gangway of a square tower set on a submerged rock in midstream. ”

“ There is an individual note, too, about the people, a suggestion of peculiar history that mocks us as we try to seize it. One of the earliest documents in a people's archives is ordinarily their language, but that spoken by Engadiners, the interesting form of Romanic known as Ladin, one of the many tongues evolved from late Latin, only takes us back to the Roman {10} conquest of the Rhaetian upland that won the magniloquent admiration of Horace. In truth, the population is a human document, a palimpsest on which the Romans are but the latest and most masterful writers. ”

“ As the path approaches it along the cliff its lichen-gilt stone roofs, nestling close together, form a delightful mass of rich colour. These slices of mica-schist that render roofs such a pleasing feature in the Engadine are mostly quarried in the neighbouring Val Fex. Behind Isola the Fedoz descends in a fine fall, bringing material for the delta that bids fair one day to cut the lake in two. In the village is an interesting old tavern, formerly a country seat of the Vertimati; the fittings and furniture are quite a study in woodwork. ”

“ But, after all, what is scenery save a matter of appearance? In fact, Switzerland lives on appearances, and it is but business to take them into account in catering for the thousands who are attracted thither, not by the sterling virtues of the inhabitants, but by the superficial beauty of the land.
St. Moritz, seated on a spur of hill at the head of the lake, is the highest village in the Engadine, being some 200 feet higher than the Maloja Pass at the head of the valley. At the highest point is the old church, no longer used, whose interesting belfry seems {14} leaning to its fall. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Rosegg and Morteratsch glaciers are Pontresina's two main entrances to the high Alpine world, that radiant world which lies so near us in the Upper Engadine, yet seems as far from soil and smirch of lower earth as though it had just descended out of heaven from God. Plate V. gives the former: in front is the pleasant, primitive little inn; beyond it the {30} glacier, for a long time receding, has left the usual mean and desolate disorder ”

“ It is the most striking example to be found of the slow but steady encroachment of the southern streams that is going on all along the Alps. The more abrupt slope on the south gives the water greater erosive force, with the result that it is continually eating back into the range and thrusting the watershed to the north. ”

“ The one thing lacking is the Engadine; we seem to have arrived in a land of serried and far-spread mountains, {20} in which there is no place for the valley of the Inn. So precipitous are its sides at this point that no suggestion is given of the broad lake-filled chasm intervening between the immediate foreground and the sombre rampart that rises to those glistening fields and summits. At length we are among the first outposts of the forest, gaunt pines and battered larch, scourged by centuries of storm ”