All These
Three Lead Down At Last To Lake Major, And So To Milan And So To Rome.
The straight line to Rome is marked on my map by a dotted line ending
in an arrow, and you will see that it was just my luck that it should
cross slap over that knot or tangle of ranges where all the rivers
spring.
The problem was how to negotiate a passage from the valley of
the Aar to one of the three Italian valleys, without departing too far
from my straight line. To explain my track I must give the names of
all the high passes between the valleys. That between A and C is
called the _Grimsel;_ that between B and C the _Furka._ That between D
and C is the _Gries_ Pass, that between F and C the _Nufenen,_ and
that between E and F is not the easy thing it looks on the map; indeed
it is hardly a pass at all but a scramble over very high peaks, and it
is called the Crystalline Mountain. Finally, on the far right of my
map, you see a high passage between B and F. This is the famous St
Gothard.
The straightest way of all was (1) over the _Grimsel,_ then, the
moment I got into the valley of the Rhone (2), up out of it again over
the _Nufenen,_ then the moment I was down into the valley of the
_Ticino_ (F), up out of it again (3) over the Crystalline to the
valley of the _Maggia_ (E). Once in the Maggia valley (the top of it
is called the _Val Bavona),_ it is a straight path for the lakes and
Rome. There were also these advantages: that I should be in a place
very rarely visited - all the guide-books are doubtful on it; that I
should be going quite straight; that I should be accomplishing a feat,
viz. the crossing of those high passes one after the other (and you
must remember that over the Nufenen there is no road at all).
But every one I asked told me that thus early in the year (it was not
the middle of June) I could not hope to scramble over the Crystalline.
No one (they said) could do it and live. It was all ice and snow and
cold mist and verglas, and the precipices were smooth - a man would
never get across; so it was not worth while crossing the Nufenen Pass
if I was to be balked at the Crystal, and I determined on the Gries
Pass. I said to myself: 'I will go on over the Grimsel, and once in
the valley of the Rhone, I will walk a mile or two down to where the
Gries Pass opens, and I will go over it into Italy.' For the Gries
Pass, though not quite in the straight line, had this advantage, that
once over it you are really in Italy. In the Ticino valley or in the
Val Bavona, though the people are as Italian as Catullus, yet
politically they count as part of Switzerland; and therefore if you
enter Italy thereby, you are not suddenly introduced to that country,
but, as it were, inoculated, and led on by degrees, which is a pity.
For good things should come suddenly, like the demise of that wicked
man, Mr _(deleted by the censor),_ who had oppressed the poor for some
forty years, when he was shot dead from behind a hedge, and died in
about the time it takes to boil an egg, and there was an end of him.
Having made myself quite clear that I had a formed plan to go over the
Grimsel by the new road, then up over the Gries, where there is no
road at all, and so down into the vale of the Tosa, and having
calculated that on the morrow I should be in Italy, I started out from
Brienz after eating a great meal, it being then about midday, and I
having already, as you know, crossed the Brienzer Grat since dawn.
The task of that afternoon was more than I could properly undertake,
nor did I fulfil it. From Brienz to the top of the Grimsel is, as the
crow flies, quite twenty miles, and by the road a good twenty-seven.
It is true I had only come from over the high hills; perhaps six miles
in a straight line. But what a six miles! and all without food. Not
certain, therefore, how much of the pass I could really do that day,
but aiming at crossing it, like a fool, I went on up the first miles.
For an hour or more after Brienz the road runs round the base of and
then away from a fine great rock. There is here an alluvial plain like
a continuation of the lake, and the Aar runs through it, canalized and
banked and straight, and at last the road also becomes straight. On
either side rise gigantic cliffs enclosing the valley, and (on the day
I passed there) going up into the clouds, which, though high, yet made
a roof for the valley. From the great mountains on the left the noble
rock jutted out alone and dominated the little plain; on the right the
buttresses of the main Alps all stood in a row, and between them went
whorls of vapour high, high up - just above the places where snow still
clung to the slopes. These whorls made the utmost steeps more and more
misty, till at last they were lost in a kind of great darkness, in
which the last and highest banks of ice seemed to be swallowed up. I
often stopped to gaze straight above me, and I marvelled at the
silence.
It was the first part of the afternoon when I got to a place called
Meiringen, and I thought that there I would eat and drink a little
more.
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