Alpine pasture

“ There were fair ranges of pasture-fields, into which the fine race of cattle which constitute the pride and wealth of the Swiss mountaineers had been brought down from the more Alpine grazings where they had fed during the summer, to be near shelter and protection when the autumnal storms might be expected. ”

“ High mountain regions, practically restricted to this Graswirthschaft, soon reach their maximum of prosperity and population. The amount of hay secured for the winter feeding limits the number of cattle, and the number of the cattle, through their manure, fixes the valley hay supply. Alpine pastures cannot be enlarged, and they may be reduced by accidents of nature, such as landslides, devastating torrents, or advance of ice fields or glaciers. ”

“ All pastures are not equally available in every season. Those which are at a height of more thatthan 4,000 feet in the north, and 2,300 to 2,600 feet in the south, are covered in winter with a thick mantle of snow. These are summer pastures. During the winter the animals are brought down to the principal valleys or to sheltered cañadones below the level of the tableland. The mallin is, as a rule, a winter pasture. When it is too wet, however, it is treacherous, and the animals are buried in it. ”

“ The highest and steepest parts of the Alps are apportioned to the grazing of sheep and goats. Indeed, sometimes the sheep are carried up one by one on men’s backs, and left there till the end of the summer, when they are carried down, considerably fattened, in the same fashion. Here the shepherd passes months, his only companions besides his flock are the chamois,89 who, in the moonlight, cross the snow-fields, the glacier, or bound over the crevices and come to pasture on the grassy slopes ”

“ The hemlocks, beeches, yellow birches and maples have stayed behind in the region of cow pastures. Here where sometimes the deer come and where mountain sheep ought to find pasturage, only the hardiest of pasture people have dared to take their stand. The firs and spruces have come up, growing stockier and more gnome-like at every hundred-foot rise, until above the head walls of the ravines they shrink to low-growing shrubs not knee high, except where they have cunningly taken advantage of some hollow. Even there they rise no higher than the shelter that fends them from the north wind. ”

“ During the long winter months, the cows, which are of such value to the Swiss, are kept in hot, often stuffy, stables in the villages, and only taken out every day for water. It is a familiar sight to winter visitors in the Alps to meet these animals in the village street, plunging and galloping about in the enjoyment of a few breaths of fresh air on their way to drink at one of the many troughs with which even the smallest of Alpine hamlets is so liberally supplied. ”

“ Literally speaking, there are mountains of vineyards in northern Italy and in Switzerland.
Cattle-raising in the Alps is done in small herds and is mostly on the Swiss side. The stock looks smooth and fine. Along with a drove of cows are always a few goats. In the early summer the herdsmen drive the animals up the paths and trails to the little patches of rich pasture, where they feed until fall, neither man nor beast coming down until driven by the cold. I saw cattle pasturing on the mountain-side where it was so steep it seemed they must have feet like flies or they would tumble down. ”

“ An old-standing love for the Alpine region usually draws me there, sooner or later, wherever I may chance to turn my steps immediately after leaving England. He who has once seen the mountain pastures in June will find their spell too strong to be resisted.
At that early time the herdsmen have not yet reached the higher pastures, and cows and goats have not cropped away the flowers which scent the pure cool breeze. The birds are undisturbed and trustful, and still busy with their young. ”

“ Not very far from the Dead Alp, you can see, summer and winter, a broad field of snow, far below the usual snow-line. This, too, was once a luxuriant pasture, where herdsmen were kept very busy tending their cows, and making butter and cheese from the milk they gave in such profusion. ”

“ The false dawn reddened and vanished, the gray of the real dawn was streaked and then flushed with rosy light shot through with gold, and a thousand voices of jubilee rang from treetop to treetop the whole pasture through and far out into the wood beyond, and still I waited, stretched motionless. A man might have thought me dead, the victim of some midnight tragedy, but the denizens of the pasture are wiser in their own province than that. ”

“ But the forests and the mountain pasturages are the chief source of wealth. The lower pastures maintain a fine breed of cows, while the upper are let out in summer to Bergamasque shepherds. There are many mineral springs, such as those of St Moritz, Schuls, Alvaneu, Fideris, Le Prese and San Bernardino. The climate and vegetation, save on the southern slope of the Alps, are alpine and severe. ”

“ One might say the pasture holds so many hundred rocks and cattle, but which is which it takes a nice discernment to decide. Especially is this true when the herd stands motionless and regards the wandering stranger. Then the red bodies are the very color - 146 - shadows of the green pasture shrubs and the white faces patches of weather-worn granite. Sometimes it is disconcerting to tramp up to such a rock in such a shadow and have it suddenly spring to its feet with an indignant "ba-a" and flee to the forest with much clangor of a musical bell. ”

“ With the passing of the sun comes a difference. The chill of the high spaces of the air comes down then and the winds complain about the cliffs below and above and prophecy disaster to him who remains too long. It is well then to scramble downward and leave the highest pasture lands to the deer, if they choose to climb out of the sheltering black growth below, or to such spirits of lonely space - 159 - as may come at nightfall. Far below are the man-made pastures that are friendly even at nightfall, and it is good to seek these. ”

“ After their many vicissitudes, the boulders have settled down upon the bosom of the pasture and come to be a fixture in the landscape. This present age is to them the serene and mellow autumn of their troubled life. Their day is a thousand years. But they are melting into soil—as icicles dissolve in the sun—in that measureless and yet imperceptible thaw which melts granite. The pasture land is perhaps the dust of a still more primitive race whose life has been transmuted into the dandelion and the thistle. ”

“ In the Austrian Karst, a sterile plateau of limestone cliffs and caves has been dotted with groves till the valleys have been refreshed with the water of resuscitated springs; and pasture-lands, long too impoverished even for the sustenance of mountain goats, once more are covered with herds of thriving cattle. ”

“ From the top of this mountain the view embraces the Lake of Constance, southern Germany, the Tyrolean Mountains, and the Alps in Glarus and Bern. All the way up are various pastures with their low châlets, where butter and cheese are constantly made and carried down the steep paths277 for consumption in the valleys. The Sentis, like all other mountains where cattle go to pasture, is supposed to be haunted by mountain-folk, who, when well treated, always helpful to mortals. ”

“ Everyone in summer then would be able to devote himself to keeping up, perhaps to enlarging a little, his prairie land, and to making and storing up hay for winter. But this would depend on a sufficient amount of summer pasturage being kept common. Common property is not generally well looked after, or made the most of: but this is true of Alpine pasturage in a less degree than of other kinds of commonable land, because it does not depend for its produce upon care and labour, as a commonable cornfield or a commonable vineyard would ”

“ Except the stud sheep, the flocks are rarely seen from one shearing-time to another, living out on the hills, on the tussock-grass, which gives them excellent pasture. It was strange to think that thousands were lying out in the snow on those hills, and that yet the loss is only two per cent., or the same as cattle-ranching in America when the cattle remain out all the winter. The house was a small lodge, with an Italian fountain in front, which looked singularly out of place, facing towards the range called the Black Hills. ”

“ The shepherds on the Italian hills are more hospitable and courteous, I think, than their Swiss brethren: twenty cows are moving their tails contentedly in line under the shed, for Breuil is a rich pasture valley, and in an autumn evening I have counted six herds of from ninety to a hundred each, in separate clusters, like ants, along the stream in the distance. The friendly man, in hoarse but hearty tones, urges us on as we drink ”

“ That wish was fulfilled the self-same night, for huge masses of snow and ice fell down upon the pasture, transforming it into a wintry waste, which well deserves its name, the Cursed Alp. Since then, whenever a storm rages, or whenever fog envelops the mountain, the buried herdsmen rise from their shroud of snow, and one can again hear them snapping their whips, exciting their dogs, and hotly pursuing ghosts of beggars whom they are condemned to chase for ever in punishment for their sins. ”

“ And now—well, men are but children still, and for them, too, their own little round is the centre of the world.
All these pastures had names, of course, well understood by us children, though I [59] am not sure how generally they would have been recognized by the townspeople. The first in order was River Pasture, the owner of which turned his cattle into it, and every few years mowed the bushes, with the result that the berries, whenever there were any, were uncommonly large and handsome. ”

“ The cattle went up to the high pastures a few days after our arrival. They went by our house, and all day long we heard the tinkle of the cow-bells, the tramping of their patient feet, and the pushing and rubbing of their heavy swaying bodies, and the air was full of their breath as though we were in a dairy-yard. All the cattle in the valley go up about the middle of June (as soon as the snow is off the ground) and come down the latter part of September. The pasture lands are owned by the commune, and each burgher of the valley has the right to keep a certain number of cows there. ”

“ Pasturing land with sheep thickens the grass on the ground. For the kinds of grass preferable for pastures, see our article on Grasses. Plaster sown on pastures containing clover, materially increases their growth. A little lime, plaster, and common salt, sown on any pasture, will prove very beneficial. Streams or springs in pastures double their value. The idea that creatures need no water when feeding on green grass is a mistake. Every pasture without a spring or stream should have a well. Cattle in a pasture in warm weather need shade. ”

“ You, Grant, who have travelled so much in Switzerland, must be aware of the practice which still prevails there, of burning down large patches of gigantic pine timber on the sides of the Alps, for no other reason than to allow the sun and the moisture to reach the surface of the ground, so as thereby to increase the quantity and value of the pasture growing beneath. ”

“ A picturesque legend claims that in the Golden Age, when no snow or ice had ever been seen in Switzerland, rich pastures lay between the Faulhorn and the Siedelhorn. A fine brook flowing through there supplied the cattle with all the water they needed, and enabled the herdsmen to keep all their pails and pans in a state of dazzling whiteness and immaculate132 purity. The pasture was so rich, and the cows gave such quantities of milk, that the men were always tired of milking long before they were through. ”

“ Besides the plains, there is a vast extent of pasture-lands in the mountains. Wherever there is soil enough to support vegetation, grass is found in abundance, to a line far above the limit of timber growth, and almost to the crest of the snowy range. These high pastures, however, are suitable only for summer and autumn range; but in portions of the great parks and large valleys, most parts of which lie below eight thousand feet altitude above the sea, cattle, horses, and sheep live and thrive the year round. ”

“ Or consider this mountain sheep pasture with its clumps of stunted spruce and balsam, its scattered boulders and patches of sensitive fern, its reddening sorrel and running cinquefoil; bluets lie over the ground like a light fall of snow; pasture stones are incrusted with parmelias and set in a frame of hair-cap moss and reindeer lichens, incomparable mosaics; wild strawberries nestle among dainty speedwells, half hidden under the bent grass. It is a whole, an homogeneous piece of work, like a tapestry. ”

“ They are more exposed to the sun and to the frequent violent parching north-west winds; they lose their covering of snow earlier in spring than the southern slopes, and are thus more closely grazed at a critical season for the pasture; and sheep at all times show a preference for feeding on the warmer sunny slopes. When the pasture on the exposed slopes fails, that on the shaded slopes has to feed all the stock that is about, and unless the stocking is reduced to meet the new conditions the remaining grasses are sooner or later eaten out. ”

“ It drinks deepest of all in a cove. You will hardly know where pasture leaves off and cove begins, the two mingle so gently. The pasture creatures here slip down into the cove, and those of the pond make their way well up into the pasture. You yourself, approaching the cove from the pasture side on foot, will be splashing ankle deep in it before you know you are coming to it at all, so well do the pasture bushes, standing to their knees in the cool water, screen it from you. ”