The little figure is AUCTOR. LECTOR is up in the air looking
at him. Observe the perspective of the lake below, but make no
comments.
I went very slowly. When I was about half-way down and had come to a
place where a shoulder of heaped rock stood on my left and where
little parallel ledges led up to it, having grown accustomed to the
descent and easier in my mind, I sat down on a slab and drew
imperfectly the things I saw: the lake below me, the first forests
clinging to the foot of the Alps beyond, their higher slopes of snow,
and the clouds that had now begun to gather round them and that
altogether hid the last third of their enormous height.
Then I saw a steamer on the lake. I felt in touch with men. The slope
grew easier. I snapped my fingers at the great devils that haunt high
mountains. I sniffed the gross and comfortable air of the lower
valleys, I entered the belt of wood and was soon going quite a pace
through the trees, for I had found a path, and was now able to sing.
So I did.
At last I saw through the trunks, but a few hundred feet below me, the
highroad that skirts the lake. I left the path and scrambled straight
down to it. I came to a wall which I climbed, and found myself in
somebody's garden. Crossing this and admiring its wealth and order (I
was careful not to walk on the lawns), I opened a little private gate
and came on to the road, and from there to Brienz was but a short way
along a fine hard surface in a hot morning sun, with the gentle lake
on my right hand not five yards away, and with delightful trees upon
my left, caressing and sometimes even covering me with their shade.
I was therefore dry, ready and contented when I entered by mid morning
the curious town of Brienz, which is all one long street, and of which
the population is Protestant. I say dry, ready and contented; dry in
my clothes, ready for food, contented with men and nature. But as I
entered I squinted up that interminable slope, I saw the fog wreathing
again along the ridge so infinitely above me, and I considered myself
a fool to have crossed the Brienzer Grat without breakfast. But I
could get no one in Brienz to agree with me, because no one thought I
had done it, though several people there could talk French.
The Grimsel Pass is the valley of the Aar; it is also the eastern
flank of that great _massif,_ or bulk and mass of mountains called the
Bernese Oberland. Western Switzerland, you must know, is not (as I
first thought it was when I gazed down from the Weissenstein) a plain
surrounded by a ring of mountains, but rather it is a plain in its
northern half (the plain of the lower Aar), and in its southern half
it is two enormous parallel lumps of mountains. I call them 'lumps',
because they are so very broad and tortuous in their plan that they
are hardly ranges. Now these two lumps are the Bernese Oberland and
the Pennine Alps, and between them runs a deep trench called the
valley of the Rhone. Take Mont Blanc in the west and a peak called the
Crystal Peak over the Val Bavona on the east, and they are the
flanking bastions of one great wall, the Pennine Alps. Take the
Diablerets on the west, and the Wetterhorn on the east, and they are
the flanking bastions of another great wall, the Bernese Oberland. And
these two walls are parallel, with the Rhone in between.
Now these two walls converge at a point where there is a sort of knot
of mountain ridges, and this point may be taken as being on the
boundary between Eastern and Western Switzerland. At this wonderful
point the Ticino, the Rhone, the Aar, and the Reuss all begin, and it
is here that the simple arrangement of the Alps to the west turns into
the confused jumble of the Alps to the east.
When you are high up on either wall you can catch the plan of all
this, but to avoid a confused description and to help you to follow
the marvellous, Hannibalian and never-before-attempted charge and
march which I made, and which, alas! ended only in a glorious
defeat - to help you to picture faintly to yourselves the mirific and
horripilant adventure whereby I nearly achieved superhuman success in
spite of all the powers of the air, I append a little map which is
rough but clear and plain, and which I beg you to study closely, for
it will make it easy for you to understand what next happened in my
pilgrimage.
The dark strips are the deep cloven valleys, the shaded belt is that
higher land which is yet passable by any ordinary man. The part left
white you may take to be the very high fields of ice and snow with
great peaks which an ordinary man must regard as impassable, unless,
indeed, he can wait for his weather and take guides and go on as a
tourist instead of a pilgrim.
You will observe that I have marked five clefts or valleys. A is that
of the _Aar,_ and the little white patch at the beginning is the lake
of Brienz. B is that of the _Reuss._ C is that of the _Rhone;_ and all
these three are _north_ of the great watershed or main chain, and all
three are full of German-speaking people.
On the other hand, D is the valley of the _Toccia,_ E of the _Maggia,_
and F of the _Ticino._ All these three are _south_ of the great
watershed, and are inhabited by Italian-speaking people.
