ÆäÀÌÁö À̹ÌÁö
PDF
ePub

ST

ALPINE TIT-BITS.

The

WITZERLAND is a land of legends, and the neighbourhood of The the Lake of Lucerne comes in for a full share of these. plaster statue of William Tell in the square at Altdorf, where he is said to have stood when he shot the apple off his son's head; the tower with the frescoes of Tell and Gesler on it, and which is said to stand on the site of the very tree on which Gesler hung his cap for the populace to salute as they passed along; the chapel, well-nigh brand new, which fringes on the lake itself below the Axenstrasse, and which marks the spot where Tell escaped from Gesler's boat; the little meadow of the Grütli, on the opposite side of the lovely Bay of Uri-just south of Seelisberg-where three springs are said to have started into existence in commemoration of the three reputed founders of Swiss Independence (who met together on the grass-plot in the dead of night in November 1307), are mere trifles to the grim stories which hover round Pilatus. The body of the Roman Governor, after he had committed suicide at Rome in disgrace, was thrown first of all into the Tiber, but was afterwards removed It thence on account of the storms which raged round that river. was next sent to Gaul, where at Vienne it was consigned to the Rhone. Later on, having been once more transported—this time to the Lake of Geneva-it was finally deposited in the little tarn on the side of the well-known mountain near Lucerne which to this hour bears his ill-omened name. Even here the perturbed spirit broke loose, dealing havoc and destruction to the neighbourhood; and, to total up this long roll of superstition, the wraith was one day encountered by a traveller, and an agreement was then and there entered into between them that the former was to give itself rest for ever, with the stipulation expressly provided that it might break loose from its prison-house on one day in each year-Good Friday-when the spirit, clothed in the red robe of office, henceforward sat annually on a rock above the lake, and whoever saw it died before the year had run out. The Lucerne magistracy prohibited all approach to the tarn; and in 1387 several adventurers were put into gaol for dis

obedience to this order. Later, in 1518, permission was granted to four men of science to approach this accursed piece of water, and they then took the opportunity of ascending the mountain. In 1555 Konrad Gesner was allowed to climb Pilatus, with his friends, and from that year the grim spell, which had for long bound the mountains, was relaxed, and the Alps began to be accounted gradually, as years rolled on, as that playground of Europe into which they have now so thoroughly developed, instead of being looked upon as the harbingers of evil and the strongholds of demons and wraiths.

If only such a writer as Herr Scheuchzer could emulate Rip Var. Winkle and revisit his haunts of nearly two hundred years back, he would not only be able to re-edit his dragon stories once more, but with his very own eyes he would see nowadays huge monsters in the Alps such as were not even dreamed of in those far off legendary days. "Monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lumen ademptum." Supposing Herr Scheuchzer had found himself, for instance, on the summit of the Rigi in 1873, when the first up-train from Vitznau came puffing along from the lake below and at length disgorged its human freight within two hundred yards of the top of that popular height, his graphic pen would have done ample justice to what he saw there! The iron age creeps on apace. Threatened corkscrews inside the Jungfrau ; a line of rails to span the Wengern Alp; a long creeping thing everlastingly worming its way up the Nicholai Thal, to the very front door of the Riffel Alp Hotel; such and many another tale would supply legends for a thrilling chapter in the history of Switzerland in a few years' time from the present date, if only a good story-teller could be found to chronicle them. Tempora mutantur. The Gazzetta Piemontese of February 9-10, 1892, states that Herren Imfeld and Heer have taken instructions from the Federal Council of Switzerland to furnish particulars with a view of constructing a railway to an altitude of 3,000 metres above the level of the sea, at the base of the Matterhorn itself, at a cost of only 7,000,000 francs !

Whether all that does duty as "improvements" is really an index of advancing culture depends a good deal upon those points of view from which we may look at matters. The iron-bound age of Alpine history, which is now passing through its first edition, will certainly not react as an alloy detrimental to the pocket-filling inclinations of Swiss hotel-keepers; and the spider's web of railways which is now fast proceeding in every corner of Switzerland enables those who little dreamed of an Alpine tour when in their teens to become as familiar as they please with these glorious recesses of an obliging

Nature. The old poet of Tibur tells us "Naturam expellas furcâ, tamen usque recurret." And this is true enough. May the gods of the mountains grant that these railways do not succeed in so spoiling the nooks and corners of the Alps that they are at length pitchforked out of all recognition, so as never to "recur" at all to their pristine loveliness and primitive associations.

This last Christmas there were eighty visitors at Boss's Hotel ("The Bear") at Grindelwald. Winter visits to the Alps have become quite common. Nowadays, the great tide of humanity swarms up to Zermatt in the summer and autumn months with far less difficulty from New York or Philadelphia than was experienced a couple of generations ago in a journey from Piccadilly into Yorkshire.

A quaint history connects itself with the valleys which lie south of the Rhône. We may well wonder as to how many who revel in that splendid scenery between the Simplon and the great St. Bernard take the trouble to look back into the histories and associations which are severally bound up with the various Thals, each furnishing its quota to the great European river.

1 The present village of Zermatt (in den Hoffen) is not, according to tradition, the earliest hamlet in that neighbourhood. Zu den tiefen Matten, at the base of the Howäng or Schönbühlberg in the valley of Zmutt, is said to have existed at a more distant date. Zermatt is referred to in 1280, in a deed of October 27, and was clearly then a place of long standing. The deed refers to the sale of grassland at Finellen, &c. Pratoborno (pré borné) was then the name of Zermatt. In Türst's map of Switzerland (1495-97) "Matt" is distinct in loco; and in the latest edition of "Délices de la Suisse" (1778) "Matt" is still its name, but in 1789 De Saussure, who was the first explorer of the valley as an actual visitor, styles it "Zer Matt." Thus it appears to have been a village of no small importance before the establishment of the Swiss Confederation in 1291, though the Canton Va'ais, in which Zermatt is situated, did not properly form part of the Confederation until 1815. It is on record that so long ago as 1406 a man was paid to keep up a road in the Zermatt valley. In the burial registers the name of Johann Branschen occurs in 1574; between 1578 and 1580 Anna Biner of Zermatt, and two other Zermatt women, died at Grindelwa'd. The year 1854 may with confidence be fixed as the date when Zermatt began to emerge into modest prominence as an Alpine centre. Before that time the Zermatt Breithorn had been ascended more than once in mistake for Monte Rosa, but no point in the great rock See Swiss Travel and Swiss Guide Books (1889).

ridge which culminates in the Dufour Spitze had been reached prior to 1848. In 1854 the Ost Spitze, which is only very slightly indeed lower than the Dufour (Allerhöchste) Spitze, was reached by Messrs. Smyth (3), and in the same year by Mr. E. S. Kennedy, but it was left to the following year for the true summit to be gained, viâ the great western arête, by the Rev. Christopher Smyth, the Rev. James Grenville Smyth, the Rev. Charles Hudson, and the Rev. Edward John Walter Stevenson (August 1, 1855). It was in 1854 that Herr Alexander Seiler became proprietor of the Zermatt Inn, and also, in that year, the Riffelhaus was built and leased to Seiler. In 1854, too, Mr. Justice Wills made the first ascent of the Wetterhorn from Grindelwald, on which ever-memorable occasion old Christian Almer took up a young fir-tree and planted it on the snow-tipped summit. Thus the beacon-fires, so to speak, were simultaneously and sympathetically lighted from the two great Swiss centres on either side of the Rhône, and the ball was fairly "opened" when mountaineering commenced its career as one of the legitimate sports of Europe; a pastime the most invigorating, the most healthy, the most social, and withal without any speck of cruelty to the lower animals of creation. All the great peaks around Zermatt have, since 1854, one after another fallen to Englishmen. The year 1865, it is true, taught us that the mountains claim victims in the sport which they afford; but, considering the immense number of ascents which have been made, not only of the Matterhorn, but of all the other great peaks in that neighbourhood and in the Alps generally, and considering, be it added, the reckless folly of some who have climbed them, it is indeed a providence which one may well marvel at that there have been so very few, comparatively, fatal accidents to record in the Alps. The sad catastrophe on the Matterhorn (in 1865) by which three English gentlemen and a far-famed guide from Chamonix lost their lives, or (to be more accurate) the splendidly graphic account of that accident as given by Mr. E. Whymper, one of the survivors, in "Scrambles in the Alps," put the final jewel into the crown of Zermatt. The Matterhorn became a sort of mountain fetish henceforward. Some went to tremble beneath the scene of the great disaster, others to climb the monster which had levied such heavy toll from those who had been the first to trample him underfoot. And, so long as that great peak stands firm on his exalted pedestal, it seems impossible that any other centre in the mountain districts of the world should ever supersede Zermatt, either as a climbing or as a tourist headquarter. Though less beautiful than majestic in the sternness of his grotesque upheaval, there is a

grace upon the outlines of the Matterhorn which is altogether unique. No shape in Nature exactly acts as counterpart to the Matterhorn and he dominates in the midst, or, more accurately, as an extreme outpost of that district which is absolutely unrivalled in the whole Alps. If the Matterhorn be the most majestic instance of stern grandeur near Zermatt, the Weisshorn is by far the loveliest of all objects in the natural world. Monte Rosa is as disappointing when viewed from the Zermatt side as any great object can well be. Stunted, illproportioned, like an ill-favoured potato, it is, perhaps, from a panoramic point of view the most depressing feature in the world, for a mountain of its size. But, as against this, where shall we find such a rock-peak as the Rothhorn, or such a glorious mêlée of rock-work and snow as is represented by the Dent Blanche?

Life in the Zermatt valley was quaint enough in earlier days.

One Thomas Platter, who states, in a now celebrated memoir, that he was born in 1499, on Shrove Tuesday, when they were singing Mass, tells us that he was destined for the priesthood by his valley friends because of this particular circumstance. Sacerdos nascitur non fit was evidently amongst the old legends of the valley. His mother's maiden name was Summermatter, and her father reached the enormous age of 126 years. The precocious Tommy, indeed, springs his bow so tightly as to tell us, in all apparent gravity, that his grandfather assured him, six years before he died, that he knew men in the valley who were older than he was then. When the old man had reached a hundred years of age he married a wife of thirty, and had a son, of whom this young woman was the mother. Weaned very young, Tommy was obliged to drink cows' milk through a little. horn; and he plaintively tells us that this little method of nursing very young children was all in the way with them, as no child under four ever tasted anything except by means of this process of suction. The women did nothing but weave and sew, whilst the men went away in the winter to Bern to buy wool; and this resulted in the homespuns which the female portion of the community of the valley made up into coats and breeches for their husbands and brothers. Poor Tom's father caught the pestilence one year, whilst engaged in his purchases, and was buried in the village of Stäfyssburg, near Thun. His mother married a second husband, one Heintzman of the Grund (a house between Visp and Stalden). Her offspring then left her, though Tom, either from their extreme number or else from their truant vagaries, had no notion as to how many brothers and sisters he ever had. Simon and Hans were killed in the wars, and Joder died at Oberhofen, on the Lake of Thun. Poor old Platter, Tom's

« ÀÌÀü°è¼Ó »