GOING over the Tête Noire is another of the things that everybody does, and like most things that are so easy, hardly worth while. I do not mean that there is no good scenery on the road, but there is nothing that quickens the pulse or sets one to breathing deep.
Perhaps I may do less than justice to the Tête Noire road because of my bodily sensations while passing over it. I certainly was not happy that day. The beast in my throat had downed me. I had a headache and a fever, a cold in the head, and an unpleasant sense of collapsibility in the legs.
Every few miles I stopped at some wayside inn or refreshment booth and ordered a liqueur glass of kirsch (which is a local form of liquid fire) and a few lumps of sugar, and, by dipping the sugar in the nostrum, was able little by little to absorb its fieriness, whereby the legs afore-mentioned acquired an artificial stiffening that carried them a few miles farther.
Antonio was greatly distressed at this immoral method by which I kept going. I think he had visions of my becoming a dipsomaniac in consequence of that day’s tippling. If he had only known how unpleasant the kirsch was, he would have been less alarmed.
The day passed somehow. There were showers here and there to add to the rawness of my throat. We passed back into Switzerland about noon. At dinner-time we began arriving at Martignys. There are an indefinite number of them spread out for miles—old town, new town, and railroad station. The last named was our destination. After dinner at the Hotel de la Gare (a function in which I was not personally interested, though I took another kirsch), we boarded a crowded train for Sion. I have seldom been so glad to get anywhere as I was to get to bed in the Sion hotel that night. I was sorry for poor Belle Soeur having to share my room, for I was well aware of the infectious character of the microbe I was harboring, but as they had no more vacant ones (or said they hadn’t), there seemed to be no help for it.
The next day I felt worse. Belle Soeur nobly offered to stay with me at Sion till I got well and let the boys continue the trip without us. But I did not want to break up the party, and knowing I was bound to be miserable that day anywhere, decided it might as well be on the road. So Frater filled his pocket flask with kirsch instead of cognac, and off we started over the Rawyl.
Now, the Rawyl is one of the least traveled passes in Switzerland. Baedeker, who takes it in the reverse direction from ours, gives a very inadequate description of the path, and says it takes ten and a half hours from Lenk to Sion, and that a guide is desirable. We ought to have taken warning from that ten and a half hours, for Baedeker’s times allow for no stops and assume a pretty swinging gait. But we wanted to go home that way, and we trusted to luck.
We did not get such an early start as we intended, and we took the wrong road out of Sion and walked an extra mile or so before we got set right. Those of us who had been brave enough to dig through the Swiss histories were mildly interested in the roofless, windowless, grinning skulls of castles that crowned the hill-tops over the town, the Bishop’s and the Baron’s. They used to have such lively times in Sion between their two sets of tyrants!
As always, it was sizzling hot in the Rhone valley, and we were glad as our road lifted us out of it. We went through a fine fruit belt as we rose, and I regret to say we plucked a plum or a pear or an apple quite frequently as we walked along.
At Ayent, about half-past ten, we came to what we knew was the last settlement. Here we fortified ourselves with a second café-au-lait, and laid in a stock of bread, sweet chocolate and hard-boiled eggs. Then we turned our backs on civilization and went on. We knew we had to leave the wagon road soon, but were in great doubt where, till a very intelligent peasant came along who gave us directions we could really follow. He also told us that we were two days’ journey from Lenk—which hardly sounded encouraging.
That day seemed to me about a hundred years long. Would there never be an end to this picking up of one foot and setting down of the other? And I had to keep pushing the old things so to make them move! No wonder I was tired. My head weighed about a ton, and had a red-hot and very tight iron band around it. And every bone in my body ached. Oh, bless the old man at Chamonix! At Ayent I had happened to look in a glass that hung on the dining-room wall, and the reflection I saw fairly frightened me for its ugliness. Did that shiny red nose, those bleary red eyes, that blotchy red face really belong to me?
By lunch-time we were among the high pastures and had opened up a pretty broad view of the Valais mountains, our old friends around Zermatt on the other side of the Rhone. We came upon a spring which had been piped to a trough for the cattle, and, as we were very thirsty, thought we would risk drinking from it, when, fortunately, we looked closer and saw the water was alive with long squirming hair-thin eels! They were the most uncanny-looking beasts I almost ever saw. Antonio suggested picking them out, as they were extremely visible, and drinking the expurgated water, but somebody objected that the water must be full of their eggs and that it would be so unpleasant to have them hatch—afterwards. So we ate our chocolate and hard-boiled eggs and bread, and kept our thirst for future reference.
We felt that we must surely come upon the cattle pretty soon and that then we could buy some milk. The afternoon was half gone, however, before we saw a trace of anything alive, and then it was a very small boy leading a pig way off in the distance. We hailed him and with some difficulty made him understand that we wanted to buy milk. The patois of that region is a fearful and wonderful thing. He agreed to lead us to the cow châlets, but as it was away from our path, and seemed very, very far, we were several times on the point of giving up the quest. However, he kept encouraging us, assuring us we were nearly there, and finally emerging over a grassy shoulder, we came upon the herd of several hundred cows in a sort of pocket.
It was the milking hour, and we could not have struck it better for our wants. The head-man, or Senn, I suppose, escorted us up to the cheese-hut and gave us stools to sit on, while he ladled out foamy warm milk from a bucket in a half gourd and passed it first to one and then another, apologizing for his lack of conveniences. Imagine a dozen men living up there for four months on end with never a cup or a bowl or a ladle among them except this solitary gourd!
There were two huge iron caldrons under which fires were burning and into which the men poured their buckets of milk as they brought them in. This was to make cheese. We asked them to sell us some, but they said they were not allowed to. They gave us, however, a bit of the old, last year’s cheese which they ate themselves and declined any remuneration for it. As it was a present, it would be impolite to say what we thought of it.
All the men crowded into the hut and gazed at us with interest, but only the two intelligent ones in charge did any talking. Perhaps the others spoke only patois, but they were of the utterly stupid heavy type I have already referred to.
We asked about our route, and they told us it was absolutely out of the question for us to get over the pass that day, as we were not more than half way, and it was already four o’clock. We must pass the night at the châlets of Nieder Rawyl, the last pastures on this side of the summit. Would the people there give us shelter, I asked. The man smiled and shrugged his shoulders. “They will have to,” he said.
Very much refreshed by the milk and the little rest, we bade farewell to our friends and made our way back to our path, then onward at a quickened pace, lest darkness come upon us before we reached the huts of Nieder Rawyl. We were getting pretty high now, and the wind that blew down from the snow belt made us feel that a night in the open air would not be a pleasant experience.
For me, the last hour of walking that afternoon was a nightmare, my head swimming with weakness and fever, my feet staggering foolishly. I kept on because I had to. Fortunately, we had no difficult climbing to do, nothing requiring steadiness, no precipices to skirt, just a steep, stony path.
About six o’clock we came in sight of a group of stone cheese and cattle huts, which we knew must be what we were in search of. The milking and cheese-making were just over, and a group of men were standing in a doorway. We went up and addressed the most intelligent-looking. Could they give us shelter for the night? The sun had already set behind the mountains, the long shadows were falling over the valley. It was perfectly obvious that we could not go on into that bare region of rock and snow beyond. Very gravely and courteously the head-man assured us that he had no way of making us comfortable, but that what they had was at our service.
He led us to a little one-room stone hut. It had no windows, and the door consisted of a couple of boards to keep the cattle from straying in, I suppose. It did not keep out the mountain wind, but as there was no other means of ventilation, perhaps it was as well. There was a raised stone platform to build a fire on. Our host brought us some sticks and started them blazing and hung an iron kettle full of milk over the fire to heat for us. He owned a granite-ware cup and a sort of spoon whittled from a cow’s horn, which he placed at our service. There was a long wooden bench which we drew up in front of the fire and sat on while we made our supper of sweet chocolate and hot milk. Our bread and eggs were gone by now.
About half the hut was occupied by a raised wooden sleeping platform, covered with musty-looking hay. Four greasy gray blankets were there, too, which were put at our disposal. They were not inviting-looking, but the bitter Alpine cold was getting into our bones, and we were in no position to pick and choose. We did not even take our shoes off, but each wrapping a blanket outside of whatever coats and wraps we had with us, disposed ourselves on the hay pile and awaited slumber. Personally, I could not have held up my head another minute if the world had been coming to an end. But tired as I was, I could not sleep.
Our host and another man came in and sat on the bench, heated milk and drank it with their supper, which consisted of hunks of black bread and strips of last year’s cheese, which they cut off with their pocket-knives from a stone-hard slab. When they had finished eating they still sat on the bench and kept up a desultory talk. Hours passed and they still stayed. At last one of them lay down on the platform by the embers of the fire and the other stretched himself out on the bench. Whether they slept or not I cannot say, but their conversation ceased. We had been wondering why they stayed so late, but it dawned upon us then that, having given us their beds and blankets, they had no place else to go. Belle Soeur and I exchanged whispered comments still from time to time, but at last she also went to sleep. Frater and Antonio had dropped off first of all like nice tired children.
After this I kept vigil with the fleas. Their name was legion. I have met this voracious animal in various parts of the world, Italy, Egypt, California and Japan, but never in such concentrated swarms! What between them and my headache and fever, and the place I was in, and the company I was keeping, I did not succeed in forgetting my miseries till daylight was appearing wanly in the doorway.
There had been the pigs, too. It seems our hut was built on a steep slope, and though we had entered it from the level of the ground, in the back it had a basement. This was occupied by the pigs. And surely those brutes must have had uneasy consciences, for all night long they kept up the most unholy noises! There were also waves of odor from the piggery, which surged up to us from time to time.
Our hosts had gone out about their work when I woke up, and my companions were starting the fire for breakfast. I did not feel very gay, but the fever was gone and my head was very much clearer, especially after I had bathed it in the chilly brook outside. We ate some more chocolate and drank some more milk and were ready to set out on our way.
When we wished to settle for our entertainment, we found our hosts were charging only for the milk we had consumed, and were quite dazzled by our munificence in adding five francs for lodging. Evidently they did not expect it in the least, and had given up their beds and blankets to us in a spirit of true hospitality.
One of the men offered to show us the path if we could wait about half an hour till he finished his work, but as we had had no great difficulty in finding the path so far, we fallaciously argued that it would be the same the rest of the way, and declined with thanks.
About half a mile beyond the huts the path came to an abrupt end at the beginning of an open meadow, bounded on the far side by a wall of rock. Somewhere beyond that meadow the path began again and led up the rock wall into the Alpine wilderness above. But where? No scanning by the eye could reveal it. Each of us had a different theory as to likelihood. We crossed the meadow and skirted the base of the cliff looking for that vanished path.
At the extreme right, a stream tumbled down a gully in a series of cataracts. By the near bank there had been a slide of stones and loose earth, making a place several hundred feet in height, which, though terrifically steep, was not, like most of the wall, absolutely perpendicular. Above this we saw a horizontal line in the rock, which might be the path.
Somewhat dubiously we decided to try. I never encountered anything more discouraging than that slide of loose stones. With every step we took upward we slid back about nine-tenths of a step. Sometimes more. And we were never sure that we would be able to stop ourselves till we struck bottom. The higher we went, the more precarious and crumbly it became. We clambered on all fours. Belle Soeur and I could never have gotten up if the boys had not helped us. Antonio dubbed it the Gutter Spout of Heaven. I don’t know about the Heaven part, but the Gutter Spout was all right.
We kept encouraging each other with the nearer approach of that horizontal line in the rocks. When at last we got there, breathless and exhausted, we found it was not a path, but merely a natural ledge. How far it led, or whether it led anywhere, we did not know.
Belle Soeur’s heart was making itself felt just then, so we had to sit down to let her recover, and while doing so, we held a council of war. We were about half-way up the rock wall now, and none of us wanted to throw away all the time and labor we had put in getting there by going back. Also, since the waterfall marked the extreme right-hand boundary of the rock wall, the path, if it existed at all, must lie to the left. Therefore, by following our hard-won ledge to the left, we should cross the path,—unless indeed the ledge came to an end too soon. At all events we decided it was worth trying, so as soon as Belle Soeur’s heart had returned to the normal, we started. After edging our way along the ledge in a gingerly fashion for about fifteen minutes, our faith was rewarded, for we made out an unmistakable path zigzagging upward, and had no further difficulty in reaching it.
The joy of finding one’s path again is so great that I do not know but it makes worth while having lost it! With renewed vigor we climbed upward to the plateau-like region of snow drifts and rock ledges that awaited us, which some ironist has named the “Plain of Roses.” We should have had fine views of the Valais mountains but for the clouds which enveloped them. Our immediate foreground was wild and desolate enough, but as none of the peaks were more than two thousand feet higher than we were, our views lacked grandeur of outline. For pure bleak Alpine solitude, though, the walk of the next few hours was unrivaled.
We quenched our thirst with handfuls of snow from the virgin drifts around us. This is said to be a bad thing to do, but we experienced no ill effects either on this or other occasions. At noon we sat down on a rock and ate cheese and chocolate. This was the fourth meal we had made from this combination of foodstuffs, with the addition of milk at the second and third, bread at the first and hard-boiled eggs at the first and second. This time there were no accessories. None of us felt much of a craving for either cheese or chocolate for some time thereafter.
The summit of the pass (just under eight thousand feet) is marked by a shelter hut and a great wooden cross, whose bare arms, stretched out over the wilderness of rock and snow, have a singular impressiveness. The cross marks the boundary between the cantons of Valais and Berne.
Another hour’s walking, past a cold gray Alpine lake, brought us to the northern edge of the plateau, where the green and fertile Simmenthal lay spread out at our feet between the piled-up Bernese mountains.
Our path plunged down steeply now, and about three o’clock we reached the outpost of civilization, what Baedeker calls a rustic inn—at Iffigen Alp. We asked with lively interest what they had to eat and found they had neither meat nor eggs. What did they have, then? Coffee, milk, bread, butter, honey and cheese.
We balked at the last-named, but ordered a large supply of everything else. As soon as the maid brought it in, we told her to begin getting ready a second installment just as large. And how we did eat! Was ever anything so good as that bread and butter and honey, except the long drafts of café-au-lait that washed it down?
All day long my health had been improving and my cold disappearing, and this ambrosial meal seemed to complete the cure. We asked for soap, water and towels, combed our hair before a looking-glass, put on clean collars, and looked so respectable that we hardly knew each other. For myself, I felt as if I had just returned to life and the joy of it from a most unpleasant dream. The treatment I had given my influenza had been heroic,—a sort of kill-or-cure. But it had happened to cure, and in a phenomenally short time. The rest of the family, who took their share comfortably at home, also took longer to get over it.
Greatly refreshed, we left the “rustic inn” of blessed memory and swung happily down the path past the pretty Iffigen waterfalls. We soon found ourselves on a wagon-road which led us in the course of a few miles to Lenk, a village of considerable size with thermal springs and the attendant hotels and health-seekers. The specialty here is throat and nose trouble.
We spent the night at Lenk and in the morning walked the eight and a half miles down the valley to Zweisimmen.
The Simmenthal is famous for its cattle, and as we happened to have struck the day on which they were coming home from the high pastures, the whole eight and a half miles was through a procession of moist milky cattle. Sometimes they filled the road so that it required ingenuity to get past. They were big, handsome, sleek creatures, and seemed to be perfectly gentle.
The Rawyl wilderness separates not only the two cantons, but the two languages as with a sharp knife. There is no lapping over at the edges. The herdsmen at Nieder Rawyl spoke French, but no German, and the waitress at Iffigen Alp spoke German and never a word of French.
Zweisimmen is the railway terminus. Here we took train to Spiez, and hence to Interlaken and home in the usual manner.
Thus ended the second trip.
