In the night how curiously this little nest of houses must look,
lighted up, winking and blinking at the solitary traveller, like some
mysterious eyes looking out of a great eternity! There they all are
fast asleep, Pierre, and Jaques, and grandmother, and the goats. In
the night they hear a tremendous noise, as if all nature was going to
pieces; they half wake, open one eye, say, "Nothing but an avalanche!"
and go to sleep again.
This road, through the pass of the Tete Noir, used to be dangerous; a
very narrow bridle-path, undefended by any screen whatever. To have
passed it in those old days would have had too much of the sublime to
be quite agreeable to me. The road, as it is, is wide enough, I should
think, for three mules to go abreast, and a tunnel has been blasted
through what seemed the most difficult and dangerous point, and a
little beyond this tunnel is the Hotel de la Couronne.
If any body wanted to stop in the wildest and lonesomest place he
could find in the Alps, so as to be saturated with a sense of
savageness and desolation, I would recommend this hotel. The chambers
are reasonably comfortable, and the beds of a good quality - a point
which S. and I tested experimentally soon after our arrival. I thought
I should like to stay there a week, to be left there alone with
Nature, and see what she would have to say to me.
But two or three hours' ride in the hot sun, on a mule's back,
indisposes one to make much of the grandest scenes, insomuch that we
were glad to go to sleep; and on awaking we were glad to get some
dinner, such as it was.
Well, after our dinner, which consisted of a dish of fried potatoes
and some fossiliferous bread, such as prevails here at the small
hotels in Switzerland, we proceeded onward. After an intolerably hot
ride for half an hour we began to ascend a mountain called the
Forclaz.
There is something magnificent about going up these mountains,
appalling as it seems to one's nerves, at particular turns and angles
of the road, where the mule stops you on the very "brink of forever,"
as one of the ladies said.
Well, at last we reached the top, and began to descend; and there, at
our feet, as if we were looking down at it out of a cloud, lay the
whole beautiful valley of the Rhone. I did not know then that this was
one of the things put down in the guide book, that we were expected to
admire, as I found afterwards it was; but nothing that I saw any where
through the Alps impressed me as this did. It seemed to me more like
the vision of "the land that is very far off" than any thing earthly.
I can see it now just as distinctly as I saw it then; one of these
flat, Swiss valleys, green as a velvet carpet, studded with buildings
and villages that looked like dots in the distance, and embraced on
all sides by these magnificent mountains, of which those nearest in
the prospect were distinctly made out, with their rocks, pine trees,
and foliage.
The next in the receding distance were fainter, and of a purplish
green; the next of a vivid purple; the next, lilac; while far in the
fading view the crystal summits and glaciers of the Oberland Alps rose
like an exhalation.
The afternoon sun was throwing its level beams in between these
many-colored ranges, and on one of them the ruins of an old Roman
tower stood picturesquely prominent. The Simplon road could be seen,
dividing the valley like an arrow.
I had gone on quite ahead of my company, and as my mule soberly paced
downward in the almost perpendicular road, I seemed to be poised so
high above the enchanting scene that I had somewhat the same sensation
as if I were flying. I don't wonder that larks seem to get into such a
rapture when they are high up in the air. What a dreamlike beauty
there is in distance, disappearing ever as we approach!
As I came down towards Martigny into the pasture land of the great
mountain, it seemed to me that the scenery might pass for that of the
Delectable Mountains - such beautiful, green, shadowy hollows, amid
great clumps of chestnut and apple trees, where people were making
their hay, which smelled so delightfully, while cozy little Swiss
cottages stood in every nook.
All were out in the fields, men, women, and children, and in one
hayfield I saw the baby's cradle - baby, of course, concealed from view
under a small avalanche of a feather bed, as the general fashion in
these parts seems to be. The women wore broad, flat hats, and all
appeared to be working rather lazily, as it was coming on evening.
This place might have done for Arcadia, or Utopia, or any other of
those places people think of when they want to get rid of what is, and
get into the region of what might be.
I was very far before my party, and now got off my mule, and sat down
on a log to wait till they came up. Then the drama enacted by C.'s
mule took place, which he has described to you. I merely saw a distant
commotion, but did not enter into the merits of the case.
As they were somewhat slow coming down, I climbed over a log into a
hayfield, and plucked a long, delicate, white-blossomed vine, with
which I garlanded the top of my flat hat.
