Valais

“ On the east we were shut in by rugged mountains, on the west we looked down on wild valleys, where, however, on every green patch human dwellings were visible. Before us lay the valley of Valais, where at one glance the eye took in mountains piled in every variety of mass one upon another, and stretching as far as Martinac and even beyond it. Surrounded on all sides by mountains which, further on towards the horizon, seemed continually to multiply and to tower higher and higher, we stood on the confines of Valais and Savoy. ”

“ The children, too, struck us (in general) as plain and uninteresting. We were not greatly impressed by the entrance to the Pays du Valais, having already passed through scenery of the same nature so much superior in Savoy and Italy; [226] but it is certainly romantic and pretty in some parts. How naturally one falls into judging by comparison! Had it been possible to have immediately entered the Valais upon leaving the monotonous plains of France, we should have thought the former highly sublime and beautiful. The barberry and elder flourish here in every hedge ”

“ We have had a grey day, with every now and then a glimpse of sunshine. It is impossible to describe how infinitely variegated the Valais here again becomes; the landscape bends and changes every moment, cooking around you all the objects seem to lie close together, and yet they are separated by great ravines and hills. Generally we had had the open part of the valley below us, on the right, when suddenly we came upon a spot which commanded a most beautiful view over the mountains. ”

“ To a considerable degree the history of the Valais is a struggle between the German element (predominant politically till 1798) and the French element. Good wines are produced in the district, especially Muscat and Vin du Glacier. Otherwise the inhabitants of the main valley (at least from Brieg onwards) are engaged in agriculture, though suffering much from the inundations of the Rhone, against which great embankments have been constructed, while many swampy tracts have been drained, and so the plague of malarial fever abated to a certain extent. ”

“ Valais, a Swiss canton, between Berne on the N. and Italy on the S., in a wide valley of the Rhône, and shut in by lofty mountains; cattle-rearing is the chief industry.
Valdai Hills, a plateau rising to the height of 1100 ft. above the sea-level in Russia, forming the only elevation in the Great European Plain. ”

“ It is altogether a religious term. May I suggest that they are a relique of the old population of the mountain vallies imperfectly Christianised, therefore despised by the more enlightened population of the neighbourhood,—half-civilised, perhaps, and physically degraded by the same causes which have given the goître and the idiocy of the Cretin to the inhabitants of the Valais. ”

“ The joy of finding one’s path again is so great that I do not know but it makes worth while having lost it! With renewed vigor we climbed upward to the plateau-like region of snow drifts and rock ledges that awaited us, which some ironist has named the “Plain of Roses.” We should have had fine views of the Valais mountains but for the clouds which enveloped them. Our immediate foreground was wild and desolate enough, but as none of the peaks were more than two thousand feet higher than we were, our views lacked grandeur of outline. ”

“ I would like to tell you much about the upper Valais, a region seldom visited by travelers, but have not time; people kind and simple; got nothing to eat on the way except hard and dry brown bread, that may have been baked ten days; passed the villages where avalanches had fallen in former years and crushed many people;{261} the scenery much more picturesque than I expected, but was most interested in the people and their little villages; women mowing, reaping, and doing every sort of the hardest labor; all awfully afflicted with goitre, scarce a person wholly free from it ”

“ We learn from the maps that we are sitting in the angle of an elbow, from which the smaller part of Valais, running almost directly from south to north, and with the Rhone, extends to the lake of Geneva, while the other and the larger portion stretches from west to east, and goes up the Rhone to its source, the Furca. The prospect of riding through the Valais is very agreeable, our only anxiety is how we are to cross over into it. ”

“ Content with seeing all that the early season allows us to see, we are ready to start again, intending to penetrate as far as Valais to-day. A thick mist covers the whole valley, and reaches half-way up the mountains; and we must wait and see what sun and wind will yet do for us. Our guide purposes that we should take the road over the Col de Balme (a lofty eminence which lies on the north side of the valley, toward Valais) , from the summit of which, if we are lucky, we shall be able to take another survey of the Valley of Chamouni, and of all its remarkable objects. ”

“ This little town is situated amongst lofty mountains, which the industry of the peasants have cultivated wherever it was practicable, and they often carry their cattle with great labour to little spots of pasture which would otherwise have been lost, as without assistance, they could not have arrived at them. The cottages on the side of the Valais are so placed, as to contribute greatly to enliven the scenery ”

“ By insulating this mountain, and studying it by itself, one feels its mild sublimity; but still, as a whole, I give the preference greatly to the other view. From this point the lake is too distant, the shores of Savoy dwindle in the presence of their mightier neighbour, and the mysterious-looking Valais, which in its peculiar beauty has scarcely a rival on earth, is entirely hid from sight. Then the lights and shades are nearly lost from the summit of the Jura ”

“ We had now for three hours been ascending the mountainous region which separates Valais from Berne. This is, in fact, the great track of mountains which runs in one continuous chain from the Lake of Geneva to Mount S. Gothard, and on which, as it passes through Berne, rest the great masses of ice and snow. Here above and below are but the relative terms of the moment. I say, for instance, beneath me lies a village—and in all probability the level on which it is built is on a precipitous summit, which is far higher above the valley below, than I am above it. ”

“ A beautiful winding road leading right through this valley formed a convenient pass between the cantons of Bern and Valais, and the people there would have been perfectly happy had they not been subject to tyrannical lords. These noblemen were grasping and unprincipled, as well as cruel, and built a castle near the highway so that they could conveniently despoil all travellers and levy supplies from the peasants in the neighbourhood. ”

“ Be that as it may, the apple of discord was soon in the midst, and there set up as claimants numerous seigneurs of Graubünden, barons from the Valais, near relatives, as well as Austria and the empire. Zurich and Schwyz also contended for the promised stretch of land. To penetrate into the maze of petty conflicts which followed would be ridiculous as it would be impossible. ”

“ If we could have had it all to ourselves without the tourists! But then we should have had to work very much harder for it. It is better to take the gifts which the gods provide and be thankful.
It did not seem to me as if I could ever come [128] to love the Valais mountains as I did those of the Oberland, but they were magnificent. ”

“ Our friend, with the horses, was to descend the Valais, and go by Bec, Vevay, Lausanne, Freiburg, and Berne, to Lucerne; while the count and I pursued our course up the Valais, and endeavoured to penetrate to Mount Gothard, and then through the canton of Uri, and by the lake of the Forest Towns, likewise make for Lucerne. In these parts you may anywhere procure mules, which are better suited to these roads than horses; and to go on foot is, after all, the most agreeable mode of travel. ”

“ The dress of the women of La Valais is excessively unbecoming, and a pretty face is rare. Their manners are kind and polite, and at the little auberges, where we have stopped on the road, there has been a cleanliness and a generosity in the supply of the table, which prove virtues among them, not found in Italy. ”

“ Gall, Thurgau, Grisons, Aargau, Vaud, and Ticino were added to the confederation of states. And by the Congress of Vienna, in 1814-15, were also added Valais, Geneva, and Neuchâtel. The latter, however, still continued under the sway of Prussia, although partly a free state, till 1857. The reader will clearly see into what a complicated fabric of unions the league is growing, and that the Swiss fatherland did not spring at once into life as a fait accompli. ”

“ It is true that this cascade was upon the territory of the Valais, consequently then upon the French territory, and I forgot that I was not allowed more of that than the small space of ground which separates Coppet from Geneva. When I returned home, the prefect not only blamed me for having presumed to travel in Switzerland, but made it the greatest proof of his indulgence to keep silence on the crime I had committed, in setting my foot on the territory of the French empire. ”

“ We went about a league farther on the road to La Valais, and stopped at a castle called La Tour de Bouverie, which seems to be the frontier of Switzerland and Savoy, as we were asked for our passports, on the supposition of our proceeding to Italy. ”

“ Valais, and Tessin, will no longer sit solitarily behind their mountains remote from Berne, Geneva, and Zürich, as they do at present.
As regards political freedom in the Cantons, I have heard more evil spoken than good. Party feeling is often carried to an unprincipled length. The better class of citizens are set aside to give place to the worse; the bold, unprincipled man is the conqueror, and the ignorant set themselves in the place of the wise. ”

“ The mountains nearest to us run down on both sides slantingly to the level ground, and by their shape gave a kind of perspective effect to the natural landscape. Beneath us was the Valais in its entire breadth from mountain to mountain, so that the eye could easily take it in; the Rhone, with its ever varying windings and bushy banks was flowing past villages, meadows, and richly cultivated highlands; in the distance you saw the Castle of Sion, and the various hills which begin to rise behind it ”

“ In Switzerland the cantons of Neuchâtel, Vaux, and Geneva are strikingly in advance of Lucerne, Valais, and the forest cantons; they are not only superior in matters of education, but in matters of industry, of commerce, and of wealth; and their artistic and literary activity is greater. ”

“ The French-German linguistic frontier in Switzerland crosses the upper Rhone Valley just above Sierre, but the whole canton of Valais above the elbow of the river at Martigny shows fundamental ethnic unity, indicated by identity of head form, stature and coloring.692 Where the Elbe flows through the low plains of North Germany, its whole broad valley is occupied by a pure Teutonic population—fair, tall, long-headed; a more brunette type occupies its middle course across the uplands of Saxony, and speaks German like the downstream folk ”

“ There is no more interesting district in the Rhone valley, perhaps even in the whole of Switzerland, than that which lies around the north-western entrance to the upper and main portion of the Canton of Valais—that impressive, narrow entrance formed by the buttress cliffs of the Dent de Morcles and the Dent du Midi, just inside of which nestles the ancient town of St. ”

“ In the Low Valais the counts of Savoy had obtained a footing, and were moreover advancing into Vaud. Vaud was at that time governed by a host of more or less important nobles, such as the barons of Grandson, Cossonay, Blonay, &c., and was contended for by the bishops of Lausanne and Geneva, and the counts of the latter town, whilst the counts of Greyerz governed in the districts of the Saane, and those of Neuchâtel in the lake districts of the Jura. Little Burgundy, with Solothurn as capital, fell to the counts of Buchegg. ”

“ At Martigny, we entered on a part of the grand road of the Simplon, and bidding adieu to our mules, and to the mountains over which they had carried us, we proceeded on our journey in a charaban (or light country cart, with seats across it) to Bex. I did not observe that extreme indolence in the inhabitants of the Lower Valais, with which they have been reproached by some travellers. They are no doubt very poor, but their cottages are not devoid of neatness and comfort. ”

“ The Valais forms a long and exceedingly narrow valley, thro' the whole length of which the Rhône flows and falls into the lake Leman at St Gingolph. The breadth of this valley in its widest part is not more probably than 1,000 yards, and in most places considerably narrower, and it is enclosed on each side, or rather walled up by the immense mountains of the higher Alps which rise here very abruptly and seem to shut out this valley from the rest of the world. ”

“ Above all, however, the prospect of the ice and snow-mountains asserted its rights.
“We protected ourselves from the cold blast by the shelter of the rocks and let the sun pour down directly upon us; food and drink tasted excellently good! We looked down on the fog as it gradually dispersed; each of us discovered something, or claimed to discover something. Gradually Lausanne began to show with all its châteaux; Vevey and the Castle of Chillon came out distinctly; the mountains that shut us off from sight of the entrance to Valais, sloping down into the lake ”