to zermatt
what blessings thy free bounty gives
let me not cast away;
for god is paid when man receives:
t’ enjoy is to obey.—pope.
august 26.—we left london at 8.45 p.m., and reached paris the next morning at 7 a.m. we found the capua of the modern world looking much as it used to look in the days that preceded the siege and the commune. the shops were decked, and the streets were peopled, much in the old style. if, as we are told, frivolity, somewhat tinctured with, or, at all events, tolerant of, vice, together with want of solidity and dignity of character, are as conspicuous as of yore in the parisian, we may reply that if they were there before, they must be there still; for a people, can no more change on a sudden the complexion of 2their thoughts and feelings than they can the complexion of their faces. these matters are in the grain, and are traditional and hereditary. the severity of taxation france will have to submit to may, when it shall have made itself felt, have some sobering effect, whereas the bribery and corruption of the imperial régime only acted in the contrary direction. but time is needed for enabling this to become a cause of change; and much may arise, at any moment, in the volcanic soil of france, to disturb its action. all that we can observe at present is, that the people seem still quite unconscious of the causes of their great catastrophe. their talk, when it refers to late events, is of treason and of revenge; as if they had been betrayed by anything but their own ignorance, arrogance, and corruption; and as if revenge, to be secured, had only to be desired. in such talk, if it indicates what is really thought and felt, there is scant ground for hope.
august 27.—we left paris this evening at eight o’clock, taking the route of dijon and pontarlier. the sun was up when we reached switzerland at verrieres. there was no gradation in the scenery: as soon as we were on swiss ground it became swiss in character—mountainous and rocky, with irrigated meadows of matchless green in the valley. we were sure that the good people in the châlets below could not be otherwise than satisfied with the price they 3were getting for their cheese; for its quantity, and perhaps quality, we were equally sure that the greenness of their meadows was a sufficient guarantee. by the wayside we saw women with baskets full of wormwood, for making absinthe which will be drunk in paris.
we breakfasted at lausanne, and dined and slept at vevey. we had thus got to switzerland, practically, in no time at all, and without any fatigue, for we had been on the way only at night, and both nights we had managed to get sleep enough.
we had come, as it were, on the magical bit of carpet of eastern imagination; which must have been meant for a foreshadowing of that great magician, the locomotive, suggested by a yearning for the annihilation of long journeys, without roads, and with no conveyance better than a camel: though a friend of mine, whose fancy ranges freely and widely through things in heaven above, and on earth below, tells me he believes that that bit of carpet was a dim reminiscence of a very advanced state of things in an old by-gone world, out of some fragments of the wreck of which the existing order of things has slowly grown.
my last hours in london had been spent in dining at the club, with a friend, who is one of our greatest authorities on sanitary, educational, and social questions; and our talk had been on such subjects. it is well to pass as directly as possible, and without tarrying 4by the way, from london and paris, where man, his works, and interests are everything, to switzerland, where nature is so impressive. the completeness of the contrast heightens the interest felt in each.
those who give themselves the trouble, and do you the honour, of looking through what you have written, become, in some degree, entitled to know all about the matter. they are in a sort partners in the concern. i will therefore at once communicate to all the members of the firm that i did not go on this little expedition because i felt any of that desire for change by which, in these days, all the world appears to be driven in jehu-fashion. i have never felt any necessity for this modern nostrum. i do not find that either body or mind wears out because i remain in one place more than twelve months together. i am a great admirer of white of selborne; and i hope our present lord chancellor’s new title will lead many people to ask what selborne is famous for; which perhaps may be the means of bringing more of us to become acquainted with a book which gives so charming a picture of a most charming mind that it may be read with most soothing delight a score of times in one’s life (one never tires of a good picture); and which teaches for these days the very useful lesson of how much there is to observe, and interest, and to educate a mind, and to give employment to it, 5for a whole life, within the boundaries of one’s own parish, provided only it be a rural one.
it is true that i have been in every county of england, and in most counties of scotland, ireland, and wales; and some general acquaintance with his own country—which is undoubtedly the most interesting country in the world—ought to an englishman, if only for the purpose of subsequent comparison, to be the first acquisition of travel; and also that i have made some long journeys beyond the four seas, having set foot on each of the four continents; but i can hardly tell how on any one occasion it happened that i went. it certainly never was from any wish for change. it was only from taking things as they came. and so it was with this little excursion. it was not in the least my idea, nor was it at all of my planning. my wife wished to spend the winter in a more genial climate than that of east anglia; and it was thought desirable that her little boy should go to a swiss school, for, at all events, a part of the year, until he should be old enough for an english public school. and so, having been invited to go, i went. my part of the business, with the single exception of a little episode we shall come to in its place, was to be ready to start and to stop when required, and to eat what was set before me; in short, to take the goods a present providence purveyed. i recollect a weather-beaten blue-jacket once telling me—on the 6roof of the york mail, so all that may be changed now—that the charm of a sailor’s life was that he had only to do what he was told, and nothing at all to think about. of this perhaps obsolete nautical kind of happiness, we housekeeping, business-bound landsmen cannot have much; but a month of such travel comes very near it. and if a man really does want change for the body, together with rest for the mind, here he has them both in perfection. what a delightful oasis would many find such a month in their ordinary lives of inadequately discharged, and too inadequately appreciated, responsibility! this little confidence will, perhaps, while we are starting, convey to the reader a sense of the unreserved and friendly terms on which, i hope, we shall travel together. i regret that, from the nature of the case, in these confidences all the reciprocity must be on one side.
august 29.—left vevey by an early train for sierre. the line passes by montreux, villeneuve (where it leaves the eastern extremity of the lake of geneva), aigle, bex, st. maurice, martigny, and sion. at sierre we took the diligence for visp. this part of the valley of the rhone is a long delta, which in the lapse of ages has been formed by the débris brought down by the rhone, and the lateral torrents from the mountains. much of it is swampy, and full of reeds. some of this, one cannot but suppose, might be made good serviceable land by cutting 7channels for the water, and raising the surface of the land with the materials thus gained. indian corn grows here very luxuriantly. it is a large variety; some of the stems had three cobs. this, the potatoes, and the tobacco—of which, or, at all events, of the smoke of which, we saw much—in thought connected the scene before us with the new world.
between sierre and visp there are a great many large mounds in the valley. the side of these mounds which looks up the valley is always rounded. the face which looks down the valley, is sometimes rocky and precipitous. this difference must be the effect of former glacier action, at a time when the whole valley, down to geneva, was the bed of a glacier, which planed off and rounded only that side of the mound against which it moved and worked. above visp the land is very poor, consisting chiefly of cretaceous detrital matter. this is covered with a pine forest, a great part of which is composed of scotch fir, the old ones being frequently decorated with tufts of mistletoe.
geologists are now pretty well agreed that the lake of geneva itself was excavated by this old glacier. its power, at all events, was adequate to the task. it was 100 miles long, and near 4,000 feet in thickness at the head of the lake, as can now be seen by the striated markings it left on the overhanging mountains. it acted both as a rasp—its under side being set with teeth, formed of the rocks it had picked 8up on its way, or which had fallen into it through its crevasses; and also as a scoop, pushing before it all that it could thrust out of its way. and what could not such a tool rasp away and scoop out, at a point where its rasping and scooping were brought into play, as it slid along, thicker than snowdon is high above the sea, and impelled by the pressure of the 100 miles of descending glacier behind, that then filled the whole broad valley up to and beyond oberwald? it was wasting away as it approached the site of the modern city, where it must have quite come to an end; for the lake here shoals to nothing; there could, therefore, have, then, been no more rasping and scooping. at the head of the lake, where the glacier-tool was tilted into the position for rasping and scooping vigorously, the water, notwithstanding subsequent detrital depositions, is 900 feet deep.
at visp my wife and the little boy got on horseback. another horse was engaged for the baggage. i proceeded on foot. our destination was zermatt. we got underway at 2 p.m., and reached st. niklaus at 5.45; about twelve miles of easy walking. the situation of this place is good, for the valley is here narrow, and the mountains, particularly on the western side, rise abruptly. the inn also is good. i note this from a sense of justice, deepened by a sense of gratitude; because here an effort, rare in swiss hotels, has been made to exclude stenches from the 9house; the plan adopted being that of a kind of external amy robsart gallery. from visp to st. niklaus the road is passable only for horses.
august 30.—my wife and the little boy took a char for zermatt, which also carried the baggage. i was on foot. the distance is about fourteen or fifteen miles, slightly up hill all the way. the road is good and smooth. i must now begin to mention the conspicuous objects seen by the way. at randa, in the bies glacier, which is that of the weisshorn, we saw our first ice. this glacier descends so precipitously from the mountains, on the right of the road, that you can hardly understand how its enormous weight is supported. there are, however, on record some instances of its having fallen; and it is also on record that on one of these occasions the blast of wind caused by the fall of such a mass, was so great as to launch the timbers of houses it overthrew to the distance of a mile; but i would not back the truth of the record.
after an early dinner at zermatt, my wife and myself walked to the foot of the gorner glacier, to see the exit from it of the visp. it issues from a most regularly arched aperture. this is the glacier that descends from the northern and western sides of monte rosa, the sides of the breithorn, and one side of the mighty matterhorn.
we found the hotels at zermatt overcrowded. this is a great rendezvous for those who do peaks 10and passes. in the evening, particularly if it is cold enough for a fire, the social cigar brings many of them together in the smoking-room. among these, at the time we were there, was the hero of the season. he is a strong, wiry man, full of quiet determination. he was then doing, so ran the talk of the hotel, a mountain a day, and each in a shorter time than it had ever been done in before. to-morrow he is to climb the matterhorn in continuous ascent from this place, in which fashion i understand no one has yet attempted it.
