THE following day, during which we progressed down the Val Formazza to its juncture with the Simplon road at Crevola and up that road as far as Iselle, has a color in my memory all its own. Italy went to our heads. Antonio reverted to type. All the Latin in him came to the surface. Up to now, under the influence of our society and his English grandfather, he had been the most quiet and reserved of us all. Now he suddenly warmed up and blossomed out in shrugs and gesticulations, in song and laughter. We all caught the contagion more or less. Our feet had wings down that lovely wooded valley, and we laughed at nothing for the pure joy of living. We exchanged greetings with all the cheerful, friendly peasants whom we met, so different from the unexpansive Swiss variety. If we did not actually see Pan and the mænads, I am sure they were not far away. The sky above us was different from the Swiss sky—warmer and brighter somehow. The vegetation was richer and more luxuriant. Our northern blood bubbled and effervesced under the enchanted touch of Italy. And in Antonio the South claimed her own again.
Even the discomfort of my shoes could not seriously dampen my enjoyment. Those trodden-over heels had become nearly unbearable; but when I caught one between two rocks and tore it off, the resulting limp was worse. It was not till the next morning that Frater evolved the brilliant thought of prying off the other heel to match, which was a great relief.
Feet and shoes are always a problem on a long pedestrian trip. A shoe too tight is misery, but one too large, which allows the foot to rub and chafe, is almost as bad. Any unhardened foot is sure to develop blisters after two or three days’ walking. These rub and break and leave the flesh raw. It isn’t pleasant, but in the high altitudes, where there are no bacteria, everything heals rapidly, and if one resolutely says nothing about it and keeps on walking, it isn’t so bad as it sounds. We were all in the same fix by this time. I know now that I bestowed more sympathy than was absolutely necessary on the “blistered and bleeding feet” of Washington’s army, over which I used to shed shuddering tears as a little girl.
At San Rocco, where we lunched, we found there was still more than fifteen miles between us and Crevola. So, as we had now struck the carriage road and the daily diligence was just about due, we decided to treat ourselves to a ride.
It was a sort of uncovered omnibus, and proved to have one vacant place too few for us, so Antonio sat on the steps. The driver must surely have been exercising his calling for the first time, for he did strange and fearful things all the way. The worst was when he evolved the wonderful thought of improvising a brake by putting a piece of stout cord-wood through the spokes of the two rear wheels. Of course something had to give way. The spokes cracked ominously and the wood, catching in one of the carriage springs as the wheel revolved, promptly broke it and tilted that side of the ’bus down most unpleasantly. All the passengers, except the priest and ourselves, objurgated the driver in fluent Italian, and the priest gave him some serious advice. So did Frater and Antonio, but I think theirs was in English. After this the driver became very sulky and took out his bad temper in language addressed to the poor horses, who really were not to blame. We were in momentary expectation of our vehicle’s falling to pieces, but it providentially held together while we were in it. I am sure, though, that the catastrophe must have occurred soon after we dismounted.
We sang most of the way (heaven save the mark!) partly to distract our minds from the supposed impending disaster, and partly because the priest enjoyed it so much. He kept his breviary open and his eyes fixed on it, but seldom turned a page and smiled broadly when the choruses grew joyous. He had a good face, that priest, and it was nice to see the way everybody greeted him with “Buon’ giorno, Riverenza” and “Addio, Riverenza,” on entering and leaving the stage.
Having reached Crevola, where the roads join, about four o’clock, perfectly fresh after our long drive, we decided to walk seven miles up the Simplon to Iselle before stopping for the night. The first part of the road was extremely pretty. There was a deep rocky gorge with a river at the bottom, feathery-leafed trees, and pale blue mountains, just like a landscape by Salvator Rosa. But when we came near Iselle, where the Italian entrance to the tunnel is located, the two sides of the road began to close up with shanties and rookeries. We met some thousands of workmen returning home after their day’s labor in the tunnel. Everything swarmed, reeked and crawled, and we began to wonder if we could possibly find a place to sleep in. We purchased a large watermelon, and ate it sitting on a pile of stones in a wilderness of cranes and derricks, comforting ourselves with the reflection that at least the inside of it must be uncontaminated!
We kept looking for the one hostelry mentioned by Baedeker, which proved to be at the extreme end of the long-drawn-out town. Our hearts sank as we saw it, for it was of an unspeakable griminess. Evidently it had become a workman’s boarding-house, pure and simple. We entered, with the faint hope of finding it better inside than out, but it wasn’t, and we were really relieved to learn that they had no room for us. We retraced our steps to the other hotel they told us about. It was a blaze of light. A promiscuous crowd of men were drinking and smoking on the front balcony, and a woman was banging concert-hall airs out of an atrocious piano inside. The air of dirt and slovenliness was inexpressible, and we were by no means sure the place was even technically respectable. The proprietor, who looked like a brigand, if ever I saw one, offered us one double room in the hotel and another across the street. Belle Soeur and I were not particularly timid, but we agreed that nothing conceivable would tempt us to spend the night in that hole, with our natural protectors in another building. A young German tourist, a pedestrian like ourselves, understanding our predicament, offered to share his room with Frater and Antonio, so as to keep the party under one roof. We thanked him and held his offer in reserve, but resolved to try first the one other inn which we had noticed in passing.
It proved to be kept by a gruff old German-speaking Swiss, and was, though plain, quite reasonably clean inside and of a reassuring respectability. The price—four francs apiece for lodging—struck us as high in view of the accommodations, and we said so. The reply was surprising. “If you had come to me first, it would have been less. But you visited every hotel in town and came to me as a last resort. I saw you when you passed.” The joyous shout of laughter with which we greeted this explanation seemed rather to nonplus the old man. But we made no further protest. His frankness was worth the money.
The balcony in front of our rooms overhung the noisiest river I ever heard, while our windows looked out on the main street, which was filled till midnight with an equally noisy stream of people; but it would have taken more than noise to keep us awake, now that we had clean sheets and felt safe.
We got away from unprepossessing Iselle as soon as possible the next morning. Although we had enjoyed our detour into Italy, I think all of us experienced a sense of relief when we passed the custom house a couple of miles up the road and found ourselves once more in clean, honest Switzerland.
This was an easy day for us, walking somewhat lazily up the easy grade of the excellent post-road which Napoleon was good enough to build for us. It was rather warm and we spent the entire day covering fifteen miles lengthwise and forty-four hundred feet of ascent.
The Simplon road has a great reputation for scenery, and doubtless it would be imposing if one came to it from the plains. But to us who had been living in the heart of the Oberland and who were fresh from that wild climb over the Gries Pass, it was disappointingly tame and sophisticated.
A road-house which we passed had a stone tablet cut into the wall, announcing that at this spot Napoleon stopped and drank a glass of milk. So we did the same (being probably thirstier than he) and paid several prices for the association’s sake.
We ate our luncheon under the shade of a big tree on a velvety meadow running down to a brook, where we refreshed ourselves by washing faces, hands and arms in the cold clear water.
By the way, do people generally realize that glacier water is not clear? It is always thick and muddy, a regular café-au-lait color. Some of the mountain streams which do not come from glaciers are almost as cold and are crystal clear.
We made it a general rule to drink no water on our tramps. Sometimes it was a great temptation, for we would get very thirsty walking, and we were always crossing cool little streams that looked the incarnation of innocence. Doubtless some of them were, but we had no means of knowing which was which.
Antonio was the thirstiest of our party and the most inclined to waive prudence and drink, but a graphic description of his shapely throat adorned with a large goiter usually had the desired restraining effect. He didn’t care a rap about typhoid, of which the danger was much greater. But we all draw the line somewhere, and he drew it at goiter!
This reminds me that goiter must be dying out in Switzerland. I don’t think we saw half a dozen cases all summer, but I remember it as one of the horrors of my childhood when I visited Switzerland before. It seems to me nearly every other old person had one then.
There is a hotel on top of the Simplon Pass, and there was no reason in the world why we should not patronize it; but we decided it would be much more interesting to lodge at the Hospice built and endowed by Napoleon and served by the monks of Saint Bernard.
It is a big, barracks-like stone building approached by an imposing flight of steps. At the top is a rope which it is the business of the visitor to pull. It sets a huge bell vibrating in the stone hallway and one feels that one has created an undue disturbance for a mendicant. A member of the brotherhood responds, one asks for hospitality for the night, he leads one to an immaculate bedroom and tells one the dinner hour.
We had taken a provisional farewell of each other on the doorstep before pulling the bell-rope, for we knew nothing of the customs of the place and had an idea that we feminine members of the quartette would probably be herded in some wing apart and not allowed to communicate with our escorts till we left. Nothing of the kind occurred. It was just as though we had been in a hotel, without the necessity of asking prices. They did not even expect us to attend chapel. The bare stone walls and floor lent an air of conventual austerity, and the presence of the monks reminded us where we were.
When the dinner-bell rang, we assembled, along with twenty or thirty other chance guests, at two long tables, and, to our surprise, the brotherhood ate with us. The meal, though plain, was generous in quantity, and they kept pressing us to eat more with true hospitality. We found our hosts very interesting to talk to. One old man took a profound interest in America, especially in the St. Louis exposition, and plied us with questions about it. Naturally we were more interested in asking about their life and mission, which seemed to us a delightful but highly incongruous survival of medievalism. They admitted that the Hospice served no very useful purpose in summer, but it did a big charity work spring and fall when thousands of Italian laborers were tramping into Switzerland and back, who could not afford to stop at the hotel, and during winter, when the hotel was closed, though travelers were few, the Hospice became a life-saving necessity to those who did go over the pass. After dinner they showed us the portrait of himself that Napoleon had given the Hospice and a few other treasured relics.
There is no charge whatever made for meals and lodging at the Hospice, and the offering one puts into the almsbox is entirely voluntary. We had to ask where this box was, and I do not think it would have been brought to our attention in any way had we failed to do so. I imagine many fail, or unduly consult economy in their offerings, for we noticed that our hosts, who had been most kind throughout, became positively effusive after we had deposited in the box—no princely sum at all, but just about what we calculated we would have expended at the hotel. I must say most of our fellow guests looked as if they deserved Frater’s characterization of “dead beats,” and yet the brothers told us that travelers often found fault with their accommodations! Probably the less they paid, the more fault they found. But even this sordid company could not spoil the sentiment of the place for us, and the memory of our night at the Hospice remains one of the jewels in our casket.