CHAPTER III

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“Where the mountains Lift, through perpetual snows, their lofty and luminous summits.” _Evangeline._

Wallenstadt--Sargans--Gorge of the Tamina--Ragatz--Chur--Ems--Reichenau--Thusis--Zillis--Andeer--Splügen--The Splügen Pass--The Custom-house--Cascade of the Medessimo--Campo Dolcino.

The storm of the evening gave no kind augury of sunshine on the morrow, and with rather anxious thoughts we listened as it roared among the mountains which overhung our hostelry. But it seemed that we had suffered enough, and when we woke we found that, though the clouds had not yet cleared off from the sides of the mountains, there was nevertheless every prospect of a fine day.

We were obliged to leave by an inexorably early steamer at half-past five for Wallenstadt, and so lost all but the suggestion only of the magnificence of the mountains which tower up so grandly over the north shore of the lake. Like Goethe on his way into Italy, we might exclaim, “What do we not pass over, both on the right hand and on the left, in order to carry out the one thought which has become almost too old for the soul!” But our time was limited, and our chief anxiety to spend as much of our short holiday as we could in Italy; and so, sad though we were to miss what was doubtless so well worthy of being seen, on we were bound to go without delay.

Before we started I had secured a voiturier whose carriage was at Wallenstadt to take us on to Chur, so that on this score I had no trouble before me. Our voyage was only too soon made. Unlike the Lake of Zurich, where the traveller rather hopes that each place at which he stops may be the last, on this lake, as the tiny steamer ploughs its way rapidly over its surface, with its goal always in view, and with not a place to stop at on its road, he ceases not to long that his pleasure may be prolonged!

By seven o’clock we were in our carriage, and _en route_. The sun began to shine, and every minute the clouds rose higher and higher; so that, before we finally lost--by turning into the valley of the Rhine--the last view of the valley of the lake, we could see the peaks of the mountains which we so wished to have seen before, the Sieben-Churfürsten, which tower so grandly over the lake.

Wallenstadt is but a poor place, its situation being unwholesome, and its inns not much to be commended. It has a church of modern character, with an old-looking tower in the position of a transept, with a saddle-back roof, gabled north and south. On the lower part of the south side of this tower are paintings of the Crucifixion and some other subjects, apparently of some antiquity. Just above the town, on the right, we passed the ruins of an old castle; and at a slight rise in the road had a beautiful view of the calm waters of the lake, looking blue, but very much smaller than it really is. This, no doubt, is owing to the great height of the precipitous rocks on its north side, which we now saw for the first time, the clouds having at last risen and disclosed some of the beauties which they had been concealing from us.

The valley from Wallenstadt to Sargans, just beyond which our route, after crossing the very low watershed, joined the valley of the Rhine, was strikingly beautiful. Its ecclesiological features were not, however, remarkable, if I except the constant repetition of what I have often noticed in the Catholic cantons of Switzerland and in Tyrol--the occurrence, namely, of grated openings on either side of the western door-way, commanding the interior and protected by an open porch, through which passers-by, though not able to enter, might still see the altar. On our journey from Basel to Zurich we passed a church the altar of which was lighted up, and the doors behind these gratings left open very late at night. It was in a lonely place, and when I passed there was no one in or near the church. I never see this arrangement without wishing to introduce it in England. There are so many of our Churches which cannot conveniently be left always open, and where such a provision might suggest to passers-by, as it does here, the propriety of using a church at other times than those of public service.

The cultivation of this valley is not so uninteresting as its ecclesiology. Here we first found the vines trained about in the horizontal Italian fashion, whilst under them great gourds and pumpkins developed themselves to a prodigious size.

Sargans is a very picturesque old town, and has some capital examples of good Swiss carpentry in its houses; in addition to which there is a picturesque and antique-looking castle, rising high above the houses on a rock, guarding the eastern entrance to the town, and commanding the junction of our road with that of the valley of the Rhine leading to the Lake of Constance.

Our coachman was under a bond to travel as fast as a diligence which lumbered on slowly in advance of us, and as far as Ragatz was quite true to his word; there, however, we determined to pause for a few hours, not willing to pass anything so famous as the baths of Pfeffers without a visit. Leaving our carriage, we mounted a light car, and were soon ascending the beautiful gorge of the Tamina to the baths. The road is capitally made, and follows the windings of the mountain torrent so closely as to require some nerve in those who drive rapidly along on their road to or from the baths. The ascent is steep, but in rather less than an hour we found ourselves at the baths. The rocks rise nearly perpendicularly behind the ledge of rock on which they stand, and the only mode of access to the upper and more wonderful part of the chasm was by passing through the long corridors, which betokened the once religious object of the building. These passed, and in charge of a guide, we crossed the torrent by a rude bridge, and then by a rather precarious path made our way, as it seemed, almost into the bowels of the mountain. The gorge is so very narrow that in many parts the light of the sky is no longer visible, the rocks overhanging each other above the head. All the while the torrent is roaring by our sides, and we feel that we are indeed enjoying an excursion into the very heart of the rocky earth. At last we reach the end of the path, are compelled by our guide to ensconce ourselves, one by one, in a small kind of box formed round the source of the spring--to pronounce it very hot and very nasty (its two most eminent qualities)--and then, still admiring the matchless grandeur of the rocky way, we regain our car, and are soon again whirled down the hill to Ragatz.

Our driver is a cheerful, pleasant fellow, talks German much better than the man we brought from Wesen, is communicative, moreover, and seems to enjoy a laugh and a joke uncommonly. Of course we become friends, and with no trouble on our parts, though with some little on his, it is arranged that our old driver shall remain where he is, and that our new friend, proud in the possession of the then very necessary Austrian passport, shall take us on as far at any rate as Chiavenna. A hurried Swiss luncheon--wine, honey, bread and butter--is soon despatched, and again we are on our way under the auspices of our new voiturier.

But we must not leave Ragatz without noticing its church, remarkable for its exceedingly good octagonal wooden spire springing in an unusual manner out of a square wooden belfry stage, and another church at (I think) Vilters, close to Ragatz, which has a lofty tower finished on each side with a sharp gable, and a thin octagonal spire rising from the intersection of the cross-gabled roof; both these steeples are in a position which for some reason is very popular in this district--the south side of the chancel.

[Illustration: WOODEN SPIRE--RAGATZ.]

From Ragatz to Chur the churches are all very similar; they have tall towers generally in the same position as those near Ragatz, and capped with bulbous roofs, or sharp spires covered with metal. The road is not quite the most agreeable we have travelled; some of the views, it is true, are most lovely, and the mountains--among which towers pre-eminent the grand outline of the Falkniss--are very noble; but, despite all this, the valley is too wide, and the Rhine, by periodical inundations, manages to secure so nearly its whole extent to itself, that there is a waste, desolate, and pestilential look in the foreground which is not prepossessing. We arrived at Chur at about half-past

[Illustration: 3.--CATHEDRAL. CHUR. Page 33.]

one, and, not sorry that our horses required rest, betook ourselves to the inspection of this very curious town.

It is entered by old gateways, and many of the streets are still full of ancient houses. The curious feature of the place is however its complete division into two quarters--the Protestant and the Catholic--the latter walled off, and entered by its own gates.[2] It occupies the upper part of the town, and contains in the cathedral church of S. Lucius an attraction for architects which has unusual merit and interest. Its plan consists of a nave of three bays, a choir of one bay raised by twelve steps above the nave, and a sanctuary much narrower than the nave and choir, and also of one bay. The steps from the nave to the choir are narrow and on each side, and between them is a very flat wide arch, under which access is obtained to the crypt, the floor of which is a few steps below the nave, and extends under the choir and sanctuary. The plan is, it will be seen, not unlike that of the Cathedral at Zurich, save that here there are no apsidal terminations at all.

A sketch of the interior of so singular a church cannot be uninteresting, and it will be seen from this that the whole is of the very earliest pointed work, and good of its kind; the crypt is supported in the centre by a column resting upon a grotesque animal. Two of the altars have fine shrines of metal of the thirteenth century, and two other altars have ancient pricket candlesticks, and there are some fine brass standard candlesticks also; the choir stalls are old, and there is a late triptych behind the high altar, and a very fine Sakramentshaus with metal doors just below the northern flight of steps to the choir, which reminded me of the very fine example in a similar position in the cathedral at Ulm. The altar is of stone of the thirteenth century, with five detached shafts in front, supporting the slab or mensa. The whole church is groined. It is worthy of notice that the choir makes a great bend out of the straight line towards the north--so much, indeed, that it is impossible to avoid noticing it as one enters the church. The steps from the nave to the choir lack dignity. But it is true that if they had been in the centre, and the entrances to the crypt on each side, the crypt would not have been seen, as it now is, from the nave, and a striking effect would have been lost. The west end has a fine round-arched doorway with several shafts in each jamb, above this a large window of the same character, and in the gable a small middle-pointed window. About ten feet in advance of the west doorway is a curious remnant of a gateway with piers and shafts resting upon monsters, looking, however, very much as though it had been removed from elsewhere.

Service commenced just as I was obliged to think of leaving the church; the priests wore red cassocks and tippets, and very short surplices edged with lace, and looked unclean and untidy; there was no one in the body of the church, and the sacristan, after the service had commenced, walked backwards and forwards about the choir, down the steps into the nave, and then--after a little attention bestowed on some matter there--out of the church. On a subsequent visit to this church (in 1872) I found repairs in progress, which bade fair to destroy some of its great archæological interest.

Descending from the melancholy and squalid-looking Catholic quarter, we soon came upon the Protestant church, dedicated in honour of S. Martin, which is now somewhat remarkable. It is old, but it has been plastered, whitewashed, and then painted by some original artist over its whole exterior, in an extraordinary imitation of all kinds of inconsistent architectural devices; pilasters, cornices, mouldings, tracery, and the like, are all boldly represented with black paint, and in such style that we all stopped the moment we saw it, struck by the conviction that it must be a scene from some play, so utterly absurd, flat, and out of all perspective did the whole look.

The situation of Chur is very lovely, placed as it is just at the point where the Schalfiker Thal joins the valley of the Rhine, and upon the steep and rugged bottom slope of the mountains.

The weather was every moment becoming more glorious, and just as we left Chur, along the road which leads to Reichenau, we had one of the most lovely views we had enjoyed. It is not always the case, however beautiful may be the scenery, or however lovely the weather, that one finds everything group together perfectly; here, however, it did, and I commend the subject to the pencils of those who follow me on this route.

We soon reached Ems, whose church, situated upon a green knoll above the village, has the peculiarity of a small apsidal building east of the chancel apse. The key was not to be found, so that I could not go in to examine what this building was. This church had an octangular steeple, whilst another church in the same village had one of the bulbous coverings of which I have before complained. At Reichenau it is proper to go to see the house in which Louis Philippe acted in 1793 as schoolmaster under a Monsieur Jost, and I fear we fell rather in the good opinion of our driver when we neglected so proper and regular a custom; but so it was. The garden of the inn is charming, and from its edge you obtain the best view of the junction of the Vorder and Hinter Rhine, and having enjoyed this thoroughly, we passed rapidly through Reichenau, across its two quaint covered wooden bridges, and by the beautiful meeting of the waters, until we found ourselves following the course of the Hinter Rhine and fairly on the Splügen road.

We only wished to reach Thusis by sunset, and so our time was ample for enjoyment; we walked much of the way, detecting eagerly every here and there patches of snow on the mountains in the distance, each of which is hailed as a discovery by every fresh traveller, who feels himself transported with delight by the distant view of the pure white against the sky.

Castles are here as numerous as ever upon the Rhine, and at least a dozen, I should think, might be reckoned perched on every favourable spot between Reichenau and Thusis. As the road advances the valley widens out into a kind of basin, into which flow two streams, the one through the as yet unperceived gorge of the Via Mala rather to the right, the other through an opening in the mountains directly in front of us, which allows us a charming view of the snowy heights above the Julier Pass, drinking in the last red rays of the setting sun, long since passed away from the ground on which we stand; then there is a long ascent, and, passing peasants coming in from hay-making, merrily laughing and singing, we drive up the straight ugly street of Thusis to the Via Mala Hotel. But the evening is too glorious to lose, and in five minutes we are out again on foot to explore the commencement of the black defile; and until we are absolutely turning into it, so narrow is the gorge that it is not seen, but when seen, and by such a light, how grand and beautiful it is! We ascended some distance and then stood and admired. Above us tremendous rocks towered high into the air, riven in two for the narrow chasm in which we stood, at whose bottom we heard the distant roar of the Rhine, and down below and beyond, framed as it were between the grand outline of rocky crag and pine-covered mountain, lay the valley of Domleschg, still retaining, by contrast with the gloom around us, some light upon its fields, and castles, and villages. Rest was well earned after such a pleasant and actively spent day, and, if we were late in starting in the morning, it was as much the fault of our coachman as of ourselves. However, though not so early as we intended, we left soon after six, and in a few minutes were again in the Via Mala. And now by daylight I doubt whether we were not all disappointed; there is so much in a name that one expects something _very_ terrific from such a name, and this it scarcely is. It is seldom fair to compare one piece of scenery with another, but still I feel that this was certainly not the most savage I had ever seen, and therefore not justly _my_ Via Mala. But beautiful in the extreme it was, and I believe we all regretted that we so soon found ourselves again in the more open valley on the road to Zillis. Here we found a church with a lofty tower, in the same position, and with a spire of the same design, as that at Ragatz; the nave low and ugly, the chancel lofty, with a steep pitched roof and apse; the windows pointed but modernized; the belfry windows of the steeple of three lights, with circular arches, and divided by shafts, which were continued on in blank panels on each side of the windows, so as to form an arcade of five arches on each side. And this I believe was the last noticeable church we saw before we reached Chiavenna, and in its arcaded belfry I fancied that I saw something of an Italian influence at work, which might well have been the fact.

We soon reached Andeer, where we waited but a short time, and then commenced a steep ascent. The lovely scenery, the mountains closing in round us, and the roar of the falls of the Rofla making music in our ears, made our way very enjoyable. There was but little chance, however, of rapid progress, as from Andeer to Splügen the road is almost always on the ascent, sometimes gradually, at others in steep zigzags up the shoulder of some obstructive hill, and constantly overhanging or crossing the rapid, white, foaming mountain-stream, sole representative here of the noble river whose broad waters have been admired at Basel. The air of desolation becomes more decided as one reaches Splügen. Trees and shrubs more scarce, and often blasted by the fierce rush of the wintry wind, or the keen sharp blow of the fallen rock, or the swift sweep of the avalanche, aid in making up the desolate picture. Vegetation has well-nigh ceased, and the eye, though deceived at first by the intensely red colour perceived every here and there on the hill-sides and on the rocks, discovers presently that not to flowers or plants, but to lichen or other such desolate vegetation, is it owing.

By the time we caught the first sight of Splügen the sky was overclouded, the wind rose, and a sudden heavy storm of rain gave us a lesson in the customs of the weather in these regions, to which our driver’s quiet assurance that we should probably have a snowstorm on the pass added the few remaining drops required to make up the draught which we saw ourselves doomed to swallow.

Splügen, however, was reputed to have an inn which would give us enviable shelter for a couple of hours, and we entered at once, hoping, if we waited, again to see the blue sky before we crossed the boundary between the North and the South--between Switzerland and Italy.

The table-d’hôte was just about to commence, and in came a diligence from Milan, and out came the passengers: another carriage, which had pursued us relentlessly all the way from Andeer, came in at the same moment, and down we sat, about fifteen English people, not one of whom had been in the house ten minutes before, not one of them stopping for more than their own and their horses’ dinners, and all proceeding in different directions, either on their way home satiated with travel, or just about to dive like ourselves in full quest of pleasure and excitement, into a new country. These meetings are always curious, generally amusing, and to the quiet and attentive observer of character not a little edifying. On this occasion there was subject-matter enough, and we found an old gentleman, travelling sorely against his will, under the care of an active and thoroughly vulgar wife, some literary old maids of another party, and the enthusiastic damsel of a third, each in their way amusing, and not the less so in that it was necessary to inspect them and part with them so rapidly.

Splügen, in a soaking rain, is not a pleasant place; and as I employed myself in sketching from the inn window the very picturesque old bridge, which gives[3] all its architectural character to the village, I conceive that I accomplished all that was necessary; and when we got into our carriage again, and, crossing by the bridge, left the Bernardin road to the right, and finally plunged really into the Splügen route, it seemed like a reward for my industry to find the rain cease and the sun again occasionally shine out.

The ascent begins with a series of zigzags, which rapidly carry the road high above the valley of the Rhine, and then, passing through one of the long covered galleries for which this route is famous, it emerges in an upland valley or dip between two mountains, up which it takes a steady course along a road macadamized, by-the-by, mainly with the white marble which abounds here, until, just below the summit, it comes again upon a steep mountain-side, to be surmounted only by a patient unravelling as it were of the intricacies of an endless zigzaging, which at last brings us to the Swiss guard-house and the entrance to the great gallery. The clouds are low and gathering; but still as we see below us white patches of snow every here and there, and above us the blue edge of a great glacier marked with lines of crevasses and fringed with a white edge of snow, we feel that we have really at last achieved the summit. Noisily we trot through the arched gallery, and then, after another slight ascent for a few minutes, we stop and put on the drag, and then down we go rapidly and cheerily, backwards and forwards, occasionally giving a merry tap to some corner post at the turns of the road, in order to let it be known that we, our driver, and our horses, are all of us heartily glad that we are at last on the south side of the pass--no longer the German Splüg_en_, but, as we learn from divers notices along the road, the Italian Splug_a_. A short drive takes us to the custom-house--not looked forward to cheerfully by those who have met, as we had at Splügen, a man turned back by mistake, and after two days’ delay again retracing his steps--but happily, in our case, passed easily enough, and with an exhibition of the greatest courtesy and civility from the Austrian officer, the mention of whom reminds me of the great change which has taken place in the political status of this country since first I made acquaintance with it. It is a change of no little importance to the traveller, who now goes without let or hindrance almost everywhere, instead of being worried out of his life by troubles about passports which even Austrian courtesy could not make tolerable.

We are soon off again across a drear and peaty-looking plain, with no view of the neighbouring mountains, and accompanied along the road by a troop of wild smuggler-like fellows, in broad-brimmed steeple-crowned hats, loose jackets, knee breeches, and coarse stockings, riding wildly along on rough horses, without saddles or bridles, but every one of them handsome grand-looking fellows, showing, as they smiled, teeth of the purest white, and more nearly coming up to one’s idea of real Italians than any with whom, later in our journey and more in Italy, we happened to meet. Before long, however, we again commenced the descent, and then, after passing through two or three galleries of prodigious length, at last came out upon one of those spots, the view from which, as much perhaps by reason of its associations as for its intrinsic beauty, rests on the mind for ever after, as one of the most lovely ever seen. On our right a steep mountain track slopes rapidly and almost perpendicularly down to a narrow valley, whose opposite and no less precipitous side we are about to descend; below us, far down, we see the village roofs of Isola, with its church and Italian campanile; beyond--and this is indeed the great charm of the prospect--down the valley, where the atmosphere seems redolent of the South, we see a grandly formed mountain, and again to its right another but more distant; between these two dim and distant shades lies the lake of Como--beyond them the broad rich plain of Lombardy; the sun shines forth, and we dream henceforward of that valley, looked down upon from the gallery on the Splügen, as one of the brightest prospects of our lives!

We had not gone far beyond the last gallery before our voiturier made good a boast which he had often repeated, of showing us a real waterfall on a grand scale before we parted company, and, pulling up his horses, made us--not unwilling--dismount to look _down_ the cascade of the Medessimo. A passage has been formed from the road to a point which just overhangs the fall, and here, securely parapeted round, you look down over a grand sheer fall of some eight hundred feet, in the course of which the torrent which goes to feed the threadlike Lira down below us in the valley, and just now roaring in bold volume underneath our road, loses itself in soft, delicate, and fairy-like spray, and ere it reaches the rock below, seems like some delicate mist falling from the sky for ever in endless and exquisite change of form. Just beyond the cascade the most wonderful part of the descent in an engineering point of view commences, and the road seems really to descend the perpendicular face of the rock, surpassing in boldness most other roads that I know, and affording very fine and varied views of the cascade on the descent. We soon reached Campo Dolcino, a miserable and most dirty-looking village; and were, sorely against our will, obliged to wait for our horses to bait; and then on we went, the sun some time set, and the night dark and cloudy. Presently a storm arose; and without lights, and travelling along a road turning sharp angles every minute, and never losing the music in our ears of the roaring Lira, our lot seemed more wild than enviable; at last we came to a house and tried unsuccessfully to borrow a light, but presently at another house we succeeded, and then guided by a lantern we pursued our way safely enough. I have seldom been out in so grand a storm; the lightning was vivid beyond all that I could conceive; and as at one minute it played about on the foaming water beneath us, and at another lighted up the whole mountain-side beyond with pale and intensely lovely light, flickering, playing, and dancing about in the wildest fashion, I believe we felt half sad when house after house appeared, and at last we entered the long, narrow, and thoroughly Italian streets of Chiavenna.

Another journey took me to Chiavenna at the same time in the evening, on my way north from Como. It was the night of the 8th September, the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin, and every peasant in his solitary châlet on the mountain-side was burning a bonfire in her honour. There seemed to me to be something very touching in this flaming burst of distant greeting from mountain to mountain, and few circumstances have ever brought home more vividly to me the isolation of these mountaineers, than the compensating power of a sympathetic faith which made them thus bid each other welcome by their flaring fires.

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