/ ^.' L^y^ T OFF THE MILL .. |^3K| W^^^^*SKtttK^KKtKBBMB9Kf^^ ^P mm^ > 1^- w' :.jii^bs -.%.. i-'^^fe ^|^3 ^^^Ifl---^ .&',#k| m '' '^^I'i.vr' -^ ^V^pq' 1 m-^k.... MiL 't 1 "^D^HP J\ .>JP r^uMI^M p 1 ^feJB ## iav ' '> ^Hhh^^^S^'^ MX-} ^^^HhHHr . I'HQ^i '^mi HmnMnT'lKL ^^fcMlrt^., ip t|,V .#^ 'iP'"''i' flBOl'- m'' '^ r w*i^^^u^==J^te L ij^^^ttl i*^*!*- 1 w-^-'^ 1 OFF THE MILL SOME OCCASIONAL PAPERS BY G. F. BEOWNE, B.D, D.C.L. HONOBARY FELLOW OP ST CATHARINE'S CANON OF ST PAUL'S BISHOP OP STEPNEY MEMBER OP THE ALPINE CLUB J o ? MACMILLAN AND CO. 1895 < ' PEEFACE When I rejoined the Alpine Club last winter, after some years of absence from that most pleasant society, it was suggested that I should collect and publish some of my papers on Alpine subjects, which appeared thirty years ago and more in various periodicals. That is the excuse for the present little book. Some of the ' Cornhill ' articles appeared originally with illustrations, the earliest, or almost the earliest, examples of Mr. Du Manner's work. It was at first intended to reproduce these, which I have always re- garded as the best part of the papers. But on con- sideration we came to the conclusion that the great change which has taken place in ladies' dress would cause the illustrations to seem unreal. The present generation of Alpine climbers, if the book falls into the hands of any such, will find in the text quite sufficient indications of the earlier state of things. Their way to their work is made much more smooth and easy than ours was. We had no Einspanners, and we carried our own things. ivil59986 VI PREFACE I have added one or two papers on other subjects. The ' Night with a Salmon ' records an experiment which gave rise to a new kind of sport, namely, salmon fishing in heavy tidal waters, where it used to be sup- posed that rod-fishing was out of the question. I shall be glad if ' Collecting Ancestors ' leads some readers to enter upon the investigations which I have found so interesting. The * Archaeological Frauds in Palestine ' conveys warnings of general interest, I think ; and the papers on *Pontresina' and *The Engadine' will not be without result if they induce anyone to take more than a surface interest in the beautiful district to which so many of us in London owe such strength as we have. I have to thank the editor of the ' National Review ' for permission to use a recent article. G. F. STEPNEY May, 1896. CONTENTS PAGK How WE SLEPT AT THE CHALET DES CHEVRES ... 1 How WE MOUNTED THE OlDENHOEN 30 How WE DID MoNT Blanc 60 ICB-OAVES OP ANNECY 90 A Winter Excursion in Switzerland . . ... 117 A Night with a Salmon 138 The ChIteau in the Ardennes 161 The Engadine 168 Arch^ological Frauds in Palestine 195 Collecting Ancestors 227 pontresina 253 ILLUSTRATIONS Thb Old Low-housb (* Collecting Ancestobs') FrontUpieee The Bio Fish ('A Night with Salmon') tofcboe page 138 HOW WE SLEPT AT THE CHALET DES CHiJVRES ' We were a party of three pedestrians; two sisters, A. and M., and one brother, G. The former had been developing their walking powers during a stay of two or three months among the woods of the Jura, by such rambles as ladies might take unaccompanied, and the advent of the male person of the party had long been looked forward to, as opening up a number of excur- sions too extensive or too ambitious for the sisters alone. In fact, they were not alone ; but the other members of the family party lacked the physical power requisite for their long climbs, and could scarcely feign a sympathy with what foreigners know as the English mania for wandering and mounting. And yet it was strange that the clear air of the upland village had not supplied the one, and the tempting beauty of the scene the other. Below was the lake, with its broad frame of flat and richly wooded country, stretching away to the west till lost amid the glancing skylights of Geneva. The whole plain lay hot and parched under the terrible August sun, suggesting ' Cornhill Magazine^ September 1863. B 2 HOW WE SLEPT AT THE CHALET DES CHfiVRES feelings of self-gratulation to the fortunate spectator who stood at a cool level on the hills. Mont Blanc, meanwhile, instinct with glittering life, flashed his snowy mantle against the cloudless sky on the opposite side of the lake, imparting an irresistible impulse in the direction of a mount into the higher glens, where, even in the Jura, the snow and ice were yet unmelted in the pits, and a cold breeze might be secured in the middle of the hottest day. The excursion to which this paper owes its origin came to pass in this way. The three young people already mentioned were sitting in the covered balcony of the chalet where their family had spent the summer ; no one thought of raising an eye to look at the evening glories of the Savoy Alps, for the magnificent view had become an every-day matter. The lake close below, for so it seemed to be, though twelve hundred feet of eleva- tion and some eight or nine miles of road cut them off from it, displayed in vain its sunset dress ; they were biases for that particular view from that particular spot ; the balcony was now a place for reading and work, though once it had been devoted entirely to gazing. A. and M. were busy with their work, giving fitful accounts of their mountain walks to G., who was by turns an inattentive and attentive hearer as the volume of Tauchnitz proved interesting or the reverse. One of these excursions, on which they appeared to dwell with peculiar delight, had taken them to the top of a high cone of rock, comparatively bare of trees, HOW WE SLEPT AT THE CHALET DES CHllVRES 3 which rose abruptly about half an hour's climb above the wooded glades forming the summit of the Jura. They said much of the beauty of the view, of the clear- ness of the air, of the difficulties of the road, and of the one blind path which they had discovered by following the complicated directions of a chalet man, given in unintelligible patois. At the very top of this rugged cone were four walls and a part of a roof, being the remains of what had once been the Chalet des Chevres the goats' chalet. At this point G. became so far interested as to raise his head and ask what sort of shelter the old chalet would afford in case of a storm. ' Very good,' they asserted, ' if the window-holes were a little filled up, and anything in the shape of a door forthcoming.' ' Any signs of a fireplace ? ' G. asked. ' Yes ! ' cried A., quite breathlessly, and with dis- tended eyes. ' Such a charming hole in the roof ! The smoke couldn't help going through ! ' ' What do you think,' G. continued, almost brought to silence by the eager interest with which A. hung upon his words, ' what do you think of spending a night up there, to see the sun rise ? ' ' Mother ! mother ! ' they ran screaming off, ' he's proposed it himself ! We didn't say a word about it ! ' and much clapping of hands ensued, not unaccom- panied by groans, or rather murmurs of protest, from the elderly lady whose slumbers were thus broken in B 2 4 HOW WE SLEPT AT THE CHALET DES CHllVRES upon. It turned out that this idea of camping in the chalet for the sunrise had been for some time in A. and M.'s mind, as possibly to be carried out on G.'s arrival ; but the prudent heads of the family had determined that it was impracticable. More than that, they had been confident that G. would be the first to think so, unless it were very artfully put before him. The spontaneous insanity which he had now displayed was a stroke for which they were not prepared, and all direct opposition was at once broken down. It was agreed, however, on all hands, that at least two of the three aspiring excursionists should pay a previous visit to the chalet, to see what its capabilities really were, before they committed themselves to the labour of carrying up the things necessary for spending a night within its walls. Accordingly, M. and G. went one day to survey the place, and after some hours of agreeable climbing reached the chalet, which they found (a foregone con- clusion, it need not be said) perfectly fit for their purpose. The walls were so thick that large stones could be piled up in the holes which had served for windows, so as to keep out some of the night air and all less pleasant visitors ; and there were a good number of planks lying about which would serve to raise the sleepers from the damp ground. Above all, they dis- covered in a corner a very respectable piece of door. There were three compartments inside the chalet : the middle, where the principal hole in the roof was, for HOW WE SLEPT AT THE CHALET DES CH:&VRES 5 kitchen and eating purposes ; the two ends for bedrooms, one horribly dark and still, the other light and very- draughty. So that on the whole they were justified in taking a flourishing account of the accommodations of the place to their friends below, and also a goodly bas- ket of the spoils of the way in the shape of blaeberries and strawberries, which went far to remove the slight opposition still kept up on conservative principles. The preparations were not very great. Bedding was for long a vexed question, for every native told shudder- ing tales of the cold of a night at the top of the hills, and warned the mad English that wraps would be more necessary than food itself. Fortunately the protesting parents of the party were guiltless of French, and so the full force of these representations never reached them ; for all the interpreting passed through the hands of the pedestrians, and the energetic little landlady's wailings over their probable fate were perhaps not rendered into English of equal vigour and spirit. So they settled the question by taking no rugs ^in fact the heat on the lower part of the hills promised to be so great (and it fulfilled its promise) that a rug would soon have had to qualify for a shroud, had they attempted to carry one. Those miserable duvets gave the greatest trouble, for there was no gainsaying the paternal arguments which asserted their lightness and powers of compaction, and the only way out of the difficulty was by an unqualified assertion that Madame Dorier would not like her clean duvets to be put to such a disreputable use. Unfor- 6 HOW WE SLEPT AT THE CHILET DES CHfiVEES tunately, Madame was so extremely kind and obliging that the stay-at-home faction were confident that she would accede to the request for the duvets, if the matter were properly put before her ; after which nothing was left but for A. to say that she hadn't the face to ask it, and positively cotiZc? not do it; M. and G. shrugging sym- pathetic shoulders and declining to have anything to do with so unreasonable a request. The bedding was a great weight off their minds and backs, and at length their ideas of what would be necessary were brought within the requisite bounds. A. and M. so far bowed to maternal authority as to strap each a shawl to her waist, the two ends hanging down, and that was the sole extra wrapping they took with them. Each had also a flat basket of food, similarly fastened, and an empty quart bottle. All three carried toilette apparatus, and a small basin and saucer, with spoon and knife. M., who was a sturdy little person, undertook the teapot, a strange Swiss copper vessel ex- actly like a brown owl in shape and colour, which was wont to be perched on a stone by the kitchen fire when- ever it was expected that the English would require warm water. Like the shawls and baskets, M. slung this to her waist ; but lest it should bump too much it was put under the skirt of her dress, by which means its vagaries were sufficiently restrained. G. carried on his back, knapsack-wise, a coat and waistcoat for night use, for it was much too hot for anything more than a shirt in walking, and, wrapped in these, a vast loaf of HOW WE SLEPT AT THE CHALET DES CHJiVEES 7 spherical form, cut into halves to economise packing- room. Also a small bag knapsack, wherein was a bottle of Langlade wine, an empty quart bottle for milk, and an empty tumbler for butter, these to be procured at the last chalet, an hour and a half from the goats' ruin. At the last moment before starting, a Vicuna shawl, soft and light and warm, was brought by the maternal hands, and it was declared authoritatively that if G. did not wrap up his coat and the hemispheres of bread in this the party simply should not go. This being a matter which no interpreting ingenuity could stave off, G. was victimised, and the shawl had the advantage of seeing the sunrise. At last they were off, amid the ill-omened prophecies of the anxious landlady, which they did not think it necessary to explain to their equally anxious parents. Mounting began literally the moment they left the door, for the house was built on so steep a slope that the ground-floor at the back, whence they issued, was a high balcony-floor in front. After a hard and hot ascent through beech woods for half an hour, they stopped for a minute or two, nominally to admire the view, really to rest a little. The view, however, was well worth the few minutes devoted to it, for they had now reached the first plain, a green lawn from which the hay had been four days removed, where the chalet La Violette stood. The fresh green grass, and the beautiful bell-shaped beeches which rose from it in picturesque groups or still more picturesque solitariness, were in 8 HOW WE SLEPT AT THE CHALET DES CHfeVEES themselves sufficiently fair ; but as the travellers stood well back on the plain, and turning southward saw the pure white of the upper half of Mont Blanc, cut short off by the fairy lawn from which they looked, the effect was simply magical. Fifty-five miles of land and water lay between the meadows of La Violette and the snows of the White Mountain, but all was hid from view by the green crest over which the path had lain, and the ice and snows seemed to be as near and refreshing to them as the lovely young grass of the vast lawn. Keeping their object sternly in view, they soon left La Violette behind, and an easy half-hour brought them to the ' convent fountain.' Every one knows so well the provident wisdom displayed by the monks in their choice of sites, that it is needless to tell how the convent fountain was famed through all the southern slope of the Jura. The water poured through a wooden pipe into a huge trunk trough, lying in a soft green plot of grass surrounded by beech-trees, among which the mounds that marked the convent walls might be traced with great accuracy ; so much so that the dormi- tories round the centre building might still be counted, and the solitary cell be seen a stone's cast from the mass of the convent. A. and M. had in the course of two or three months become so deeply enamoured of the beauties of this fountain, that they had set off, a week or two before the present visit, with a large stock of pots and pans, and had cleaned out the trough, even scrubbing it well into the corners with nail-brushes. HOW WE SLEPT AT THE CHALET DES CHEVRES 9 This sufficiently explained the angry exclamations which broke the stillness of the monks' old home, when they found sundry pieces of plebeian bread floating in the water. The poor raspberry gatherers, who had steeped their dry dinner in the fountain, came in for a large amount of vilification ; and an unfortunate little bird, whose feather polluted their pet trough, was apostrophised in all the strong words of a lady's vocabulary. Neither bread nor feathers, however, prevented them from applying to the pure source. A. now dis- played her chief weakness, which took the form of a passion for cold water on a hot walk. Water by itself was a sufficient delight, but when she had her little red glass with her, there really were no bounds to her pota- tions. That little glass was her idol, chiefly, as was believed, because it had once been sat upon and had come out uncracked from the ordeal. She was always told that she would kill herself, and on particularly hot walks G. had been known to wax very cross as the tumblerfuls mounted up to the high numbers. But on the present occasion she was obliged to be more moderate, being called upon to tell how ' the seigneurs ' were allowed three weeks to change their religion, and how they followed the example of the North British monks at Ripon, and chose rather to desert the convent, carrying their silver with them, before the three weeks expired. She had learned the tale from a deboshed- looking old man, whose wife complained that no work 10 HOW WE SLEPT AT THE CHALET DES CHfiVEES could be got out of him now that the English ladies let him walk about with them and tell them lies. They left the convent fountain not without regret, for the next good water was miles away, and the after- noon was so terribly hot that all were more or less affected by a partial mania, similar to A.'s chronic com- plaint. Once off, however, they thought no more about the water, for the sudden changes from wood to open, and from open to wood, kept them in a constant state of delight, while every step crushed a hundred little flowers, which formed the design of the soft carpet on which they trod ; so that on the whole the hours seemed to have passed very quickly when they found them- selves at the Chalet de Grantene, patois for Grand Ennaz. This was the last piece of humanity on the way, and here they were to complete their stores by filling the empty bottles and the tumbler. Fortunately they reached the chalet a few minutes before the afternoon milking began, so they were in time to accept the offer of a bowl of new milk from the hospitable head of the establishment, a fine Bernois with grey head and eagle nose, and meanwhile seated themselves in the cool butter-room to drink Hit lait. For this last purpose the visit was not well timed. The full benefits of the refreshing qualities of Hit lait are only to be enjoyed when it is on the balance be- tween hot and cool; and now it was cold, and therefore heavy. , The men had already armed themselves for milking; HOW WE SLEPT AT THE CHALET DES CHfiVEES 11 a somewhat curious process, presenting a most remark- able appearance when accomplished. The interior accommodations of a chalet are becoming so familiar, that it is almost unnecessary to describe the ' chair of the mountains,' as the chalet men pleasantly style their itinerant seats. Each milker possesses a stool, which, when not in use, may be taken for a small round shield, with a boss at the centre a foot long, shod with pointed iron. This stool is strapped on bodily in a suitable position, and when a man gets up, his stool of course gets up with him, so that when he comes out with his pail of milk to the huge copper cauldron ready to receive its contents, he appears with a stiff stump of a tail behind. One would have thought that three legs would have been easier to sit upon than one, but undoubtedly the prevailing arrangement is much more picturesque and ludicrous. To an unpractised Englishman the manoeuvring of this caudal appendage is a great difficulty, for the strap round the hips is tight and cramping, and renders locomotion undesirable ; while to sit down in any soft place is attended by awkward consequences, as the leg inserts itself into the ground according to the weight of the sitter, and has him at a considerable dis- advantage when he attempts to get up. The advent of ' the English ladies,' about milking- time, at any of the chalets in the neighbourhood, always elicited a number of those inimitable milking songs from the men, and with these they now amused themselves until the firstfruits of the first cow were brought by the 12 HOW WE SLEPT AT THE CHALET DES CHftVRES Bernois himself with much politeness, and with a grace which few Englishmen would have achieved with a foot of wood and iron for a tail. The milk was strained for them into an inexpressibly white tub, round the edges of which hung three wooden spoons of large capacity, carved by the chalet men. The sieve was a remarkable apparatus, consisting of a wooden funnel with an aper- ture large enough to admit a female fist, if such a thing exists ; into this aperture a bunch of spruce twigs was squeezed, something like what you extract from the crop of a capercailzie, and through these twigs the milk was poured. Having consumed the best part of a small cow, the pedestrians proceeded to fill the quart bottle from another tub, and gave the tumbler to the Bernois to be filled with butter. He was anxious that they should take a little brick of serre (stiff cheese curd), but they could not carry up sufficient milk to make it palatable, and so declined the offer of the tempting-looking mass. A. and M. quite fell in love with the old man, because he was the first person who had not attempted to dissuade them from making their beds in the goats' chalet, and, above all, because his bright eyes became brighter, and his tail wagged sentimentally, when he divined their purpose in the expedition, and spoke of a sunrise as if he felt its charms, and could sympathise with any efibrt which had so worthy an object. He made them promise to call in the morning and tell him how they had sped ; and then, seeing they were ready to go, he made HOW WE SLEPT AT THE CHALET DES CHfeVRES 13 off to his COWS again, waggling his stumpy tail behind him. A hundred yards or two brought the party to the last water. Here they filled the two remaining bottles, and then steadily set their faces towards the grey cone which now became visible, rising up from the undulating plains and woods which crown that ridge of the Jura. The road to the foot of the cone was beset at each step by prolific tufts of blaeberries and strawberries, but as the sun was drawing down fast towards the horizon, and they contemplated a sunset as well as a sunrise from the solitary elevation, they had not much time to spare ; moreover, G.'s digestion was not in a state to allow him to eat crude fruits, so he stalked on inexorably at a pace which it required all the sturdiness of M.'s short legs, and all the length of A.'s long ones, to keep up with. So far they had not come across any real mountain climbing, although it had been a severe ascent the whole way ; but now they reached the base of the cone, and began to wind up its almost perpendicular sides. It certainly reflected great credit on A. and M. that they had discovered the path, guided by an excelsior instinct which they always displayed when near a mountain. To uninitiated eyes, there was no reason for going to the right rather than to the left of sundry groups of trees, no apparent object to be gained by going below instead of above certain fragments of mountain. But when all the obstacles which clustered round the foot of the cone had been surmounted, and the three stood on the clear 14 HOW WE SLEPT AT THE CHALET DES CH^VEES face of the rock, it was seen that there had been a method in their windings which no path had pointed out, and the male person of the party expressed (and possibly his companions felt) great admiration for the feminine in- genuity which had threaded the difficulties without a guide. M. had a weakness for performing all her excursions in a roomy crinoline, and it had been an amusement to A. and G. the whole time to watch the peculiar forms into which the inflated petticoats were driven by the superin- cumbent weight of the copper teapot, slung, as has been said, under the skirt of her dress. These peculiarities were considerably increased now that she came to lay herself well down to the steep climb, and one conse- quence was that she persisted in going last. This worked badly in one or two ways ; first, because she knew most about the road, and her directions from the rear often came too late ; and, secondly, because they had now come to the region of griffes de chat, and as M. was particularly attached to that fruit, and there was no one behind to drive her, A. and G. could not get her on. Eventually they missed the sunset, and the others silently attributed it to the unlucky combination of tea- pot and petticoats and precipice which had let M. loose upon her pet fruit. Griffes de chat are not very tempting things either ; resembling an irregular blackberry in shape and size, and a half-ripe barberry in colour, and it may be added, in sourness. At last they reached the top, and pressed eagerly HOW WE SLEPT AT THE CHALET DES CHfeVRES 15 into the little hut to see how it looked now that they were really dependent on it for a night's shelter. There is no denying the fact that their hearts rather sank, for it looked incredibly gloomy and the air was one mass of midges. The left-hand compartment, which had been dignified with the name of the double-bedded room, was so perfectly dark that for anything they could see there might be bears or wolves or wild boars hiding in the corners, for the neighbourhood could supply all those horrors on occasion. Clearly nothing was to be done till they got a good fire ; so they hurriedly rid themselves of their encumbrances, and after a mad panic for a second or two when no one knew where the matches had been put, and another more subdued fright when the smoke refused to go out by the hole in the roof, they succeeded in establishing an excellent blaze, which soon cleared the midges away and made the place look quite comfortable. A little arrangement of small boulders formed a capital fireplace, and benches were easily made round the fire with the planks and logs which were strewn about the chalet. A., meanwhile, had set off to make what use she might of the fast-failing twilight to gather strawberries for tea, and G. now started for a more pretentious load of firewood, such as should suffice to keep the fire going till the morning. M. was left to make the tea, and to set out the various kinds of food which the whims of three people had brought together. The tea- making process was a simple one, as there were no 16 HOW WE SLEPT AT THE CHALET DES CH^VKES complications of kettle and um and teapot ; the copper owl, set on a stone in the fire, was filled with water, and when this boiled the tea was thrown in and sent to the bottom with a spoon. Before very long, A. had exhausted the twilight and G. had collected a suflSciency of wood, and the two returned slowly, not to say wearily, to the camp. By this time all appearance of day and of Mont Blanc had vanished, and the moon made vast pillars of moonshine on the surface of the lake, now between three and four thousand feet below, itself being twelve hundred above the sea. The scene which presented itself when they reached the door of the chalet was a perfect picture. M. had large talents for neatness and orderliness, and her utmost skill had been most successfully exerted on this occasion. On a large raised plank were arranged the different foods, according to their proprietorship ; ham for one, hard eggs for another, corned beef for a third, with a hemisphere of bread and an abundance of sweet Swiss cake for the party in general. One of the three had so far defied public opinion as to bring a piece of Gruyere with abominably orthodox smell ; before the evening was over, however, public opinion waxed hungry, and shared the cheese with the owner. On such excursions nothing is equal to a well-made wurst, if only one has a knife with a very sharp blade to cut it neatly ; the Jura, however, is not the habitat of ivurstj so the party had none. Opposite this stall was the fire, blazing away as only gipsy fires can blaze, the HOW WE SLEPT AT THE CHALET DES CH:^VRES 17 blackened little owl simmering contentedly on its warm perch, while on two suitable projections from the walls composition candles burned cheerfully and bright. The whole was a mass of brilliant illumination, and in the midst M. moved about with neatly festooned dress and short hair. ' Short ' is not usually an epithet of praise when applied to a lady's hair ; but in this case it is so, for M., having once had her hair cut short in a dangerous illness, looked so well in it that she yielded to the solicitations of her friends, and ever after kept it almost as short as a boy's. This nearly got her party into a scrape at the French fort of Les Rousses, which is in such unpleasant proximity to that Dappes valley lately ceded to France. The day of their visit to the fortress being windy, G. was seen by some of the soldiers to assume a pair of blue spectacles when he came to the dusty glacis, and evidently this excited their sus- picions; imagine, then, how they bristled with the importance of detecting spies, when a sudden gust lifted off M.'s hat and concealing veil, and displayed a neat man's head of hair ! Picture or not, A. and G. were too tired and too hungry to stand long at the door, or hole of entrance, to look at it. Accordingly they speedily pushed in towards their provisions, and as soon as the milk-bottle and the butter had been brought from the window- hole in which they had been set to cool, proceeded to attack the food. It was found at once, however, that the fire was too hot, although the tea stall was as c 18 HOW WE SLEPT AT THE CHALET DES CHJiVHES far from it as the limits of the hut would allow. So a screen became necessary, and G. felt a peculiar pleasure in running a couple of alpenstocks through the maternal Vicuna shawl which he had been forced to carry, by which means it was suspended from what remained of the rafters. When the tea came to be poured out, it issued from the pot almost black, and in answer to the exclamations of A. and G., M. said, ' Oh, yes, of course she had put in all the tea. Wasn't she meant to do so ? ' This was a bitter blow to the others, who had set their hearts on a refreshing cup at sunrise. M., however, fertile in expedient, at once extracted the leaves from the pot and spread them on a stone by the fire to dry, remark- ing that the present tea was strong enough without them, and they would make good enough tea in the morning, as they had been in the water a very short time. At a 'later period of the evening, A. took it into her head to sit down, quite promiscuously, upon this very stone, and so carried off the nucleus of the morning cup on her dress, thus making G. the only one of the party who had not plotted against the sunrise tea, a fact which at once reconciled him to its loss. When there was really nothing more to be ex- tracted from the owl or the bottles, the three adven- turers made a promenade on the little plateau on which their castle stood. The lights on the opposite moun- tains were wonderful. High up on the Alps a flame would appear for half a minute, large and clear, and HOW WE SLEPT AT THE CHALET DES CHIiVRES 19 then vanish ; sometimes there were five or six full broad lights all in existence at once, stretching from the extreme east among the Bernese Alps, to the Grand Saleve and the westernmost Jura. Brilliant beyond all, however, were the distant lights of the Grand Quai of Geneva, each given in glittering dupli- cate by the still waters which border the current of the Rhone. The wooded plain, too, at the foot of the cone of rock, seemed to be one blaze of bonfires, large trees burning as they stood, and black figures, frightfully like Hartz demons, apparently jumping about in the flames. This added immensely to the effect of the night scene, and the travellers congratulated themselves largely on their ggod fortune when they learned the next day that the men of a chalet below had chosen this particular night for clearing away sundry groups of trees, in order to increase the neighbouring pasturage. At eleven o'clock, or thereabouts, the moon dis- appeared, and it was time to think of bed. On this point an important change had been made in the arrangements. The left-hand compartment of the chalet was so exceedingly dark and gloomy, that A. and M. preferred the idea of sleeping by the fire in the warm central division, which had so far been used as kitchen and drawing-room. G.'s apartment, on the other hand, was so utterly exposed to every breath that chose to blow, and was in such a litter with bits of stone and tufts of grass growing here and there, and pieces of plank lying in all directions, that he came to c 2 20 HOW AVE SLEPT AT THE CHALET DES CH^VEES the conclusion that all three had better sleep in the same place. Planks and logs were accordingly arranged so as to form planes of various inclinations, as each one fancied, on which they might lie with as much comfort as may in the nature of things be extracted from hard or soft wood, the present material being decidedly hard and presumably damp. Then all had a final half basin of heated red wine, the very worst thing it is possible to take before going to bed ; the fire was made up with solid logs ; the piece of door was dragged out of its corner, and propped so as to cover a maximum amount of the hole by which entrance to the hut liad been won ; sundry holes almost as large, by courtesy called windows, were so far blocked up with stoifes as to render it a difficult matter for anyone to get through from the out- side though who should attempt to get through, except the mountain demons, no one could say, and they didn't suppose that stones would stop them if they had a mind to come. At the same time it did seem very probable, or at least very possible, that the startling appearance of a large and sustained fire in the chdlet des Mvres might draw some of the rough men from the chalets below ; and so, while laughing at the idea of its being in any sort of way a necessary precaution, G. thought it wise to make his fortifications as strong as possible. By common consent a fine club was rescued from the fire, to be used as a defensive weapon in case of need ; then the party proceeded not to undress, but to dress themselves, G. assuming his waistcoat, for so far a coat HOW WE SLEPT AT THE CHALET DES CHEVEES 21 alone had been almost too much, and A. and M. wrapping little handkerchiefs about their heads in the approved style. After this they proceeded in a body with torches to investigate the dark corners of the rejected double-bedded room ; and finally the candles were put out, and a half-trembling ' Good-night ! ' was wished all round. Of course each of the three had determined to lie as still as a mouse, and make no noise to disturb the others. But somehow one's bones do come through to the skin so very soon when the mattress is composed of roughish five-inch planks laid gridiron-wise, that one or other was generally on the turn. And however well it may fit at first, a hollow^ place in a log of wood doesn't do for a pillow as a permanency, especially when the rest of the log is very knobby, and the dozer's head wanders uneasily from one knob's point to another. When all was over, each had a hazy recollection of a black dream, the leading idea of which was a sleepless night ; but whether the sleeplessness was a reality, or, as so often happens, merely an unpleasant dream, no one could feel quite sure. While all was yet perfectly fresh the reports ran as follows : G. believed that he had slept in every new position for a minute or two, until his bones came through, when he turned and slept again, and so on. M. asserted that she had not slept at all, but had lain in tolerable comfort for some time, after which she got up stealthily and sat by the 22 HOW AVE SLEPT AT THE CHALET DES CHEVRES fire. A. confessed at once that she was seized early in the night with a fit of the horrors, and lay till daybreak in a state of blank fright. It was remarkable, however, that neither A. nor G. knew anything of M.'s sitting by the fire, and that each thought the other had slept tolerably soundly all night; which threw an air of suspicion upon everyone's story. On the whole, each of the party would probably endeavour to disabuse any rash young friends, who might be similarly inclined, of the idea that under the given circumstances a night is short or a log soft. At length M. announced, in a voice that was clearly glad to be heard again, that it was four o'clock, and that something like colour was beginning to appear in the sky ; upon which all started up with great alacrity, privately making wry faces at their hard beds, but each unwilling to say the first word of abuse. The door was soon knocked down, and the fire, still smouldering, resuscitated to a magnificent extent ; a cup of Langlade and a little roasting fortified the party for the morning air, and then all three issued forth from their shelter and waited for day. M. had been for some weeks busy with a christening frock for a small niece, and having prudently brought a piece of it with her, now sat down on the highest rock of the plateau and proceeded vigorously with the large-stitch parts in the doubtful light. Already there was enough of diSused twilight to render Mont Blanc perfectly visible. Though the lake HOW WE SLEPT AT THE CHALET DES CH^VRES 23 lay fall in view, and the whole range of Alps and their neighbour hills for two hundred miles displayed their jagged horizon of grey rock and snowy points, the eye could rest on nothing but the king of mountains. The marvellous resemblance which the outline from the north bears to a massive human head, reclining on a pillow of snow and facing the east, was never more striking than now. The straight forehead, the short finely chiselled nose, the firm mouth and flowing beard, all lay calm and still in the grey repose of death. No one who affects to see a likeness to the old Napoleon's head can have had the opportunity of seeing the moun- tain as it now appeared ; no one who has so seen it can consider it much short of positive blasphemy to liken that strong and delicate profile to the features of the ill-tempered and vulgar Emperor. M. had not much time for her embroidery. There came first, for a single instant, a suspicion of a ray of light intercepted in the neighbourhood of the Diablerets, and the next moment a simultaneous cry, their first and last, from A. and G., announced that the sun, still invisible, had struck the highest crest of hair which gathers on the brow of the gigantic head. For a few minutes each instant brought a new delight, as the different levels of peaks were successively gilded by the rising sun. Gradually the glittering points seemed to descend, fixing in turn upon all the salient features of the profile. The mountain woke into life under the magic touch of light and heat : the face was no longer 24 HOW WE SLEPT AT THE CHALET DES CHEVRES dead, it seemed visibly to rejoice in tlie reappearance of its daily companion and friend. The great power of the sun for the last month or five weeks had added much to the illusion which is owed to the peculiar outline of the mountain ; for exactly where the shoulder of the reclining giant would natu- rally lie, a huge black precipice had been exposed by the melting or sinking snow, and fifty or sixty miles of distance reduced this to the very facsimile of an officer's epaulette. The choicest beauties of the scene did not last long. Nature is not prodigal of her highest efforts of light and shade. The mountains and the snow remained pre- cisely as they were when the first herald of the sun appeared, but the peculiar charm had left them, only to reappear when another favourable combination should allow the grandest portion of our world to assume again for a while its loveliest dress. No sooner had the sun risen than its hydraulic power began to mar the scene : a haze spread over all the plain towards the west, and only paused for a moment in its upward progress to afford a hurried view of the distant tops of the French hills, picked out against the still unmeaning sky by the golden messengers of the sun. With more of awe than they cared to confess, and in silence which they almost dared not break, the three adventurers turned at length to the hut which had afforded them so kindly a shelter. It required some effort to shake off the feeling that oppressed them ; and all felt HOW WE SLEPT AT THE CHALET DES CHI:VKES 25 a certain relief when a few light words, and a palpable return to the more commonplace circumstances of their position, expelled the overpowering reality of a too great beauty. It has never come back upon them in its full fprce ; perhaps never will do so. The human mind is not capable of retaining a living recollection of a scene whose loveliness is divine. The utmost that can remain in the memory is the consciousness that at one period of existence a beauty too great for comprehension has stirred the soul, too pure for words, which has yet left behind it a certain intelligence not possessed before by the mind, a certain proneness to discover beauty where it is not strikingly and prominently visible, an in- exhaustible consolation in the idea that the best feelings of heart and mind have been face to face with the most perfect impersonation of nature, and have carried away from the meeting some portion of her reflected divinity. There was no object to be gained by a longer stay on the plateau, so, as soon as G. had put the finishing touches to the letters which recorded, and probably still record, the initials of the visitors and the precise date of their visit, and when all packing was satisfactorily completed, the descent commenced on the opposite side of the mountain. The object of this change of route was principally to arrive as soon as might be at a chalet where water for ablution could be procured, and milk for breakfast. Each step disclosed such masses of wild fruits in virgin ripeness that G. left A. and M. to in- dulge their appetites^ and hastened on to engage a cow, 26 HOW WE SLEPT AT THE CHALET DES CHIIVKES fearing lest the morning's milk should all have been put into the cheese caldron before the party could arrive. This would certainly have happened, for there were only two cows unmilked when he reached Le Couchant, or, as the patois map of the commune gave it, Gu-au-tzin, rendered by the natives (in English letters) Tsoo-ow-tchang. A. and M. having at length arrived, the three pro- ceeded to the well, an immense circular tank of water iced by the feverish night they had passed. Through a small round hole cut in the fir-trunks which formed the cover, they drew pailful after pailful of exquisitely pure and cold water by means of a balanced pole, and revelled in the luxury of sponging head and neck and arms with unceasing and undiminished enjoyment. The unfortunate cows were on short commons of water, all the minor sources, if there were any, being dried up ; and, knowing well the meaning of the round hole in the cover of the reservoir, they crowded round the washing party and pressed somewhat unpleasantly upon them. Thus G., for instance, was wholly engrossed in giving himself sponge shower-baths from a pail freshly hoisted up, standing with head bent submissively to receive the grateful stream, when suddenly the odour of new milk came with owerpowering strength to his nostrils, and he felt his hair caught up with a sound like that of a thousand lampreys, a misguided cow having taken a fancy bo the abundant water contained in it. A. and M. had less ponderous but more persistent tormentors. HOW WE SLEPT AT THE CHALET DES CHEVEES 27 in the shape of sundry goats, which evinced an insati- able desire to browse upon their hats and wicker baskets, and were of course able, unlike the cows, to climb up to them however high they might be hung on the heaps of firewood. The craving for fresh water was at last in some measure appeased, and with invigorated appetite they proceeded to a small paddock enclosed by stone walls, where they lay on their shawls under the shadow of the chalet, with their faces turned towards the sweet west wind. Here one of the civil men brought a white tub of milk, round which the three lay to breakfast, the remaining hemisphere of bread and a fresh supply of butter completing the feast. As if that were not enough, the head man of the chalet, pleased with the money which had been prudently given him as soon as the cow was engaged, and instigated by his native liberality, brought in addition a whole goat, as to its milk, in a separate bowl, and, greatest treat of all, a perfect little goat's tomme, reclining in a bower of fresh gentian leaves. It was well that one of the party had brought a small, a very small bottle of brandy to qualify the milk, for indeed the quantity taken needed something to qualify it. No one can understand the full force of the temp- tation, who has not found himself lying on soft green grass (a Vicuna shawl, say, intervening), lulled by the deep or tinkling bells of the authors of his feast, fanned by a Jura breeze, and shaded from the early sun by a Jura chalet ; a white-wood bowl of the purest possible 28 HOW WE SLEPT AT THE CHALET DES CHEVEES milk rippling its gentle blandishments before his eyes, and a tastefully carved wooden ladle suggesting the means of making those placid smiling charms his OAvn. M. alone could in any way be called temperate ; she was the owner of the brandy-bottle, and not being able to imbibe much milk even when disguised with brandy, she soon retired from all active part in the meal, and, making over the brandy to G., worked composedly at her niece's christening frock. One thing alone could be called a drawback. In one corner of the paddock there was a small breach in the loose wall, and through this an inquisitive young goat essayed to visit the party. They knew well enough that once in it could not be driven out. And the chances amounted almost to a certainty that, in evading expulsion, the little wretch would frisk itself into one of the milk bowls, and leave the paddock in general in a state similar to that of the room whose occupant was annoyed by a bluebottle fly. Thus it was necessary constantly to make up the breach with temporary fortifications, which the persistent goat as constantly pulled down. Blows gently administered, it is true were of no avail, and only seemed to increase its curiosity ; but, by one means or another, the enemy was kept out, G. groaning sadly over the interruptions which the repairing of the defences cost him. It is perhaps not fair to say that this was the only draw- back, for A., whose friends were wont to call her slightly fastidious, was troubled by a small species of HOW WE SLEPT AT THE CHALET. DES CHEVRES 29 slug, which the lovely grass she admired so much seemed to produce in considerable numbers. These, disdaining their native soil, shewed an unvarying and unanimous desire to repose on the shawls of the party." At length it was time to start for the lower regions, by a wood-road which led round the base of the cone to the Chalet de Grantene. We have not space for describ- ing the triumphant jodeln of the friendly chalet men there, or the congratulatory tremulousness of their master's tail. Neither may we tell of the excitement which all Arzier felt on the return of the mad people. Perhaps, also, it is unnecessary to add, that for some months none of the party could shew the slightest indi- cation of cough or cold, without calling forth maternal groans over that night on the summit of the Jura. 30 HOW WE MOUNTED THE OLDENHORN^ Some of my readers may recollect that they were carried up last September (1863) to see the sunrise from a summit of the Jura range. They must now take a higher and a wider flight, and, crossing many leagues of land and water, deposit themselves for a while in the picturesque valley of the Upper Ormont Ormont dessus. It would be well for them if they were really in that lovely spot. A comfortable rustic pe^ision at three and a half francs a day without wine, or another at four francs which may be described as simply luxurious, will set the main question at rest even for a Briton who does not change with the sky. The cheaper house is close to the Grand' Eau, whose rising and falling with the waxing and waning power of the sun on the glaciers close at hand may be watched from hour to hour, sometimes from minute to minute. On the tamer side of the valley, though such an epithet even in comparison is strangely out of place, the world is shut out by the lofty green and grey range over which Chaussy and La Pare and Isenaux preside ; while the opposite barrier is formed by the inexpressible grandeur Comhill MagaziTie, July 1864. HOW AVE MOUNTED THE OLDENHORN 31 of the amphitheatre which contains the Creux de Champ, formed of perpendicular rocks down which the glaciers creep wherever they find an exception to the prevailing perpendicularity, and countless cascades, of every size and shape wherein most beauty may be found, come tumbling headlong with no such careful search. Once in the Creux de Champ it might be supposed that its precipices reach the skies ; but on emerging it is found that nature has reared a higher trophy still, for clear above all stretches up a steep and iceless mass of rock, the queen of all that region the Oldenhorn. It was currently reported in the Upper Ormont valley that two English ladies had ascended this moun- tain a year or two before, and on enquiry at the pension it was found that a son of the hou^e had been one of the guides on that occasion. What had once been done by two English ladies, two English ladies might do again, and A. and M. had accordingly set their hearts upon making the attempt as soon as G. joined them, for, as in the previous year, that male person's holidays began rather late. In the Pension Gottraux there was a some- what motley collection of guests, and among them a remarkably pleasant family, whose oldest son was a manly Swiss of sixteen or seventeen, with much of botanical and other knowledge. Madame D'E. was anxious that her son should prove a good mountaineer, and to the great satisfaction of the English trio she proposed that he should accompany them to make trial of his powers. 32 HOW WE MOUNTED THE OLDENHORX It was about half-past three in the afternoon when the party left the pension, the Oldenhom overhead gazing with defiant contempt upon the many adieux. Never was an excursion commenced with such evil pro- mise. M. had privately confessed to A. a violent headache, with intermittent dizziness, while A., in her anxiety to cure a blister, had aggravated it to an all but incapacitating extent ; D'E. had run the point of an alpenstock into the top of his foot a day or two before, and G. suffered silently spasmodic premonitories. And never was such promise so belied ; for the result was one great total of complete enjoyment. The work for the evening was to be a four hours' walk by the Col de Fillon^ and up the left bank of the Reuschbach to the Ghdlets cVAudon, which were to be reached between eight and nine o'clock and left at two or three the next morning, some one having picked up an idea that beds were to be procured in the straw in one of the cluster of chalets. The Grand' Eau has two main sources : the one from the Creux de Champ, con- sisting of the water which pours down from innumerable points of the Sexrouge glacier, and also of large supplies welling up from dozens of limpid sources in the level meadows at the mountain foot ; the other sent forth by the northern slope of the same glacier, and bursting from the rocks in a clear arch for the last hundred feet or two of its fall. This is the Dard, and up its course their path lay until the fall was passed on the right hand. There are few things more charming among HOW WE MOUNTED THE OLDENHORN 33 Alpine delights than to lie on a summer's day on the richly flowered grass, beyond the farthest point to which the spray of a glacier fall can fly, and watch the span of the arch becoming broader with the growing power of the sun upon the ice. As the forenoon minutes pass swiftly on, the unbroken stream flies farther and farther from the face of the rock, its volume sensibly increasing ; trout might rise where in the morning all was dry gravel, and by the time that hunger steps in to end the romance, the whole scene has passed through in- numerable variations of beauty, each in its turn the most beautiful. This evening, however, their minds were intent upon other things; the Dard might leap and dance in its wild fall as madly as it chose, they had no eyes for its grand and graceful fling : the thoughts of t(5-morrow's labours and dangers sat visibly upon more than one brow, and perhaps some fear of coming beds intruded itself among loftier cares. After a time a small stream was reached which flowed eastwards, the Dard having passed away to the west, and for the rest of the way the glacier falls precipitated themselves into this stream, which carries their waters into the Saane, and thence by the Aar and the Rhine tp the German Ocean. Thus of two falls from the same glacier, within rifle-shot of each other, one carries the debris of the Oldenhorn to puzzle the delicate fish of the Mediterranean, and the other will float a piece of Olden pine to be picked up on the silent sands D 34 HOW WE MOUNTED THE OLDENHORN of Scarborough. ^ Even this phenomenon did not engage their attention long, for now Alexandre, our guide, suddenly left the beaten track which would have led to La Reusch and Gsteig (Chatelet), and, crossing the stream, plunged into a steep and pathless pine forest. At the upper end of this he expected to strike a path skirting the foot of the precipices on the right, by which means ' a good half-hour ' could be saved. But short cuts are bad roads. After a mile or two of very hard work, each difficult step rewarded, it is true, by some fresh majesty in the surrounding trees, the party was brought to a sudden stop by a scene of such chaotic confusion as defies description by pen or pencil. ' Behold a true eboulement ! ' was all that Gottraux could say, referring to the eboulement of the Diablerets which was to be the next course attempted by the throe English. And indeed that was exactly what it was : a vast mountain of rock had fallen, leaving a deep chasm from top to bottom of the precipice overhead, and sweeping down in its course a broad belt of forest, and alas ! the very path for which the travellers had been making. It seemed at the first glance impossible to cross the track of the rock avalanche ; but in the Alps, as in other parts of the world, impossibilities are ' Murray did not allow this. In his * Clue Map of Switzerland ' (9th edition, 1861), he made the Saane flow on contentedly till it had passed Freiburg, and almost reached the battlefield of Laupen, when some evil impulse turned it southward, to be finally lost in the Schwarze See ; whereas the local belief is, that it flows past Laupen and falls into the Aar some fifteen miles below Berne. HOW WE MOUNTED THE OLDENHORN 35 wont to melt before determination and care, and in no long time the path was struck on the opposite side, at the point where its continuity had met with so sudden a solution. But the word ' path ' is a misnomer, if it conveys any such idea as it might do on a Scotch or English hillside : it was a thing of faith rather than of sight ; and to ' miss the path ' amounted to a shallow euphemism for breaking one's neck. Unfortunately the latter was the form in which the affair presented itself to A.'s mind, and accordingly she did not display too much alacrity when the path came periodically to more complete disappearances at the critical points. Gottraux confessed the next day that he had brought them by this path in order to test their powers of head and legs, and that at one peculiarly awkward place he had turned to D'E. and whispered that the great demoiselle could not manage the Oldenhorn. He had not taken national character into his calculations, however, and A. nobly proved him wrong when it came to the point. As considerable time had been lost in one way or other, they now made what haste they could, stopping, however, to admire to the full the grand loveliness of the broken falls of the Reusch. Before very long they had ascended by a series of zigzags, with a constant lift as severe as the Lantern Tower of York Minster, to the top of the precipitous rocks, when they found themselves on the edge of a small and almost level pasturage the Olden Alp, down the middle of which the Reusch cut its D 2 36 HOW WE MOUNTED THE OLDENHOEN noisy way with the puerile waste of power of one whose first important plunge has not been made. The pleasant grass was dotted thickly with cows and goats, and the large cluster of chalets lay agreeably near, the whole hemmed in on the east by the harsh and naked mass of the Sanetschhorn, too grand to be grotesque, yet bordering closely on the fanciful in some of its forms, and on the west by the suspended precipices round whose other side their way had lain. At the farther end, as there was still light enough to perceive, were massed the snows at the base of the Oldenhorn, the inhospitable steepness of the peak itself affording them no long resting-place on its sides. Above the snow, and more to the left, the edge of the Sanfleuron glacier (patois Tzanfleuron) frowned seemingly close at hand, and brought home to their hearts, not without an accompanying impulse of chill awe, the fact that they were approximating at this late hour of the night to the regions of perpetual ice and snow. At last the right chalet was reached, and they entered without much ceremony. There were human beings within, for grunts plusquam-porcine issued from the darkness, and as Gottraux's tongue was only French, and the party had now passed from Vaud to Berne, D'E. enquired in his worst German whether beds were to be had there. The inmates evidently did not under- stand him, nor he their rejoinder ; but the others were hungry and tired, and so took a hopeful view of the matter, and boldly interpreted the sounds to mean yes HOW WE MOUNTED THE OLDENHORN 37 and a welcome. Then something shuffled along the floor and began to blow, and in a few seconds the smouldering embers produced a blaze, and a motionless figure in an apology for a gown was seen holding a piece of unlighted candle, promptly put to its natural use by the new-comers. Knapsacks were taken off, a board was propped up to form a table, bread and wurst and tea and coffee were unpacked, and at last the landlady was galvanised into exposing a three-legged pan of water to the now handsome blaze, and producing a vessel of cream two feet high, from which they baled for themselves full basins until all were for the present appeased. The fire was in the middle of the earthen floor, kept within moderate bounds by three stone walls about the height of the cream-jug, on which dusky human figures began to make their appearance, creep- ing out from different corners and sitting in lumps on the walls to enjoy the new warmth. Fortunately the housewife was a very superior woman, who compre- hended that when a thing was asked for she must get it if she had it. One of the men, too, was good for an answer, or at least a responsive motion, about twice out of three times ; so that what with signs and what with broken German words, all things necessary were procured, with the sole and strange exception of butter, for converting what had been brought into a most promising meal. Suddenly, however, as they were on the point of sitting down to enjoy it, a rush of many feet was heard 38 HOW AVE MOUNTED THE OLDENHORN outside the chalet, the door flew open, and with screams and yells a dirtier half-dozen precipitated themselves through the opening, and banged the door behind them. The first impulse of one at least of the invaded party was to open in his pocket a large knife carried for feeding purposes ; but before he could do so, and before A. and M. had time or breath to scream, the intruders ranged themselves against the wall on either side of the door, and relapsed into total inanimateness. At the same time a rapid succession of angry roars, ac- companied by sounds which shewed that some horned beast was charging the chalet walls choosing, let us hope, the soft places explained the irruption of men. The woman muttered something of which the word Stier formed a part, and pointed to a dark comer whence the men drew each a long pole. Then, sallying forth as if moved by very deliberate clock-work, they belaboured the unfortunate bull until he took himself off". * He is diabolical when strangers come,' she was understood to explain, ^ and the very Teufel if they are women.' Tea was a delightful success, notwithstanding a practical difficulty which arose from the obstinacy of a rickety old bench. That piece of furniture was equal to standing safely by itself, and did not quite fall when one person sat at each end and one in the middle, but under no other condition was equilibrium possible. This was only learned by the experience of two catastrophes, when the rising of one of the party was followed bv the subsidence of the other two amid HOW WE MOUNTED THE OLDENHOEN 39 avalanches of plates and cups and food. After this it was enacted that no one must get up without giving due warning. When tea was finished, the subject of beds came naturally into prominence, and D'E. asked the woman to shew the way to the expected straw. She shook, or rather swung, her head in a hopelessly puzzled way, but at length, on constant reiteration of the word Stroh in connection with bed, she seemed to understand what was wanted, and opening a sort of door in the side of the place where they had fed, went through with the candle and pointed into the half- victorious darkness. She was not the only one of the group to point ! This, then, at length, was the meaning of Stroh : the darkest, dirtiest little cupboard, four feet high, resting on the ground, with two beds berthwise in its height stuffed with squalid patchwork, the whole propped against the wall, and used as a table. The face of the upper layer of reclining humanity would be within an inch or two of the under-side of the table, a favourable position, doubtless, for speculating upon the materials that might be thrown onto it during occupancy, while the lower layer could enjoy the tattoo of a drowsy cowherd, sitting on the table and making music with his pendant iron heels. A. said, ' Never ! ' and M. said, ' Never ! ' and the party fled. It now struck G. that, as corn is not grown in great quantities at glacier altitudes, dried grass might convey more meaning than Stroh to their hostess's mind, and accordingly he put his idea into such words as his 40 HOW WE MOUNTED THE OLDENHOEN ignorance suggested, and also made imaginary hay. Now, at length, they were on the right track ; sleeping on hay was clearly a routine affair, whereas Stroh was an unknown bed. This time she led the way with alacrity through a hole in the opposite wall, and ushered the sleep-desiring five for Gottraux accompanied them with a lighted lantern he had picked up in detachments into the stable where the cows were milked, empty now of all but one sick heifer. About eight feet from the ground a large shelf, decked with abundant cobweb, stood out from the wall, with a ladder leading up to it : placing the candle so that the hay on the shelf might be seen, the woman pointed silently to the primitive staircase, and departed. They looked at the shelf, and they looked at each other. A. was seen to shrink into smaller compass as the involuntary hand drew in her draperies, while a blank grey look came over her face, such as was wont to appear there when impossibilities presented them- selves for performance. Gottraux was the first to move : he had borrowed a dried calfskin from one of the men, and with this clutched about him, and a fiery handker- chief tied round his bushy black head and swarthy face, he mounted the ladder and flung himself down in an uncouth heap at one end of the shelf. D'E. ascended next ; then G. was ordered up ; and M. led jauntily the feminine division. A. b.eing tall, five or six steps of the ladder brought her face to a level with the shelf, and there it remained for some time significantly expressing HOW WE MOUNTED THE OLDENHOEN 41 unwillingness to proceed ; for Gottraux was now sitting up on end, and with his calfskin, hair outwards, and red head-dress, and the pattern of the lantern-side projected on his face, he made that part of the shelf look the reverse of tempting; while in its way A.'s own end contrived to look equally uninviting. However, it must be done, and at length she crept up and subsided with a protesting shudder. But Gottraux was not satisfied. He called attention to some foreign substance, which cropped up here and there at the female end, and bade them extract it from the hay; when to every one's surprise it proved to be an opportune duvet, with which A. and M. at once gladly covered themselves. The order of arrangement was this : the five lay parallel, Gottraux at the extreme right, and at a small interval D'E., with G. near him; then after a con- siderable gap came M., flanked by A. The lantern was put out, though not without dissentient votes, and then it was found that to those who were so inclined, the holes in the roof presented favourable opportunities for observing the transit of the stars. But little was done in that way, for the business of the night soon com- menced in real earnest : it may be summed up in one word fleas. If a supplementary word be required, it is forthcoming; it is snores. The former will convey a depth of meaning to many a troubled mind ; but it is probable that the full force of the latter was never so completely felt as on this occasion ; for, considering all the circumstances, there was something so uniquely 42 HOW WE MOUNTED THE OLDENHORN horrible in Alexandre Gottraux's snore, that its victims doubt the possibility of a successful rival performance. It was two distinct snores, the ascending and the descending, each frightfully complicated and subject to astonishing maxima in its execution, maxima being the opposite of lulls. Sometimes the ascent was a loud and jubilant trumpeting, ringing out clearly through the cold night air, and then again it was subtle music of more dirge-like type ; the descent was a deep prolonged groan, which shook the rafters of the building, and cruelly wrung the English nerves. Only the English nerves, for fortunate D'E. was so fast asleep that even an injustice to which he was subjected by G. failed to rouse him. Ideas of space and position become shockingly confused under such circumstances as the present, and perhaps G.'s bodily torments did not allow much calculation on his part. At any rate, he conceived the idea that the snores proceeded from D'E.'s averted head, and consequently admonished him with gentle heel in the hope of mitigating the nuisance. This having no effect, he became enraged and struck out with his left elbow, taking poor D'E. in the short ribs : D'E. flinched palpably, but the snore at that moment in the full swing of a triumphant ascent went serenely on, without the gasp which is usually observed to follow an aggressive measure of this description ; from which G. understood that he had make a mistake. Another disturbing element most unexpectedly ap- peared, in the shape of loud idiotic explosions of HOW WE MOUNTED THE OLDENHORN 43 laughter, which broke at intervals from various members of the chalet family ; not choruses, but solitary roars, as each one realised some unwonted scene of the evening. It was consoling to humanity to know that there was so much of life in these fellow-creatures, but the noise was a most aggravating anti-soporific. About one o'clock things became a little better ; each member of the family in the next compartment had laughed ; the fleas had exhausted their powers ; the snoring had become a normal condition of existence : it seemed almost possible to sleep. But it was not to be. The heifer below had so far been quiet ; it now began to dance, and mountain heifers sound or sick wear bells. For a few minutes this was writhingly endured ; then one after another started up, and declared it was time for breakfast. Gottraux and D'E. were maltreated into waking, a match was struck while they were still in the hay, and the party descended. Breakfast did not occupy much time, for no one was inclined to eat anything, though large demands were made upon the pitchers in which tea and coffee had been brewed. All were in a state of half-feverish im- patience to be out and off, and about half-past two the start was made, under the guidance of a glittering frosty moon which seemed to give a new character to every- thing on which its rays fell. The moon is in the way of doing this, reaching further than the surface and planting a spark of ghostly life in the heart of inanimate things. The English members of the party were by this 44 HOW WE MOUNTED THE OLDENHORN time familiar enough with the appearance of a glacier, but seen by moonlight the blue dip of the Sanfleuron was something entirely new to them. It was a living thing, possessed of divers orders of spiritual existence, and they walked along in silent awe, as in the confessed presence of these. Half an hour of this, a sharp look-out being kept by Gottraux for the diabolic bull, brought them to some- thing more practical in the shape of the first snow, forming a bridge over the infant Keusch strictly infant now, for its sources were bound up by a biting frost, and its voice had ceased for the time. The snow was smooth and level and delightfully crisp, and the fresh crystals, one taken up after another in ceaseless succes- sion by the swiftly moving eye, seemed to dance exult- ingly in the presence of unwonted admirers. Day soon began to break, marking its appearance in their imme- diate neighbourhood by a change rather in the character than in the amount of light. But on the proud crests of the surrounding precipices an imperceptible warmth of colour was suggested, to the mental rather than as yet to the bodily eye, which spoke of some influence more impassioned than the convent coldness of the virgin wanderer of the skies. After a time, D'E. startled the party by announcing that he had two shadows ; and when they all stood in a row to mark the curious phe- nomenon, the effect of the ten shade-pictures was very strange. If Peter Schlemil had been there, he might have come to some more satisfactory arrangement ; but HOW WE MOUNTED THE OLDENHOKN 45 he must have made haste, for the conquering sun banished the left-hand shadows before many yards more of snow had been traversed. But now the snow was no longer level; smooth still, for it lay on a sheet of ice, but very steep. Gottraux cut foot-holes athwart the slope, and by this means the highest point of snow was reached, at the foot of the precipices on which it had been unable to lodge. These were now to be skirted eastward until they should assume an assailable character, and the skirting process was no pleasant one. There was not a level inch for the foot to rest upon, the steep slope commencing from the solid perpendicular rock. Moreover, the snow reached within four or five inches of the foot of the precipices, and that extent of sloping shale was accordingly the only available path; while here and there the snow encroached, not soft and deep, but frozen into thin ice of most persuasive slipperiness, as the edges of such snow-fields usually are. It might be nothing to a practised moun- taineer, but it was very trying for beginners, inasmuch as the slightest slip must have led to a long glissade down a slope of forty or fifty degrees, with ragged boulders below stretching up inhospitable arms to receive the prey. At length Gottraux came to a stand, and announced that they must now go up the rock on the right. It certainly was lower than it had so far been, and the surface was more broken ; but still it looked alarmingly like a ruinous house side, and even Gottraux's goat-like 46 HOW WE MOUNTED THE OLDENHORN ascent failed to inspire confidence into the dismayed adventurers. It was mere ignorance on their part, and before the day was half over they had learned to look upon such things as a matter of course, and had risen to the requirements of the situation ; but they shuddered now and the chair seems to sink through the floor as the scene returns when the eye wandered disobediently to the slope of snow, and suggested the only possible result of a fall. This was the first of many like difficul- ties, for they had reached that part of the mountain which Mr. HinchlifF has graphically likened to a giant staircase with sloping steps ; the edges, too, of the steps were frittered away, and the loose shale lurked treacherously, at the steepest points, like some ruined stair at the foot of which our explorations of an abbey or a castle are brought to an end. Every angular point of the body must serve for a hand or a crimponed foot ; the elbows must know how to cling grimly, and the knees, and on occasion the very nose, must be ready to save a slip of half an inch from becoming a fatal fall. And thus they crept slowly up, Gottraux approving himself a perfect lady's guide, always cheerful, and taking a pleasure in making their difficult work less hard ; encouraging them up the possible places, and dragging them up the im- possible with the handle of his axe ; they all the while feeling like infinitesimal units clinging to nothing, and oppressed by the conviction which hangs about the face of a precipice, that the slightest puff of wind must blow them ofi*. But there was a grandeur of penetration in HOW WE MOUNTED THE OLDENHOKN 47 the absolute beauty of each vocal peak and mountain- top, whicb crushed scornfully through such human weaknesses as fear half undiscovered and incipient fatigue, and made its way irresistibly to those recesses of the heart where dwells the nearest approach to the appreciation of more than mortal loveliness. In course of time they came to the true level of the Sanfleuron glacier, and some of the party were anxious to make a digression onto its smooth and tempting surface, which extended without an apparent break for leagues and leagues towards the east, and south, and west. But some roughish country lay between their present position and the nearest edge of the glacier ; so the more prudent heads decided that it was best to get to the top of the Oldenhorn first, and take the San- fleuron on their way down, if they had not found out by that time that merely up and down the mountain would be quite sufficient for their powers. Their work now lay before them ; for the Oldenhorn rises in a sheer precipice from the west side of the glacier, and the ridge up whose edge their way must lie sprang from the spot where they stood, and lay extended as it were up the mountain's side like the contorted back of some huge antediluvian. Along this they toiled, a mark for the blazing sun, until the base of the final cone was reached. Its only accessible side was a mass of loose shaly stones, moving down bodily when a step was made in advance, and carrying the climber back through half the length of his stride. Here Gottraux 48 HOW WE MOUNTED THE OLDENHORN made a determined stand on a narrow ledge, which afforded no room for sitting down, but had the advan- tage of an agreeable back to lean against, and com- manded an uninterrupted view of the vast Sanfleuron far below, from its very edge at the foot of the precipice on whose face they stood. They must get some fotce^ their careful guide told them, before the last struggle, having observed, perhaps, some indications of giving way. So the bottles were brought out, and they pro- ceeded to get what force they could from crude red wine. None of the four will ever forget that ledge of rock ; for there, for the first time, they saw in its full beauty the suggestive elegance of the chamois. Even that cabined creature which feeds on the sugar and bread of charity at the Giessbach Falls is a perfect incarna- tion of all that is sprightly and soft; and the mere offer of a piece of Gemse at a table d'hote stirs up a sort of appetising romance. To the more experienced, it suggests the suspicion before tasting that some kid has died to furnish the luxury ; while after trial made the kid too often becomes an old goat, and suspicion becomes certainty. But in its wild state the chamois is irresis- tible, and the glasses were never out of use, watching his graceful course as he traversed daintily the glacier below, or stopped with head erect seeking intently and painfully the origin of Gottraux's alarming whistle. G. had directed the guide to procure a rifle the day before ; but unfortunately that was the day of the tir at Aigle, and not a rifle or a powder-horn was to be HOW WE MOUNTED THE OLDENHOEN 49 found in all the valley. It made no difference to the chamois one way or the other, for he was quite safe in G.'s hands ; but in descending they came close upon three more, penned up in so narrow a cleft of the rock that it would have been very difficult for even him to miss them all. When the chamois had disappeared it was time to start again, and up the shifting shale they ploughed stiffly and somewhat wearily. Did any one ever reach the top of a mountain, or any other great object of desire, without coming upon it at last unexpectedly? It is always a surprise in the last few yards or the last few seconds as the case may be ; and so it was now. Hitherto they had seen on the right hand the smiling valleys of Vaud, and on the left, many glimpses of the world-renowned giants which lie between the lake of Than and Monte Rosa ; but the ponderous mass of the Oldenhorn itself had shut out all the south-west view. No words can express their amazement and delight when this seemed suddenly to melt away with the last three steps, and they found nothing but the telescopic atmosphere on any side. It would be tedious and im- possible to tell what old and new friends flashed out from every point of the perfect horizon : a negative list would be much more simple, for the peaks that cannot be seen from that vantage-ground of 10,290 feet are very few. On their way to the summit, the Combin had been the easternmost of the mountains visible on the left hand, and had stood out with such massive 50 HOW WE MOUNTED THE OLDENHOKN prominence that they had believed for a time that in it they saw Mont Blanc. A different stand-point so entirely changes the character of a mountain, that their familiar knowledge of Mont Blanc from another side was held to be no rule for their present position. But now they were indeed undeceived, when the veri- table giant stood revealed in all that calm bewildering grandeur which its closer converse with the heavens has won. There is always a something about this mountain which appeals to a subjective magnifier in the heart, and the higher the observer rises the greater the magnifying power; that is to say, the mountain looks disproportionately high as compared with other mountains. This is usually attributed to the compara- tive solitariness of the whole position; but constant familiarity with the soaring outline seems to put a deeper meaning into it than this. At any rate, even Monte Rosa, never a very striking mountain from the distant north, is dwarfed into a thoroughly secondary place for spectators from the Oldenhorn, in the presence of its great rival. There was not a cloud in the whole sky, so long as the back was turned on eastern France ; but over that country the white clouds lay fleecily, their upper side presenting the appearance of a large army under canvas, thousands of tent-like cones rising up skyward and clearly seen from above. Over no other point of the vast field of view was there any barrier between earth and heaven. The mountains, clothed from base HOW WE MOUNTED THE OLDENHOEN 51 to summit in glacial dress, looked like some white-clad early Christian crowd at baptismal Easter-tide, raising the clasped hands of prayer and adoration ; with here and there one springing up into the eager attitude of praise, and seeking with aspiring palms enveloped in the bright garments of the new birth, to grasp the incomprehensible, to attain to the infinite. And the answering rays came down with abiding softness, and played as it were lovingly around the adoring head and on the hands of prayer ; and they sweetly lighted up the ascribing palms with divine phosphorescence. And the spotless virgin in pure Cistercian garb of jewelled ice and snow, at whose voice when raised in wrath the Wengern Alp is seen to tremble, and the rugged Car- melite at her side from beneath his concealing cowl, renewed evermore their worship and their vows ; and the ministering Engel-horner softly lurked behind. And nature unisonant seemed to sing Te Deum ; and antiphonal harmonies replied, for Jacob's dream was there. But yet from all this loveliness the eye wandered continually to the lovely Sanfleuron. A thousand feet below, it lay ; the fair bodily form of the spirit of peace and repose, hymning heavenward a silent lullaby which soothed the weary climbers as it passed. However, frail mortality has other senses than that of sight, and a certain unromantic member of its animal economy is possessed of a voice, and of power to make it heard. A lady, in writing of such a situa- tion as the present, has spoken of the rich sweet thank- E 2 52 HOW WE MOUNTED THE OLDENHORN fulness in being able to enjoy, which fills the eyes with happy tears ; but the males at least of the party omitted that ceremony, and proceeded instead to the enjoyment of a well-seasoned ivurst. There was barely room for the five to sit, and on all sides except the shaly approach the precipices fell sheer down ; nevertheless, they made a perfect dinner, body and soul enjoying an inimitable repast. One creature comfort the former found very unexpectedly, the keenness of the night's frost having caught a small patch of snow before it had time to slip off, and pinned it there for icing the half-churned wine. When the meal was finished, they opened the cmhe and drew out the collection of wooden labels on which the names of 'all their predecessors were carved or written. A. and M. sought eagerly for the two English ladies of whom they had so often heard, and at length found them, one bearing a ducal surname, with a Christian name now honoured by royalty. Some of the ascents dated as far back as the beginning of the century, and there were names among them that the world has heard ; but, to A. and M.'s great delight, no woman's name appeared except on the one label. G. at once set to work to carve a memorial on a piece of wood brought up for the purpose, and when it was finished they all agreed that it was more complete than anything the Oldenhorn had so far possessed. By this time Gottraux was fast asleep, and as they kept an eye upon him lest he should roll off, it was seen that he was going through some lively adventure. D'E. was HOW WE MOUNTED THE OLDENHOEN 63 in the act of remarking that the dreams should be very romantic on such a couch, when he suddenly awoke, and parodied the romance by exclaiming in the husky voice of returning consciousness, ' Le matelas est lien dur, Monsieur D'Espine!' When asked to give an account of his dreams, he said that he had been beat- ing an engineer for declaring that the road from Gsteig into the Ormonts, over the Col de Pillon, could not be made. This road had long been hoped for by the in- habitants of the valley, and curiously enough the engineer was at this moment prospecting on the Col, and he told the party in the evening that he had watched them through his glass as they rested on the summit of the Oldenhorn. After two hours and a half had passed away, with that ruthless rapidity which marks the march of moments of delight, they sorrowfully determined that it was time to start. They gazed on the charms they now must leave, with the long, lingering look with which it is supposed that in an earlier stage of civilisation a lover was wont to part from his mistress. Nor was the mistress in this case at least unresponsive ; for when the heart yearns to some snow-clad mountain, and cries aloud with the silent eloquence of the eye to its valleys and crags, each atom of the mountain has its voiceless answer ready, and gives it with abundant sympathy. But at length they forced themselves to rise, and once on their feet were soon equipped. The descent of the highest cone was a very simple matter, 54 HOW WE MOUNTED THE OLDENHORN for it was only necessary to plant themselves every now and then afresh, and the moving shale carried them down without any effort beyond that by which equili- brium was maintained. This effort D'E. fancied that A. found it difficult to make, so he went to her assist- ance, and the two came sliding down hand in hand, preceded by a rattling avalanche of stones. The others of the party had reached the bottom of the cone, M. going a tremendous pace with the support of Gottraux's hand, which reassured the dizziness she still felt, and on looking back up the slope they were considerably struck by the picturesque appearance presented by A. and D'E. From head to foot A. was clothed in dove-coloured grey, save where a brown hat and corresponding ribs of colour at the other extremity broke the Quaker-like monotony. D'E., on the contrary, rejoiced in white trousers and a flaming red shirt and a white straw hat, with a new botanical tin of the brightest possible green. Both of them were tall and slight, and in the course of their mutual efforts to save each other from falling their hands had been gradually raised up high between them, and they looked like those ornamental dancers who perform on china mugs and gaudy tea-trays. There was another reason for M.'s greater speed, which partook of the nature of a feminine mystery and was only explained later. Both A. and M. were care- fully looped up, but the sharp-pointed rocks which cropped up here and there knew how to catch the festoons and hold them impaled. M.'s was an elderly HOW WE MOUNTED THE OLDENHORN 65 gown, and with a finished grace it always gave way on these occasions and offered no resistance to the rocks ; but A. was more stiffly clad, and her festoons struggled with their captors, while polite D'E. was always ready to stop and assist in their release. So that although M. reached the foot of the cone long before A., she reached it more or less in ribbons, whereas A.'s more stately paces were encompassed to the end by untattered habiliments. At length the level of the Sanfleuron was once more reached, and as they all felt perfectly fresh a digression was made onto the glacier : their enjoyment of it may be gathered from a remark made in stepping from it to the rocks again, ' I could have walked there for ever/ The popular idea of a glacier gives it a sur- face like water frozen as it chops and churns in some narrow sea, and the cockney glaciers of Grindelwald confirm and generalise the impression; but a more smooth and level plain than the Sanfleuron cannot well be imagined, excepting in the Sanetsch corner, where crevasses prevail to an alarming extent. If the glacier had looked beyond expression lovely from the height of the Oldenhorn, the mountain in its turn looked beyond expression grand from the surface of the glacier. The whole sea of ice was hemmed in by masses of rock of most striking character, but none rose with such glorious abruptness as that which had now been made a friend for life. The melancholy remnants of the three fallen Diablerets stood out with 56 HOW WE MOUNTED THE OLDENHORN an air which told a part of their story, a story told in full detail by the chaos in which the Lac Derborence has found a home ; while the two that are yet to fall reared themselves to the skies with a full measure of preparatory pride. It had been the ambition of A. and M. to ascend these, and there is certainly a strange fascination in the idea of standing on the summit of a mountain ten thousand feet high, whose companions lie in shattered heaps in the valleys below, confidently ex- pecting the fall of the remnant that is still left standing. But the ascent to the bird's-eye view of the eboulement involves a long cheminee, and A. and M. did not care to have their clothes torn off their backs ; while the real ascent of the Diablerets was said on that side of the mountain to present ^ glacial difficulties through which no local guide would undertake a lady ; so that on the whole they were prudently satisfied with the graceful and more possible summit of the Oldenhom. The glacier only escapes beyond its rocky margin at two points : the one between the Oldenhom and the Diablerets, where its overflow forms the Sexrouge, a glacier which some weeks before had hurled down huge masses of ice upon A. and M. those rash adventurers having climbed up to its lowest point in a dense mist but had hurled them with so merciful a discretion that only one small piece took effect; the other outlet between the Oldenhom and the Sanetsch, down which gap they * The ascent from the side of Anzeindaz, including the cheminie or pas de lustre, became very familiar to them in later years. HOW WE MOUNTED THE OLDENHORN 57 were now to endeavour to make their way to the chalets d'Audon. They had determined that the route by which they had ascended to the level of the glacier was impracticable for the descent, when the whole giddy height and the steep slopes of ice and snow would lie before their eyes, demonstratively visible at every step they took. They certainly did eventually get down, but to this day one or two of them scarcely know how. Gottraux, in his anxiety to prove the way easy for he had quite come in to the view he had at first opposed went down thirty or forty yards of the ice slope like lightning, thus tempting D'E. also to try a glissade. Poor D'E., how- ever, got under way before he was ready for a start, and he shot down shapeless, providentially taking a line which brought him within reach of Gottraux's powerful arm. Had that chance of safety failed, the inevitable boulders were ready for him below ; but as it was he merely lost a little skin and his eau de cerise. Gottraux then came back, and piloted M. down in safety, G. undertaking A. and bringing her also down after various little accidents. She was sometimes not very sure-footed, and at the steeper points his only plan was to fix his alpenstock firmly in the ice a little in advance, and against this to place his foot ; then A., holding his left hand, was to let herself glide gently down till she rested on the upper side of this foot, when she could get a good hold with her own alpenstock, and then the slow process could be repeated. But she did not 58 HOW WE MOUNTED THE OLDEKHORN always liit the foot in sliding down, and on such occasions her feet of course slipped from under her, and with a wild shriek of ' Oh, George ! ' she flung her left arm blindly round his neck, and the two rolled chaoti- cally down till one or other caught at something. One of these rolls was alarmingly long, for A. missed her accustomed clutch of G.'s shoulder, and brought her left hand, still tightly grasping her alpenstock, heavily upon his unfortunate nose, so that he commenced the roll in a half-stunned state. M. and Gottraux were not without their tumbles too, but the others were far too much occupied to take any notice of them. At the foot of the glacier they spent a long time in collecting the lovely flowers which have chosen that inclement region for their habitation ; one, the fairest of them all, la frele soManelle^ with its delicate lilac fringes, bursting through the hard crusted edges formed by the frozen meltings of the snow and ice. Each of the five contrived to find a better specimen than the others of the happily named velvet jpied de lion, so prettily introduced in a German tale of con- jugal happiness restored : the arabette, with leaves like those of the plants which lower latitudes call ice-plants, seemed to fill its proper place at the edge of the San- fleuron; while various ranunculaceas, the small red glacial ranunculus, the white clusters of the anemone a fleurs de narcisse, and the large white Alpine anemone, rewarded their enthusiastic search. Then the chalets d'Audon were at length reached, the only HOW WE MOUNTED THE OLDENHOEN 69 disappointment having been that not one of the mar- mots which abound in that valley had made itself visible. Gottraux had no object now in trying the heads and legs of the party, so the path which had suffered from the eboulement was prudently avoided, and the better and more beautiful route by the course of the Reusch was chosen. They were met by Madame D'E. with a party, in great anxiety for her son's safety, four hours from home, and regaled by her with a ban- quet of cream in a chalet ; the two parties then united, and reached the jpension^ with flags improvised and few or no signs of fatigue, at seven o'clock in the evening, the five having thus made a hard day of seventeen hours after a harder night of three. But even then, and much more now, they could think only of the delights of the day, for all its hardships were pleasures and its dangers triumphs ; and of the night it may be said, that in the course of time they have come to look upon it as a most amusing experience. 60 HOW WE DID MONT BLANC ^ The ascent of Mont Blanc is usually called a very cockney aflfair. Moreover, it has been talked about, and written about, and lectured about, till one might suppose that every part of the mountain, from the Hotel in Chamonix to the summit of the Calotte, was as well known to the British public as the hills which stand about London. But one member, at least, of the British public had always found it impossible to make out, from any of the numerous histories of ascents, what there really was of diflBculty, and what of danger, in reaching the highest point of Europe ; and with the view of satisfying himself on this question he determined upon trying to accomplish the task. The training gone through in preparation for the struggle amounted to two days on a sofa in Geneva, with threatenings of bilious fever, and incessant attention to a leg which medical skill said might be patched up sufficiently for ordinary walking ; these being the results of many hot, fatiguing days among the lower mountains, and cor- responding nights of unsuccessful skirmishing with the population of Continental beds. ' Cornhill Magaziiie, June I860. HOW WE DID MONT BLANC 61 Call this ill-trained person, unfit for glaciers, G., and his companion/ a young fellow of seventeen, who had spent a fortnight in creditable ice excursions, H. The guide was a Zermatt man, whom they had taken with them to Chamonix, and when P. P. are given as his initials, any connoisseur of high mountains will know that a better guide could not have been found. ^ As a cheerful practical proof of the absence of danger in the ascent, there arrived simultaneously at Chamonix the complete leg and foot of one of the party lost in 1820, which had been found that afternoon on the Glacier des Boissons, and was exhibited to the new arrivals before burial. It had been intended to take one porter from Chamonix as far as the sleeping-place on the Grands Mulets, to carry the necessary provisions, and another to accompany the party to the summit as under-guide. But when they applied at the bureau for a porter, the chef-guide proved to G. with much politeness, from the printed regulations, that it was impossible to attempt the ascent without one guide and one porter for each monsieur The reglement declares that this number is necessary for courses danger euses. G. claimed exemp- tion on the ground that, as no one could call the Mont Blanc a dangerous course, the rule must have been made for the Breven or the Mauvais Pas. But when politeness and reason have failed with a Frenchman, ' Captain Gaskell, late 9th Lancers. 2 This was Peter Perm. 62 HOW WE DID MONT BLANC chaff is scarcely likely to succeed, and the chef merely bowed stiffly, and remarked that if monsieur would pardon him, the Mont Blanc was the most dangerous of the many courses dangereuses of the reglement, and he could not possibly supply less than three men to assist P.P. P. P. being a Swiss, and therefore impatient of interference with the liberty of mankind, agreed with the Herrs that under no circumstances would they submit, after he had vainly suggested that as one of the members of the Alpine Club had the same name as G., the difficulty might be evaded, for members of that Club can take what number of guides they choose. When he had listened to a homily on the immorality of his suggestion, he made off into the village, and by good fortune found a Courmayeur man, who was on the point of returning home. This man was of course not bound by the laws of the place respecting guides and porters for Mont Blanc, and he agreed to make a fourth to the summit, and to cany his share of food and night- clothing to the Grands Mulets. But the chef-guide heard of the arrangement in some roundabout way, and illegally captured and incarcerated the Courmayeur man, and so reduced the party to their elements again. Fortune did not therefore cease to smile upon their efforts ; for P. P. discovered a master-shoemaker, who was anxious to make the ascent, and would be only too glad to accompany the party pour son plaisir, and carry half the things. Of course he was to be paid something. HOW WE DID MONT BLANC 63 privately, but for all public purposes he was a gentle- man at large, and the chef-guide dared not meddle with him. And thus they were at length complete, one guide, two Herrs, and one master-shoemaker. The amount of food to be carried may be imagined from the following copy of the bill : Provisions: Mont Blanc Fr. ct. Fr. Ct. The . . 5 Brought forward 43 50 Cafe . . 5 Fromage 2 Sucre . . 3 Pruneaux 3 Viande de bcBuf . 5 1 bile. Cognac . 4 50 Jambon . 6 1 flacon Cognac . 4 1 roti de veau . 6 7 biles, vin ord. . 7 2 gros poulets . 10 1 bougie et 1 chandelle 1 50 Sel et poivre . 50 Verres perdus 2 12 ceufs . 3 Gros et pt. pain . 3 Carried forward 43 50 70 50 Ferdinand Eisenkraemer, of the Hotel Eoyal, possesses, for three months in the year, a secretary, who manages all these matters. The guide of the party meditating an ascent goes to the bureau of this gentleman, and orders provisions for Mont Blanc for so many persons, and the secretary puts up what he thinks proper. It is evident, also, that he charges what he thinks proper. The present secretary is a schoolmaster, whose pupils are handed over to his wife for the Chamonix season ; let us hope that she inculcates those lessons of modera- tion and honesty which her husband is meanwhile putting in practice. He is a man of friendly manner, 64 HOW WE DID MONT BLANC and of much imagination, which last has developed itself in a new table of capacities, k propos to his arithmetical work with his pupils in the dull season. Two Swiss, he says in his heart, one Frank; four Franks, one Boule. He therefore loves the English much, as a people of stomach and of purse, nay, he not only loves, he worships the golden image. He believes, or professes to believe, that they can eat any amount of food when they make a course, and pay any amount of money for it when they return. The fervour with which he squeezes an English hand is but a faint shadowing forth of the operation he performs upon the purse. And yet there are immense charms in the Hotel Royal at Chamonix, in the excellence and negligee of its table-d'hote, the comfort of its beds, the picturesque undulations of its billiard-table, and the sublime glories of its mountain views. The shoemaker was not promising, as far as per- sonal appearance went. He was sickly and small, and had a large white nose, through which he snuffled when he was in pluck, and whined when he wasn't. His name, he said, was Friedrich Zimmerman, of Thun; on which G. informed him that, as a testimony to his pluck in thus attempting the ascent, he should be called, not Zimmerman, but Immer-mann which seemed to delight him much and add something to his stature and his step. He began at once to explain what must be done, on their return, to obtain the certi- ficate of the chef-guide, which that exalted personage HOW WE DID MONT BLANC 66 gives for five francs to all who make the ascent. And when he was told that it would be time enough to talk about that when the ascent was made, he said proudly that he had already made a promenade to the Breven last year (5000 feet above Chamonix) without much fatigue, and had once reached St. Bernard in two days. The seven bottles of vin ordinaire were in reality only six, and of these P. P. had decanted four into a waterproof bag, which in its turn was carried in a waterproof knapsack ; as the verres perdus of the bill represent the missing fabric of the remaining two, it would seem that empty bottles are a valuable property in France. Before they had gone far, P. P.'s back dis- covered that neither bag nor knapsack was wine-proof, and as Zimmerman began to find himself very hot, Gr. took charge of the coats of both. This slight relief was not of much use to the shoemaker when they reached the steep zigzags of the forest, and he walked last, and cried constantly, * doucement ! doucement ! ' causing P. P. to become vocal with a song of two lines, re- peated ad libitum Langsam voran ! langsam voran ! Damit der letzte Mann nachkommen kann ! ^ * It is to be hoped that the shoemaker did not know the Folk- song of which this is possibly a corruption, for the comparison with the Austrian Landsturm would not have pleased him : ' Nur immer langsam voran ! langsam voran ! Dass der Oestreicher Landsturm nachkommen kann; Die Oestreicher haben eine Schanz' erbaut Aus lauter Speck und Sauerkraut.' F 66 HOW WE DID MONT BLANC varied with prose declarations that a good guide's motto should always be, langsam, aher immer. Still the shoemaker fell more and more behind, and it be- came evident that no amount of langsam would ensure the tmchhoTrvnien : so a halt was called, and the bundle of rug and wraps was transferred to G.'s back. But all was of no avail, and within an hour and a quarter of Chamonix he came to a total stand. The knapsack of provisions was taken from him, and all that was his was eliminated from the bundle of wraps and thrown on to the zigzag way, and then he was igno- miniously turned out of the party, and told that neither Zimmerman nor Immer-mann should henceforth be his name, but, instead, Nimmer-mann. P. P. said that a small auberge was being built higher up, and it might be possible to find a porter there, so he and G. made a division of the baggage, H. being by general consent too young for such work, and they once more started in hope. At the Pierre Pointue a new and cheap and excel- lent little auberge was found, kept by Sylvain Couttet, and attended to by his pleasant wife. In future ascents, it will be a good plan to purchase all pro- visions here, and so avoid the extortions of Chamonix, and save the porters some of their toil. Sylvain was speedily persuaded to carry half the baggage to the Grands Mulets, and off they went across the rocks in high spirits, Nimmer-mann coming on still behind, with snuffling declarations that he would at least cross HOW WE DID MONT BLANC 67 the glacier, and even bursting forth into a nasal song in proof of his restored pluck. But he was sternly bidden to cease it was not for him, of all men, to dare to sing ; and, as for the glacier, he should not put one foot upon it, with all those horrible crevasses. And so he was half bullied, half frightened, into returning with a party whom they found at the Pierre a I'Echelle, one of whom did his best to turn H. back because ot the lightness of his clothing,^ which had already stood the blustering cold of a storm on Monte Rosa ; and another, a most agreeable Frenchman, showered evil omens on the expedition by persisting in calling P. P. * Benin,' and correcting himself each time with a shudder, and Ah ! ce pauvre Benin, il est mort ! ^ When P. P. heard that this gentleman was a member of the Alpine club, he added the word Suisse with much scorn ; but his scorn became intense respect when he was told how worthily he had been elected into the English club. Good guides are too much in the way of affecting to ' This gentleman was afterwards proved, on unmistakable in- ternal evidence, to be the author of several interesting papers on glacier excursions. In one of these he has described his outfit for Mont Blanc, which he believes cannot be improved upon: 'A merino"; waistcoat, then two light flannel shirts, chamois-leather waistcoat, and over these a double-breasted cloth waistcoat, a light kind of " lounging-coat," and light over-coat. For the nether garments, a pair of stout trowsers, and two pairs of drawers.' The lightness of H.'s clothing might well surprise him. G., too, had only an old pair of trowsers, cut short at the knee, made of very thin flannel worn thinner. - Lost shortly before in an avalanche on the Haut de Cry, in the spring of 1864. F 2 68 HOW WE DID MONTIbLANC despise this Swiss club. Thus a famous guide refused to accompany one of its officers, because, as he said, he found the English club climbed better and paid better. Another guide tells that when his Herrs were dining in a certain hotel, members of the Swiss club sent a message from another hotel in the town, proposing fraternisation. He answered that his HeiTs were at dinner, and must not be disturbed; he would see about it after dinner. Meanwhile he paid a visit of inspec- tion, and found that the Swiss gentlemen had umbrellas with spikes, paper pantofles, and black coats and trow- sers ; so he burked the message entirely. Certain young malcontents of the canton Valais have conceived a disapproval of the principles of this club, and propose to form a rival society. They are to perform real feats, as they say, in the way of ascents, and, to shew their contempt for the pretensions of other clubs, are to call themselves the Order of the Broomstick, meaning the alpenstock, and their presi- dent the Grand Ramoneur. It might be suggested to them that if they would carry brooms also, as a part of the paraphernalia of the order, they might do some- thing towards cleaning their native Valais; and then the travelling world would heartily wish them the success which attended an ancient hero in a similar labour. The most interesting part of the whole ascent now commenced, across the shattered ice-fall of the Glacier des Boissons, and up the ice and snow to the Grands HOW WE DID MONT BLANC 69 Mulets a collection of rocks in the midst of the higher glaciers. A few minutes of jumping across crevasses, and windiog along ice-bridges and up ' vertical preci- pices ' of the same material, sufficed to shew that the danger here was simply nothing, as far as the fall of a man was concerned, unless he was very determinedly bent upon falling ; but from P. P.'s vite ! when the party passed the base of any of the overhanging pyramids of ice, it seemed that there was more room for a mischance there. Indeed, a very competent authority has laid it down as a law of nature or, at least, of the more adventurous members of the English Alpine Club that the only danger in mountain climb- ing is from avalanches and falling stones and ice ; for the guides have too strong an affection for their own necks or, shall we say, for their wives and little chil- dren to put themselves in positions beyond their skill. Perhaps the most striking part of a tyro's first ex- tensive glacier lesson is the ease with which difficulties are circumvented, and the excellent foot-hold afforded by glacier ice. Nor is anything more instructive and assuring than the first fall. As with a young horse at an early fence, so with young climbers on their first glacier, a fall is an excellent thing. It teaches a man the wonderful use of the rope, and gives him thereby much confidence ; and if, like the young horse, he is careless, which is not very probable, it teaches him also to look to his feet. He goes crashing down, with much clattering of icicles and the rattle of a truant alpen- 70 HOW WE DID MONT BLANC stock or axe, and has about time to conceive the idea that he is gone for ever, when a sudden and unpleasant strain upon his waist pulls him up short ; he hangs for a few moments all ways, like a wounded rook in a tree, till he is hauled up by his neighbours on the rope, regardless alike of the projecting keenness of ice-points and of the due precedence of head and feet. When our friends had been an hour or so on the ice, they heard the cannon of Chamonix announcing the arrival at the Grands Mulets of a party which had left the other hotel an hour before them ; and though the prolonged iniquities of the wretched Nimmer-mann had so much delayed them, they found on arriving that they had gained on the others. The great Murray says that the hut on the oasis of rocks is 10,000 feet above the sea ; and, though the verbal inspiration of a guide- book is the last theory a traveller is likely to take up, there seems to be no particular reason for doubting this measurement. But when it is added that ' the excite- ment of sleeping out on the mountain is part of the interest of the adventure,' the most diluted theory of inspiration is too strong. There are few places on the face of the earth more abominable than that little hut and its environs.' When the present party reached it, they found two Englishmen already established there, with more than the Chamonix allowance, two guides, namely, and three porters ; and three other porters had accompanied them to the Grands Mulets, and returned ' This was of course the old hut of over thirty years ago. HOW WE DID MONT BLANC 71 to Chamonix. The Englishmen had finished their meal, and were preparing for ecarte amiably converted into whist on the stones outside; but the hut was pervaded by guides and porters in every stage of unpleasantness. There were wet boots and damp men smoking before the little stove, the men lying about uncouthly and un- courteously, doing their unpolished best to ignore the new arrivals, who were infringing every golden rule of Chamonix. No ascent had been this year made by the Grands Mulets, but there had been various attempts, and the disappointed travellers had left the debris of their meals to become unpleasant in every corner of the hut. Fourteen feet by seven is its size, and although its foulness cannot well be imagined, it may be more easily imagined than described. It was not much satis- faction to hear that Couttet had undertaken to build a better hut the next week, and that 120 guides and porters had promised to carry each one plank in solemn single file, a procession which would drain half Switzer- land of rascality.^ The new hut was to have two beds, and the old one was to be left for the use of guides and porters only. Tea is a beverage most refreshing on the mountains, and tea had been looked forward to with much eager- ness. But the opposition guides had possessed them- selves of the only pan, and had commenced to make soup therein ; soup, which, even in its beginning, gave * Not that this present writer believes, with so many of his countrymen, that Mont Blanc is in Switzerland. 72 HOW WE DID MONT BLANC fortli odours of a compound vileness that suggested what its maturer moments would be. As the time passed on it was now five o'clock, and they had eaten nothing to speak of since an early breakfast ' Is the soup ready ? ' was constantly demanded from without, and ' No ' as constantly answered from within ; not that the Herrs wanted the soup, but they did want the pan. Those five men must have denied themselves their soup for a good hour, that they might enjoy the thirst of the wretches who had dared to come on Chamonix ground without a pack of Chamonix guides. And when the soup was made and swallowed, the snow was still to be dug for making the tea, and it seemed to be as obstinately slow in melting as the soup had been in making. Meantime P. P. took an opportunity of representing to his Herrs that if there should arrive anything, three was not a good number. An injured man could not be left alone, and, on the other hand, it would not be well for one to go alone for help ; so he strongly advised that, if possible, Couttet should be retained for the ascent. Now Couttet at the Grands Mulets was a man of higher price than Couttet under competition pressure, and so it came to pass that a long time was spent in making francs mean half francs, and then it was time for bed. The Chamonix men kept the places near the fire for their Herrs, and for two of themselves the guides to wit ; then the other Herrs reposed themselves, and then the remaining five ; every one, of course, HOW WE DID MONT BLANC 73 lying on the floor. But when the Herrs were settling down to dream of sleep, the guides, with one accord, got up to eat and drink and make a noise; and the clatter of bottles, and pots, and tongues, and the undulations of the floor on which the Herrs lay, as the heavy feet tramped up and down between the stove and the provision-shelf, to say nothing of more serious results when the feet were careless as well as heavy, banished all idea of sleep. Moreover, the damp and evil odour of the floor came reeking through the rug, and added a yet viler group to the melange of vile smells ; while all the angular contents of the knapsacks rose to the upper side, and tested the hardness of the heads which lay thereon. And when the hunger of the guides was appeased, and their tongues became more still, and the candle was blown out, and peace by comparison seemed near at hand, an evil worse than all rose into being. Seven rough men, and one guilty Herr, sleeping, after a heavy supper, with their heads lower than their bodies, and their mouths open, pro- duced a variety and an amount of noise utterly incon- ceivable. For some time G. tapped sharply on the floor with his heel at each crisis, and a prompt responsive thud told that a Chamonix man had interrupted his own snoring, and was taking it out of P. P.'s back, P. P. being a noted performer in that line ; but nothing produced any permanent improvement, and G. and the unsuccessful smiter got up, and spent the remainder of the night in the open air. 74 HOW WE DID MONT BLANC The tender-hearted moon was lavish of her purest splendours to reconcile them to the cold, and the ice and snow thundered forth their most majestic harmonies, as they poured in white and sinuous bands down distant precipices of rock. The very vacuum was moved which years of the Chamonix tariff had created in the guide's breast, and he grunted his unfeigned assent, between prolonged whiffs of tobacco-smoke, to the proposition that, even if they saw nothing from the summit, the weird waste and weird crashes of ice and snow would amply repay their toil. As a rule, however, it is not fair to draw upon a guide for sentiment, as that commodity is not in the bond, and the chef-guide has no tariff price for it. At a quarter to one they ventured to return to the hut, to rouse the various sources of sound into activity of a more useful kind ; and the fire in the stove was easily restored to sufficient vigour to melt a fresh allowance of snow, and produce a decoction of tea. The five Chamonix men, with the assistance of the departed three, had brought, at their Herrs' expense, abundant food for holding the Grands Mulets for many days, and they now suggested to the owners of this extensive larder that it might be better to eat something. The other party also proceeded to make a selection from their more limited, yet most magnificent store, but the vile air of the hut backed up P. P.'s cautious nur ein wenig only too decidedly. Then came the dressing for the ascent. P. P. possessed himself of his HOW WE DID MONT BLANC 75 Herrs' boots, and ran melted candle onto every part of them, especially about the laces and the part by which boots are pulled on. Woollen helmets and magnified babies' gloves completed their preparation, Except that G. was persuaded by P. P. to put on a thin Inverness cape, with the sleeves tied behind, and H. assumed a thicker scarf. The getting-up of the other party by their guides and porters was a sight to see, and P. P. sniffed a heterodox scorn in rare intervals of hard-boiled eggs. A Herr was caught, and extended on his back on the bench near the fire, with naked feet. Eound each foot paper was then wrapped, made soft and binding with much candle, the head guide going through all the graces of a young hospital dresser who thinks he has a turn that way. Then, with much ceremony, the stockings were put on, and another layer of grease run in, produced by the application of candle-ends to the surface of the opportune stove. Then came the boots, stifi" and white already with over-night grease, and coated now afresh. Over all, a pair of long brown cloth leggings, tied at top with gay red garters, with bows and flying ends. When all this was done, and the Herr was turned off the bench, he not un- naturally remarked that it was as well he knew from previous knowledge which were his feet, for he had no present sensation to guide him in appropriating a pair. These ceremonies occupied a considerable time, for the guides and porters seemed to think it right that each should do something, and it required a good deal 76 HOW WE DID MONT BLANC of lengthy manoeuvring and stage action to bring all five to bear upon one pair of feet. And when the feet were finished, long after the patience of the other party, the head of the Chamonix men suggested to his accomplices, dubiously like a man in a play that they might, perhaps, eat a little of something : an operation which lasted a good half-hour, and put out of sight much calf, and a family of cocks and hens. De Saussure was still more unfortunate, for his eighteen guides kept him till half-past six, quarrelling about the adjustment of the baggage, each fearing lest an extra half-pound should make him the victim of a weak snow-bridge. P. P. now informed his Herrs that the other guides had proposed that the two parties should start together and each cut half the steps, to which he had agreed ; so all the eleven, Herrs and guides and porters, scrambled down from the hut and bade farewell to the rock until their return to the Grands Mulets after eleven hours of ice and snow. The first cord held the party of seven; a guide at the head, then a Herr, then another guide, then the other Herr, and the three porters brought up the rear in a body. P. P. of course headed his own rope, with Couttet at the other end and the Herrs in the middle. It was curious to see the antics of the chief of the Chamonix guides. Taking his axe, stock downwards, between his finger and thumb, he pranced carefully off the rock and delicately felt and probed the snow, making a step in HOW WE DID MONT BLANC 77 advance with the air of a man ready to do and die, but determined to do and die with science. Whether he impressed his own people, did not appear; but the party behind scoffed and moved onwards, and then he theatrically made up his mind that it was safe to pro- ceed. The snow was in perfect order, crisp and smooth, and requiring a considerable stamp in the steeper parts before impression sufficient for a foot-hold could be made. As this was the first ascent of the year by the Grands Mulets, the only previous ascent having been made from the other side, the swelling slopes lay rounded off in virgin purity, and shone and glittered in the strong moonlight with all the firm fulness of nine unbroken months of incessant cold. And when the sun rose behind the Aiguille de Charmoz, convert- ing countless peaks into Aiguilles Rouges, the exuberant domes of snow put on that satin sheen which underlies the bark of silver birch. The effect of the winter had been very great upon that part of the mountain which lies between the Grands Mulets and the Grand Plateau ; and when the Herrs of the smaller party found that the guides must discover a fresh path among new crevasses, and give up the line they had been accustomed to take, they forgot to feel like cockneys tramping on a treadmill, and the ascent assumed the charms of experiment and novelty. Some time before arriving at the Plateau, and before one step had been cut, the Chamonix party dropped behind, and P. P. led; and as they never came 78 HOW WE DID MONT BLANC to the front again, he had to cut every step of the whole ascent. On the Grand Plateau, where for a mile or two the snow is almost level, the four held a serious discussion, the others being out of sight in the rear ; at least P. P. and Couttet discussed, and the Herrs sat on the snow, and drank cold tea and listened. There was a choice of routes; and the day was so exquisitely clear and still, that diflSculties arising from wind and cloud need not be considered, and the routes could be judged on their merits alone. The three points of attack lay in front, spread out like a fan round the upper end of the Plateau. On the left, the ascent to the Corridor ; impossible, from its long steepness, to the ignorant eye, and almost equally impossible to the experienced eyes of P. P. and Couttet, from the state of the crevasses at its foot, which seemed in the distance to be more than usually unpropitious. Moreover, it was the longest of the routes by an hour and a half. To the right was the base of the Dome du Gout^, and if only the overhanging glacier would be merciful, that was a most recommendable route. But P. P. argued that it was very possible that when that little diflBculty had been got through, and they arrived at the Bosse du Dromadaire, they might find the whole length of the final arete mere blue ice, and that would cost immense labour and much time. Finally, between the two, lay the Ancien Passage. It looked smooth and pleasant enough, and it was a short cut to the top, which HOW WE DID MONT BLANC 79 about that time was certainly a consideration. But the Ancien Passage has a history, and is a passage for some- thing else besides men. Here Dr. Hamel's guides were lost in an avalanche in 1820 ; and for the last three years thermometers and lanterns and scalps and limbs have been coming out from the glacier miles and miles below, and reminding the valley of Chamonix of the terrors of the heights above. So when Couttet argued that the day was most still and fine, and the snow in a better state than he had ever seen it ; and when he declared that he would guarantee that no avalanche would sweep the Ancien Passage that morn- ing; the Herrs called to mind the shrunk leg and contorted foot they had seen two days before, lying swathed in the boughs of trees at the wooden cross in Chamonix, and they heartily ratified P. P.'s determina- tion to have nothing to do with that route. By this time the other party had come up, and their guides were wholly in favour of the Corridor ; so while they made their halt, P. P. led on towards that side ot the amphitheatre. Couttet renewed his arguments for the Ancien Passage as soon as they were out of hearing of the Chamonix men, saying that he was sure they meant to try it, and so reach the top first. But he prevailed nothing, and P. P. went steadily for the crevasses guarding the foot of the snow wall which drops from the Corridor to the Plateau ; went steadily, but doubtfully, for he feared that the winter's changes had made the route impracticable. The ice and snow, how- 80 HOW WE DID MONT BLANC ever, must be very obstinate through which those keen divergent Zermatt eyes can find no path, and the four had already been performing the part of flies for a quarter of an hour or so on the wall, when a noise more expressive than thunder brought them to a stand. As they clung to the frozen snow, and glanced out to the right, they saw the Ancien Passage swept by an avalanche of ice-blocks suflScient to have shattered all Chamonix. The whole broad couloir through its utmost length appeared to be in breathless motion, and far down onto the Plateau the vast masses roared and ran, as if some evil spirit within were urging each on furiously farther than the other. P. P. gazed sternly on the rolling chaos with the left eye, and deftly flashed on Couttet the reproachful right, asking with expressive thumb where was his guarantee. H. constituted him- self the spokesman of the party, and observed with characteristic nonchalance that by Jove it was as well they were not there. Some time after, when they were near the top of the snow wall, another avalanche swept down the passage, and they had the satisfaction of feeling that if they had adopted that route they must have missed the grandeur of this second sight and sound.* The Corridor was rather dreary walking, with only ' There was a terrible accident here not long after, a whole party swept away and killed, except a guide who was mounting by the edge of the couloir instead of in the couloir itself. As the guide was Sylvain Couttet, I reported to the chef-guide his persistence in my own case, and he was suspended. HOW WE DID MONT BLANC 81 a slight ascent, and nothing more interesting than softish snow ; but at the upper end a glorious view of southward peaks opened out, and the Mount Maudit in the immediate foreground was exceedingly grand. Here, in obedience to the sun's warnings, extra wraps were taken off before commencing the assault of the interminable height of the Mur de la Cote, up the whole of which no single step was made in advance without the assistance of P. P.'s axe. The other party had made no halt at the head of the Corridor, and were now within distant hail ; and it was amusing to hear after a time the voice of their head guide coming rolling up the ice, with a cool request that P. P. would cut the steps a little nearer to each other, as his mon- sieurs found them rather wide. We made them a little wider after that. Step-cutting is generally a slow process, and on clear blue ice it is not bad to accomplish an average of one a minute ; but here the continuity of the ice sur- face was sometimes broken by frozen snow, which cut more readily, and so the second party never caught us up. The short halt after each step, while the next was being cut, made the ascent of the strangely smooth and steep Mur an easy matter for the Herrs, and allowed abundance of time for attempting to appreciate the view. But whether it had really been harder work than it seemed, or whether the diminish- ing amount of necessary air began to produce an effect, G. called a halt at the top of the Mur, on the edge of G 82 HOW WE DID MONT BLANC the level plain which leads to the final Calotte, and harangued the party in general. It was not, he said, that he was in any way losing pluck, but he was decidedly in the body somewhat gravelled, and he must call for constant short halts for the remainder of the ascent. Since an early breakfast the day before (and it was now eight o'clock in the morning) he had eaten, he declared, a certain amount of bread and butter, and the thigh of a Chamonix poulet, the gros in the bill referring to the price rather than the size of the bird. Besides, he was taking up a lame leg to the summit, which every second step made more lame, and faintness and fatigue together produced a sort of mal de mer. P. P. answered that he was very glad the Herr had spoken out, instead of ruining the ascent by foolishly struggling on till he was done. H., on the other hand, did not like it quite so well. He was fresher than when they started, and was evidently good for a rapid race to the summit ; and moreover he was terribly afraid lest the other party should reach the top almost as soon as they, for then the world of Chamonix, now gazing eagerly with all its telescopes from the other side of the mountain, would believe that the parties had made the ascent together. So he kept helping G. with a tug of the rope when the step was steeper than usual, timing the tug with more zeal than discretion, and cheering him on with a youthful in- genuousness which made that aged and emotionless traveller smile in spite of himself; now crying, ' See HOW WE DID MONT BLANC 83 how near we are ! A few minutes more ! ' and now appealing to other feelings, and declaring that the party below was coming on apace. For the last quarter of an hour or so this ceased, for the absolute proximity of the desired summit banished for the moment all fatigue, and they mounted promptly to the final crest. Here they found that twenty yards off there was a point of snow a foot higher than the level of the crest, and these twenty yards G.'s body and soul refused to face ; but before he had time to collapse H. put a strong pull on the rope, and hauled him along with tottering steps to the true summit, whence they heard the cannon of Chamonix sending up a triumphant welcome. There was a similar point in De Sauss are's time, and he has left it on record that he kicked it, rather with anger than with any sentiment of pleasure. It has been written airily, in a book which treats of Alpine matters, that, on arriving at the top of a certain difficult pass, the historian of the ascent pro- ceeded to make what observations he could. The guide believes that at that interesting crisis his Herr simply threw himself on his face and howled, the only observations made being, ' I wish I was down again ! ' ^ I wish I was dead ! ' This of course is a calumny ; but when a long and elaborate account is drawn up of all that can be seen from some point which has cost the writer many hours of incessant and immense fatigue, one seems to see him in an armchair in his study, striking ex post facto lines of view on the map G 2 84 HOW WE DID MONT BLANC with a ruler. And so the less that is said of the view on this present occasion the better, beyond the bare fact that on three sides out of four the most perfect clearness prevailed. From the head of the Corridor they had seen the whole mass of Monte Rosa and the Mont Cervin, and all the famous peaks which realise the early fable of the giants' war with Heaven; and now the Oberland and Dauphine were added to the view. H. turned his undivided attention to a box of sardines, which the numerous porters of the second party had contrived to bring to the summit ; and a warm discussion regard- ing the respective merits of butter and sardines brought poor G.'s woes to the point of despair, inasmuch as the mere sight of an innocent bread-crust had been too much for him. In vain P. P. pointed out theDauphin6 Alps ; he only groaned and turned away. Ah ! now P. P. told him, he could see the Monte Rosa peaks and again he groaned and turned away; now, the Bernese mountains ; till at last he studiously faced a thick mist which concealed the lower parts of Neuchatel and Vaud. But even there P. P. had him, and ex- plained what he would have seen had there been no mist. There was nothing for it but to descend a little into denser air, so H. was ruthlessly torn from his sardines, and carried off down the Calotte. About twenty minutes from the top they met a friend^ ascending all alone. He had left Chamonix ' Mr. Frederic Morshead, of Winchester. HOW WE DID MONT BLANC 85 half an hour after midnight with one porter ; but this porter had come to an end of his promised pluck shortly after the Grands Mulets, and returned ; and so the Herr came on alone, making use of the steps cut by P. P., and accomplishing a feat never accomplished before. While they slowly continued the descent, and the solitary adventurer passed on to the summit and drank his champagne and ate his poulet, P. P. gave expression to the most unbounded astonishment. He knew this Herr's powers well, had made many courses with him and others of the best members of the Alpine Club, and had said only the day before that there was not one who could compare with him : still, he was completely overcome by the adventurousness of the ascent. ' Ah ! ' he kept repeating, ' das ist ein ga-ieslicher Herr ! ' and griesUch being a new word, he was called upon for an explanation. It seemed that Christian Aimer and he had been discussing various Herrschaft, and among the chief this present Herr, whom Aimer had summed up with a deep sigh, reminiscent of many a grind more severe than his soul loved, and ' das war ein grieslicher Keisender ! ' P. P. confessed that it was patois, not meant for grdsUch, and he believed that no German or French word would quite hit it off. It was far on the other side of schrecUichj and a good deal beyond heillos ; and heillos, a great authority ^ has declared, means past praying for. Mr. Leslie Stephen. 86 HOW WE DID MONT BLANC The grieslicher Herr came up with them again at the top of the Mur de la Cote, and administered the remains of the champagne. Here G.'s physical faint- ness caused him to develop that excessive and sharp- tempered prudence which is so near akin to fright. To an inexperienced eye the appearance of the rapid, even slope of ice and frozen snow, across and down the face of which they must follow the steps cut in the morning, was so unpleasant, that no account could well exaggerate it. The ice seemed to shoot clean down to the Corridor, with a slight rocky edge at the bottom, beyond which an insignificant drop to the Corridor might be imagined. But in passing up the Corridor in the ascent, they had noticed this same drop, and instead of finding it insignificant, they had been struck by the grand loftiness of the precipice ; and tWb recollection of that impression afforded a most suggestive measure of what must be the length of the slope, at the bottom of which the drop could now seem so small. H. had fed well, and was practised, and, moreover, had experienced the power of the rope. G., on the other hand, light-headed and heavy-footed, made every step in the belief that if he slipped he must inevitably carry the other three down with him. The grieslicher Herr, meantime, danced unroped behind, doing Albert Smith's account of the horrors of the Mur. The descent from the Corridor to the Plateau was something the same, only rather less so, to use for once a slang expression. Rather less so, inasmuch as. HOW WE DID MONT BLANC 87 although steeper, it was more snow than ice, and ended in a shelving blue crevasse instead of a solid pitch over rocks ; and, besides, the Plateau once reached, nothing worse than fatigue had to be faced. On the Plateau the party halted for a long time, and discussed the ascent. H. had never thought it could be so easy, and so little dangerous, and could sc-arcely believe that he had at last been up Mont Blanc. G. allowed that the ascent was in all ways less than he had expected, but expressed his great surprise that so many people had achieved the descent in safety, and his satisfaction that he was well out of it. Here for the first time he was set right about the power of the rope, and was informed that P. P. and Couttet would have held themselves and him with the most perfect ease, however wild a tumble he might have made. This would have relieved him immensely on the Mur de la Cote, but still he repeated that there was more to face than he had expected, not of fatigue, but of apparent danger, on the Mur and on the descent to the- Plateau. Then it was confessed by the guides that many Herrs require a hand, and two hands, at every trying place ; require also that their feet be guided and held ; pray constantly that they may be taken back ; and, in descending, are shunted down the worst slopes like logs of wood possessed ; indeed, guides are in the habit of saying that they would much rather take up a log of wood of equal weight than many a Herr who has ^ successfully made the ascent.' One 88 HOW WE DID MONT BLANC illustrious Alpine traveller's name was especially taken in vain. The second party had meanwhile come down, and had already got a long start from the Plateau, so the four in the rope, with the grieslicher Herr unattached, went off at a great pace down the slopes of softened snow. As they got lower and lower on the mountain they sank lower and lower in the snow, and, for a long way, well above the knees was little more than an average depth. Their theory and practice was that they stopped for nothing ; and so, when one of the four stuck fast or fell, he was constrained to do the impossible, and head and arms and legs became for a while a spasmodic chaos, which turned out feet downwards and face foremost, with mechanical legs, some yards in advance of the chaos point. Farther down still, the passage of soft snow-bridges over the crevasses became more or less hazardous, and the grieslicher Herr was persuaded to lay a hand on the rope. Here, moreover, they found the other party, and taking the lead, they soon reached the G rands Mulets, and packed and started for Chamonix. Once across the last snow, and down and across the Glacier des Boissons, they ran at such a break-neck pace down the remaining part of the descent that they ' did ' the watchful authorities, and reached Chamonix before any one knew they were within an hour of the place, much to the disappointment of that excited town. The waiter at the door of the Royal was the first to see HOW WE DID MONT BLANC 89 them, and he bolted like a rabbit with a ferret behind to order the cannon, but they triumphantly achieved their rooms before the salute was heard. From the Grands Mulets to the summit had been six hours and a half, to the Grands Mulets again three and a half for the state of the snow did not allow a glissade and to Chamonix well under three. - Next day they got certificates from the chef-guide. These documents stated that they had made the ascent, accompanied by so-and-so tous guides effedifs de la Societe des Guides de Ghamonix. Considering the illegal obstructiveness of the chef in the matter of the porter, G. pointed out to him carefully the ludicrous falseness of this clause, thereby congealing that evaded functionary, polite and stern, and vertical even in defeat. On the back of the certificate a list of ascents down to 1855 is given. An early acquaintance will scarcely know himself as N. B. Richowor, and what English gentlemen may be represented by Athbrun and Alpedecolatt, and Honourable Jackeville, it is difficult to say. Enslechndwom, Anglais, is said to have made the ascent on August 16, 1854, and a like feat would seem to have been performed on August 18, 1855, by M. K. G. Eirslacehndzous, Anglais also. 90 ICE-CAVES OF ANNECY^ Attention has recently (1865) been called to the curious works of nature locally known in Switzerland and in some parts of France as glacises, or ice-caves, being caves in which large masses of ice are found throughout the year, in latitudes and at altitudes where ice would not naturally be expected to appear in summer. Many of these are out of the reach of tourists who object to face discomforts, not to say hardships, in their search for the picturesque or the strange. But in the neigh- bourhood of Annecy, in what is now the French depart- ment of Haute-Savoie, three remarkable ice-caves are found, which can all be visited in the course of a long day from comfortable and attainable head-quarters. The present paper contains some account of a second visit to these caves, in the summer of 1865, the object of which was to complete certain investigations left un- finished in the previous year.^ Our party consisted only of two members of the > Good Words, November 1, 1866. * The descriptions of two of the caves, the glaci^res of Grand Anu and Chappet sur Villaz, form Chapters X. and XI. of my book on the Ice Caves cf France and Switzerla/nd, Longmans, 1865. ICE-CAVES OF ANNECY 91 Alpine Club, one of whom ^ has on various occasions done something towards maintaining the scientific character of that muscular society. We left the dili- gence, or rather it left us, at Charvonnaz, close upon Les Ollieres, a hamlet some three-quarters of an hour distant from the residence of our excellent friend the Maire of Aviernoz, the owner of two of the glacieres and our guide to all, with whom we had made arrange- ments by post for the farther exploration of the caves. Being breakfastless, we naturally asked for the nearest auherge at Les Ollieres, and were informed circumstan- tially that it was only ten minutes off, near the Church, an amount of detail which might in itself have rendered us sceptical as to the existence of the auherge, if we had not been fresh from England. We went on for more than one ten minutes, each new peasant assuring us that there was no such thing nearer than Thorens, which we knew to be some miles off, and declaring that we could not even be supplied with bread or milk awo Ollieres. At length a larger house appeared at some small distance from the path, and we determined, auherge or no auherge, to breakfast there. M. Joly, for such we eventually discovered the distinguished name of the proprietor to be, was supercilious at first; but after some explanations as to our position and inten- tions, he became polite and elaborately hospitable. His welcome hospitality went the length of milk and bread. The bread was black bread. It was a ' The Keverend Professor T. G. Bonney, D.Sc. 92 ICE-CAVES OF ANNECY whole loaf, and we could not get into it. M. Joly chopped off a piece of crust at one side, with a small hatchet, and carried it off to his little horse. Then we got at the inside. On enquiring about M. Mitral, the Maire of Avier- noz, and M. Rosset, the Instituteur of that commune, we found that M. Joly was a friend of both, and he proposed to accompany us as far as the Mairie, a pro- posal which we accepted with polite raptures. He put on his best hat and coat accordingly, and led the way. Finding that we were ecclesiaMiques of the Anglican Church, he proceeded to ask precisely the same ques- tions that the schoolmaster of Aviernoz had asked the year before, couching them in such very similar lan- guage that I am disposed to believe it is a part of the religious instruction of the district to slander the faith of our Church. When we reached the Mairie, about eight o'clock in the morning, we found that M. Mitral had gone out to work in his fields, under the impression that the weather was too bad to allow of our projected visit, and M. Rosset was still in bed. The Mayoress meanwhile received us with some empressement, and sent for the Maire and awoke the schoolmaster. The latter ap- peared first, in a state of great delight by reason of the aiTival of his friend of the previous year, and of some squalor by reason of the hastiness of his toilette. We shook hands most affectionately ; but with that insular coldness which characterises even the most adaptable ICE-CAVES OF ANNECY 93 Englishman, I abstained from embracing and saluting him, to his evident surprise. He was much impressed by the presence of the vrai savant, my companion to whom I introduced him. He rejoiced greatly in our turning up on the day we had fixed, inasmuch as it was his weekly holiday, and he could therefore accompany us without the necessity of any ingenious devices to excuse his absence from scholastic duties, such as he had employed the year before. Presently the Maire arrived. He, unlike the schoolmaster, did not look so well as in the previous year. The end of his nose was decidedly and fixedly red, and his incessant shrug had ended in chronic high shoulders. Considerable preparations had been made for our expedition. One of the domestics was to accompany us as porter; and a monsieur from Annecy, a good friend and confrere of the Maire's, had engaged to come out and give us his countenance for the day. Indeed, he had promised to condescend so far as to call upon us at the Hotel de Geneve, and accompany us from Annecy to Aviernoz, but that he had not done. To enhance his merits, M. Metral informed us that he was an auhergiste. As he did not appear before the start from the Mairie, his alpenstock was made over to Bonney, whose trusty weapon had been lost the week before on a railway in Brittany. The new possessor was not as grateful as he ought to have been for the honour, misdoubting the sustaining power of a long and thin mottled bamboo for such the stock was 94 ICE-CAVES OF ANNECY with a point something like the broken awls with which boys used to arm their reed arrows, in the days when boys were boys and made their own offensive weapons. A steep ascent through fir woods brought us in two hours to the furthest of the Maire's three chalets, where we encountered a particularly disagreeable hrouillard, and endeavoured to console ourselves by lunching on uncooked ham and boiled milk. Bonney was scientific enough to take an altitude observation with his aneroid, and fastidious enough to broil his ham on the end of a stick, marks of the civilised savant which caused the assembled party to marvel, and brought upon the poor Maire the affliction of burned fingers in the course of a praiseworthy effort of imitation with respect to the ham. Twenty minutes from this shewed the mouth of the first rfladere, the glaciere of Grand Anu, as Rosset had spelled it for me the year before, though now he said that ahn would be a better spelling. As we stood amid rude vegetation at the edge of the huge pit in whose side is the entrance to the cave, the appearance of the vast portal below, with its gigantic architrave of a single block almost regular enough to give the idea of art, was exceedingly impressive; and the large masses of piled snow which lay at the bottom of the pit, and led into the darkness, added much to the strangeness of the scene. The perpendicular depth of the pit is 120 feet, and the descent of more than half of this is by the snow which has resisted the summer's heat. Bonney made an excellent sketch from a point ICE-CAVES OF ANNECY 95 a few feet below the edge of the pit, in spite of the difficulty of drawing down-hill. The snow had very much increased since the last year, and it gave M. Joly much fear. That upright man came slowly and stiffly on, at each step tottering on the verge of becoming an avalanche, and not re- assured by the dreadful yells of Rosset, who had pre- ceded him and developed a mania for waking the subterranean echoes. M. Joly arrived at the bottom at last ; but it was evident even in that dim light that he had left his colour behind, and from observations made during the day it is certain that he never quite re- covered it. The increase of snow was still more per- ceptible at the mouth of the cave than on the side of the pit of descent ; and where there had been in the previous year a neat and precise pyramid of that material, there was now a huge mis-shapen mass, almost blocking up the entrance. The amount of ice on the walls was very great, much greater than before, and its folds and curves were beyond description beautiful and grand. To my great satisfaction, the prismatic structure of the ice, which many of those whom I had consulted on the subject had attempted to explain away, was very beautifully and clearly marked, and we chopped out at random masses of ice composed entirely of separable prisms. We found, as might have been expected, that an hexagonal arrangement pre- vailed ; but there were apparently many exceptions, and in numerous cases the bounding lines of the end 96 ICE-CAVES OF ANNECY surfaces of the prisms were not straight lines. Some of the prisms were decidedly of the nature of truncated pyramids, and others were twisted. The ice in the more solid masses seemed to be but little less hard and difficult to cut by reason of this structure. The pieces chopped out usually broke off at the depth of from one to two inches below the surface, and prisms of that length were easily separated from the mass by means of a penknife ; very often our fingers alone sufficed for the operation. A pit in the ice on the opposite side of the cave was the point on which our hearts were set. I had found it on my former visit, and had fathomed it to a depth of 70 feet, the aperture at top being a yard or four feet across. One side of the pit was the solid rock wall ot the cave ; the other sides were the ice of the floor. We nad brought from England a sufficient length of the stoutest Alpine club rope, and pulleys running on bars of iron, with an abundance of strong staples to make our proposed descent free from danger. To make it if possible comfortable, I had caused to be made a broad and strong belt of stretching-girth and leather, that we might not be cut by the rope while being let down. At the mouth of the original pit of entrance we had cut three strong limbs of young fir trees, which were to be laid across the pit, and used as the frame- work for the pulleys supporting the rope. But alas ! the first sight of the edge of the pit made it too evident that our plan could not answer. Notwithstanding the ICE-CAVES OF ANNECY 97 great increase of ice on the walls of the cave, the ice forming the floor had disappeared to the extent of nearly a foot in depth; and as it had departed irregularly about the mouth of the pit, and the opposite side was sheer rock with a narrow ledge at the former level of the ice, there was no place for the bars of wood to rest upon. Indeed, it was unpleasant work to approach the pit at all, in the dim light which alone reached that side of the glaciere, and for further safety we lay flat on our faces, and thrust our heads over the edge to look down into the utter darkness, knowing from my pre- vious visit that the ice caved away sharply under our feet. We had brought out a number of yards of mag- nesium wire for the illumination of the lower regions ; but when we began to make experiment thereof, we found that, without some further contrivance than we had the means of effecting, the wire was of no use to us. Each motion of the hand, or jerk of the string which supported the wire, caused the ignited portion to snap off, and after a score of attempts we fell back upon our oil lamps. Bougies had been intended to be our main stay for all ordinary purposes, but when we asked the Maire for some at his house, he assured us that there was not a candle of any kind in the whole commune, none nearer than Thorens, indeed. Of oil lamps we had two. One was our own property, a bull's-eye lantern purchased for the occasion in Cambridge, and it turned out to be the most utter imposture ever perpetrated, dying in an unscrupulous and unseemly manner within H 98 ICE-CAVES OF ANNECY a minute of each fresh re-arrangement of the wick. The other was a lamp of the country, from the luncheon chalet, looking completely past work, but doing its little best when tried. This we lowered steadily, with the care which might be expected of men whose only lumi- nary was being committed to unknown and perilous depths. As the feeble, twinkling light descended, it shewed in passing that what had before been bare rock had now a thick coating of ghost-like ice, pro- fusely decorated with large corbel towers and massive pendants ; and though immediately under where we lay the solid ice which formed the floor of the glaciere caved inwards, the pit seemed to be closely surrounded with ice through three-fourths of its circumference, and wherever the scanty light of the oil-wick penetrated, we saw still the same glacial decoration. Between sixty and seventy feet below the surface, the lamp struck a floor of ice, and as we paid out more line it glided smoothly down the slope, passing at length under an arch in the rock, which hid it from our view at a depth of seventy-three feet. Just before its disappearance, the flame burst for a moment into something like bril- liancy, and the flash revealed to us the smoothest possible slope of dark ice, passing on as far as we could see. This was close upon 200 feet below the surface of the earth, and the temptation te prosecute our designs was naturally great. But, independently of the fact that there was no possible j^oint d'appui for our apparatus of cords and pulleys, it struck us that the rope, in swinging about as we descended, ICE-CAVES OF ANNECY 99 must detach some of the heavy corbels of ice, and launch them upon the adventurous head below. Any- one of them would have been sufficient to fracture an ordinary skull. Besides, the slope at the bottom was, so far as we could tell by the one glimpse we had caught of it, so exceedingly smooth, and so very suffi- ciently rapid, that a man suspended, as we had pro- posed, with a belt under his arm-pits supporting all his weight, could never effect a fast footing, and so must be content to slide down shapeless out of the sight of those above, till such time as water, or a preci- pice, or the end of the 90 feet of rope, should arrive. Under all the circumstances, we determined that no good could come of an attempted descent. Even the dictum of a Cambridge friend, who, having the lowest possible opinion of all approach to instruments and observations in connection with the Alps, had told us that ' if we were smashed, it would be a comfort to be smashed in the interests of science,' could not to any practical extent ameliorate the unpleasantness of the situation. All the same, it would be a useful thing to determine how far towards the centre of the earth this strange stream of subterranean ice rolls down the wide fissures of the limestone rock. We decided sorrowfully that this investigation must be left to other and better-equipped explorers, and made a start for the second glaciere. This had declined to be found in the previous year, having only been dis- covered two years before, and never since visited. On H 2 100 ICE-CAVES OF ANNECY the receipt of my note to the Maire, Rosset had gone off for a hunt in the neighbourhood of the place where the Maire had told us it certainly ought to be, and having succeeded in finding it, had marked it down. Nevertheless, we were taken hither and thither among the chasms and furrows in the white live rock, which here formed the surface, and up and down the pro- jecting masses of stone, in a very unsystematic manner. Patience and endurance, however, met with their re- ward after a time, and the coy glacidre stood at length revealed. Nothing could be more unlike the grand wild opening of the former gladere, than the unpreten- tious hole which afforded the only means of reaching VEnfer, a name which provided the schoolmaster with inexhaustible material for witticisms bordering on the blasphemous, and sometimes transgressing the boun- dary. A descent under an archway of rock, by a slope of muddy shingle for forty feet or so, ushered us into a large low hall with a floor of ice, of which we could see no termination any way, for unlike the previous glaciere daylight failed as soon as we reached the bottom of the slope. Once more we gave the impostor lantern a chance, but it failed even more miserably than before. The native lamp, which had braved the dangers of the pit we dared not face, did not give sufficient light to render locomotion under its guidance safe, especially as we were a party of six, and only one could have the lamp at once. We therefore resorted to the magnesium wire, and saw at once the form and ICE-CAVES OF ANNECY 101 dimensions of the cave. The floor appeared to be of solid ice, perfectly level and unbroken, and formed an area approximately circular, with a diameter, as we afterwards determined by measurement, of seventy-five or eighty feet. The roof was ten or twelve feet above the floor, and the surface of the rock composing it was almost even. From one side to the other it scarcely varied at all, and the effect of this even, natural roof, stretching away always parallel with the floor, was very remarkable. Progressing slowly at such times as the magnesium wire chose to burn, and remaining carefully without motion during the frequent intervals, we ar- rived at length at a hole in the ice floor, and into this the two Englishmen made their way. It soon turned under the ice, and we proceeded by the light given by a succession of wax vestas to explore its further recesses, sternly forbidding any of the others to come. Little came of it, however, except that we saw enough to shew that the ice composing the floor of the cave was of great thickness. On our return to the surface of the ice floor, we found that the others of our party had become sufficiently accustomed to the darkness, or twilight, to move cautiously without a candle. They had discovered that at the farthest end of the cave the ice did not quite reach up to the wall of rock, but was rounded off in a swelling wave, leaving a sort of Berg- schrund or gap a foot or two across, formed, of course, on a principle the very opposite of that of a Bergschrund proper. Into this hole they threw stones, which crashed 102 ICE-CAVES OF ANNECY down over ice for what sounded like some considerable distance, and then fell heavily into water. It seemed to be possible to effect a descent at one end of this chasm, where the ice joined the rock, so Bonney put on the belt and we let him down with the lamp. He reported that at a depth of about twelve feet a tunnel- shaped hole passed steeply down under the main mass of ice, and at the bottom of this tunnel water was visible. He threw down several large pieces of stone, and ' made all the observations he could,' and then we hauled him up again. The other Englishman in turn assumed the belt, and was let down with a string for measuring distances, and a supply "of magnesium wire to illuminate the depths. The length of the tunnel proved to be twenty-three feet, and its slope we guessed at about 30", so that the thickness of the mass of ice forming the floor of the glacidre was here about twenty- four feet. The water was collected in a cave in the ice, lyiug in a most suggestively unpleasant manner at the end of the tunnel, which was perhaps four feet high. The standing ground provided by nature for these ob- servations was of the narrowest and most unsatisfactory description, and we were obliged to have the rope kept on a constant stretch to check the frequent commence- ments of a slide down into the tunnel. While half standing, half hanging, I chanced to kick a large piece of decayed wood towards the mouth of the tunnel, and getting onto the slope it glided rapidly down, and fell with a loud splash into the water. A second or two ICE-CAVES OF ANNECY 103 elapsed, when a horrible gurgling groan issued from some cavernous depth, and almost startled me into losing my hand-hold. They heard it distinctly above, and were asking what could that noise be, when, to our dismay, the same rolling groan came from far away under the ice, feeling its way, as it were, towards the tunnel, and up to where I stood. At periods of several seconds it continued to be repeated, losing nothing of its horror, as long as I stayed down below. After they had hauled me up it still lasted, growing rather fainter, and occurring at considerably less intervals, till at last, when we went away, it was going at the rate of thirty- nine groans a minute. Those who have heard a large hydraulic ram at work, and can conceive that sighing, groaning noise transferred to such a place as I have described, and made horrible by the acoustic properties of the black depths from which it issued, may have some idea of what it was. The schoolmaster suggested, with a ready ingenuity which I believe came very near the truth, that the noise was related to that class of noises which water running from the neck of a bottle allows the entering air to make. He imagined that the piece of wood I had despatched to the lower regions, had been sufficiently heavy to remove some obstacle, which had before prevented the accumulated waters from passing through a hole into a reservoir still further underground, and that the noise we heard was, on a large scale, exactly the gurgling noise which attends the flow of fluid from a bottle. It is unnecessary to 104 ICE-CAVES OF ANNECY suggest any of the various modifications of this theory, which the tastes of different theorisers may form. It may very probably be that some explanation of the noise can be given on grounds radically different from those which Rosset enunciated, but for the present I am quite inclined to believe that he hit off the true theory, or something very like it. At the mouth of the gladdre we found a young man in a blue blouse, whom the Maire introduced as his confrere, the aubergiste from Annecy, who had come out to give himself the pleasure of joining our party. With this accession to our forces, we marched off to the third glaciere, down a very remarkable face of riven and eroded rock. The cheminee leading to this glaciere was found without difficulty, and four of us ascended to the entrance of the cave. The Maire had declared, early in the day, that though he had not entered this glaci^e when I was last there, he fully intended to explore it with us now ; but he changed his mind at last, and did not even attempt the cheminee. His last year's care- fulness about risking his neck, in the descent from the entrance cave to the fissure in which the glaciere lay, had been attributed to a patriotic determination that so exalted a person as the Maire of Aviemoz must at all hazards be kept unhurt ; but he had no such excuse now, for he informed us that the elections had taken place three days before, and another was Maire. He had been eligible for re-election, but had not desired it. Indeed, it was nothing but trouble, being Maire ; there ICE-CAVES OF ANNECY 105 was nothing to be made by it, and the work was great. Fiveorsix francs, for journeys which he wasforced to make on communal business, that was all the reimbursement he received. It appeared, however, that whether eligible or not, he had no chance for re-election, for the prefet had put down the name of the man to be chosen, and the commune had been obedient. It was a conge d'elire, accompanied by a letter recommendatory. The election had occurred after three, instead of after five years, so M. Metral's period of dignity had not been so long as he had expected. The Maire, then (for so we were still at liberty to call him, inasmuch as the bare sapin, which is planted in front of the official's house, and points out to the world the position of the Mairie, had not been removed), and the monsieur from Annecy, remained at the bottom of the cheminee ; indeed, the Maire eventually made his way to the fire of some Italian charcoal burners, where we found him roasting on our return. M. Joly, still manfully maintaining an upright back, clambered stiffly up the cheminee, and posed himself in the small cave at top, a sort of dark ante-room to the narrow internal fissure which penetrates into the heart of the mountain, with its roof of rock immensely high above. He had long before relapsed into a sort of moody silence, caused by his fatigue, and broken only by occasional questions to which he seemed not to require any answer, such as, ' The English are the greatest people in the world ? ' * You don't believe in baptism ? ' and so on. The rest 106 ICE-CAVES OF ANNECY of the party made towards the drop which leads from this cave to the fissure, and we observed that there was an absence of the icy current of air which had so tried our endurance and our candles on the previous visit. On lowering the solitary little oil-lamp down this drop, we found, to our astonishment, that the fissure was choked with snow, commencing eight or nine feet below the platform where we stood, and passing down as far as we could see, which is not saying much, for the range of the lamp did not command a radius of six feet. I had believed, on my previous visit, that it was quite impossible for snow to reach the fissure, and I am now at a loss to know how it got there, unless the lie of the hills and gullies exposes the mouth of the cave to strong northerly winds, which drift the snow through the various windings of the approach to the fissure. We could see that the snow shrank from the sides of the fissure, and so presented a sharp descending arete, with what may be called a Bergschrund on a small scale on either side. To pass down this in the dark was as unsatisfactory a process as can well be imagined, for the friction caused by the contact of a broad shoulder with the rugged side of the fissure was often the only hold, excepting the sharp edge of unresisting snow, on which the foot dared place no reliance whatever. Considering how useful the bull's-eye lantern would have been, we rather wished we had the man who sold it at one or two of the worst parts of the descent. The snow reached as far as the entrance to the first ICE-CAVES OF ANNECY 107 ice-chamber. This, a gallery of forty feet long, shewed a complete flooring of ice, whereas in the previous year, rather earlier in the summer, there had only been ice at the further end of the floor. The ice cascade which blocked that end was much higher and more striking than on that occasion, when it measured seven yards in height. It must have been now, at the least, half as much again, and the ice was thicker and more beautiful. The most limpid parts of it were prismatic, and were so clear that, as we moved the lamp backwards and forwards, the meshes of the network of shadow cast through the ice upon the rock behind were most distinct, being magnified and diminished, of course, according as the lamp was nearer or further ofi". In one part we observed that the mass was formed of prisms of very large size, the ice being so clear and limpid that the shadow cast by the dividing lines was seen as if nothing were interposed between us and the rock on which it rested. Some of these prisms were at least three inches across the exposed end, and one or two cast shadows of most perfect hexagons ; their length, that is, the thick- ness of the ice in this particular part, must have been half a foot, and was possibly a good deal more. Their beauty was so great, that here, as in the first glaciere, we groaned over the impossibility of carrying them away. Some parts of this cascade were interspersed with large and eccentric air-bubbles, but in the best prisms there was not a flaw of any kind. It was now time to descend to the lower chamber on 108 ICE-CAVES OF ANNECY the right-hand side of the fissure, everything being, of course, involved in the most pitchy darkness. The solid ice floor of this chamber, and the remains of columns at the entrance, were apparently in precisely the same state as when I had last seen them. But the corner which we were bent upon exploring was much changed, unfortunately for our schemes. It was before closed by a curtain of ice, and a hole in the curtain was easily made, large enough to admit a man. Within the curtain I had found a gentle slope of ice passing down into a supposed chamber, which gave forth sounds of water and of rock in answer to the lumps of ice despatched along the slope. The curtain at that time formed a low roofing, which did not permit me to stand upright, but allowed room for sitting on the ice-slope and using the axe to cut steps. I had desisted on that occasion from proceeding more than a yard or two down the slope, in consequence of the absence of ropes, and the impossibility of finding any holding for hands or feet in case of a slip. We were now well provided with ropes, and we attacked the curtain in great spirits. It was evident at a first glance that the amount of the ice which formed the curtain had very much increased, but we were not prepared for the labour it cost us to hew a hole through it. The difficulty of this process was made greater by the extreme slipperiness of the ice on which those who hewed and those who looked on were obliged to stand. Whenever the hewer put more than ordinary vigour into a stroke, his foothold gave way, ICE-CAVES OF ANNECY 109 and he slid along the ice bent double and with all sides foremost, in that fatuous way which marks a beginner's appearance on skates. This was only partially remedied by roughening with the axe the ice-floor in the neigh- bourhood of the desired hole in the curtain. When at length we had all had our turn, and had all skated about involuntarily and inelegantly, and were all pretty well tired, a hole sufficiently large to admit a man, legs first, was achieved, and we sent in the oil-lamp to explore. The icy current which rushed out from the hole was almost too much for the feeble flame, and blew it about so much that we could see nothing of what was inside. We therefore lighted a piece of the magnesium wire, and after many unsuccessful attempts contrived to light up the interior with it. In place of a tolerably roomy cave, with floor and roof of ice, and ice on one side and the other, we found a mere trough. The diminution in size was caused by the lowering of the icy roof, which now approached much nearer to the slope forming the floor, and ran parallel with it as far as we could see, until the flooring passed down into invincible darkness, and the roof joined the rock. What we had called a curtain was in fact a grand and solid mass of ice, streaming down from a fissure in the rock, and completely occupying all that corner of the chamber. This mass of ice reached within two feet of the ice floor through all its thickness, and the curtain in which we had hewn a hole was a veil hung before the entrance to the broad and low tunnel thus made. 110 ICE-CAA^S OF ANNECY The roof was very prettily groined, and was studded with crystals, and here and there graceful pillars ran up to it from the floor. There was nowhere room to sit upright, barely suflScient room for a man lying down ; and there was no possible chance of using an axe. It was clear, however, that a man lying on the ice could worm himself along down the slope, and ac- cordingly the belt was put on and I essayed to go, entering feet first, and taking our only light with me. But before I was well in a feeling of suffocation came on. The situation was too much like what it must be to be buried alive. Whatever happened, it was im- possible to do much more than raise the head and indulge in lateral motion of the arms and legs. The idea was so choking that I began to resolve to go no further. There seemed to be no reason for supposing that there would be more vertical space further on, where the slope became more rapid and turned a comer of the rock ; so that it was among probabilities that an explorer in my circumstances would be let gradually down by the rope, gliding on his back round this corner, and there would remain jammed when the attempt to pull him up again was made. Besides, the horrible devouring gurgle of the depths of the last glaciere was still in our ears, and this tunnel in which I lay might end in sudden water just as the tunnel in VEnfer did. Water we knew to be roupd the corner at some greater or less distance, and the idea of plunging in, feet first, ofi" a slippery slope of ice, without room ICE-CAVES OF ANNECY HI for any kind of struggle, and without a certainty that the spasmodic tirez ! tirez ! would reach through all obstacles to the men at the other end of the rope, finally decided the question. Before calling, however, to them to haul me up through the hole, I observed that the roof of this strange trough was thickly set with the same brown case-flies which I had found in the glacieres of La Genolliere and St. Livres in the Jura, as also here, in the previous year. The present specimens struck me as being smaller than those I had before seen, and I secured two being all I could accommodate in fingers already encumbered by an axe and an oil-lamp. Then they were told to haul me out, which they did with a will, evidently enjoying it much more than I did, and oblivious of the fact that a human being feels more than a log of wood may be supposed to do, when jerked abruptly on his back over a little obstacle a foot high, consisting of a solid threshold of ice jagged with recent hewing. While we were placing the two flies in the box prepared for them, we found that two others had attached themselves to my beard, and one of these was of an entirely different species. These insects have since been submitted to the inspection of the Entomological Society. Three of them are specimens of Stenophylax, the largest being probably, though not certainly, S. hieroglyphicus of Stephens, as the specimen brought from an ice-cave in the Jura had already been supposed to be. The two smaller caddis flies are either 8. testaceus of Pictet, or some very closely allied species. 112 ICE-CAVES OF ANNECY The remaining insect is an ichneumon of the genus Paniscus, but no one has been able to identify it with any described species. It differs from all its congeners in the marking of the throat, and in this respect bears a strong resemblance to some species of Ophion ; never- theless, it is a true Paniscus} The case-flies may have been washed into the cave, somehow or other, in the larva form, and come to maturity on the ice where they have lodged. Case-flies, it is well known, have the power of adapting themselves to great extremes of cold ; the same flies which come to maturity in one year, or even in one season, in protected and warmer regions, requiring two and three and even four years to arrive at the perfect state at higher altitudes, or in colder latitudes. But this explanation will not hold in the case of the ichneumon, which is a parasitic genus on larvae of terrestrial insects. The ice trough in which the flies were found must have been hermetically sealed at the end by which we entered. No one who had seen the huge curtain of ice which shut in that corner of the cave could doubt the fact. The other end plunged down into darkness, and blocks of ice despatched down the slope fell at length into water. A great entomo- logical authority is of opinion that the presence of the ichneumon proves conclusively that some communica- tion with the outer air existed at the time, or had very recently existed, but the depths into which the trough * I have to thank Mr. R. M'Lachlan and Mr. Albert Miiller for valuable information and suggestions with respect to these insects. ICE-CAVES OF ANNECY 113 plunged pass straight on towards the heart of the mountain in whose face the original entrance to the fissure lies. Another gentleman, who has for several years investigated the insect fauna of Switzerland, is inclined to think that the curtain could not have hermetically sealed the entrance to the trough, and that through its interstices the insects had flown. I feel sure that if he had seen the place he could not have thought this. In any case it is exceedingly remarkable that this particular cavity in the ice should be found to contain such a very large number of the same insects that I had found in two of the Jurane ice-caves the summer before. The flies were perfectly stationary on the ice until touched, when they ran actively, and we had great difficulty in catching the ichneumon. On the opposite side of the main fissure from that on which this triangular chamber opened out, we found the same curious channel of motionless water that we had observed the year before, lying about a yard and a half wide between vertical walls of rock which passed up out of sight. By lighting the fissure with mag- nesium wire we discovered with some difficulty the other end of this singular channel, far away from the furthest point we could reach. The rock at the end rose up vertically like the sides, and we did not succeed in detecting the roof. The man who accom- panied us from the Mairie declared that he had long known the glaciere, and had been employed to extract ice from it for M. de Chosal of Annecy ; and that on I 114 ICE-CAVES OF ANNECY one occasion he had found one side of the channel of water solid ice, along which he had passed till he reached yet another ice-cave. This supplementary visit to the glacier es of Mont Parmelan and the Montague de I'Eau had the efifect of raising our opinion of the grandeur of the natural phenomena connected with them ; while our obser- vations seemed to shew that no very deep scientific reasons for their existence need be sought. The presence of a large quantity of snow in the cave last described contradicted the opinion formed upon the observations of the previous visit, and shewed that in this cave also snow may have played the large part it certainly does play in many glaciereSy in the pro- duction of the larger masses of ice which form the solid floor of the caves. Very probably such glacieres may be found in connection with many of the rieigi^es, or snow-holes, which abound in the Jura, in cases at least where the water formed by the melting snow does not run off entirely by natural drainage, but lodges in a cave at the bottom or side of the pit. And from the nature of snow it is easy to see that the mere presence of a large superincumbent mass will tend to convert the lower parts into ice, when the infiltration of surface water is taken into account, without the necessity of supposing a complete thaw of the snow and a separate freezing of the resulting water. The decorative parts, which appear on the walls in the shape of curtains, and as pillars, and stalactites, and stalagmites, are originally, ICE-CAVES OF ANNECY 115 no doubt, formed in the end of winter or in early spring, and are maintained by the low temperature which a cave half full of ice and snow must possess. Probably, indeed almost certainly, additions are made to these por- tions of the ice by the congelation of some of the water which courses over them, or falls on to them from fissures in the roof and walls of the cave, at later periods of the spring and summer. It is worthy of special notice that in the course of a visit paid to two of the Jurane ice-caves in the middle of January some years ago, a small course of water was found to be running down the face of the rock where in summer is nothing but a solid sheet of ice ; and a certain pathway in the cave, which in the hot months is difficult by reason of a thick crust of ice, was bare rock. This appears to point to early spring as the time when the formation of the decorative parts of the ice takes place. The temperatures in the three glacieres after we had been in them some little time were respectively as follows: 1*2 centigrade, 1-5, and 2*5, being higher than the register of the previous year, observed a few weeks earlier in the season. The misconduct of the aneroid renders the altitude observations less trust- worthy, but the heights of the three caves are probably from 4,900 to 5,500 feet. With regard to the prismatic structure so very clearly marked, it seems possible that when large masses of ice are subjected for a length of time to the summer temperature of these caves, a I 2 116 ICE-CAVES OF ANNECY degree or two degrees above freezing, the surface takes the opportunity afforded by the partially relaxed con- dition of its molecules, to assume to a definite extent the crystalline form which in a more modified degree is natural to it. Note. The question of the prismatic structure of the ice is dealt with in Chapter XVIII. of my Ice Caves of France and Switzerland. I read papers on the subject at the Bath meeting of the British Association in 1864. 117 A WINTER EXCURSION IN SWITZERLAND "^ The reading world has been abundantly supplied of late years with accounts of Swiss excursions made in the summer season, but Switzerland in the winter is comparatively a novelty. It may not be without interest, therefore, to attempt a description of an ad- venturous expedition into the Jura in the third week of January of the present year (1866). Our party consisted of five persons, two being men whom we may call the Doctor and Monsieur, following the nomenclature adopted by our Swiss friends and one a boy, who may without offence to his dignity be called Charley ; the remaining two, being ladies, must maintain a modest incognito as M. and H. The object of our excursion was to visit one or two curious caves of the district, containing vast masses of permanent ice, under cir- cumstances which would seem to afford no further opportunity than any ordinary cave affords for the preservation of that material through the hot season. Having seen these caves in the summer months, and made joyful use of their cooling stores, we were ' Orice a Week, December 22, 186G. 118 A WINTER EXCURSION IN SWITZERLAND desirous of visiting them at the season when the annual addition to the supplies of ice might be in course of formation. Our intention had been to leave Geneva by the route for France, passing at the back of the Dole on foot by the Faucille road, and so down to St. Cergues and Arzier, leaving the main road before reaching the famous French fortress of Les Kousses. But the high valley behind the Dole is so completely unprotected from the worst inclemencies of the weather, that prudence, and regard for our weaker members, forbade the attempt to face it, and the less romantic rail con- veyed the party to Nyon. Thence a walk of eight or pine miles, over much snow in parts, led up the Jura to Arzier, from which village the expedition to the caves was to start on the following day. One small cave, indeed, had been intended for the afternoon of our arrival, but various delays made it necessary to omit that portion of the programme, and we visited instead some of our old summer haunts. It was strange to see everything so familiar, and yet so utterly different from what we had ever known it to be. Lovely and treacherous as the steep green slopes of summer pasture had always been, they were yet more lovely and treacherous now that they lay smooth with untrodden snow. Pure as the fresh green of the young meadows might be in summer, their winter dress was purer still. And never on the loveliest summer's day had the atmosphere been so exquisitely A WINTER EXCURSION IN SWITZERLAND 119 clear, the view so wonderfully grand. The whole range of Mont Blanc stood out free from the dark seams which in the hot season mark the desertion of the snows ; and from Mont Blanc eastward the horizon was studded with all the white peaks which link the sum- mits of Savoy with the furthest giants of the Bernese Oberland. More than one chaotic fall as we progressed forcibly reminded us that there were other changes besides in- creased beauty to be taken account of ; for on slopes where in summer the foothold had been sufficiently good for all practical purposes, a hearty laugh at the mishaps of any of the party was now almost sure to end in a long roll down the face of the snow. That night to our dismay the weather changed. As we sat over an excellent though primitive supper, the shutters were driven in by a sudden gust of wind, sweeping down pans and the whole stock of cups and saucers, and creating a disturbance which could scarcely have been greater if the house had come down, a catastrophe which for a time we believed to have arrived. The cold was intense, and every one secured a hot bottle for the feet before going to bed. Sunday morning brought pouring rain, heavy snow having fallen in the night, and only three of us struggled out to the little village church, the others staying at home and preparing the walking boots of the party. About this time we found that our arrangements for guides could not be carried into execution, as one of 120 A WINTER EXCURSION IN SWITZERLAND our meditated companions was suffering from pleu- risy, and the other had sprained his ankle two days before. So in default we took a man whom they re- commended as walking well, working well, and talking little, and about two o'clock on the Sunday afternoon we started for the more immediate neighbourhood of the caves. St. Georges was the village for which we were to make our way ; it was where in summer we had more than once stopped en route, and had found respectable accommodation au Cavalier, The country was deep in snow, through which we ploughed in a most praise- worthy manner, and there was so dense a fog that any one who separated himself ever so little from the party was for a time lost. We swept through more than one village, to the utter astonishment of such of the inhabitants as could catch a glimpse of us, and were plodding on our way, desperately wet and slightly out of heart, when suddenly the sun burst out on the right, opening a rift in the hrouillard, and there, in the centre of the narrow rift, appeared the head of Mont Blanc, with a suddenness and clearness which seemed almost magical. Then the view expanded, and above the boiling, whirling, tearing wreaths of mist we saw the Bernese mountains, the peaks near the Rhone valley, and even in another direction the highest summits of the Jura. The very guide was moved to speech and feeling ; and we all stood still, lost in admiration, till unmistakable sensa- A WINTEE EXCUESION IN SWITZEELAND 121 tions about the feet and ankles reminded us that a compound of deep snow and rain forms an undesirable standing ground. The ' Cavalier ' seemed to think at first that the place could scarcely fulfil the promise of its sign-board Loge d jpied. The woman in charge was not prepared for travellers at such a season, and it was with difficulty that we made our way upstairs to judge for ourselves of the badness of the quarters. There was a good- sized room, with a bench and two beds ; a miserable little back place, containing a wooden trough filled with straw, which counted as another bedroom ; and behold all ! ' Was there not a hole of any kind into which Mademoiselle could be put ? ' H. asked. ' Yes,' the woman said, * there was ; but ' and she looked at Mademoiselle, and said, ' No, it would not do ; she could not even shew it.' ' Shew it by all means,' we urged ; ' Mademoiselle is not difficult.' It turned out to be a large room, with a long table and benches, some with legs and some without, but all in the vilest state of dirt and evil smell. In an alcove was a narrow trough, with straw, to which the hostess gave the style and title of a single bed, the broader trough in the other room being presumably accounted a double bed. As it was a question between quarters here and quarters nowhere, we at once decided to take these three rooms for sleeping purposes, and proceeded 122 A WINTER EXCURSION IN SWITZERLAND to ask where could we eat, as we were by this time hungry. There was no room which possessed a fire, they told us, and inasmuch as we were wet through with snow-water, we were unwilling to put up with the absence of artificial warmth. Distressed to see us in such a plight, the hostess offered her own bedroom, where there was a stove, informing us that, as there was an alcove, her husband and she would not mind our presence, and we should do very well there for our supper. There was also a baby a few months old in their bed, but that, she supposed, did not signify, as it could be warranted quiet. That room was naturally declined. Then we discovered that the double-bedded room had a fireplace, and, although the chimney appeared to be hopelessly choked with snow, we suc- ceeded in melting it out with a cheerful blaze of wood, and soon had a glorious fire. The table, unfortunately, was a dissipated sort of table, and could not, without much care, be brought near the fire. When that feat was accomplished, one of its legs struck work, so it rested on three odd legs and two nails in the wall; these last proved eventually to be too frail a support, and they betrayed the trust reposed in them in a very treacherous and painful manner. One tallow candle was all the light we could procure in the anbergej so we placed the thick carriage-lamp candle we had brought for our subterranean explorations on a similar prop in the wall. But everything seemed to be alike rickety and unsound ; and prop, and candle, and all, were soon A WINTER EXCURSION IN SWITZERLAND 123 lodged on poor Monsieur's head, depositing there an unwelcome run of melted bougie. No one had a complete change of outer or under clothing, for we were obliged to march light, and in our generally damp state we did not make much profit of the two beds and the single and double trough. The last was the worst of all, for a considerable amount of its straw had been abstracted for some purpose or other, and the vacancy was made up with billets of wood. The Doctor and his wife accordingly got up next morn- ing with their bodies considerably bruised, and their minds enlightened as to the demerits of this new kind of couch. The natural result of hard beds, and noisy clocks for the clock of the village struck in the wall of the double-bedded room, and they always strike the hour twice in those parts and late tea, and universal difficulties, was that the nine o'clock fixed for the start in the morning became a late ten. At that hour the whole party got actually under way for the cavern of St. Georges,^ a large cave in the hills, below the surface of the earth, a hundred feet long and sixty high, entered by ladders through a small hole in the roof. The floor is permanently composed of ice, of unknown and great thickness, and as we had frequently visited this cave in summer, and found large and beautiful sheets of ice on the side-walls, in addition to the solid flooring of that material, we were anxious 1 Described in Chapter II. of the Ice Caves of France atid Switzerland. 124 A WINTER EXCURSION IN SWITZERLAND to determine its condition in midwinter. The way by the woods was impassable by reason of the deep snow, and we were in consequence obliged to go round by the main road which passes up the side of the Jura. Even this would have been too much for us, perhaps, con- sidering our want of training, but fortunately men had come down with wood that morning, and their cavalcade had acted as a sort of snow-plough, and made our course less toilsome than it must otherwise have been. It was hard enough work as it was ; and in spite of a dense fog, which prevented the rays of the sun from reaching us, we became so hot that the men walked in shirt-sleeves and the ladies without wraps. When the track of the woodmen ceased to be available, we ploughed along knee-deep, till at length, after an hour and a halfs walking, the cavern was almost reached, and then the guides were obliged to cut branches and make a sort of platform for us to stand on, while they shovelled away the snow from the mouth of the hole of entrance. The ladders were declared to be sound, which had not been the case on one of our previous visits, and we proceeded to descend, tied with ropes as a matter of precaution, for the rungs of the ladders were more or less covered with ice. To explain the presence of the ladders, it may be as well to say that ice is taken from this cave in large quantities during the summer, to supply Geneva and Lausanne. The cave felt quite warm when we got well into it. A WINTEE EXCURSION IN SWITZERLAND 125 but that, sensation was partly due to the contradiction of our expectations, rather than to the actual tempera- ture of the contained air, for the thermometer observa- tions gave the temperatures within and without the cave the same, viz., half a degree Centigrade above the freezing-point. The hygrometer also gave the same record in each case, a lowering of half a degree due to evaporation. The large sheet of ice which in summer clothes one of the side-walls of the cave with fantastic and beau- tiful drapery was gone ; but there were grand icicles hanging freely from many parts of the roof, and some signs of the commencement of another sheet on the wall, in the shape of mural icicles, partly connected by curtains. In one corner was a small remnant of a sheet of ice, but it appeared to be fast melting away, and a minute stream of water trickled down a face of rock on which in summer there is always ice. A raised terrace of rock and stones, which in the hot season is difficult by reason of its thick covering of ice, was now perfectly free from that treacherous material. A block of stone, three feet by two, was covered with an efflorescence of ice-crystals, like those of carbonate of lime, but larger, being from half an inch to two inches and a half long, some hexagonal and others pentagonal. These were joined at their bases, but stood out clear from the stone. The great lake of solid unfathomed ice, forty-five feet by fifteen, was dry, very much drier than in summer. A large quantity of snow lay in one corner of the cave, 126 A WINTER EXCURSION IN SWITZERLAND where even in August a collection of unmelted snow is found ; this supply penetrates in winter by a hole in the roof, near to that by which an entrance to the cave is obtained, the latter hole being permanently covered with trunks of trees to shelter the ice in summer at the bottom of the cave. Near this collection of snow we had always under- stood that there was said to be a hole or tunnel in the flooring of ice, but we had not succeeded in finding it in the course of previous visits. The man whom we had engaged at St. Georges to act as our porter and guide, told us that some men had let their sack of bread fall into it thirteen years ago, and a knife as well, and there they must be still, for no one had ever yet been down. This hole Monsieur was determined to find, and before long he found it, a nasty dark place, with only a slope of the hardest and most slippery ice to descend by. He was speedily roped, and let down for nine or ten feet into the darkness, when M. also adventured with an- other rope, and was lowered to the same point, a sort of bridge of ice and rock, lying under the collection of snow. The Doctor and H. and the two Swiss worked the ropes meanwhile, obedient to the slightest signals from the lower regions, and the boy Charley made him- self generally useful. The standing-place thus reached by the two adven- turers afibrded an opportunity of examining the further depths of the hole by means of a lantern and blazing paper, the latter being the more useful plan, for the A WINTER EXCURSION IN SWITZERLAND 127 lantern always turned its one glass side to the ice when it was lowered, and was therefore useless, after the fashion of such lanterns on such occasions. The further slope was an unsatisfactory sort of place for a descent. It consisted of a rather steep arete of ice, with sides sloping no one could say whither. If the adventurers could make sure of keeping to the arete for fifteen feet or so, all would be well. But there was no certainty about the matter, and the rope was of little use, as ropes will not work in curved lines round a comer. However, by help of a pole which had fallen into the cavity and become frozen onto the surface of the ice, this difficulty was got over ; but only to shew that there lay more and insurmountable difficulties in front and on each side. Here was found a red measuring-tape, which appeared to be in excellent condition, but melted away into nothing when it was touched, a fate that may have come spontaneously upon the sack of bread and the knife. Further than this it seemed impossible to go, nor could it be determined how far the streams of ice flowed down. We could see, however, for some fifteen feet further than we had descended, making in all about fifty from the mouth of the hole in a tortuous course. The rapidity of the descent, when once commenced, the darkness and discomfort of the depths, and the difficulty of the ascent, recalled of course a trite piece of Virgil. The ascent was really most unpleasant, for it consisted of a series of hauls over any little impedi- 128 A WINTER EXCURSION IN SWITZERLAND ments that might lie in the way, and round sharp corners guarded by jagged bits of rock. At one of these corners, M. was so nearly pulled in two by a sudden jerk, and by reason of her dress catching, that she had not breath to cry ^ Hold ! ' and was in conse- quence all but choked by the strap to which the rope was attached. The Swiss men rubbed their chins when they looked down and saw the commencement of what she had gone through, and talked to each other in whispers about courage. It was observed that at two or three places, where a little assistance was needed after the party had set off for the return, they helped H. in the most careful manner, but respectfully drew aside to let M. take care of her own most competent self The walk back to St. Georges was accomplished in less than an hour. More wood had been brought down and had further cleared the road. The method of dragging wood down the mountain-side, over the snow, is primi- tive. A sort of driving bench, made to run like a sledge, has four or five chains attached to it behind, each chain bearing a long point of iron, which is driven into the end of a tree ; and the whole apparatus is then dragged down together. When we arrived at St. Georges, there was an hour and a half left for us to warm ourselves and make pre- paration for our departure, still on foot, for Biere, from which place another and more singular ice-cave was to be visited next day. It will be understood that starting A WINTER EXCURSION IN SWITZERLAND 129 at five o'clock on a January evening for a walk of two hours and a half, cannot be called starting by daylight ; and ploughing in the dark through the deep slush which covered the roads was the reverse of pleasant. After a time the road became a gentle course of water, and in this we walked patiently till the lights of Bi^re shone out seemingly near at hand, but practically very far ofi*, for a long and deep ravine had to be turned before the auherge of Biere could be reached. Auherge, however, is scarcely a respectful name for the Hotel de la Poste, to which our steps were bent; and the landlady, being full of guests, adopted the grand supercilious air with which modern hotels at home have made us familiar. The house, she said, shortly and decidedly, was full. It was in our power to retort, as a traveller, whose weariness could not destroy his power of sarcasm, did retort, when the mis-manager of a famous London hotel made a similar statement, ' I suppose, madam, it is your affable demeanour that fills the hotel.' But we were too anxious for a resting- place to resort to such dangerous weapons of offence. The firemen of the neighbourhood, three score and ten ponipiers, were dining with their jpomjpes in the hotel. It was also a skin-fair in Bi^re. Thus the downstairs rooms and passages were all full of rabble, and the affair looked as hopeless as could well be. At this crisis a bonny chambermaid came up to her mis- tress, and reminded her that there were two spare rooms with two beds each, and one single room. The K 130 A WINTER EXCUESION IN SWITZERLAND landlady declined to recognise this statement, and only- unbent so far as to say there was a single room we might have, where we must all sleep together. Our Arzier guide hereupon turned on his heel in wrath, observing loftily that there was no occasion for company like his to say no to that, and we trudged off disconso- lately to look for another avherge. In all the place there was only one bed to be had. So we returned to the Poste, followed by a crowd of idle men and boys, who had been drawn together by the strange character of our cavalcade, and who insisted on believing that we were brigands, whatever that may mean on the peace- ful slopes of the Jura. At the door of the Poste the pretty maid met us. She had been sure we should return, and she promised to use her influence with the mistress. Eventually we got the three rooms, and the maid explained the reason of the landlady's objection to our having them. The landlord had been ill in bed for six weeks, in a room between the two double ones we had with so much difficulty secured, and his wife took us for German tourists, who would sit up all night singing boisterous songs, after the fashion of tourist parties of that nation. The necessary noise of the house was of itself too much, and the seventy pompiers and the skin-fair had almost driven the landlady mad. We soon set their minds at rest about our nationality and our sitting up all night ; and the natural sympathy we shewed for the forlorn case of the mistress of the house obtained for us many little comforts we should A WINTER EXCURSION IN SWITZERLAND l3l otherwise have seen nothing of. Indeed, the landlady raade us a fire in a little den of her own, where we regaled ourselves on larded beef, jumped potatoes, rum and cherries, and a chicken that seemed to melt in its tenderness. Unfortunately poor Charley was attacked at exactly the wrong moment by one of his favourite headaches, ' a regular floorer,' as he described it ; and as that sent him supperless to bed, it cast some gloom upon the party. The bed accommodation was very decidedly superior to that with which we had grappled at St. Georges ; but the Doctor had to be satisfied with a stiff little sofa considerably shorter than himself, and about eighteen inches wide, stuffed so as to display a rounded crest along the middle of the cushion, down which Doctor and duvet kept rolling in moments of relaxed vigilance The ludicrous airs of the pompiers songs kept every one awake for a time, and the people of the house made periodical appeals to the firemen to be quiet or to leave. They declined to do either ; and at two o'clock they were still singing and shouting with unabated vigour. M. slept during the verse, but awoke invariably for the chorus and applause. Some of us were up at seven the next morning, as we had arranged overnight to start at nine for the ice- cave ; but the men of the party were only beginning breakfast at nine, and it was a quarter to eleven before we left the village. This difficulty about getting off" early, it may be observed, is a marked feature in winter excursions. Our trusty Arzier guide had secured for K 2 132 A WINTER EXCURSION IN SWITZERLAND us the services of the Inspector of Forests, who had rented a chalet near the cave for three years, and there- fore knew the place welj. He did all he could to dis- suade us from going. More than halfway no one had yet been since the snow came. As far as halfway a man might have been in effect, a man had been ; but we should find it two feet deep for the greater part of the way. The ladders, he expected, were good, and if we were scientific people (apparently a synonym for /cms), the expedition was certainly, as far as he could see, possible. When he found that we had not come to Biere for the purpose of turning back, he consented to accompany us. The air was colder than on the previous day, and gloriously clear ; the bright blue sky, seen through the snow-laden branches of the dense firs, was too brilliant for the eye to encounter without pain. The snow was so deep, well above our knees, that we durst not look about us without stopping to do so, for otherwise the chance of coming down on our faces was very great indeed. Sometimes Monsieur led, sometimes the inspector, sometimes the guide; the rest planted their legs in the holes thus made, save when a stumble caused one or the other to flounder about a little on their own account. The snow became deeper and deeper, till a six-foot-three man plunged in frequently as deep as his legs would let him go, and still made no bottom. We passed over a stone wall and a gate with- out knowing that we had done so. M. and H. were wet through and through to well above the waist, and A WINTER EXCURSION IN SWITZERLAND 133 at one place H. stuck hard and fast, and could only with much difficulty be drawn out. Every one grew silent, and some rather sad. At length, after more than three hours' walking, a long steep ascent appeared right ahead, at the further end of a valley into which we dipped, and the idea of pounding up this slope was too much for the endurance of most of the party. M., however, had been there before, and to the general joy announced and maintained that the slope had not to be encountered, for the cave was in the valley close at hand. She was always right on such points. A few yards more brought it into sight, its yawning black mouth shewing in strange and suggestive contrast in the midst of the deep unbroken snow. The summer- chalet close at hand resounded speedily with the stamp- ing of feet and chopping of wood, and, better still, in an incredibly short space of time the roar of a blazing fire was added to the concert, for which purpose the straw-beds of the last inhabitants were ruthlessly pillaged and exposed to the action of wax vestas. Wine for heating and spicing, and solids at discretion, had been carefully brought in a sack, and to these creature comforts every one applied vigorously. The red wine of the country, when judiciously spiced, is by no means despicable as a cordial, and the guide and the inspector went in for it with emphasis, declaring that it was parfait amour. Arrived at length at the edge of the pit, further progress seemed to be impossible. The entrance to 134 A WINTER EXCURSION IN SWITZERLAND this cave, unlike that of St. Georges, is by a deep open pit, at the bottom of which a grand archway in the rock leads to the cave proper. For the descent of this pit two long ladders are required, which we found piled deep with fresh snow ; and when the fresh snow was knocked off no pleasant operation the steps proved to be frozen into a conglomerate of ice and older snow. A ledge of rock, which forms the resting-place for the foot of the top ladder, was so deep in snow that an alpenstock could not fathom it. After much prepara- tion of the ladders, M. and H. were lowered by cords. Monsieur having pioneered. Then a long slope of very slippery ice was passed, with similar regard for safety, after which came another ladder frozen into a wall of ice, and very difficult of descent. This eventually landed us at the bottom of the cave, where we found a lake of ice, with grand masses of former columns lying about, and a wall of solid ice, twenty feet high, barring our return. On the strength of previous information the floor was carefully examined till a small crack was found, and through this, after it had been enlarged sufficiently, M. and Monsieur and Charley were let down, or climbed, into a lower cave still, which shewed a continuation of the ice- wall seen above, as far as the eye could penetrate by the aid of a candle. But time failed for further explorations, to the gi-eat annoyance of the explorers. There was known to be besides a marvellous ice-cave some half an hour away among the woods, but it was impossible to go to it, A WINTEE EXCURSION IN SWITZERLAND 135 even if the inspector had known the way, which he did not.^ If gentlemen will lie in bed, or on a sofa, as the case may be, instead of getting up and starting in good time, they must expect to be cut short at the end of the day. H. and the Doctor had already been packed off some time ago, for they had a dinner party next day, and must catch the evening train at Allaman to give orders. The rest of the party had engaged to walk fast, and reach Bi^re in time for the Pastes conveyance, which would take them to Aubonne and Allaman, and so to Geneva ; but there was not much use attempting to walk fast. A strong and bitter wind had risen, the snow had become lighter and more powdery than it was in the morning, and going down- hill in deep snow after a winter twilight has well set in, is of all things the most bewildering and fatiguing. Every one arrived at Bidre too late for Pastes, or any- thing else. It was already pitch dark, and a great storm was brewing. There was no help for it but to remain there for the night, drenched as we all were. The hostess, now rid of the pompiers, did her best to make things comfortable, pitying the desperate con- dition of the ladies of the party, whose dresses made circles of wet on the floor wherever they stood still for a few moments. Thorough ablutions, and such attempts at tidying as were possible, made so great a change in their appearance that the maid exclaimed to M. : The descriptions of these two glaoieres form Chapters III. and IV. of the loe Caves of France and Switzerland. 136 A WINTER EXCURSION IN SWITZERLAND ' Mademoiselle, I cannot tell you how many more francs you look worth than when you came in from the glaciere ! ' The cuisine maintained its high character of the previous evening, and the beds were comfortable, always excepting the mountainous and refractory sofa. But neither bed nor cookery can make it other than dread- fully unpleasant to put on for the third morning the same thoroughly wet clothes. The skin and flesh assume a parboiled appearance under such circum- stances, and become exceedingly tender ; and the idea of applying clothes stiff with wet to the limbs is unbearable till the moment arrives when it must be done. In spite of these and other very serious drawbacks, it is well worth while to penetrate into the depths of the Jura in midwinter. The skies, and the loaded trees, and the wonderful undulations of the snow-clad country, have a charm which no other season and no other scene can surpass. In a scientific point of view it was worth while to determine that there was actually less ice in the glaciere of St. Georges in January than in July, the reason probably being that nature had not yet restored the supply of that material removed for culinary purposes during the summer and autumn, or melted away by the heat of the sun. Much of the columnar ice in these caves was more like alabaster than ice, an appearance due to the great admixture of air. The microscope and the air-pump displayed this A WINTEK EXCURSION IN SWITZERLAND 137 character of the ice well, and there was found to be an unusual amount of nitrogen in the cells. The ther- mometer and hygrometer gave the same results in the glaciere of St. Livres (the one visited from Biere) as in that near St. Georges. 138 A NIGHT WITH A SALMON > Nb creature of land, air, or water, is subjected to so much legislation as the salmon. If a bird happens to be hatched a grouse, or a blackcock, or a partridge, he knows that wherever he may go within the limits of these islands, man can make no lawful raid upon him and his when once December 10 and February 1 are respectively passed. His life only becomes a burden to him on August 12 or 20, or September 1, as the case may be. He knows when to make himself scarce, and when it is safe to appear. Moreover, he knows the one lawful weapon which man may wield against him, and so long as he keeps out of the way of guns his life is safe from human pursuit. If he is deprived of life by unsportsmanlike means, he has the keen sympathy of his most energetic persecutors, and a fair chance of a dirge from a bench of magistrates. The salmon has a different tale to tell. His periods of freedom from care are of so complicated a character that he is seldom at his ease. During the spring and summer months there Oomhill Magazine^ July 1869. A NiaHT WITH A SALMON 139 are certain hours in the week when he may not be lawfully circumvented with the net ; but man has had the arrangement of these periods, and has meanly selected the hours which nature and revelation alike point out as holidays even for the victim of human sport. The meagre months of continuous safety from lawful human foe are spent in the toilsome task of working up stream, and depositing the seed of future generations of the Salmo fario. Even this one oasis in the poor creature's life is of the nature of a shifting mirage. It depends entirely on the river he chooses to run up, though, as a fact, each fish knows his river and keeps to it. According as it is the Tay or the Tweed, he is absolutely free to devote himself to domestic cares from October 10 or some complicated day in Novem- ber, and becomes safe from all weapons but the rod on August 26 or October 14. For six or seven months of each year he is exposed to vastly more than one method of destruction. Engines of the net kind are of various descriptions, one more fatal than another. The common sweep-net is at least as fatal to the salmon as cholera and small-pox, and fevers high and low, all put together, to the lords of creation. The eyes which guide this pen have seen three hundred fine fish lying on the beach as the spoil of a pair of nets at one fishing station, in four hours of ebbing tide, the other tide of the day yielding another three hundred. For miles and miles up many rivers the sweep-net is going from both sides at once, the ^ shots ' dovetailing in the most 140 A NIGHT WITH A SALMON murderous manner. Only fish that are uncommonly deep, either as regards cunning or as regards position in the water, can hope to reach the upper streams, where peace from the net awaits them, and unremitting persecution from the rod. The stell-net is as destruc- tive as it is illegal, and is worked unscrupulously by those who are bound to see the law obeyed. Stake-nets are in all respects dreadful engines. The hang- net is the poacher's friend, and from the salmon's point of view is diabolical. The pot and the basket await with hungry jaws the sentimental fish that amuses himself by jumping up waterfalls. A beneficent legislature saves, or seeks to save, the salmon from perishing through its own madness when a light is blazed on the water ; but not a few do come to that manner of un- timely end each year, at the hands of blase sportsmen anxious to ^ see what it is like,' to say nothing of less distinguished persons with whom material motives weigh. And all the time, while the passion for the flesh and blood of the salmon is being carried out to the full in these various ways of violence, a steady course of underhand assassination is going on, deceptions of the most artful and stealthy description being practised to lure the unfortunate fish to his destruction. Does he love to dash grandly at a glimpse of rainbow imprisoned in the water? he makes his dash, and finds himself impaled on a hidden hook, with a creature possessed of brains at the other end of a hundred yards of oiled line. A NIGHT WITH A SALMON 141 dancing in horrid ecstasy to the tune of ' hooked him at last ! ' Is he more quiet and sombre in his tastes ? there comes stealing across the clear stream, with ever such a little kick and jump now and then, a soft-looking dark creature, with the most piquante bit of silver ornament possible ; and the same ecstatic dance and shout of triumph follow his plunge at the enchanter. Does he like his little bit of fish now and then? there is introduced to his notice, during his hungry- moments, a shy little creature of the minnow species, now darting from him, now lazily lingering, lingering till he seizes it and makes it his own, all with the same result. Nay, for salmon so degraded as to love the soft and juicy lobworm, there are found anglers so degraded as to fix such a reptile on a hook, and there- with work the ruin of the fish that forgets the funda- mental maxim of his nobility. And, as if a man could not do harm enough with one rod and line, which a providential arrangement of hands has made the full complement of his offensive armoury, he gets him a boat, if he be suitably situated, and hangs him out astern therefrom three rods, each with its line and lure. A second conspirator, the boatman, tacks quietly across and across the stream, thus drawing the lines through the water, while the first sits cat-like in the stem. Suddenly a reel rattles, the boatman shouts a husky ' therrum,' and the contest between brains and instinct commences, sometimes, it is true, to the discomfiture of the brains. The number of rods renders it possible to 142 A NIGHT WITH A SALMON pander to so many tastes at once, that the salmon falls a frequent prey to this great sport of ' harling.' The circumstances most favourable to harling are a broad expanse of water and a quick current. There is then sufficient room for manoeuvring the boat, while the current keeps the lines always in new water, as the boat drops slowly down. A romantic river, boiling over shelves of rocks and rushing between boulders like a mill-race, is no place for a boat to work ; and as salmon rise well to the fly under such picturesque circum- stances, it is as unnecessary as it is impossible to resort to the device of harling. But when the mountain burn has become a stream, and a dozen such have been gathered into a loch, and the loch has given birth to a river, and the river has become an estuary three- quarters of a mile broad, with a rise and fall of twelve or fourteen vertical feet of tide, it is of no use to cast a fly. It has been held, indeed, up to very modem times, that salmon are here entirely safe from the rod ; but recent experiments have gone far to explode this opinion. Harling has been found to answer very well under such circumstances, and it is better to take fish by harling than not to take them at all, though that manner of sport is decried by fly-fishers whose lines are cast in other waters. Now, a good deal of nonsense is talked about fly-fishing. There is an idea abroad in the world that it is a most graceful art, requiring much skill if it is to be practised with success. And the idea is sound, so far as really good fly-fishing and distin- A NIGHT WITH A SALMON 143 guished success are concerned. But salmon are killed often enough by gentlemen, and by ladies too, who have a very flail-like style of hurling a fly, and can certainly claim no superiority of skill over the scientific harler. Rough measures will take a fish determined on being taken, a state of mind in which a good many salmon find themselves one time or another. This present writer served his novitiate in a boat, with a rod more like a hop-pole than a fly-rod, with which sturdy instrument some ten or twelve yards of strong cord got itself painfully thrown out, a length speedily increased by the strength of the current. This process, repeated half-a-dozen times, secured a clean fish in half an hour, ' casting, not harling,' as the captor informed his friends with a careful pride. When once a fish is hooked in fair water, in that secure manner in which a salmon carries through the business of hooking himself when he is in earnest, a little judicious assistance from the keeper will bring him in due time to the gaff". The value of salmon, either as a means of sport or as an article of food, depends very much on the part of the river where he is taken. If he is hooked near the tidal waters, he is usually full of vigour for sport, and in thorough condition for the table, fighting hard, and shining like silver. If he is hooked in the higher waters, unless he be a fresh run fish, with sea spirits and sea food still invigorating him, he is comparatively an ignoble prey. Towards the end of the season, men on the higher waters scarcely find a gafi" necessary. By 144 A NIGHT WITH A SALMON the time a fish has *got that length' he is a lazy creature, with skin as red as a soldier ; so that it has been said, not without wit, that salmon travel better by- land than by water. It would doubtless be a great satisfaction to owners of higher waters if they could persuade fish to come up to them in good condition ; and as this is impossible, they are at daggers drawn with the lower proprietors and their nets. They cannot, with any decent show of patience, endure to see fish taken out of the tidal and lower waters by the hundred, which would, in the course of nature, have run up to them, arriving, of course, as ' red fallows,' and therefore not nearly so choice for food as when they are torn flashing like burnished silver from the arms of the tide. Legislation in the direction of some sort of arrangement between the upper and lower proprietors is constantly being tinkered at, but the principle on which Parliament interferes is not very clear. Young fish must of course be protected, and breeding fish not wantonly destroyed. But so long as the public con- venience is not violated by an undue destruction of salmon, resulting in a deficient supply of that luxurious food, the public may fairly be satisfied ; for it is idle to talk of bringing salmon down to the price of cod in a seaport town. So long, then, as the rentals of food- producing rivers do not fall off, it is rather too bad that the time of Parliament should be wasted purely in the interests of sport. The upper proprietors, however, are so powerful a body throughout the kingdom, that they A NIGHT WITH A SALMON 145 are able to influence the councils of the nation, and seriously to affect the supply of salmon for the market. A moor lets so much better if good salmon-fishing can be advertised with it. But at this rate we shall never get to our night with the salmon. To do so we must transport ourselves to that part of the Tay where the Earn joins its waters with the larger stream, and the estuary proper com- mences. Up to the year of grace 1867, no single salmon or sea-trout, so far as can be ascertained, had ever been taken here by means of rod and line. After the season for net-fishing closed, leaving five or six weeks for the sporting season, when only the rod is lawful, and salmon is no longer an article of sale, the waters of the estuary became each year valueless to their proprietors. The upper owners, far away above the tide-way, revelled in their sport with the fly and the minnow ; but those lower down had the aggravation of seeing their waters teeming with huge fish, in admi- rable condition, leaping and gambolling in all directions ' warping,' to be technical without the possibility of taking one. The impossibility lay in the force of tra- ditional laws of nature. It was an accepted fact that no salmon would take a fly or a minnow in waters where the vertical rise of the tide amounts to twelve or fourteen feet. The lower orders of the Scotch, with all their good qualities, can scarcely be called an ex- perimental race ; and so it had come to pass, that every one engaged in the fishing works held fast the tradition L 146 A NIGHT WITH A SALMON that no fish could be taken by the rod in this fine stretch of water, three-quarters of a mile across at high tide. At length, however, it was tried, and with unex- pected success. Day after day the water was paraded by a boat, across and across, with three rods and lines hanging out astern, and day by day sea-trout and whitling (the grilse of the sea-trout) came to report themselves satisfied with the arrangements made. The salmon for some time held aloof, but after a time they, too, came in. By degrees a more extended series of experiments was tried. The tastes of the fish were pandered to by appeals at odd times of the tide. It was found that the sea-trout kind took best from three hours to an hour before low water ; then a relaxation of their efforts was observed. When low water was imminent, so that the stream became very slight, and the minnows would scarcely spin, the flies not working at all, then it was that a strong and steady pull would come, followed by the joyful music of the reel, and an exciting fight with a salmon. If no such agreeable interruption came, patience succeeded expectation, and weariness patience, until the tide had well begun to flow in again, when a few whitling would rise. After an hour and a half of tide, the oars were plied in vain. It cost much time and perseverance to arrive at some experimental law respecting the best states of wind and weather, and a somewhat elaborate system of lures grew up. The fly was practically soon abandoned, not A NIGHT WITH A SALMON 147 rising one to six as compared with the minnow, and that one never more than a sea-trout. On bright days a blue phantom, on dark days a brown ; higher up the channel a smaller minnow than lower down ; a clear day infinitely better than a dull ; the less wind the better, so that it is not actually calm ; a fair speed for trout, a mere crawl for salmon ; the deeper the water the better the fish : such were some of the results of innumerable experiments. But the lesson, enforced most frequently and with most painful emphasis, was this : Never buy phantom minnows that have not W.B. stamped on the spinner. They are only imita- tions of the Aberdeen phantom, and may be sound. ^ The ^ Night with a Salmon ' was the last night but one of the rod season of 1868. It was high tide about ten in the morning, and operations were commenced at half-past eleven, an earlier stage of the tide than had yet been experimented on. For nearly an hour nothing was done, and it was determined that either the tide was as yet too large, or there were seals in the water, the latter explanation one that had already proved true too frequently. To any one alive to the beauties of nature, and the charms of local antiquities, the scene was sufficiently attractive to call the thoughts from pis- catorial failure. On all sides save one, where the sea lay, the view was closed by hills of renown, Moncrieife and Kinnoull, the Ochills with far Craig Rossie, and > This was twenty-six years ago. I know, alas, very little of phantom minnows now. L 2 148 A NIGHT WITH A SALMON the Sidlaws, with peaked Dunsinane. The sides of the hills and the level plain were dotted thick with castles, recalling many a stirring history. The castle of Kin- fauns * stood out boldly, on its new site, representing a long line of the turbulent barons of Gray ; the old site nearer the river being now unmarked by any sign of the times when Sir Patrick Charteris held there his abode teste the Fair Maid of Perth and aided the burly burghers of the Fair City. Nearer still, and close on the water's edge, were the well-kept ruins of Elcho, a nunnery once, then a castle, whence the Wemyss takes now his second title. Through an opening in the hills lay the massive keep of Balthayock, where the much-acquiring Blairs were wont to guard a pass into the Carse of Gowrie. And at equal distances along the hills, stationed on similar duty, lay the stout towers of Evelick and Kinnaird, the former indeed only poetically present, save to the eye that could see through an intervening buttress of rock. Close at hand were the woods of Errol, the cradle of the * handsome Hays,' Errol, Kinnoull, Tweeddale, and other noble branches, with Falcon-stones in all parts of the neighbourhood, in honour of the traditional founding of the family. Further away was old Megginch,^ an appanage of Errol once, and bearing still on its walls the Hay name ; in another direction grey Pitfour,^ where the handsome blood still burgeons in the female line, and Seggieden,^ Margaret, Baroness Gray. ^ John Drummond, Esq. ' Sir John Stewart Richardson, Bart. * Colonel Drummond Hay. A NIGHT WITH A SALMON 149 another Hay, with its carpets of flowers. On the other side of the river, Abernethy shewed its strange round tower, Ouldee cell, prison, campanile, granary, place of refuge, beacon, watch-tower, palace, idol temple, or whatever the most correct view of its original purpose may be. On the hills beyond, the ruins of Balvaird shewed the old home of the 'Stormont Murray s. Near it wound the road whence it is believed, in spite of some physical difficulties, that the Eomans looked down upon the Inch of Perth and the flowing Tay, and uttered, in their impudence, the doubtful compliment, ^Ecce alterum Tiherim, ecce alterum Campum Martis I ' Or, lastly, to recross the Tay and look further afield, the towers of Stuart-loving Fingask ^ might be seen, nestling under Dunsinane ; and the lordly pile of Eossie ^ with its chapel and its chimes will close the list, unless, indeed, we prefer to wind up with the chimneys of smoky Dundee. At the mouth of the Earn the captain of the ex- pedition warns the boatman not to go too near the sandbanks, and as the boat obediently turns upwards, the middle rod shews a drag, and the line begins to draw ofi* lazily. ' Bottom, Jimmy ! You always go too near there ! ' ' That's no bottom,' Jimmy declares ; and as the owner of the rod is proceeding to put things in order again, there comes a swish which nearly carries off* rod and man and all, while the reel makes mad music, eminently suggestive of a rapid end to the run. ' Back, Jimmy ! back her ! We can't stop him.' And ' Sir P. M. Threipland, Bart. ^ George, Lord Kinnaird. 160 A NIGHT WITH A SALMON as Jimmy backs, the non-combatant member of the party reels up the other two lines and gets the rods out of harm's way. The fish is clearly a monster. He plays the boat, rather than the boat him. He careers about the middle channel of the Tay for a time, the boat cautiously following, and then he goes into shal- lower water, on banks dry at low tide, where experience has taught us that more than one dangerous stake exists. Then he rushes up Earn, and to follow him against the powerful stream is no easy task for Jimmy's stout arms. He has taken the lightest of the three lines, a mere makeshift composed of two trout-lines, seventy and fifty yards long, and this puts no drag upon his movements. Nor dare we let him get far from the boat, for the splice has not been tried, and the rings are small. However, we congratulate ourselves on hooking him so early in the tide, as we can afford to spend an hour upon him and yet have the whole usual time of fishing left. But an hour sees him no nearer the gaff. He keeps up a succession of long steady runs, followed promptly by the boat, and only once getting more than seventy yards away so as to shew the splice. In an hour and a half we have drifted down into the neighbourhood of a very threatening danger, the poles and ropes of a row of sperling-nets,^ standing now on a sandbank in five or six feet of water, each * Sperling or Sparling : Fr. 6perlan : the common English smelt. They are taken in large fixed purse-nets, and are left high and dry in the nets at low water. A NIGHT WITH A SALMON 151 rope collecting a flotilla of surface rubbish. Once among these the fish must be lost, and not only does he shew a strong inclination to go there, but we have learned that he will go where he chooses. After ten minutes of anxious manoeuvring, he cruises across towards the north shore of the Tay, in the direction of a famous landing-place for salmon, a firm beach with a short spit of gravel running out into the river. The third man in the boat has never engaged in salmon-fishing before, and finding two hours' ' play ' without one sight of the fish something too much for his young philosophy, he hails with delight our prophecies of speedy success. Suddenly, ' The line's slack ! he's off"! No, he isn't, he's turned ! ' and while the slack line is reeled in with all imaginable speed, Jimmy gets the boat round just in time for the most furious bolt southward we have yet had. The third man's hopes of shore are rudely blighted. Meanwhile, the tide has drifted us down well below the sperling-nets on the south shore, and that danger is past. But the afiair is becoming serious, for we have arrived at the head of Mugdrum Island, which divides the Tay into a North and South deep, and once in the South deep, a rapid run of tide and current will quickly carry us down to Newburgh, and then there will be a stormy estuary two or three miles across to be faced. Mugdrum can scarcely be called a romantic name. It is a corruption of Magridin, the name of a Scottish saint ; another form of which is Magruder, not much 152 A NIGHT WITH A SALMON more romantic ; while yet another form lingers in the denomination of a parish in Fife, Eccles-Magirdie, Ecclesia-Magirdle. The fish at first shews signs of taking the North deep, to the great confusion of Jimmy, who reports the bottom * gey foul,' as no nets have been worked in that cliannel for years. He makes, however, for the South deep, and in the neck of the channel, some thirty feet deep, with the water running like a mill- race, he takes it into his head to sulk for the first time. There are half-a-dozen stones in the boat, a part of the mystery of harling, and these are dropped at intervals on to the spot where the fish is calculated to be. One only of them takes effect, and, after a rush of a few moments, he returns to his position, the patience of the third man becoming of a somewhat stormy character. After a quarter of an hour he bolts suddenly, and makes for a, nice little sandy beach on the island, where we could land very conveniently and fight him from the shore ; but finding himself in shallow water he doesn't like it, and sails off down the channel seawards, with current and tide and all in his favour. Down he goes almost without a pause, till we find ourselves under Mugdrum House, the harbour and shipping of New- burgh close at hand, and the wild expanse of estuary beyond. At another time the scene would have had associations and attractions sufficient for us. On Mugdrum House there hangs the escutcheon of the last male Hay of Leyes, a line of twenty-three direct de- scents from father to son, the first Hay of Leyes being A NIGHT WITH A SALMON 153 himself the sixth in direct descent from William de Haya, Pincerna Domini Regis. Newburgh was of old the capital of the kingdom of Fife. It still retains Macduff's cross, where any of Macduff's kind might find a sanctuary, sure by royal ordinance, in case he had killed a man by any means short of diabolically premeditated murder. Macduff's kind were a likely sort of people to keep the sanctuary warm. The ram- pant reformers of Perth smashed the cross as a joke while paying a visit of deformation to the Abbey of Lindores. The remains of that famous abbey are now in sight from the boat, the ground-plan wonderfully complete, and the whole cared for to the utmost by the owners and occupiers of the land. There is to be found in stone effigy the winged horse, the cognisance of the last Earl of Douglas, whom his king sent to die a monk at Lindores (' he who may no better be, a monk must be ') . There, too, is the delicate skull of the young Duke of Rothsay, the wisdom-teeth half cut, taken from a poor slab-tomb south of the high altar, where those who brought his murdered body from Falkland had hurriedlj^ laid him. There, too, are the coffins of the infant sons of the founder, David Earl of Hunting- don, whose daughters, had these little babies lived, would never have handed down the ancient throne of Scotland to the Anglo-Norman barons of Sheriff-Hutton and Bar- nard Castle, the Bruce and the Balliol. And, hanging over the abbey, is a famous crag, famous in its history as striking in its outline no other than the Clatchart 154 A NIGHT WITH A SALMON Craig, where Wallace outwitted the English ; the neigh- bouring woods being descendants of the great forest of Black Earnside, the scene of a great battle of his. Further down the river, on a bluff headland, stands the ruined Castle of Bambreich, or Ballinbreich, a former home of the Dukes of Rothes. A son of that house, Norman Leslie, became Lord Lindores at the Dissolu- tion ; but the title came to trouble, as coronets gilt with monastic gold have been wont to do. It is now half-past three o'clock, and we are rapidly- approaching Newburgh. A council of war determines that, at all hazards, we must get to shore ; and, as if in furtherance of our determination, the fish makes to- wards the island. We push on, parallel with him, and regardless of the splice, until the boat actually touches the bottom for a moment, imparting to the third man the most pleasurable sensation he has yet felt. The next moment we are rowing hard out into mid channel, for a sudden rush has run all the line off the reel but ten yards or so. That is our first and last contact with the shore from the beginning to the end. He still makes seawards ; but we observe with much satisfaction that the tide shews signs of turning, and we hope soon to find ourselves moving homewards. The change of tide seems to make the fish frantic. We are never still for half a minute, and never cease wondering what his size must be if his strength is so enormous and so un- tiring. Finally, he decides on going up with the tide, and he goes at so merry a rate that the third man is A NIGHT WITH A SALMON 155 encouraged to bring out three sandwiches of potted grouse our whole supply of food and eats his share. A strong cold wind from the sea, and a heavy fall of rain, soon come to damp his satisfaction, and he is reduced to the verge of despair. Double himself up as he will, his waterproof will not cover the whole of him ; and as he must sacrifice either his legs or his head, he elects to save the legs. The waves become embarrass- ing, and the boat is no longer easy to manage. A new fiend enters the fish, and makes him play the maddest pranks imaginable. We have for some time discussed the probability of his being a strong fish hooked foul, which would account -for some part of his power ; but just when the waves are at the highest and the boat is blowing up the river close upon the fish, out he springs two feet into the air, a monster as large as a well-grown boy, with the line leading fair up to his snout. ' Never land that fellow with a couple of trout-lines, or any other line,' is the fisherman's verdict ; and as if to con- firm it a cry comes the next minute, ' The line has parted ! ' Sure enough one strand has gone, owing to the constant friction of the wet line running through the rings for so many hours, and within twenty yards of the end of the line there is an ugly place two inches long, with only two strands out of three remaining. There is no longer a moment's safety unless that flaw is kept on the reel ; and the necessity of pressing close on the fish leads Jimmy such a life as he will probably not forget. We are hungry and cold and somewhat 166 A NIGHT WITH A SALMON wet ; it is growing very dusk, and if we could not land him with 120 yards of line, how can we with twenty? We have caught a Tartar indeed. The non-combatant determines to go overboard and swim to land ; but the fish seems inclined to save him the trouble, and once more makes for the favourite north shore. We near the haven, are within fifteen yards of land. Our friend gets on to the seat to jump, but waits for one weak moment to have a shorter swim, when off goes the fish, and ofi* we go, too, into mid-channel. The disappointed man resigns himself, for the Tay, with a strong tide half up, is no pleasant bath in the twilight of a rough October day. And now night comes on in earnest. It is half-past six, and all but dark, before we reach the pier whence we started seven hours before. Here there are several boats kept, and we shout with the utmost confidence for * Ko-bairt ' to come and take our friend ashore. Alas ! all the boats are far up in the reeds, and will not be available for two or three hours yet, so on we go into the deepening darkness. The clock at home strikes seven, and we hear our passenger groaning over the fact that they are just going in to dinner. Lights peep out on the hillsides and in the plain, and a gather- ing cluster of bright points at the water's edge reminds us that we are nearing Inchyra, where we shall cer- tainly get a boat to come out to us. We shout in concert, ' Boat ! ' ' Boo-o-o-at ' the hills all round re- turn, with echoes marvellously prolonged ; but there is A NiaHT WITH A SALMON 167 no other reply. The whole village must have heard probably takes it for a hoax. Again and again we cry, now in harmony, now in discord ; and anything more horrible than a loud body of discord borne on repeating echoes it is difficult to conceive. At length a measured sound of oars is heard, and a black pirate-like boat comes down upon us. We state our need. Can he take this gentleman down to the pier, and bring us back some food ? ' Na ! ' And that is all he will vouchsafe to say as he sheers off again. Soon, however, a more Christian boat appears, and with many com- plicated manoeuvres, to keep the line clear of the boats in the dark, we tranship our friend about eight o'clock, loaded with injunctions to send off food and a light. The light would be of the greatest service, for a frozen finger and thumb are not sufficiently certain indicators of the passage of the frayed portion of the line from the reel ; and as the fish has never ceased to rush from one side to the other, frequently passing sheer under the boat, and requiring the utmost care to keep the line clear of the oars, we think almost more of the coming lantern than of the sorely needed food. It is an hour before the boat returns, with an excellent lantern, a candle and a half, a bottle of whisky, and cakes and cheese enough for a week. Before setting to work upon the food we attempt to put in execution a plan we have long thought of and carefully discussed. A spare rod, short and stiff, is laid across the seats of the boat, with the reel all clear, and a good salmon-line on, 158 A NIGHT WITH A SALMON with five or six yards drawn through the rings. We wait till the fish is quiet for a moment or two under the boat, and, taking gently hold of the line he is on, pass a loop of it through the loop at the end of the salmon-line. As if he divined our intention, off he goes at once, running the flaw off the reel, and costing us some effort to catch him up again. This is repeated two or three times. At last we get the loop through, get a good knot tied, snap the old line above the knot, and there is our friend careering away at the end of a hundred yards of strong salmon-line, with some seven or eight yards only of the thinner line. When we examine the now innocuous flaw, we find it is seven inches long, and half of one of the remaining strands is frayed through. The only thing now to be avoided is coming into very close contact with the fish, as the new loop will not run easily through the rings. Unfortunately, the light in the boat seems to attract him to us, for he does little else than rush from one side of the boat to the other, and we are obliged to take the oars in and let her drift. For a few moments, we propose to hang the light over the stem, and gaff him when he comes up to it ; but that method is at once rejected as unfair to so noble a foe. Jimmy, however, will not abandon it. ' I should be ashamed all my life,' the fisherman declares. * There's never a body need know,' Jimmy replies. 'I should know,' was the moral rejoinder. ^ Deed I wudna tell.' Time passes on as we drift slowly up the river to- A NIGHT WITH A SALMON 159 wards Elcho. Ten o'clock strikes, and we determine to wait till dawn, and then land and try conclusions with the monster that has had us fast for ten hours. The tide begins to turn, and Jimmy utters gloomy forebodings of our voyage down to the sea in the dark. The fish feels the change of tide, and becomes more demoniacal than ever. For half an hour he is in one incessant flurry, and at last, for the first time, he rises to the surface, and through the dark night we can hear and see the huge splashes he makes as he rolls and beats the water. He must be near done, Jimmy thinks. As he is speaking the line comes slack. He's bolting towards the boat, and we reel up with the utmost rapidity. We reel on; but no sign of resis- tance. Up comes the minnow, minus the tail hook. Jimmy rows home without a word ; and neither he nor the fisherman will ever get over it. Note. A large fish was taken in the nets at Newburgh the next year, which was popularly recognised as the fish of the above account. It had a mark just where I saw the tail hook of the minnow when the fish shewed itself once in the strong water above Newburgh; and a peculiarity of form of the shoulder, which I then noticed, was seen in the great fish taken in the nets. Correspondence with Mr. Frank Buckland, who took a cast of the fish, appeared to establish the identity of the two. It was the largest salmon ever known to be taken, weighing 74 lbs. as weighed at Newburgh, and 70 lbs. in London the next day. Fish are usually found not to decrease, but to increase largely in weight after their capture. My boatman on Loch Freuchie once told me, a propos of a * 4 lb. trout ' caught by a Stirling gentleman in the loch, that the fish must have grown 2| lbs. between that and Stirling. 160 A NIGHT WITH A SALMON There is a cast of the big sahnon in the South Kensington Museum. A photograph shewing its size in relation to a large wheelbarrow and the rudder of a coble is reproduced at p. 138 ; the photographer found it impossible to prop the fish up in such a fashion as to shew its remarkable depth of side. 161 TEE CHATEAU IN THE ARDENNES^ They told me of a chateau, in the heart of the Ardennes, A pension kept charmingly by two young chatelaines ; They told me of some English people who had summered there, On next to nothing for the best and most abundant fare; They could not tell me where it was, or who the chatelaines. But they knew it was a chateau, in the heart of the Ardennes. The heart of the Ardennes is large, if it be somewhat cold; And chateaux are in plenty there, the home of barons bold; The ruins that were homes in ages past, that is to say, And not at all like pensions where English people stay; But all the information that they really could obtain Was this, it was a chateau, in the heart of the Ardennes. 1 Spa, 1880, M 162 THE CHATEAU IN THE ARDENNES They botK were very anxious to be able to make out The way to reach the chateau they had heard so much about ; 'Twould be so charming after all the tours that they had been, And after all the gay and noisy places they had seen, To go and live for nothing, far from all the haunts of men, At a veritable chateau, in the heart of the Ardennes. They left. No more they d^jeuner*d at healthy Sauveni6re, No more they meant to dejeuner at distant Geronst^re ; No more abused the Ninth for all the tuneless things they played, No more encored La ronde qui passe in Leopold's arcade. They left ; and I was lonely for a day or two ; and then, I went to find the chateau in the heart of the Ardennes. There met me, on the way to join the luggage at the gare, About the most experienced of travellers * that are, The ' Art ' himself ' of Travel ' ; and, though not bom yesterday, I listened to the guileful tale he told me by the way ; ' Mr. Francis Galton. THE CHATEAU IN THE ARDENNES 163 For he told me with descriptive tongue, as clever as his pen, What sounded like the chateau in the heart of the Ardennes. He told me of the demoiselles who kept a charming place ; Of English people, how they praised its cleanliness and space ; He told me of a brother, too, who helped his sisters dear. And how for almost nothing they gave most delightful cheer. It was not called a chateau by his friend, he said ; but then. It really was a pension in the heart of the Ardennes. A Belgian lady staying in the Britannique hotel Had told him. That was where and how my ladies learned as well. It clearly was the very place. I took the train at one ; Then drove across the bitter moors ; and when the day was done. We pulled up in a dirty little town amid the rain, And o'er the door was painted H. not chateau DES ARDENNES. M 2 164 THE CHATEAU IN THE AEDENNES A huggennugger maid appears, with pail and brush in hand, And makes a sound or two which she perhaps may understand ; And then there comes another, with a wart upon her nose, And she must be, as I at length unwillingly suppose, At least the mother of the pair of blooming chatelaines Who keep the charming chateau in the heart of the Ardennes. But if a pair they ever were, the other's not alive. And this one is the only one, and she is fifby-five ; The * brother ' is a page in blouse, who won't do what he's bid, The people call him Jacquot, but with madame he's stupide ! We've thus disposed of brother and of blooming chatelaines ; But what about the chateau, in the heart of the Ardennes ? I'm ushered in; and there, I find, are fellow victims three. Prepared to eat their soujyer, fixed for sept heures et demie ; THE CHATEAU IN THE ARDENNES 165 A monsieur with a napkin tucked beneath his double chin, A mother, and a giggling girl for ever on the grin. Then knives begin to shovel in the meat and beans, and then I feel I'm in a pension, in the heart of the Ardennes. The mother tells of glories which have quite possessed her brains, The salons of a wealthy fahricant of counterpanes ; Discusses is it proper for a Verificateur To ask to dance the daughter of a public Inspecteur. It sounds perhaps a little insignificant, but then We're very near a chateau, in the heart of the Ardennes. Monsieur gets purple over non ! and shouts it six times o'er ; And when he feels affirmative, a dozen si's or more ; Elisa nips her mother when I don't take haricots. Which smell so strong of onion I'm glad to see them go. And this within a yard or two, not more than eight or ten, Of a most undoubted chateau, in the heart of the Ardennes. 166 THE CHAtEAU in the ARDENNES The morning breaks in beauty, and romantic dreams take flight, As through the open window streams the sun's fast gathering light, Romantic dreams of sylvan courts, and eke of banished dukes, And pensive Jaqueses meditating, by meandering brooks. I rise and seek the window, feeling sure that there and then I shall realise the chateau, in the heart of the Ardennes. The noises that the pigs are making really pass belief ; The cocks are louder still, to shut the window's no relief; And, ah! for dreams of sylvan glades so sweet and fresh and pure. At every door are soaking heaps of excellent manure. But what are trifles such as these, when close within my ken, There stands at last the chateau, in the heart of the Ardennes ? The guide-book says ninth century, but carved in stone the date Of this remaining morsel is but sixteen twenty eight ; It's now a shop for carpet slippers, sweets and boots and wool. And madame takes a room in it when her hotel is full ; THE CHATEAU IN THE ARDENNES 167 The rest was all fait sauter, not by Kevolution men, But to build a new Hotel de Ville, in the heart of the Ardennes. The meats are very tender, and the bedrooms very good; Madame is very pleasant, and there's quite sufficient food; The coffee's sometimes perfect, and there seem to be no fleas; And it costs you very little by the day at Houffalize ; But yet I'm not at all inclined to go and see again That smelly not a chateau, in the heart of the Ardennes. 168 THE ENGADINE^ The Engadine has been written about so often, and from so many points of view, that the subject might seem to be exhausted. But there is one vein which has not been sufficiently worked, if, indeed, it has been worked at all. Some of the Engadiners of old time devoted themselves to a study of the history and topo- graphy of their country. The modem students of the history of Rhaetia have been active in reprinting the old works, and printing others which have lain long in a manuscript form, notably the Ehaetian history of Campellus, or Chiampel, and a large number of docu- ments from among the archives of Chur. By this means a great deal of valuable information has been rendered accessible. An additional interest has thus been given to the bracing valley which claims to have been peopled by a Latin-speaking race, and to have retained their language in the Romauntsch of to-day. To proceed at once to the place which made the modern reputation of the Engadine, some guide-books have suggested that the name of Pontresina is derived from Ad Pontem Saracenum, and others have scoffed ' National Review^ August 1883. THE ENGADINE 169 at this derivation. The Chur archives leave no doubt on the point, so far as the use of that as the Latin name of the place is concerned. Such use is of course not a proof of the derivation of the one name from the other. In 1291, Caspar and Romedius de Ponte Sarraceno make over to Andreas Planta of Zutz all their tithes in Zutz, on payment of eighty-four pounds. Five years later, Caspar de Ponte Sarraceno sells to the same Andreas four lambs yearly, part of the canons' tithes, for twenty-six pounds. Six years later still, the same two brothers resign into the hands of Bishop Sifrid the fee of Curtins in the Fex valley (in valle Fedes, the Feet- or Fex-Thal), which the Bishop grants again to one of the Castelmurs, a family famous in Bregaglia, taking its rise from the Castle of Murum on the lake of Sils, a name derived from a much more ancient place in the Val Bregell (Prse-gallia). The de Ponte Sarra- ceno or von Pontresina family were evidently going down the hill in the thirteenth century as the Plantas rose, taking their name from the bear's paw, planta. Andreas Planta, it may be remarked parenthetically, was at this time buying up tithes and church fees in all directions ; for instance, twenty-seven fishes a year from the lake of St. Moritz from Tobias de Cambescasco (Toby of Camogask) for three pounds, and another twenty-seven from Peter and James of Camogask for four pounds. That the name Pons Saracenus does refer to the Saracens, and does not owe its form to some accidental 170 THE ENGADINE coincidence, may be argued from the fact that the bishopric of Chur suffered greatly at the hands of the Saracenic invaders who so grievously troubled that part of Europe. Thus in 940, according to the original document still existing at Chur, King Otho I. gave to Bishop Waldo of Chur, to alleviate the losses inflicted by the Saracens, the church of Bludenz and St. Martin's Church in Schams (in voile Sexamnes). The latter was to go after Waldo's death to the convent of Katzis, represented in the Latin, no doubt in accordance with the then pronunciation of the double z, as Chazzes. In 955 the same Otho recorded in a document not now to be found at Chur, that he had himself seen, in the course of his journey from Italy, evident traces of the mischief done by the Saracens. He therefore gave to Bishop Hartpert as some compensation his demesne of Zizers, with all its pertinents, and also perpetual freedom from toll for the Bishop's vessel on lake Walenstadt (in lacu riuano). Lothar had remitted the toll in 843, by a charter now to be seen in perfect preservation at Chur. Otho's gift, by the way, did not pass unchal- lenged, for Count Arnold von Lenzburg asserted that the property in question belonged to his church of Schannis. The matter was investigated at Constanz in 972 before Otho, now become emperor, a jury of twelve or more men of the district, and a court of eleven Counts and Counts Palatine ; the verdict was in favour of the Bishop. The archives at Chur abound in material of the THE ENG-ADINE 171 highest interest for all who find pleasure in the province of Rhaetia, in its ancient or its modern guise. Many travellers will remember well their visit to the quaint old cathedral church of Chur, with its early charters, reliquaries by Hibernian gold-workers, and its collection of sculptured stones ranking high in point of antiquity and beauty among the Christian remains in Europe. Some of the best of the charters are displayed in the sacristy. There may be seen the long and narrow and somewhat infirm characters of the Caroline charters, still written in the Merovingian hand, before Alcuin's influence reached Chur. Alcuin, formerly head master of the Cathedral school of York, in succession to Albert, cousin of the King and Archbishop, and to Ecgbert, brother of the King and Archbishop, and afterwards Charlemagne's right-hand man, honoured the Bishop with several letters, having made his acquaintance on the journey to or from Home ; but no one who knows Alcuin's style will expect that anything of antiquarian interest is to be found in these effusions. One of them is more practical than most of his letters, inasmuch as it introduces to Bishop Remedius a certain merchant journeying on Alcuin's account to Italy, and begs that the Bishop will let him off all tolls in passing the mountains. Many of the documents in the archives at Chur relate to the Engadine. The earliest, or one of the earliest, is a gift of the Church of Sins to the presbyter Hartpert, Henry the Fowler being the giver, and 172 THE ENGADINE Berthold being the Count of the Engadine. But the most interesting are three which bear date January 22, 1139, whereby the Counts of Gamertingen sell their possessions to the Bishops of Chur. This was practically the acquisition of the lordship of the Upper Engadine, where the bishops were lords till the people bought their freedom in 1494, the Lower Engadine buying their freedom of the House of Austria in 1652. The boundaries of the Gamertingen possessions, as recited in the first of the three documents, were as follows : To the east, the pons alta, now Punt auta, still the boundary of the Upper and Lower Engadine. To the north, the source of water in Fulpugnia, of which Professor von Mohr remarks that no one can tell the site; we can scarcely be wrong, etymologically or topographically, in placing it at Palpugna, close by the little lake of Weissenstein on the Albula road, from which the Albula itself flows. To the south the water- course which runs into the lacxis alhvs, the laig or lej alv as the Romauntsch people call it still, better known by its Italian name of logo bianco, at the summit of the Bemina pass. And to the west, the water-course of Campofare, which is not far to seek now-a-days. The possessions included the church of St. Peter at Samaden and of St. Lucius at Zutz. The price was eight hun- dred marks of silver and sixty ounces of the purest gold. The second of the three deeds disposes of a part of the Upper Engadine in which some additional members of the Count's family had an interest, possessions at THE ENGADINE 173 St. Moritz and Schlatain, for two hundred marks of silver. The third gives as a free gift to St. Mary of Chur the family property at Pontresina, ad pontem sarisinam as the deed has it, in disregard of ordinary rules of gender, a disregard which the modern form of the name has stereotyped. It is unfortunate that the first mention we find of an Engadine family is due to dishonesty. There is a document in the Bishop's archives at Chur, dated May 18, 1244, by which Volkard, the bishop who built the castle of Guardaval, puts Andreas Planta in the place of Tobias de Ponte Zarisino as Chancellor of the County of the Upper Engadine, by reason of the mis- demeanour of Tobias. Von Mohr unkindly puts a note to this, that there flourishes still at Pontresina the ancient family of Saratz, probably descended from the de Ponte Zarisino. The late President of Pontresina, and landlord-owner of the Grand Hotel Saratz, was not likely to feel very grateful for this remark, which con- fuses, by the way, a gentile and a local name. Something more than 300 years ago, the Engadiners were made the subject of a cruel calumny. In the year 1550, Sebastian Mtinster, the illustrious Professor of Hebrew in the academy of Basel, published his cosmo- graphic work, printed by Heinrich Petri. He described the character of each people, as well as the country which they inhabited ; and he was in some cases very frank. Thus of the Scots he said that they were personally dirty, that they thought themselves better 174 THE ENGADINE than other people, and that the most beggarly Scot called himself cousin to the king. Of the Engadiners he used words which Chiampel cannot bring himself to repeat, so slanderous and insulting were they. Another writer is quite as angry but was less discreet. He quotes the words. The professor said in his Latin edition that the race of men in the Engadine was rapax et furtis dedita, a pack of thieves and robbers ; and in the German edition, published simultaneously, he said of them, sy stud gross&r Diehen dan die Zigyner. After some copies had been sold, Miinster found that the statement was considered likely to get him into trouble, and in the remaining copies the words were erased with pen and ink. The Engadiners took the statement ill, being conscious of no such deserts. They will, no doubt, have the sympathy of all who have paid bills for rooms and carriages in the Upper Engadine during the last few years. John Travers of Siis and Balthasar Planta of Zemetz, who were among the leading men in the lower and upper valleys respectively, were sent as delegates to Basel to make a disturbance about the slander upon their fair fame. They arrived in October 1554, and to their great disappointment they found that Miinster was dead. They endeavoured to fix the responsibility on Petri, the publisher, on the ground that he must have known what he was printing. But Petri got ofif by an argument which seems to have been good enough for those times. In the first place, he knew better than to take the trouble of reading THE ENGADINE 175 through all the books he had to print ; in the second place, though it might at times be necessary to be careful, with so famous an author as Miinster he should never have thought of examining what he printed. At length, by way of appeasing the wrath of the Engadine, the men of Basel made a proposal which was accepted. Two tablets were prepared, sealed with the seal of Basel, to be preserved in the archives of the Lower and Upper Engadine, setting forth that Munster was entirely mistaken in describing the Engadiners as a rapacious people, and in asserting that they were bigger thieves than the gipsies. Thus whitewashed, with characters guaranteed by the seal of Basel, Travers and Planta returned joyful, and deposited their invaluable docu- ments among the treasures of their muniment rooms. Chiampel, as we have seen, could not bring himself to quote the scandalous words. Peter de Porta gives the text of the whitewashing document, in which the words quoted above are found. Their account some- what exaggerates Miinster's offence, for in the Latin editions of 1550 and 1554 the Engadiners are described as bellicosam gentem sed furacem. In 1572 they are hellicosam of that, their attitude at Basel had left no doubt and no longer furacem. The German was corrected earlier, for in 1556 they are a gut streitbar Volchf as indeed they had proved themselves to be. It was discovered in the course of time that ^ one of great name, but a great rascal,' had told Munster tales about the Engadine which Munster had believed. The 176 THE ENGADINE contemporary writers spare his name. He was one of the most prominent men in Rhaetia, de Porta says. Probably he was of their own race, and they felt it a little awkward to answer a charge of rascality against the Engadiners by the argument that the Engadiner who made it was a rascal. Possibly the informant had merely travelled through the Engadine, and communi- cated his adventures to the learned professor; for Chiampel mentions one or two places of evil report, which might not unfairly give some countenance to the idea that the people were rascals. Near Siis, his own home, was a place which had been cleared by the in- dustry of his fellow-townsmen, but had formerly been covered with brushwood and stones, where * thieves and robbers lurked behind trees and rocks.' And at Zemetz, where the valley narrows so much that there is not room for the road without cutting the rock, is a place called Puntaglias, once very unsafe on account of rob- bers. When the band was overcome and seized, they confessed to having robbed many travellers and thrown them into the Inn. Chiampel does not say that any of these gentry were foreigners. The Reformation in the Engadine was brought about by a series of local struggles, each commune being a law to itself and reforming or remaining un- reformed according to the decision of the majority. By good fortune one of the main actors in the matter no other than Ulric Chiampel was engaged upon a history of Rhastia, and he and others have recorded details, such THE ENGADINE 177 as perhaps no other country possesses, of the change of worship. The struggle as a rule centred round the images. If the images were got rid of by fair means or by foul, the Mass went and the preaching came in. The means were oftener foul than fair, and the details are usually quaint. At Campfer a place very inno- cent now of anything of the kind there was a celebrated image of St. Eoche, with a shrine of the highest sanc- tity. One winter's night three men passed with sleighs, and the last "of them, being very strong and bold, dragged down the huge image, fastened it to the tail of his sleigh, and dragged it multis cum cavillis to Cresta, near Celerina, which last place, by the way, mistaken tourists will persist in calling Chelerina, as if it were Italian and not Romauntsch. The Papists, of course, were furious, and they appealedto the ordinary tribunal. The people of Samaden, and other prudent persons, appeased them by taking care that the image was put back in its place ; but no one attempted to disguise the fact that Rochus, though restored, was male habitus. It was only for one day that he recovered his position. Jachem Muott (James Hill) of Celerina, described in the record as St. Paul describes the Athenians in the English version, brought the family food to the restored Rochus to be blessed. He unluckily stumbled at the threshold and fell with the food. Forgetting his super- stition in the presence of so great a catastrophe, he uttered unseemly words against the Saint. The priest rebuked him so severely, and the bystanders jeered him 178 THE ENGADINE SO much, that he forswore Kochus on the spot, and all other saints, and joined his fellow-citizens in putting down the images and establishing the reformed faith. At Celerina, which place, in union with St. Moritz, preserved the old religion longer than any other com- mune in the Upper Engadine, Johannes Zacconius was the priest, and all his life he sang the Mass. He was a highly respectable man, in proof whereof Chiampel adduces the fact that he was the father of several lawful children, a proof of respectability which the Reformers on their part were from the first very ready to afford. The assistant priest was Thomas a Castris, who had been brought up at Zurich, the great seminary of re- formed doctrines, and there had learned better things. He made use of his access to the images at Celerina to make cracks in them, and mutilate them, and break them, and even to carry them off. People saw what was going on, but nobody dared to interfere, for the artful Thomas, who had not learned better things at Ziirich for nothing, allowed it to be supposed that the images were being maltreated at the instigation of Frederick von Salis of Samaden, the Commissary of the Upper Engadine, whose relations were the great people of Celerina. Thus the way was paved for a change, so soon as the highly respectable Zacconius should leave his lawful children fatherless. This event occurred in 1576, when Celerina and St. Moritz by common consent allowed the Mass to follow their ruined images. The dwellers at the shrine of St. Moritz, we are informed, THE ENGADINE ' 179 had for some time been inclined to hold out the hand to the Gospel, but the constant influx of strangers from Italy to drink the waters kept up the old views. They succeeded, however, in ejecting the images in 1570, as a preliminary to the rejection of the Mass. This was twenty years after places in the neighbourhood had become reformed. The proceedings at Camogasc did not follow the same order. The people were so equally divided that they could not decide whether to elect a minister of the Word or a priest of the Mass. Each half chose for itself, the minister being Chiampel the historian, the priest, usually a Bergamasque. The services were per- formed on alternate Sundays ; but one Sunday both Chiampel and the Bergamasque appeared. Neither would give way. At length Chiampel went up to the priest and asked him what the Mass was. The priest after some cross-questioning was constrained to say that the Mass was summum scelus et injuria contra Christi meritum, which his superiors would scarcely, one may suppose, recognise as an orthodox statement. Curiously enough this did not terminate the doubts of the com- mune. Chiampel migrated to Siis. Five years later the two halves agreed that they should take as their common pastor Christopher Chioerngias, who, strange to say, had been informally and impartially serving both parties without shewing his hand, and should leave it to him to decide whether Mass should be sung or not. Nunquam amplius missificavit^ he never sang Mass N 2 180 THE ENGADINE again. The unreformed party then vehemently re- gretted that they had made the pact ; for along with the Mass the images were to be removed, and the church of Camogasc possessed statues second to none in beauty and elegance. They succeeded in preventing for a while the removal of the images ; but before long a com merchant offered sixty measures of com for them, valued at a hundred florins, and this offer converted so many that the reformers had all but, if not quite, a majority. The numbers being so nearly equal that neither side had a clear preponderance, they went to law before the Courts by the space of eight months at great cost. At length the PapizanteSt seeing that the decision would go against them by two votes, acted the part of the dog in the manger. They changed their cry, and said they would rather have their saints burned than sold. The Gospel party accepted the compromise, and the judge made a solemn order that on that or the next day all the images belonging to the church of Camogasc should be * handed over to Vulcan.' The Gospel party made the pyre and kept it fed with fuel, while the others kept jealous guard outside the ring lest anything of value should be abstracted, which might be sold and so ' yield an offering to Bacchus or to Ceres.' At Zernetz there were three churches. One of these, the Church of Roven, has since disappeared, but its large bell is in one of the remaining churches, and is still known as il sain (signum) da Raven. One night THE ElSaADINE 181 in October, 1552, the statues in these churches were cut down and foully damaged, and all the furniture for Mass was torn or cut to pieces or removed. The next morning the excitement was intense. The bells were rung and the people assembled. No one had done it. What was to be done ? The Parochus, who had so far held a mean between the two parties, but had continued to sing Mass, decided that as the images had gone the Mass might go too, and it went accordingly. At Siis, Chiampel's family played a prominent part in Reformation matters. A daughter was born to him in his absence, and the infant seemed about to die. Who was to baptise it ? The grandfather, Caspar, had to arrange the affair, and his social relations with the ecclesiastics of Siis were of such a nature as to cause some complications. He altogether refused to receive the sacred dew from midwives, and there remained only the priests and the Parochus. He would not re- ceive it from the priests, for he was not on speaking terms with them. Least of all would he receive it from the Parochus, for the Parochus and he were under bonds to keep the peace towards each other, in con- sequence of differences which had come to a certain head. He therefore baptised the child himself, naming it Anna, and then it died. Thereupon the Parochus and others of Caspar's enemies, who seem to have been numerous, made a great uproar. The bell was rung and an assembly collected. Either Caspar had allowed the child to die without proper baptism, or, if the bap- 182 THE ENGADINE tism was valid, Caspar had become the compater of his own son and daughter-in-law, a thing unheard of, abominable. If divorce followed upon spiritual cog- nition, a wretch such as Caspar, unworthy of the light of day and of the nature of things, must be altogether put out of the way. In pursuance of this determination the people drew their swords, the Parochus meanwhile throwing cold water on their wrath, as Petrus de Porta ironically relates, though, after all, the recollection of the bond may have made him earnest against actual violence. Caspar got himself into a comer of the market-place of Slis, and there intrenched himself, making such good play with his sword that he kept off the parson and all the people till help came. From this arose the disputation in the church at Sus, famous indeed, but less famous than the disputation of Ilanz eleven years before. The subject was women's baptism. The discussion lasted for seven days, and was so eager that the disputants would scarce take time to dine ; ate, in fact, at mid-day, parce rapideque. At supper, de Porta takes unnecessary pains to say, they made up for it, peiisahctnt. The judges decided that in case of great necessity any one might baptise. Many of the Enga- diners retained the opposite view, and rebaptised under such circumstances, whence they have sometimes been described in history as Anabaptists, and in one veracious record as ' Antibaptists.' As the result of the great disputation at Ilanz to which reference has been made, the moderator Sebastian Hoffineister, a man of trans- THE ENGADINE 183 parent impartiality, declared that his joy and wonder were almost equal : joy, that on the Evangelical side were so many pious, modest, and learned ministers ; wonder, that on the other side were so many stupid, old, ignorant, and audacious priests. Pontresina was the first commune in the Upper Engadine to embrace the new faith. Vergerius, for- merly Bishop of Justinopolis, was resting at the house of the president of the village after the fatigues of the Bemina, at the time when the election of a minister was at hand. He heard one member of the commune after another discussing the matter with the president, and at length he began to speak of the new views and to expound the Evangel. The president was a man of a liberal turn of mind, and it occurred to him that Pontresina might as well have a chance of hearing what was going on in the world, audiemus quid italus iste novus nobis dicturus sit. He spoke to such good effect that the next scene presented by history is a procession from the church to the high bridge, over which the images were thrown into the seething depths below. It may be noted here that the interesting old church of San Gian, near Pontresina, was used in 1623 by the fugitive Protestants from the Valteline. An Italian sermon preached before them by Eampo of Zutz is still in existence in manuscript. There are in the Engadine, as in most parts of the world, creatures not pleasant to fall in with. Among them may be reckoned though they are very seldom 184 THE ENGADINE seen ^the Vipera chersea and the Kreuz-otter ; of wluch last Theobald comfortingly observes that though it is said to spring at people it does not. If it does not, it is an unworthy representative of its fore-elders. The Engadine and the neighbouring mountains have been much troubled by monsters of the serpent kind, with and without wings, all apparently able to spring in a disagreeable and dangerous manner. An early writer employs the d priori method in speaking of the existence of dragons in the Grisons: *Le Pais des Grisons est si plein de montagnes et de Cavernes, qu'il seroit 6tonnant qu'il ne s'y trouvat pas de dragons.' Those who are not satisfied with this, will no doubt yield to the argument from inspiration, whether historical or poetic, as employed by the Jesuit Kircher to prove dragons in general. None can doubt, he says in his best Latin, save those who contradict holy scrip- ture ; for in the fourteenth chapter of Daniel is open mention of Bel, a dragon worshipped with divine honours by the Babylonians, and in the Psalms it is said ' Ye dragons and all deeps.' If uninspired history is of any value as evidence, the case is clear in favour of dragons. Jean Fabritius investigated the history of a dragon which appeared in the Grisons in his time, and he wrote to Henry Bullinger (Sept. 18, 1559) to announce that he had received the assurances of a most trustworthy man on the subject. This was the less surprising to him, because thirty years before a countryman had shot in that neighbourhood a worm of THE ENGADINE 186 prodigious size, sunning itself on a rock. Its blood was so venomous, and the poison was so subtle, that a gust of wind blowing across the blood towards him caused him to lose his sight, and his body swelled so much that his life was despaired of. Peter von Juvalta, pfarrer of Stul, near Bergiin on the Albula route, writes (Oct. 29, 1702) that in August 1696, Barthelmy Alegre was driving his cows to the alp of Foppatsch (or Joppatsch, for the old Dutch account impartially spells it both ways) near Stul, when he came upon a creature lying in the mouth of a great hole. It was two ells long, had a cat's head, long red hair, flashing eyes, a mark like a white collar round its neck, feet like the fins of a fish and covered with scales, a serpent's tongue, and a forked tail. Barthelmy not unnaturally made off, and he succeeded in getting onto a rock so steep that the creature could not follow. From this vantage ground he shot at it. It came at him like an arrow, and all but reached him, but at length he managed to kill it with stones. Three days later, when he returned, the body was decomposed. The inhabitants of the district asserted that dragons of this kind were often seen on Foppatsch and on the opposite alp of Utgeis, which must in those days have been interesting places. Chiampel, the Reformer and historian, says that his maternal grandfather, Martin Massol, surnamed Baloc, saw at the foot of the Julier an enormous and horrible serpent. He fell ill of it, and lost all his hair, and all 186 THE ENGADINE the skin which was not covered by clothing when he saw the beast. In the cleft through which the Inn passes after escaping from the lake of St. Moritz, there is a hole which used to house a dragon or worm. In Chiam pel's time a trustworthy man, John Mallet, died of the sight of this worm. From the same historian we leam that the little lake of Alpiglias, near Siis,* was possessed of unenviable notoriety as the abode of a dragon. The relative of a Laviner named Bonorand had seen it rise with fearful roaring out of the lake. One Johann Branca, of Guarda, covered the surface of the water with leaves and branches of trees, and thus forced the reptile to leave the lake, which it did in a furious storm of wind. It swam down the Inn to Innsbruck, and there, not without much danger to the people, it was killed. After this we may agree with Kircher, that there is no one tarn perfrictce frontis as not to believe in the existence of Swiss dragons. To make assurance doubly sure he gives a picture of one, which the landamman of Soleure, who had seen them often, drew for him from his own experience. It is a dreadful scaly creature with wings and claws. For scientific readers he gives an explanation of the origin of such compound animals, based on observation. It is a mistake to suppose that careful scientific observation is a thing only of to-day. They are always found, he ' There is a Piz Arpiglia near Zemetz and Siis, and an Alp Alpiglia near Zuz. Chiampel knew of the ambiguity, and remarked that he meant Sus and not Zuz (i. 82). THE ENGADINE 187 points out, in regions inhabited by large birds of prey. These birds carry off to the neighbourhood of their nests many more carcases of animals than they and their young can devour, and the consequence is that car- cases of diverse creatures lie and decay together. Each decaying carcase having in itself such is his simple postulate the seed of regeneration, the seeds of all the carcases become commingled, and hybrids more or less horrible are the result. Less problematical than the dragons of the Enga- dine are its bears. The Upper Engadine is too open for such animals to maintain a lodgment, and it is most likely that any bears seen there are visitors from Italy. A calf was eaten by bears at Sils Maria in the summer of 1874, but the inhabitants asserted that the culprits were Italians. Now that arms of precision are in the hands of the natives, any bears that shew them- selves in the open have a bad time ; but the valley is full of traditions of a period when the balance was more even, and bears were a recognised and constant danger. La Presiira, near Siis, was the scene of a famous encounter between a woodman and a bear, in the course of which the man, Duri Beta of Lavin (Lavinium, the Engadiners say), thrust his left hand, wrapped in his coat, between the jaws of the bear, and with the right killed the beast with blows of his axe. In the same neighbourhood is a field called al houf giall, ' to the dun ox.' This is in memory of a fight between a bear and an ox, in which the latter 188 THE ENGADINE killed his antagonist by pinning him to a tree with his horns. A member of the University of Oxford, who seems to have had his eyes and ears very wide open indeed, if one may judge by his ' Alpine Sketches ' published in 1814, relates that in his time the bulls and bears had a regular appointed rendezvous, and always fought till one or the other fell. A bull which had once pursued a bear from its pasturage was nowhere to be found ; but after a search of three days it was discovered im- movable, pressing against a rock its enemy long since dead and putrid. The animal had made such efforts that his hoofs were driven several feet into the ground. With any less sound guarantee than that of a member of the University of Oxford, the length of the bull's legs might be called in question. There are traditions of encounters with wolves in the streets of towns in the Engadine. Thus in January 1536, a date which speaks of a severe winter, a wolf seized the grandson of Padrutt Perini in the street of Madulein (Mediolanurriy they say), when Juliot of Milan came up and after a struggle killed the beast with his swoi'd. Boy and man, however, died raving mad from their wounds a few days after. Notwithstanding the advantage which the possession of heavy rifles gives, the Engadiners still consider an encounter with a bear a very serious matter. Some years ago a number of the inhabitants of Zemetz sallied forth for a hunt with the utmost determination THE ENGADINE 189 and bravery, and they were fortunate enough to find a bear. Having found him, they did not like his looks, and they put into active exercise that best part of valour which is known as discretion. The following verses did honour to the expedition, in somewhat Italiajiised Romauntsch : UNA GHATSCHA AL UORS Un proverbi antic e bel A tuots cognit, suggerescha, Cha del Uors vender la pell Mg nun sto un memm' in prescha, Ma spetter da fer marcbo Cur cha I'Uors ais schluppetto. Quaist pi over b' a que chi pera A Zernez eir' incontscliaint, Quels Tregants sUn lur bandera Tuots pigliettan gilramaint, D' schluppetter Un bel Uorsun ' E '1 mner mort sun Un bastun ! A tel scopo 's radunettan Bain armos sUn il plaz grand E 'n discuors alio taidlettan Pronunzio dal comandant Giachem Filli il renommo, Cbi bgers TJors bo schluppetto. Amihs ! dschet el, aunz co 'ns metter Per la chatscha in chamin, Stuvais Tus uoss' am permetter, Sco ais r us eir a Berlin, Ch' eau a vus fatsch' un discuors, Per spieger che ch'ais un Uors : L' Uors ais Una bestia grossa, Ferm' e granda sco 'n liun, Cur el vain in mez 'na scossa Fo'l d' Un bes-ch be un baccun, E suvenz per complimaint Magi' il paster eir suraint ; A BEAR HUNT A proverb old and sound, Known to all, suggests That to sell the skin of a bear One must not be too quick, But must wait to make one's market Till the bear is shot. This proverb, as far as appears. Wag unknown at Zernetz, The sharpshooters on their banner AU took a solemn oath To shoot a fine big bear And bring him dead on a pole. With this view they assembled Well armed upon the great place, And there gave attentive ear To a speech made by their captain, Jacques Filli the renowned, Who many bears has shot. ' Friends I ' said he, ' ere that we put Ourselves on the road for the hunt. You must permit me now, As the use is at Berlin too, To make a speech to you. With a view to explain what a bear is. ' The bear is a huge beast. Strong and large as a lion. When he comes in the midst of a herd, He makes of a sheep but a mouthful. And often as a finish Eats the shepherd too in addition. Un is an intensitive termination, Uorsun a large bear. Thus from Bap, a father, Bahun is an ancestor ; but the quaintness of this is spoiled by the practice of pronouncing a final n as m, which gives Baboom instead of Baboon. This pronuncia- tion has a curious effect in such words as chaun and paun in the sixth stanza. Chaun is pronounced like the first syllable in chamber, and paun rhymes with it, as if an English schoolboy who had not been introduced to the new-fangled method of prouunciation were cutting the middle out of panem. 190 THE ENGADINE Cun Un cuolp da sia tschatta tin grand bos-ch vain atterr6 ; E sch' in fam el as rechatta Ho r Uors eir gii divoro II chatscheder e sieu chaun Sainza sel e sainza paun ! Tel discuors sUn 1' adunanza Fet 'na grauda impressiuu, Ognliu vzair' in lontananza Gnir vers el Un trid Uorsuij, Cun aviert la buoch' e bratscha Pel maglier sco 'na fnatEoha ! Cur r intera compagnia FUt rivela in mez il god, Cump^r Brum be sper els via Plaun plauuet passet bain bod, cun fatscha riaiiteda SalUdet tuot la brajeda^ Da trer our 'ua scliluppetteda Ad UngUu gnit que in maint E dT avair 'sche bain passeda Flit 'minchliu pU co containt ! Que dvantet in noss pajais An ottschientsessauntatrais ! ! ! ' With one blow of his paw A great tree is brought to the ground ; And, as it is found in story, The bear has also devoured The huntsman and his dog Without salt and without bread-* Such a speech as this Made a great impression on the assembly : Each one saw in the distance A horrid bear coming at him. With mouth and arms wide oj)en To eat him up like a sweetmeat. When the entire company Was arrived in the midst of the wood. Leisurely at a fair pace Near the road passed gossip Bruin, And with a grinning face Saluted the whole brigade. It never entered the mind Of any to fire a shot. And each was more than content Tliat the thing had so well passed off. This occurred in our country [three. In the year eighteen hundred and sixty- It is not necessary to point out that this passage of Romauntsch bristles with problems and illustrations of much interest to the student of languages. The pro- nunciation has almost as remarkable a bearing on the pronunciation of Latin as that of the Wallon of the Belgian Ardennes has upon the pronunciation of French. The frequent occurrence of the modified u bears out the canon, ' La Valteline et I'Engadine aiment beaucoup VumlautJ There is rather a want of early traditions of a romantic character in the Engadine. One such is localised at Guardaval, a name so suggestive of romance that invention would have been busy if fact had not forestalled it. The castle of Guardaval, near THE ENGADINE 191 Madulein, was built by Bishop Volkard of Chur before tbe middle of the thirteenth century, as a protection to the dependants of the bishopric. The roads were so unsafe in RhaDtia, that the stages made by travellers worth robbing were only from one episcopal castle to another, always under escort of an episcopal guard. The protection of the Yogt seated at Guardaval, at the time of which the tradition treats, was not the kind of protection contemplated by the episcopal mind. The Yogt gave orders that a certain fair maid of Madulein should be brought to him at the castle, and in order that she might be properly apparelled he sent down gay clothes for her. Her father brought her, gaily clad, and accompanied by a certain Adam of Camogasc, who ran the tyrant through the heart as he was ad- ministering a first salute to the maid. The people then rose and dragged down the tower, stone by stone. A guide-book alludes to this tradition, and remarks that it is a modern invention. Chiampel's manuscript, however, written three hundred years ago, tells the story, and asserts that the grandson of Adam was known to the author. This is fairly good authority for a modern invention. A more romantic form of the legend decoys the maiden into the castle and throws her from the battle- ments in her determination to escape from the Vogt. The whole is too long to quote, but the catastrophe is as follows : Castellan. Nay, but hear ! I swear by Guardavall, by my life I swear 192 THE ENGADINE Adam. Thy life is mine, not thine, swear not by it. Nor swear by Guardavall : for stone on stone Of Volkard's tower Cast. ' Let it be so, yet hear ! I swear by that thou hast or hadst most dear, That all unharmed, untouched, in groundless fear, Thy maiden sought her death. Her stainless soul As pure of hurt from me to Heaven has gone As though she had died some eighteen years ago A babe on her mother's knee I Ad. Unharmed ! untouched I and pure ! What words are these ! She was a maiden from the side of Inn : Say that, thou sayest all. In other lands, where villains such as thou Mar God's fair earth, I doubt not that it needs When that by some rare chance it may be true Needs say, expressly say, of such an one That all imharmed, untouched, and innocent, And pure she died. And I can well believe That that fell land where mother gave thee birth Hath many a damsel, many another dame, Who makes those words a lie. But in this land of ours, when such as thou Casts devil's eyes upon a maid of Inn, And time and place and circumstance favour him ; But three words will that dauntless maiden say Ere that she take safe shelter in the grave, Death ere dishonour ! ' And talkest thou of Heaven ! Did I but think That such as thou had aught to do with Heaven, I'd sin some mortal sin and thereby gain The purer realms of Hell. Dost thou not know, Thou villain tyrant, when a son of Inn Has innocent blood to avenge, foul blood to shed. But three words will he speak ere that he send The vile, damned, caitiff, soulless soul to Hell, * Death in dishonour ! ' THE ENOADINE . 198 There is one interesting tradition in a Romauntsch district other than the Engadine, more than five hundred years old, which survives in full vigour to the present day. It relates to the position of women in church. In the churches where Romauntsch services are held, the women sit on the north side and the men on the south. The separation is so well defined that in some churches the men go out by one door and the women by another, in the less sophisticated parts of the valley. And it may be remarked that in one church, at least, the men light their pipes and cigars on leaving their seats, and pass out smoking, possibly in preparation for an exercise alluded to by Ohiampel when the Reformation was still a novelty ' After the sermon, the men are accustomed to converse gravely with each other on what they have heard.' In the church of Lugnetz the order is reversed, the women sitting on the south side and the men on the north; and the women precede the men in the Holy Communion. This arrangement is in perpetual memorial of a deed of bravery which earned for the women of Lugnetz the title of las valorusas femnas di Lungnezza. In 1352, the Count Rudolf of Montfort had a contest with the Baron Ulric Walther of Belmont, who ruled over the Foppa, Lungnezza, Vals, and Flem. It was a desperate strife. No less than nine nobles were killed, and they were buried side by side in the cloister of St. Nicholas at Chur : Eberhard Helmer, Rudolf von Ramsperg, Albert von Stein eck, Hermann von Grunstein, Ilmar Herwer, Heinrich 194 THE ENGADINE Rusplinger, Hermann von Landenberg, Hans von Lindenberg, and Wolfli Singband. On one occasion the men of Lugnetz went up into the mountains and fought the troops of Montfort near Morissen, defeating them at the little chapel of St. Carlo. Meanwhile, another body of Montfort's men unexpectedly attacked the valley, which had no male defenders ; and since in those days such wars were carried on with fire, rapine, and murder, all seemed lost. The women of the district, however, collected in a large body at the gate which closes the entrance to the valley, still called Porclas {Porta clausa), and this they defended till the men came back and completely routed the enemy. In order to establish a permanent record of the bravery of their women, the men determined that they must sit on the right hand in church, and at Communion present themselves first at the altar aunz co ils. homens avaunt Vuter, 195 ARCHJEOLOGICAL FRAUDS IN PALESTINE ^ From the Quarterly Statements of the Palestine Ex- ploration Fund, and from several other sources, those who are interested in such matters, without being specialists, have been made aware that antiquities coming from the Holy Land are not altogether above suspicion. They have learned, too, that while certain names constantly recur in connection with the dis- covery or ownership of doubtful objects, there is one name which has been made to stand out very pro- minently in their detection, that of M. Clermont Ganneau. This gentleman has recently (1 885) published a book, full of interest, entitled ' Les Fraudes Archeo- logiques en Palestine.' Had the author's attitude towards other discoverers and learned men been the reverse of what it is, the book would have been a delightful one. There are many desiderata in connection with Israelite archaeology. Some authentic inscription, for instance, of the time of King David would be a great acquisition. Hieroglyphic inscriptions of a much * National Beview, April 1885. o 2 196 ARCHAEOLOGICAL FRAUDS IN PALESTINE earlier date abound. The Hittite ancestors of Bath- sheba's former husband are mentioned in inscriptions which were nearly a thousand years old in David's time, and exist still. Without going to such antiquity as that, it is quite clear that if the genius of the Israelites had run in the direction of inscriptions, there is no assignable reason why Israelite inscriptions of the time of David and Solomon, or the more archaic times of Samuel, or even of Moses, should not be found. There is nothing in the nature of stones of the right kind of stones, that is to say to render it impossible for the two tables of the Law to be in existence still and still legible. Indeed, the absence of early Israelite inscriptions needs explanation more than the existence of a considerable number of such inscriptions would do. A race which was always being told how their greatest man, at the greatest crisis of his life, inscribed on stone the greatest moral and religious gift ever up to that time given to mankind, would naturally be prone to resort to that honoured method of preserving any record of supreme importance. No scrap of anything of the kind has as yet been found. It does not say much for the courage and skill of the gentlemen who provide portable little treasures of antiquity for tourists in the Holy Land, that they have not undertaken some magnum opiis of Davidic or pre-Davidic times. The discovery of the Moabite Stone, which has quickened the forgery trade, has also impeded it. The forgers are not even yet familiar with the Phoenician alphabet, and AKCH^OLOGICAL FRAUDS IN PALESTINE 197 they dare not venture beyond a few letters. They know, too, that even tourists in the Holy Land will not now buy antiques with inscriptions in modern alphabets ; Cook's conductors know better than that. A few years ago there were no such annoying complications, and the forger's course was clear and easy. A certain hoard of coins of Moses had a great success in the pre-scientific days of a short generation ago. They bore square Hebrew letters, it is true ; but that was not in those times a very grave objection, except with the few. On the other hand, they had undoubted marks of great antiquity, which every tourist could appreciate, such as a pair of ram's horns on the bust of Moses which adorned one side of the coin, and real extracts from Moses' writings on the other side. These well-known characteristics of Mosaic coins were found to be very convincing. An inscription of Moses' time, indeed of Moses' own construction, was produced, it is true, about thirteen years ago. It was said to have been found at Madeba, some forty-five miles east of Jerusalem, but its pro- venance was not traced further back than M. Shapira's curiosity shop in Jerusalem. Madeba probably sug- gested itself as a proper place for an inscription when the first rumour of the Moabite Stone at Dhiban was heard. For Dibon and Medeba are mentioned together, each for the first time, in an archaic verse in Numbers (xxi. 30) ; and as that verse tells of Moses' victories, the evident subject for an inscription at Madeba was a 198 ARCH^OLOGICAL FRAUDS IN PALESTINE victory of Moses. M. Shapira had himself deciphered and translated the inscription. Priority of importance over the Moabite Stone itself was claimed for it, a fact which, even after the lapse of many years, stirs M. Ganneau's wrath. The date 900 B.C. would have paled before 1450 B.C., and Mesha of Moab would have sunk into insignificance in the presence of Moses of Israel. M. Shapira made the stone speak as follows : We drove them away, the people of Ar Moab, at the marsh ground ; there they made a thank-oflfering to God their King, and Jeshuren rejoiced, as also Moses their leader. So, at least, the * Times ' said, printing Sir H. Lumley's letter with that unusual spelling of Jeshurun. In the same letter the careful reader will find * Sinaitic' printed ' Siniatic ; ' and in Sir H. Lumley's letter in the next number of the ' Times,' ' Phoenician ' printed ' Phcenecian.' These are just the sort of mistakes by which an unskilful forger is detected ; but their occur- rence in the letter of a learned man in the columns of the greatest newspaper of the world may induce M. Ganneau to make less sure of some of his evidences of forgery. We have seen how Madeba may have come to be selected as the lien de naissance of this stone. In the same chapter of Numbers which suggested it, there is a quotation from that mysterious book which it is to be feared there is now no one capable of producing * the book of the wars of the Lord.' The quotation is this : ARCHAEOLOGICAL FRAUDS IN PALESTINE 199 ' What he did ... at the stream of the brooks that goeth down to the dwelling of Ar, that lieth upon the border of Moab.' And in the passage of Joshua in which Medeba is mentioned (xiii.), we find ' the city that is in the midst of the river, and all the plain of Medeba.' Here we have the origin of the facts of his- tory and physical geography mentioned on the Madeba stone. There remains the use of the name ' Jeshurun ' to consider. It is perhaps sufficient to say that except- ing once in Isaiah, where our authorised version, the authority (and a sufficient one) for the ' Times,' spells it wrong, it occurs only in that one book of the Old Testament which is supposed to have been the chief study of M. Shapira and his learned friends, namely Deuteronomy. It may serve to connect this poetical record of the rocks more closely still with that Moses whom it names as the leader of Jeshurun, to notice that when the name does occur, as the title of Israel, it is found in the two magnificent poems which Moses recites in the last two chapters of the book. Thus the whole record is full of highly interesting coincidences. This inscription must have been a great disappoint- ment to its author. It was presumably put in hand at the time when the Moabite stone began to be talked about, and before it was sprung upon the world the alphabet of the Moabite stone was fairly well known. Unfortunately, the author of the Madeba inscription had selected, not unnaturally, the Sinaitic character, and had, in fact, reproduced a Nabathean inscription 200 AECHiEOLOGICAL FRAUDS IN PALESTINE from Um er-Russas, on which other people in modern times had practised ; indeed, one skilful gentleman had taken in a German savant by inscribing a portion of it upside down. The Sinaitic character is so unlike that of the Moabite inscription, especially in the letters of the key words Moses and Moab, that the Mosaic record of the victory at Medeba had but a short course of authentic life. It may be remembered that when Captain Warren first sent for a squeeze of the Moabite stone, his messenger brought back a squeeze of a Nabathean inscription, which Captain Warren promptly rejected. It is to be regretted that we cannot stop here, and pass on to other matters than the * new Moabite stone.' But there are a few words which, in the interests of truth and propriety, ought to be said, however un- pleasant it may be to say them. Let M. Ganneau tell us himself what Sir Henry Lumley did when M. Shapira shewed him the precious piece of porphyry at Jerusalem : Celui-ci s'empressa d'en faire part au pubUc dans tme lettre qui parut dans le Times, le 29 novembre 1871, et qui fit tout d'abord grande impression. . . . Helas I Ton ne tarda gu^re h, s'apercevoir qu'il en fallait singuli^rement rabattre. Cette merveille qui se pr^sentait comme la revanche d'lsrael sur Moab et qui ne pretendait i rien moins qu'd rel^giier la st^le de Mesa au troisieme rang, n'etait pas autre chose qu'un nouveau pastiche de Tinscription nabat^enne d'Oumm er-Eesas dont j'ai parl6 plus haut. Now look on the other side of the picture. There is no such letter in the ' Times ' of November 29, 1871, ARCH^OLOGICAL FRAUDS IN PALESTINE 201 nor in any 'Times' of that year. It was written in Jerusalem on November 29, 1871, and sent to the ' Times,' but it did not appear. Sir H. Lumley came to England, shewed the squeeze to Mr. Deutsch, and got such an opinion from him that he at once sent to the ' Times ' to have his letter stopped. But on January 26, 1872, to his surprise and annoyance, the letter appeared in the columns of the ^ Times.' M. Ganneau says of it : ' Qui fit tout d'abord grande im- jpression . . . Von ne tarda guere d s'apercevoir,^ &c. It is not easy to believe that what happened was this. On the next day, January 27, 1872, a letter from Sir H. Lumley appeared in the ' Times,' dated January 26, stating that on his arrival in England after writing from Jerusalem in November, Mr. Deutsch had told him the squeeze shewed the inscription to be, not Moabite or Phoenician, but Nabathean, and that a copy more or less complete of what so far as he could judge from a mere tracing seemed to be the same inscription, had appeared twice already. ^ I took immediate steps to w^ithdraw my letter to you,' he proceeds, ' written under very different impressions, but, unluckily, it seems to have crept into your columns after all.' Had M. Ganneau found a brother savant doing the sort of thing he has himself done in dealing with this matter, he would have told him, in carefully pointed phraseology, that his date, and his ^fit tout d'ahord grande impression,'' and his ' Von ne tarda guere a s'apercevoir,' &c., needed explanation quite as much as the scratches on the 202 ARCHAEOLOGICAL FRAUDS IN PALESTINE leather of the manuscript of Deuteronomy. And he would have had public opinion with him. The seal of King David was offered to M. Clermont Ganneau, at Jerusalem, some eleven years ago, for ten francs. The illustrious French savant did not secure this unique treasure at this easy price, and it probably now forms the principal glory of some private collection of antiquities from the Holy Land. The inscription was in four lines, thirteen letters in all, and the inter- pretation was, ' Servant of Jehovah, David King.' In order to suit various tastes, the engraver had patronised various alphabets ; there was a Phoenician d, a Samari- tan m, a Rabbinic A*, a Latin I, a Moabite jod^ and an English e. The inscription was legible enough, even though the engraver copied badly. The same cannot be said of the inscription on the sarcophagus of Samson, which is much the reverse of legible. The sarcophagus is all gone but one side, a slab of lead about four feet long. Leaden sarcophagi of the Greek and Byzantine periods are not uncommon ; visitors to the Louvre will remember a highly ornamented example on a shelf on the Egyptian staircase, brought by M. Renan from Saida, with scrolls whose curious details are reproduced on some of the early English sculptured stones. The in- scription on the Samson sarcophagus is incised, and consists of fifty letters ; they have a decided soupgon of the Moabite stone, but at the same time give the im- pression that the engraver had got hold of some such document as one of Mr. Isaac Taylor's tables of various ARCH^OLOGICAL FEAUDS IN PALESTINE 203 alphabets, and had let his eye wander. M. Ganneau does not profess to take the trouble to decipher the in- scription, but remarks that the closing word is clearly Samson, ' written Chimchon.' It is evidently what we should reproduce as ' Shmshon,' and the engraver, if he took the French spelling to imply a cheth, as it seems to do, would repudiate the ch with some indignation. M. Shapira brought it to England. It had no success here, and its owner then announced that he had brought it to shew how easily a real forgery could be detected. The lead is undoubtedly of very considerable age, and M. Clermont Ganneau shrewdly remarks that the cupola of the Mosque of Omar had been under repair about that time. He seems to have an intuitive perception of the likeliest means and instruments for forgery, which renders him a dangerous subject for a forger to practise on. On many accounts an inscription in Greek letters would be easier to make tolerably natural than one in Phoenician characters. The advantages of an attempt in this direction became evident some years ago to an acquaintance of M. Clermont Ganneau, Martin Boulos by name, a worker in marble, who was accustomed to engrave epitaphs for the Jews' cemetery. In 1871 M. Clermont Ganneau was fortunate enough to find in the foundations of an old Arab house, near the Mosque of Omar, a very remarkable Greek inscription, no less than the law excluding foreigners from Herod's Temple on pain of death, copies of which are known to iave 204 ARCH^OLOGICAL FRAUDS IN PALESTINE been placed at various parts of the precincts. The in- scription was complete : ^ Let no foreigner pass within the precincts of the Temple. Any one found so doing will be guilty of his own death.' M. Clermont Ganneau spent a good deal of money in his endeavour to secure this stone, but in vain ; the Mussulman owners of the house absolutely refused to allow the stone to be removed. He left Jerusalem for Constantinople ; and the very day of his departure the Turkish governor had it taken out of the wall and carried to his quarters, where he received offers from ' the representatives of certain Powers/ as M. Clermont Ganneau puts it, meaning certainly the hated Prussians, and probably the English too. The Governor is said to have asked 2,000/. sterling for it at first, and, later on, 1500Z. Turk (about 1,380Z. sterling). Afterwards he offered it to a Jew financier living in Paris; but the national instinct did not incite the financier to make a sufficient financial exertion, and it now rests in the museum at Constantinople, of all places in the world. On M. Ganneau's arrival at Constantinople, which took place fourteen years before he learned that the Temple inscription was there, Martin Boulos endeavoured to provide some compensation for his loss of the stone. He found another copy of the law of Herod, built into the foundations of a wall, with the lines vertical, ex- actly as in the first case. There was a great deal of ceremony and secrecy about shewing the precious treasure to M. Ganneau's correspondent. The hour AKCHiEOLOGICAL FKAUDS IN PALESTINE 205 fixed was 5 o'clock in the morning, that the Governor might not get wind of what was going on. The place was an ass's stable, in the wall of which the stone was embedded, and, to the terror of Martin and the pro- prietor, the ass began to bray. They stopped that by pulling his tail an infallible remedy, it seems and at last they saw the stone. What passed we are not told, but Martin was encouraged to proceed with the negotia- tion, and in a few days he brought the stone in triumph to M. Ganneau's friend. That gentleman was ready. He told Martin that it was a forgery, so frankly and so conclusively, that Martin fled, and left the spoil in M. Ganneau's friend's possession. The photographic repro- duction of Martin's stone shews that the Greek letters are very boldly and well cut, and are, for the most part, correct; and yet, handsome as the inscription looks, the blunders in the details of letters are so frequent that only two words out of twenty-two are Greek words, and they are so short only three letters and two re- spectively that their correctness is no doubt accidental. It was scarcely necessary to warn the scientific world against performances such as this. An idea of Martin's inscription may be given in English capitals, without making any special type for the purpose ; it would be necessary to make special type for a full description, since some of his letters are not Greek letters at all. Taking the first three words of the warning notice in its English dress, ' Let no foreigner,' Martin, at his best, would have produced something of this kind : ' LEI 206 AKCHiEOLOaiCAL FRAUDS IN PALESTINE NO EOBEICNEP/ He would have been in good company in making T into I, for either Captain Warren, of the Palestine Exploration, or the sculptor who cut the beautiful inscription, in Greek letters, to Titus ^lius Adrianus Antoninus, on a pedestal in a garden at Saida, made exactly that mistake, giving Autokraiori for Autokraiori, The Moabite pottery, which began to come over to England in 1872, must be fresh still in the minds of those who take an interest in these matters. It was some of it very fresh when it came. After a certain time devoted to careful consideration a fashion which English learned men follow as being preferable to the course of rushing upon a thing, or its possessor, with a wild shriek of Faussaire ! the Moabite pottery was con- demned. Its owner, M. Shapira, had, meanwhile, been more fortunate in Germany, where the new Emperor provided the money for the purchase of a large collec- tion, some seventeen hundred pieces, at the moderate average of 21. a piece. To this step the Emperor was led by the opinion of a very learned man, M. Schlott- mann, who declared the things to be authentic. M. Clermont Ganneau does not let M. Schlottmann down easy. There can be no doubt that the English officers of the Exploration Fund in Jerusalem came to the con- clusion that the first specimens of the pottery examined by tjhem there were genuine. They sent over sketches and descriptions, and expressed themselves as quite con- AECHJEOLOGICAL FRAUDS IN PALESTINE 207 vinced. M. Ganneau refers especially to a letter in the * Athenaeum ' of November 2, 1872, in which ' M. Drake se prononce formellement pour I'authenticite,' insisting on the variety of execution and of style, which implied various hands and various epochs, on the intimate knowledge shewn of phallic rites, and on the high esteem in which M. Shapira was held by all the Protes- tant community of Jerusalem, that gentleman being a converted Jew. It will be seen from this recapitulation of Mr. Drake's arguments that the hint given in the Bible of the cuUus of Baal Peor had been made full use of by the makers and the decorators of the Moabite pot- tery. The result was that the early Moabites were credited with some abominable obscenities in their common household ware. It is interesting to note that the Book of Numbers passes straight on from the mention of Dibon and Medeba to the story of Balaam, with its immediate sequel in the evil practices connected with Baal Peor. Thus the inspiration of the new Moabite stone and of the Moabite pottery probably came from a study of this limited portion of the wanderings of Israel. Mr. Conder also took an optimist view of the pottery. He recognised Astarte in a horned goddess : he found specimens of the biblical teraphim, an image of a phoenix, a Midianite priapus, and so on. He read on one piece the name Jehovah. The committee of the Palestine Exploration Fund asked the opinion of M. Clermont Ganneau. He an- 208 ARCHAEOLOGICAL FRAUDS IN PALESTINE swered that, in his opinion, the things were forgeries from first to last. The pottery was covered with in- scriptions, in characters the same or meant to be the same as those of the Moabite stone. But they were badly copied, and they were combined in such a manner as not to make translatable words. The style of the letters struck M. Clermont Ganneau as resembling that of a copy which Selim-el-Qari had made for him of some lines of the Moabite stone, and he put the forgery down to this former ally of his. All through M. Ganneau's discoveries of forgery, it has been of inestimable service to him that he has known so well the ways and the personnel of Jerusalem rascality. In the case of this pottery, as in other instances adduced by M. Ganneau, the impression conveyed by his book is that he was the one wise man, Athan^tsiiLs contra mundum. But Mr. Drake himself had said, in writing to the * Athenaeum,' that, except in Jerusalem, people everywhere attacked the pottery as false. And the ' Athenaeum' affixed an editorial note to Mr. Drake's letter quoted by M. Ganneau M. Ganneau makes no reference to this editorial note to the effect that they printed the letter for what it might be worth, that the Germans (Dr. Socin) were the first to use the word forgery, that only one German of repute had ' gone in ' for its genuineness and attempted a translation of the inscriptions, and that even he confessed that the attempt had not satisfied him. M. Ganneau returned to Jerusalem towards the end AECHiEOLOGICAL FEAUDS IN PALESTINE 209 of 1873j sent there on an Archaeological mission by the Palestine Exploration Fund. 'Je savais d'avance, je puis le dire, ce que j'allais trouver a Jerusalem,' he tells us, but we do not gather whether his knowledge was the fruit of early experiences or was pure theory. His first step was to endeavour to obtain a sight of the new collection of Moabite pottery which M. Shapira was getting together from the friendly Bedawin of the land of Moab. The search instituted by these gentry when they heard that the first batch had sold for SfiOOl. appeared to be greatly blessed. The pots came in by the hundred. Moab was always a fertile land, and its fecundity was found to extend to works of art, early art, art scarcely worth the name of art, but price- less from its hoar antiquity. M. Shapira had, of course, heard that this would-be visitor had condemned the things which some of the English critics had believed and the practical Germans had bought, and he declined to allow his treasures to be polluted by the eye or the hand of such a sceptic. But M. Shapira was under great obligations to Mr. Drake, who knew the collec- tions well, and M. Ganneau persuaded Mr. Drake to persuade M. Shapira to take off the embargo and let him see them. M. Ganneau tells us that he had con- fided to Mr. Drake his real object, and had succeeded in shaking his belief in the authenticity of the things. Mr. Drake himself has told us that it was impossible not to notice and be struck by the great difierence between the first batch of pottery and that which fol- P 210 ARCHAEOLOGICAL FRAUDS IN PALESTINE lowed. The first specimens were good ware, and had few inscriptions ; the latter were of very poor texture, and were covered with inscriptions. Some of the earlier pieces were almost certainly old, whatever else they might be or not be. The two counter-plotters were ushered into a large room full of figures, vases, and all manner of articles of pottery, covered with inscriptions in Moabite characters, the whole thing in such profusion as was itself the most convincing evidence of fabrication. The workmanship was of the rudest description, not with an archaic rudeness, which is honest, telling, and real, but with that vulgar nide- ness which speaks of debased or fraudulent art. The French savant can think of nothing better to compare with the sight that met his eyes than a collection of gingerbread men on a stall at a village fair ; and the comparison is graphic and true. He recognised at once the style of Selim, some of whose works of art he had already in his possession how or when acquired we do not learn, for we are not here dealing with the question of inscriptions. M. Shapira allowed him to examine the pieces closely, and he found that the clay was that in ordinary use at the present day among the potters of Jerusalem, and that in some cases it was scarcely baked. There was even the impression of the coarse linen on which it had been laid when fresh though how that proved it modem M. Ganneau does not say. In short, of the whole collection * dont M. Shapira, ses premieres hesitations une fois vaincues, ARCH^OLOGICAL FRAUDS IN PALESTINE 211 nous avait fait du reste les honneurs avec une com- plaisance que je me plais a reconnaitre' there was not one piece which could be considered real. M. Ganneau told Mr. Drake, as they left the house, that the only authentic thing he had seen was a live ostrich; and that, as for the pottery, the only thing left was to look for the potter. Of Arab potters there were not more than six in Jerusalem, so the field of investigation was not large. His first attempt was upon a day labourer, Abou Mansoura, whom he questioned with extreme care not to arouse his suspicions. Abou Mansoura set him on the track by telling him that he had worked for a Christian called Selim-el-Qari, who made statues and vases of clay, with inscriptions. He had given up working for him, and mentioned Bakir-el-Masri as Selim's present potter. Bakir said he had never worked for Selim, but a young apprentice of his, Hassan, had formerly worked with another potter, Ahmed, and this Ahmed had business relations with Selim. From Hassan M. Ganneau learned the whole story. Selim got his clay from Ahmed, made it into men, dogs, and women that was Hassan's order of merit with their noses, feet, hands, and busts covered with writing. He then sent them to Ahmed to be baked. Vases, which required the wheel, Ahmed made, and Selim inscribed them, and then they were baked, Hassan's function was to carry the things backwards and forwards. This he did after sunset, concealing T 2 212 ARCH^OLOGICAL FRAUDS IN PALESTINE them under a long cloak which he wore, but he was so much afraid of being stopped by some patrol that he left Ahmed's service. The pieces were all counted with minute accuracy, and if one got broken the fragments were collected with the utmost care. On one occasion Hassan had dropped a very small piece, one of the tesseras, and Selim gave a little boy who picked it up the important sum of eight sous. On some occasions, when Hassan brought the things to Selim 's house, Selim plunged them in water, telling him it was to age them. Mr. Drake, who stood to his favourable opinion of the first batch of Moabite pottery, reported on by him and purchased by the Emperor William, took M. Ganneau's view of the second batch, and entered upon a similar investigation. He, too, got hold of Abou Mansoura, and obtained from him information which he got him to declare before the English Consul. These things M. Ganneau laid before the world in a letter published in the 'Athenaaum' on January 24, 1874, and here again we get the impression that he was the first in the field, was, indeed, the sole dis- coverer. But early in November of the previous year Mr. Drake had learned from some Bedawin that written jars were made in Jerusalem, transported to Moab, buried there, and shewn to M. Shapira as found in caves. This he communicated privately to the Com- mittee of the Palestine Exploration Fund in a letter written on November 11. On November 12, M. Gan- neau wrote a letter to the Secretary of the Fund, in AECH^OLOGICAL FKAUDS IN PALESTINE 218 which was a statement that he was on the track of the pottery. Thus Mr. Drake had that iwioriU which M. Ganneau claimed with such amusing anxiety, and such curious insinuations, in the matter of the Moabite stone, in his letter to the ' Times ' March 22, 1870. When the 'Athenaeum' in due course made its appearance in Jerusalem, there was consternation there. M. Weser, who had been instrumental in procuring the first batch of pottery for the Prussian Government, questioned the witnesses, and got a very different account from them. He then proposed to M. Ganneau that they and the witnesses should meet in the presence of Mr. Drake and have it out. In answer to M. Ganneau's direct question, M. Weser said as M. Ganneau tells us that the enquiry was entirely a personal one, and of a character strictly private, and on that assurance M. Ganneau fell into the trap. He tells us that, as he learned afterwards, the enquiry was absolutely official, undertaken, on an imperative order from the Prussian Government, under the direction of Dr. Kersten, the German Consul at Jerusalem. He describes what happened with dramatic force. Mr. Drake and Lieutenant Conder provided the place of meeting, M. Ganneau took with him his artist, and M. Weser was accompanied by M. Duisberg, an honourable grocer of Jerusalem decorated by the Bavarian Government, who has enriched the Museum of Stuttgart with Moabite pottery, and by one Serapion as interpreter, a Levantine, an employe of the German 214 ARCHAEOLOGICAL FRAUDS IN PALESTINE Consulate, of whom M. Ganneau remarks that he has since been cashiered. The witnesses were called in one by one. You might have thought you were reading the * Thousand and Second Night.' Hassan was in floods of tears. He declared on oath that the * Khawadja au cheval blanc,' there present, that is to say M. Ganneau, had entrapped him and kept him locked up, had beaten him, and threatened him with death, to make him tell the tale he told him to tell. Next came Abd-el-Baqi, that is to say, Abou Mansoura. We are not told that he was in tears, but he swore strong oaths. He swore by Allah and the triple divorce that the said Khawadja had come to him voler sa languey and to make him repeat word for word the tale he had thereupon told to Mr. Drake and declared before the English Consul. Bakir came next, and swore by oaths the most holy that Hassan came to him after his interview with M. Ganneau and told him just the same piteous tale that he had now told in that honourable presence. The third potter, Ahmed, swore solemnly that he did not even know Selim, and with an exuberance of completeness declared that he had never done work for any one of that name. But that was nothing to what was to come. Selim, the very Selim-el-Qari himself, the culprit whose evil deeds M. Ganneau had so triumphantly detected, Selim ap- peared. That his appearance was not altogether voluntary we gather from M. Ganneau, who tells us that, though an Ottoman subject, he had been arrested AKCH^OLOrxICAL FEAUDS IN PALESTINE 216 without ceremony and imprisoned at the German Con- sulate, the same arbitrary authority having carried out a domiciliary search at his house without finding any- thing suspicious le drole, se sentant menace, avait dii prendre ses precautions.' It should be added that some time later a like visit, instituted by the next German Consul, Baron Munchausen, discovered a Moabite image. Selim, then, appeared. He pathetically declared his innocence, and then turned suddenly to his accuser ' avec un mouvement oratoire qui ne manquait pas d'une certaine ampleur.' This was what Selim said: *M. Ganneau met me two months ago in the street, near the Greek convent, and promised me a hundred pounds if I would declare that the potteries of M. Shapira were false, and were fabricated by M. Shapira and myself.' ' Ce coup de theatre etait vraiment du dernier comique,' M. Ganneau adds, with an appreciative sense of the humour of the situation with which his readers would scarcely credit him. Of course, to persons not infected with the odium Moahiticum the story told by the witnesses was incredible; but even those who disbelieved it laughed at it as an excellent joke, and some, no doubt, found a certain sly enjoy- ment in the discomfiture of the savant M. Ganneau deals with those from whom he differs in a manner which renders it less difficult than from his knowledge and position it ought to be to raise a laugh at his expense. It is not without a sensation of lively amusement 216 AECILEOLOGICAL FKAUDS IN PALESTINE that we find M. Ganneau relying, after all, on the evidence of Selim's words, or rather hints. In the summer of 1877 it would seem that Selim had a desire to visit Paris, and it appears to have occurred to him that he might as well travel at his former employer's expense. Accordingly, he wrote to M. Ganneau to say that M. Shapira and he had fallen out over some payments, and that he, Selim, wished to ruin M. Shapira, as M. Shapira had ruined him. If M. Ganneau wished to have the whole pack of lies shewn up from beginning to end, he was to send him money for the journey from Jerusalem to Paris. This letter M. Ganneau prints in full, as evidence that the pottery was a forgery. It does not mention pottery at all. It speaks of antiquities generally, and, as it is clear that there had long been dealings in antiquities, the reference may be to some- thing else than the pottery. The letter is veiled and subtle, and tells nothing. If Selim had got his journey money and come to Paris, and told a circumstantial tale of forgery, there would still have been people foolish and mean enough to say, that the one occasion on which he really told the truth was that which M. Ganneau has likened to the ' Thousand and Second Night.' All this work of carving inscriptions on stones, incising them on lead, impressing them on pottery, and engraving them on gems, required persons skilled in manual labour; and such persons were naturally not quite equal to the task of reproducing with AECHiEOLOGICAL FKAUDS IN PALESTINE 217 sufficient exactness the archaic form and disposition of the letters, and of inventing likely inscriptions. For complete success, scholars and men of letters were required, and the work must be done in secret, without the intervention of persons in a position to be bribed or likely to become talkative in their cups. As time went on, those who were bent on making some really grand coup appear to have seen that the only kind of forgery which would meet the exigencies of the case was the forgery of a manuscript. Unfortunately, there was an inherent difficulty in the way of a Davidic or a Mosaic document, the nature of the material. With a good block of basalt the only question was the genuineness of the lettering ; with papyri, dates reach- ing very far back indeed are accepted without hesitation ; but with a roll of leather there came the disagreeable question, which any ignoramus could ask, and every one would be sure to ask, how had the material survived ? No doubt the secret council which considered the whole matter knew a good many examples of rolls being bought for four or five centuries older than they really were, and they may have thought that Western credulity which had accepted so much, could accept a few centuries more. However that may be, the order was given. A manuscript was to be produced in the same character as the inscription on the Moabite stone. It was to be a Biblical manuscript, but no slavish copy of any book of the Bible. Whether the conspirators familiar with our Greek names for some of the books of the Pentateuch 218 AKCHiEOLOGICAL FRAUDS IN PALESTINE had a sly intention in their selection no one can say ; but the fact is there, that they selected the book we call Deuteronomy, and proceeded to make it assume the position of a second edition. The labour of acquiring a sufficient precision in the Moabite alphabet must have been great. Supposing this difficulty surmounted, the work of dictating an amended book of Deuteronomy, in language sufficiently archaic to pass undetected under the eyes of the most learned persons the Western world had at its disposal, might well have made the most sanguine Eastern despair. But there was courage as well as skill among the allies. The third difficulty, the material, they must have known to be, on the face of it, at least as great as either of the other two. It would appear that they got synagogue rolls of un- doubted and considerable antiquity, and with broad margins, and they cut off the margins to form the corpus of their last and greatest experiment. The outer edge of the old and worn roll was, of course, ragged; they seem to have been unable to grapple with the difficulty of causing the cleanness of their new edge to disappear. Further, the roll from which they cut the margins had lines run with a pointer across its width, to divide it into proper spaces for the columns of manuscript, and these ineradicable lines, impressed into the material of the leather, remained on the margins they cut off. They boiled the leather in fat, put it into the ashes, and maltreated it in every imaginable way to make it look old, but they so far ARCHiEOLOGICAL FRAUDS IN PALESTINE 219 forgot themselves as to leave it supple. All having been duly completed, they prepared the historical and geographical facts of its discovery. A Bedawi had found it in a cave many years ago, near Aroer, on the river Amon, on the north border of Moab. It was wrapped in dark-coloured linen, embalmed after the manner of Egyptian mummies. The fortunate finder kept it as a talisman for a considerable time. At length it came into M. Shapira's hands at the modest cost of a few shillings. Its talismanic properties had evidently proved to be apocryphal. The new possessor of the manuscript saw in it some- thing more than a discredited talisman. It was nothing less than an early perhaps original manuscript of the book of Deuteronomy, written in the same character as that of the Moabite stone to which the date 900 B.C. had been assigned. The value of such a document was beyond calculation ; M. Shapira gave up the attempt and put it at 1,000^000^ For this sum the British Museum could have it, or presumably, any great insti- tution. It was brought first to the British Museum, in July 1883. M. Ganneau saw an announcement in the news- papers that this precious relic had come to London, but the name of its owner was not mentioned. He wrote, on August 1, to the French Minister of Public Instruction, stating that he had reasons for holding the document in suspicion until the fullest examination should be made; that it might prove to be yet one 220 ARCHJEOLOGICAL FRAUDS IN PALESTINE more of the frauds to which the discovery of the Moabite stone had given rise ; and that there might be some connection of origin between it and the pseudo- Moabite pottery purchased some years before by the Emperor of Germany so M. Ganneau describes that potentate which he had shewn to be absolutely apocry- phal. The result, he adds, fully confirmed his doubts. The remark must occur to the reader that M. Ganneau had no priority or monopoly of doubt, as he seems to imagine. What he said to the Minister of Public Instruction was just what the great mass of people who knew anything about such matters had said in England from the first. The manuscript required, of course, careful examination ; but the only real question was where would the first clear evidence be found that the forgers had outwitted themselves. No doubt there were people who were ready to believe the possibility of the existence of such a document, but they were not among those who know what manuscripts are. Captain Conder wrote a very sensible letter to the 'Times,' pointing out that our earliest Hebrew manuscript is not older than the seventh century alter Christ, and that the famous Samaritan roll at Shechem, which he had more than once examined, dating possibly from the sixth century, is in a very different state from the Shapira manuscript. People had been inclined to argue from papyrus to leather. He informed those who did not know more about papyri than that some were supposed to be 3,000 and 4,000 years old, that it ARCHiEOLOaiCAL FRAUDS IN PALESTINE 221 was only in the dry and rainless Theban desert that such examples were known, and that their state before they were unrolled was something as unlike as possible to the complaisant leather of the original of Deutero- nomy. Papyrus and parchment both were used by the Assyrians and the Accadians, and not a fragment of either was known to survive. And yet here in Moab, a district with a rainfall of twenty inches, a mass of comparatively supple rolls of leather was found, written in characters which preceded the square Hebrew, so that the manuscript must be at least 2,000 years old. That was the tone taken by those who knew about such things, and it is absurd for M. Ganneau to write as if he had any priority or monopoly of insight into the truth. The Minister of Public Instruction gave M. Gan- neau a mission to England to examine and report upon the manuscript. It had been committed for that pur- pose by the Museum authorities to Dr. Ginsburg, who had been at work upon it a fortnight when M. Ganneau arrived, and had not finished with it. Imagine an Englishman going under such circumstances to the Bibliotheque Nationale or the Louvre, and expecting to be allowed to examine the manuscript. Nothing can be more polite and obliging than the authorities of those institutions, but they would know how to indicate that the document was closely engaged under official examination, and that at present it was not to be seen. If the Englishman, after such an answer, persisted, and 222 ARCHiEOLOGICAL FRAUDS IN PALESTINE quoted his official mission, they would have no difficulty in indicating their feeling that the Minister who gave the mission, and the person who attempted to execute it, were just a little forward. No such reception was accorded to M. Ganneau, and yet he writes of what happened with additional gall in his ink and a special point to his pen. Indeed, from the moment that Dr. Ginsburg appears upon the scene, we feel that we have got at the final cause of M. Ganneau's little book. There is a bath well known at hydropathic establishments called ' the sharp needle,' where the sufferer is surrounded by coils of pipes full of little holes, from which issues a countless and con- tinuous shower of icy darts when the torturer gives a twist to the screw. The relations between the appa- ratus and the bather are much the same as those be- tween this portion of M. Ganneau's book and Dr. Ginsburg. The bath, it may be remarked, is much enjoyed by some people, and it does them a great deal of good. M. Ganneau came to the British Museum, and was introduced to the room in which were Dr. Ginsburg, the manuscript, and M. Shapira. He was received with marked coolness. He explained that he had come to study the document ; that, in order not to interfere with Dr. Ginsburg's ' priority ' in the matter of text, he would confine himself entirely to the material, and that he only asked for one hour's study. Dr. Gins- burg allowed him to look at two or three of the frag- ments, and promised to let him know next day but one ABCH^OLOGICAL FRAUDS IN PALESTINE 223 whether the request could be granted. Some of the fragments were displayed in a glass case, and these he, like the rest of the world, could look at as long as he pleased, though not, of course, under the most favourable circumstances. That is the manner in which most of us have to examine things supposed to be of great value and perishable. When M. Ganneau returned to the Museum, the Principal Librarian told him that, to his great regret, he could not submit the fragments to him, for M. Shapira absolutely refused to allow him to do so. That this was M. Shapira's strict right M. Ganneau allows, but he proceeds : ' L'on pourrait se demander seulement pourquoi le Dr. Ginsburg et I'administration du British Museum ont cru pouvoir de preter a une pareille recusation. II ne m'appartient pas de repondre a cette delicate question.' There is clearly more than one usage of the word delicate; but the answer is a very simple one what else could they do ? It must be remembered, too, that their visitor was an old acquaint- ance, whose desire for 'priorite was well known, and it was pretty certain that he would interrupt the cautious and complete investigation by some public announce- ment, ' une note destinee a me faire prendre date et h, m'assurer la priorite de la decouverte et de I'interpreta- tion,' as he said in his letter to the ' Times ' in con- nection with the Moabite stone. In fact, this was what actually happened. He complains with various insinuations, that he was not allowed by special favour 224 ARCH^OLOGICAL FRAUDS IN PALESTINE to examine the leather. But, after all, he was allowed to examine it by special favour of Dr. Ginsburg, and by the general liberality of the authorities of the Museum, to an extent quite sufficient for his purpose. The fragments in Dr. Ginsburg's hands and those in the glass case told their story to him quite clearly, and he lost no time in proceeding ' k me faire prendre date.' He wrote to the 'Times' on August 18 a long letter, which appeared on August 21, stating that the manu- script was a forgery, written on leather cut off the margin of a synagogue roll, as was shewn by the fact that there were lines running across the leather, which had served to divide the whole original scroll into con- venient columns, and that the forger had written across these lines as if they had not been present. The scraps of margin had been sewed together to make a continuous piece. An evening journal has slyly suggested that if Selim had been present he would have explained that Moses, being a great economist, used the margins of a roll of Genesis for writing Deuteronomy. No doubt it might be maintained in sober earnest that if it was possible for leather of that age to exist still, the facts of its having one edge cut clean and of lines being im- pressed upon it across the writing were not inconsistent with conceivable circumstances. If that was all there was to say against the manuscript, its defenders were not reduced to that utter despair to which M. Ganneau claims to have reduced them. Fortunately, in the same number of the ' Times,' there appeared the letter AKCH^OLOGICAL FRAUDS IN PALESTINE 225 from Mr. Conder above described, which dealt a much severer blow than that of M. Ganneau, and from a more scientific side. The hasty publication of the fact observed by M. Ganneau coincided with the completion of Dr. Ginsburg's labours. As though no such person had intervened, Dr. Ginsburg allowed his translation of the closing portions of the manuscript to appear in the ^ Times,' and sent to the authorities of the British Museum his report on the document, dated August 22, 1883, the day after M. Ganneau's letter appeared in the ' Times.' Dr. Ginsburg declared it a forgery both on external and on internal evidence. The external evidence was that already announced by M. Ganneau, but he was able to add the very important fact, without which M. Ganneau's statement loses much of the force it would have had, that rolls of just such leather, with margins of the right width, were bought by the British Museum from M. Shapira in 1877, the year in which he became possessed of the manuscript, and that in one of these rolls a piece of the margin had been cut off and sewed on again. Now, in reporting thus, Dr. Ginsburg did not allude to M. Ganneau. It would have been a simple matter to say a few graceful words of the eminent French savant to whom he had shewn some of the fragments ; had the circumstances of the two men been reversed, M. Ganneau, in reporting, would have managed to make the other wish he had not been in such a hurry to put in his claim for priority. But Q 226 ARCH^OLOGICAL FRAUDS IN PALESTINE Dr. Ginsburg did not even allude to M. Ganneau, and he suffers for it. There is a paragraph on page 232 of M. Ganneau's little book which, from the concentration of its venom, must probably take rank as his chef d'oeuvre. We will not give him the pleasure of seeing it on these pages. The other ground, the internal evidence, was in itself more interesting ; and here Dr. Ginsburg's three weeks' study almost found its justification. The book had remarkable variations from the received Deutero- nomy, the object of several of them being obvious ; it was dictated by some one who learned his Hebrew in the north of Europe, to two scribes, neither of whom was perfect in the alphabet of the Moabite stone ; and the dictator either was careless in his revision or was himself not well practised in the alphabet, for gross blunders were allowed to remain. Gross, by the way, only too aptly characterises the example given by Dr. Ginsburg. It has seemed necessary to speak of some parts of M. Ganneau's amusing little book in a manner very different from that in which it would be natural and pleasant to speak of anything done by one who has so many claims on the regard of the scientific world. The necessity of speaking more strongly still of his remarks in connection with M. Shapira's suicide warns us off that painful subject. 227 COLLECTING ANCESTORS ^ Man has been defined as 'a collecting animal.' The definition goes far. It notes the fact that man has an eye to the past, a regard, respect, reverence, for anti- quity and things ancient. It notes the fact that man has an eye to the present, to beauty, comparison, ex- haustive illustration, acquisition. It notes the fact that man has an eye to the future, desires to build up an interest that may grow as he grows, to send down something that bears the impress of his own handi- work. And it notes the fact that each man has his individuality, his idiosyncrasy, his taste, his hobby. No doubt these characteristics often lie dormant in men, not at times only but throughout their lives. Still, they are there, though dormant. And they are, as a class, distinctive of the man as compared with other animals. The bower-bird not that a bird, ex- cept for scientific purposes, is usually regarded as an animal decking its garden and walking about in it with its tail spread, comes nearer to man than most things do which are not man. The squirrel storing Cornhill Magazine, March 1895. Q 2 228 COLLECTING ANCESTORS nuts for the winter is a collecting animal. But these are only examples of the working of two universal laws, from which no living thing is free, the instinct of pre- serving life and the instinct of perpetuating life. A collecting animal ! What a delight it is to be able to fulfil in one's own person this definition; to have the knowledge, and to have for once the money ! If careful search were made by some favourable en- quirer, it might perhaps be found that to be a collector, to collect, calls into play some of the highest and noblest feelings of which man is capable. It certainly calls into play some of the worst. We must draw, of course, a clear and broad line between calling into play an unworthy feeling and inducing the man to give way to it. Many a collector has been tempted by the oppor- tunity of acquiring a treasure from some ignorant per- son, at a twentieth part of its value, to the great loss of the owner; and some have overcome the temptation. Some haven't. Many a collector has been tempted to delay the return of a specimen or a book or a photo- graph, in the idea carefully concealed from himself that the owner and he will forget all about it, or one of them will die, or in some other way it will become a part of his own collection. The knowledge of most of us is adverse to the view that collectors always or shall we shall generally ? overcome this curious temp- tation. Many a collector has been tempted to dig up by the roots and carry away the only specimen he can find of some rare plant. Let botanists and tourists COLLECTING ANCESTORS 229 look into their hearts, and their other receptacles, and blush. But collecting ancestors is a different kind of thing from collecting china, or coins, or ivories, or ferns. You cannot buy them, dear or cheap ; you cannot steal them; you cannot dig them up and dry them. Of course, in a sense you can buy them ; that is, you can buy a picture of 'a gentleman in half-armour/ and, having ascertained the period represented by the dress, you can paint a name and a date upon it. It is also, in a sense, possible to steal them : in the sense, that is of taking what is not your own. But you cannot take them away from the people to whom they belong ; for one of the charms of an ancestor is that he can belong to a great many people, and half a dozen more make no practical difference. It is no robbery of Lord Spencer to claim kinship with the departed glories of burnt Cowdray and drowned Montacute. It is less clear that there is a sense in which you can dig them up and dry them. It is only in metaphor that you talk of un- earthing an ancestor ; and a dry old hunks is the mere abuse of a deservedly disappointed heir. Landscape gardeners tell you there are two ways of making a weeping ash. One is to graft buds of weepers at the crown of an ordinary stem. The other is to plant a sapling upside down, branches in the ground, roots in the air. If you examine some very large specimens, you will see reason to think that the latter course has been adopted. So, in producing a genealogical tree, 230 COLLECTING ANCESTOES you may proceed on either of two methods. You can begin at the top, or you can begin at the bottom. The one gives you a fan-shaped tree hung from the tassel of the fan ; the other gives you the fan as a woman holds it. The woman is always right in these days. Beginning then at the bottom, that is, at yourself, it is clear that above your own name come two others. Above each of those two others, and so on. In four generations, counting yourself as one, there stand above you eight names, and of these, in ordinary course, only one is your own name. What are the others ? Where did the eight people live ? Who were their forbears ? Of course, if you are a great person you have the answer at once ; it is emblazoned at the Heralds' College ; it is recorded on the pages of the history of England or of Scotland ; you have it constructively or actually in the Peerages, the County Families, the Landed Gentry; you can draw it all out when you please. But there are a great many people, and not such very small people either, who can by no means tell you very straight off all the eight names and all about them ; there are a great many more who are lucky if as much as one of the eight is found in those interesting volumes; there are a vast multitude who have not even that assist- ance towards collecting their ancestors. If persons belonging to any of these three classes desire to collect, in any one of the eight branches which does not link on to lines in printed books, there is only one way to do it. They must go to the parish registers. After COLLECTINa ANCESTORS 231 that, if they have been fortunate, they have plenty of other places to go to, probate offices, and so on ; but our present concern is with the first step, the parish registers. Behold, then, a collector of ancestors, who knows all about his wife's eight names and a good deal about some of his own eight, going forth to investigate the earlier origin of a relative so near as his mother's father. That gentleman was not a young man, was rather elderly, when the collector's mother was born, and she was born in 1801. His birth may have taken place about 1750. A reference to a directory of the cathedral city in which he lived, dated 1825, shewed that he was sub-chanter of the cathedral church, rector of Thursdaythorpe ^ in the W6lds, vicar of St. Mary Priesthill Junior in the city, and curate of Appleton, four miles up the river. The ^Maior and Jurats' of New Romney once applied to the Archbishop of Canterbury to send them ' a nimble curate in full orders;' and on January 31, 1664, they remonstrated with their non-resident vicar for having left them wholly destitute since Christmas last, up to which time they had enjoyed the services of ' a nimble curate who was usually in his sermon and prayer before it about a quarter of an hour.' The collector's grandparent must have been a very nimble curate if he did all his duties at Appleton and elsewhere. The thin disguises of names of places here and in Westmor- land are retained as they originally appeared. 232 COLLECTING ANCESTORS The collector had never had speech of this beneficed gentleman. How much could have been learned in ten minutes' conversation with him, if he had consented to be communicative ! He was, as a fact, very reticent. ' We are a fallen family,' was all he would tell his young daughter, who was inquisitive, as young daughters sometimes are or were. *We came from Scotland, long ago,' he used to say. And once, talking of some great people near, he was heard to say, ' Countess ! I have a cousin a countess.' Before his death he de- stroyed his letters and papers ; but in a private drawer there had once been seen a miniature of a beautiful young woman, and his daughter imagined that this was the cousin, and that thereby hung a tale. The collector once came by accident on the official record of his appointment as chaplain to the premier Earl of Scotland ; but no attainable cousin seemed to lurk in either of the countesses of the said earl. One thing was quite certain ; he himself came from Charbrook, in Westmorland, and his father was a ' statesman,' the owner and worker, that is, of an estate in land. In that beautiful valley of Charbrook, leading up from the left bank of Tummere to the Kirkliston Pass, his forbears had lived and worked their own land. Could they be traced in the registers ? Were their de- scendants still there? A letter to the vicar settled both questions. They appeared on the first page of the registers, and they and another family were at present the most respected statesmen in the dale. The COLLECTING ANCESTORS 233 first page of the registers might not mean very much in the way of antiquity, but the answer was stimu- lating. To get to Charbrook village you have, as every one knows, to go by Stringness, if you go by water, and by Birkthwaite, wrongly called Turnmere, if you go by rail. How the tourist swarms at Stringness, and how bright the shore looks, with its dozens of pleasure boats gaily painted and red-cushioned ! And how pretty the white-winged yachts are, bending gracefully beneath the breeze till their jib laps the water ! And if you are there on the occasion of a regatta, when the racing yachts are for once brought out from their confinement in safe houses, you do indeed see a beautiful sight. Even the swiftly plying steam yachts are not un- picturesque, from the little cock-boat with a tea-kettle for a boiler, to the great public boats, the ' Teal,' and the ^ Swan,' and the ' Tern,' built respectively for three, four, and five hundred people, and on occasion proving that they possess elastic properties. It is not quite sure that the steamer, as etherealised by Mr. Kuskin on the neighbouring Konigsee into a glorified gondola, is so very much superior, from an aesthetic point of view, to these Midland Railway boats, with W.S.Y. sup- posed to be short for whisky embroidered on the jerseys of the men. And how well the great crowds on board and on shore conduct themselves, all good temper, and quietness, and propriety ! The contrast between this and the Isle of Man is in this respect extreme. 234 COLLECTING ANCESTORS There is probably no place in existence which is so trying to a quiet person as Man in the hands of trippers. A solitary archaeologist, sorely afflicted by that visitation, and treated with special contifmely by some of the 'softer' sex, thus delivered himself: It's true, but rather spiteful, To say, in Mona's isle, That Man is quite delightful, But man is very vile. * What though the spicy breezes Blow soft o'er Ceylon's isle, And every prospect pleases, And only man is vile.' With fallen man the poet Reproached that torrid isle ; In Man, he did not know it, Much more than that is vile. Fair Mona, far from torrid, Of tailless things the nurse, Thy tripping man is horrid. Thy tripping woman worse. But pleasant as the lake tourists are, the collector avoided them by resting at the most quiet and restful place on the lake, the Low-moor Hotel, with its private pier a mile short of Waterend, for Kanturside. A pretty walk of a mile, or a mile and a half, over the shoulder of the hill, brings you from Low-moor to Charbrook Dale and village. At Charbrook Church the Vicar disclosed his treasures, kept still in the old oak chest, with three COLLECTING ANCESTORS 235 keys and a partition for each key. It was clear at a glance that the ' first page of the Kegister ' meant a great deal in the way of antiquity, and that extra- ordinary care had been taken to preserve the venerable relic. The first date visible was 1579. The records had been kept in a paper book, and the earliest pages had become discoloured and worn, almost to the last degree. Some one with knowledge and means had had the worn fragments let into paper sheets, in the skilful manner now carried to so much perfection at the Record Office, and bound in a vellum-covered volume. More than that, the whole of the faded writing had been read, and the registers from 1579 to the time of the modern books had been copied into a fine folio volume in a clear hand. All this good work was due to the leading statesman of the place, whose ancestors, from time im- memorial, had been among the principal people there ; his name, whether the real name qr not does not matter, George Browne. The inlaying of the worn leaves and the vellum binding had been done at Eipon much to the credit of the Ripon workman. The example set by the village of Charbrook is well worthy of imitation by many greater places. The ancestors to be collected were Forrests, and the Vicar's communication had said, ^ Forrests and Birketts are all the same,' whatever that might mean. Again, it does not matter whether the names are the real names or not. The second entry in the Register, m the year 1579, ran thus : ' George Byrkhead the . . . 236 COLLECTING ANCESTORS Byrkhead was baptized the . . / Then came ' Cuth- bert Birkett was buryed the 3d of April!.' Then, * Margrett Birkhead the daughter of Christofer Bii'kett baptized the ... of the moneth of Aprill.' Then, ' Catheryne hir sister being her Twynlynge was baptized the same daie ' a pretty word for a twin sister or twin brother. Seven out of the first nine legible entries were of these names. It was clear that Birkett, Birkhead, and Byrkhead, were all one, and that the Birketts take their name from an ancestor who was designated ^o' the Byrk-head,' his home nestling in, or under, some projecting spur of the hill, clothed with birch trees. Any supposed reference to the character of the ancestor as a hardheaded man may be rejected. No Forrests appeared till 1703, when there was an entry, ' Edward, son of John Forrest,' baptized January 23, 1703, meaning, of course, what we should call 1704, the old year ending with March. But in 1647 there was an entry which suggests an interesting question, * Isabell Ellerey, daughter of George of Orrest.' Every one knows Orrest and Orrest Head at the foot of Charbrook Dale, not far from Stringness. Did the name Forrest in those parts come by elision of the opening vowel from the place designation ' of Orrest ' ? And was this the last surviving hint of it, mixed up with a permanent surname taken from elsewhere ? The Kegisters gave several examples of place designa- tions on which surnames might be founded ; for instance, ^o' th' Beckside.' Ellerey, or Elleray, is COLLECTING ANCESTORS 237 itself a place designation, so that the entry would mean ' Isabell of Elleray of Orrest,' the family having moved from Elleray to Orrest, or from Orrest to Elleray. ' Price ' from ' ap Rhys,' and ' Pritchett ' from ' ap Richard,' are patronymics formed on the same principle as ' Forrest ' from ' of Orrest.' In a similar manner Saint Liberius has given birth to Saint Oliver, through the form Santo Liverio, and Saint Odo to San Todo, from Sant' Odo. This John Forrest had to be traced upwards and downwards. Upwards, there was no sign of him ; he was clearly an imported person a foreigner. Down- wards, he grew. He married again, his second wife being ' Agnes Fleeming.' Fleming is a common name thereabouts, and the le Flemings have long been great people in those parts. The old Hall of Kirch- Konigs- burg was their residence for seven generations, on the property which came to them in the time of Henry III. by marriage with the Urswicks. It was not till 1409 that they settled at Tieal, when a marriage with the daughter of Sir John de Lancaster brought to the le Flemings their present lovely domain. The particle le was dropped in the next generation ; nearly 300 years later the owner had his son christened 'Michael le,' and from that time they have been le Flemings again. This second marriage of the foreigner John Forrest was in one of the years 1707 to 1715, near the end of that period, the margin with the years being wwn away. On May 15, 1743, his son married Agnes Birkett, and 238 COLLECTING ANCESTORS Eichard, their fourth child, was baptized March 19, 1748. This was the pluralist of 1825, and thus the two names were added which alone were wanted to complete the eight in that generation. The four corresponding names in the previous generation were there too, and, if John could be traced, the eight in the generation beyond were in the books. The leading names, more- over, were there up to the tenth generation, beyond which the registers did not go. The collector had secured from eighteen to twenty ancestors, and search among wives' parents would give more. This was a great haul for one afternoon. The other treasures of Charbrook Church are the church itself, with a roof very bold for its period, two old collecting boxes of oak, with inscriptions, and a silver chalice with an inscription, shewn at Carlisle some years ago, and there seen by the unwitting col- lector. All of these were found to connect themselves with the search for ancestors. The church was rebuilt in 1736 by George Browne, son of Elizabeth Birkett, who was aunt of Agnes, the pluralist's mother; the pluralist, it was recorded, preached in the church when it was forty years old and he twenty-eight. The collecting boxes were inscribed, ^ Remember the poor. W.B. I.e. 1692,' those initials representing William Birkett and John Cookson. The chalice was inscribed, ^ This is the gift of Agnes Burkstt y^ datighter of Gapton George Burkett given to GharrehrooJce Church Apr ill y' 28 Ann/} Bom. 1688.' The is had been omitted, and was COLLECTING ANCESTOKS 239 added by the same liand above the line. These four material ' finds ' were pieces of luck such as very rarely come in a collector's way. There remained the most material of the links with Charbrook, the existing members of the two main families. One of the families was soon exhausted ; BirkettSj as statesmen, there were none. But, of course, every one knows the ' Mortal Man ' of Char- brook, with its old sign, a red-faced man fronting a pale-faced one, and the legend of their dialogue ' ! Mortal Man, that liv'st on bread, How comes thy nose to be so red ? ' ' Thou silly ass, that looks so pale, It comes of drinking Birkett's ale ! ' Forrests had become heirs of the two ' estates ' formerly held by Birketts, and a very pleasant visit to the modern statesman the collector had. The two ' tene- ments,' held from time immemorial of the great Barony of Kendal (manor of Turnmere, sub-manor of Char- brook), on service of a man and horse for each, have always been known as Lowfold and Lowhouse respec- tively. Lowfold came first to the Forrests, by marriage with the Byrkheads, Robert having been admitted to possession in 1743, in right of Agnes his wife, heiress of her brother who died sine prole in 1739. It is now let out to cottagers, the two farms being worked as one, and most of the windows on the ground floor and upper story have been made up, one end of the house being used for storage. Before these changes it must have 240 COLLECTING ANCESTOKS been very picturesque, both on the long straight face which looked on the village street, with a particularly- fascinating and unusual upper oriel, and also on the court side, where the long house with its return gable end, and the barn with another return gable, form with the wall and gate a rectangular enclosure. There is a peep through to a garden with southern-wood ; and the balustraded space under the bam roof, at the head of the covered stone stairs, with doors giving access to various lofts, is gay with trailing flowers, like a German lavhe. An oak cupboard let two feet into the wall in one of the rooms of Lowfold, with unusually good carving and pendants, has ' 1674 C.B.* in the centre of the canopy, c and at one end in a circle , that is Christopher Birkett and Anne, his wife, daughter of Edward Turner, of Kendal, who were married September 5, 1657, the great-great-great-grandfather and mother of the col- lector. This, again, was a very unusual piece of luck. On a slatey stone is inscribed ' R. Forrest annos 18 natus 1820, Jun. 30,' that being the handiwork of a son of Lowfold who became a well-known clergyman in Australia, and returned to die at Kendal and be buried at Charbrook. The ' tenement ' of Lowhouse came to the Forrests a generation later than Lowfold, by marriage with another Agnes Birkett. The present Lowhouse is a much more modern house than Lowfold, probably a hundred years later. It has on a gable 'W.B. M.B. 1627,' William Birkett and Mary, his COLLECTING ANCESTOKS 241 wife, father and mother of Christopher, of Lowfold, But by a very unusual instance of spaciousness, William and his wife left standing within the large enclosure of their courtyard the old house which they quitted when they moved to the new house in 1627. It was kept up as a second family house for a considerable time, and tradition says that ' Capton George Burkett ' lived here, whose daughter Agnes gave the chalice in 1688. It is the oldest house in the district, and dates at least from Edward IV.'s time. An etching of it was published early in the present century in the ' Beauties of the Lake Scenery,' and it is the most photographed house in all the dale. A walk round it shews a larger place than the photograph (see frontispiece) indicates. A fine tall statesman, sitting in an ancient chair in the home of his ancestors, talking of the old people and the old times, is a very pleasant sight to see. The pleasure is greatly enhanced, to the mind of the visitor from a distant city, by the sense that the old times and the old people belong to him too. There were a few excellent bits of old blue china, and two great circular Leeds dishes with the feathered edge, exactly like two great Warburton dishes which the collector in his china days rescued from Nuremberg, but with the projecting rim at the bottom which puts a chasm between Leeds and rare Warburton. In the passage between the entrance and the best room there was a beautiful oak cupboard, let into the wall as at Lowfold, and very skilfully carved, with the date 1634, R 242 COLLECTING ANCESTOKS seven years after the completion of the gable end. Up- stairs, the great bedstead was quite a dream of hand- some Jacobean pillars and richly sculptured head. It bore in the centre of the head ' G.B. 1654,' presumably ' Capton George.' A beautiful chest on the landing carried in bold relief the legend * I.B. 1694/ for John Birkett. Latest of all the dated pieces was a plain chair of black oak, with arms of the Glastonbury type and the initials * A.B.' no doubt the Agnes Birkett who became heiress of Lowfold in 1739 and brought it to the Forrests in 1743. A date, ' 1752,' was marked on the back in different character. A collector must be very grasping who asks for fortune greater than this. These * tenements ' were two out of the forty-eight customary tenements of the sub-manor of Charbrook. Both of them were ' five cattel ' tenements, that is, the holder had the right to turn five young cattle onto cer- tain stinted pastures of commons. The lord's rent was 6s. 8d. Other land was held with Lowfold, for in 1742 the lord's rent was 9s. 2cZ., and free rent 8d. The great Barony of Kendal was granted to Ivo Taille- bois, and in the course of time it came to be divided into four fees. One of these, which included Charbrook, was called the ' Richmond fee,' because it was granted to Margaret, Countess of Richmond, mother of Henry VII. It had reverted to the Crown on the death of her father, John Beaufort, Duke of Somerset and Kendal. This was the sixth escheat to the Crown since Ivo's line had ended in two heiresses, from the COLLECTINa ANCESTOES 243 younger of whom, Alice, married to William de Linde- sey, the Eichmond moiety descended. The other moiety was the 'Marquis' fee. Alice's older sister, Heluise, married Peter de Brus. One of their daughters, Margaret, married Eobert de Ross, whose heiress five generations later married William Parr. William Parr's descendant, five generations later still, was William Parr (brother of Queen Catharine Parr), created Marquis of Northampton. Hence the name of ' Marquis ' fee. Margaret's sister Lucy married Mar- maduke de Thweng, and brought to him a half-moiety of the Barony of Kendal. Their heiress married a Lumley, and hence this fourth part of the barony was called the ' Lumley ' fee. The tenants held on the tenure of service at ' the western border for anent Scotland.' The Richmond and Marquis fees are famous as having been the subject of the attempt of James I. and Prince Charles to put an end to tenant-right and take actual possession of the tenants' lands. If they had succeeded we might now have a race of malcontents where all is peace and order. The king's plea was that with the advent of his gracious person to England the boundary was obliterated and there could be no border war. If no border war, then no border service. If no border service, the tenure was bad. Prince Charles filed a bill against the tenants of the Richmond and Marquis fees. They subscribed 2,700L and gave it to the Chancellor, Francis Bacon, and he confirmed them in their customary rights. John Forrest, George R 2 244 COLLECTING ANCESTOKS Browne, and Stephen Birkhead, were among the bonds- men. Stephen Birkhead's bond for a second payment is now in the chest at Lowhouse. The Charbrook statesmen were specially favoured, they and their neighbours at ' Amylside ' paying only half and two-thirds the fines paid on change of lord or tenant by other tenants of the Richmond fee. In all tenements of the fee, if daughters are lefb and no son, the eldest daughter succeeds without subdivision, and this it is that has kept the tenements and the families together. A widow, too, of customary right holds her deceased husband's tenement during chaste widowhood, another means of keeping a family together. In this case, as the border service could not be performed by the tenant in person, the lord took as a heriot the best beast on the holding. Charbrook, like Amylside, was a forest. The Lady Margaret had to pay out 21. 3s. a year to the foresters of Charbrook, and 31. Is. 6d. to the bowbearer there. When the *old park' was disparked it was divided among the tenants, with a special arrangement to give a piece that bore wood to each tenant who had no wood on his holding. It remained to call on the great storehouse of ancient lore, Mr. George Browne,* the king of the dale, as some ladies had described him, the statesman to whom the parish is indebted for the preservation and ' The coincidence of name is accidental. COLLECTING ANCESTOES 245 the copy of the registers. Here indeed was a feast of good things manor rolls, marriage contracts, volume after volume of letters and drafts of letters bound in order, and, collected on one sheet, the autographs of all the adult males of five generations, from the owner, the fourth George in succession, up to Benjamin Browne, whose marriage with Elizabeth Birkett made the owner and the collector fourth cousins. As to the house, there never was such an oak house. From the entrance hall to the top landing nothing could be seen but oak, old oak : oak clocks, oak chairs, oak chests, oak floors, oak doors, oak cupboards, oak buffets, oak partitions, oak walls, oak staircases. The staircases were particu- larly engaging, two parallel flights on each story up to a half-way landing, and then a single flight doubling back between them to the actual landing ; all standing open and clear, so that from the bottom you saw the double and single flights crossing and recrossing in the air. The splendour of the carving was beyond descrip- tion, especially in the case of the great bedstead and the cradle, carrying inscriptions and an early date. To the eye of the collector, and perhaps in fact, there was no piece more interesting than the great chair which commemorated the marriage of Benjamin Browne and Elizabeth Birkett, with the appropriate inscriptions all in relief, of course, though that may be a contradic- tion in terms and on the back two shields, one bearing the double-necked eagle displayed,^ for Browne, and the ' Not the usual arms. 246 COLLECTING ANCESTORS other the Birkett arms, on a field sable three garbs proper within a bordure or. This house, again, is photographed by every one. It is called Townend, and the statesman's phloxes are as fine in their way as his oak. Here the collector was shewn original letters and deeds and admissions of his ancestors, and was informed that the dashing cavalry general of the Southern States in the war between North and South was grandson of a Forrest who went out to ' Charles Town ; ' and elsewhere he learned that a well-known Australian statesman in a different sense was the grandson of another. * The Forrests came from Kanturside to Charbrook about 1700, and their tradition is that they came originally from Scotland.' So the collector was in- formed. As Kanturside was for a few days the col- lector's metropolis, it was a natural thing to inspect the registers there. The mere sight of them is delight- ful. They only begin in 1642, but for the first hundred years they were kept on long narrow pieces of parchment, each new piece sewed on to the end of the previous piece when required. They are in three separate rolls, each many yards long, and are written on both sides. The lengths of the pieces vary greatly. In the oldest roll the average length is about a foot, and the longest piece is about 22 inches. In the middle roll the pieces reach 28 and 30 inches in length. The most recent roll consists of pieces about 21 inches long. The breadth is from 4J to 4f inches. John Forrest was soon found. Indeed, there were COLLECTING ANCESTORS 247 two. One was born in 1684, too late by a few years for the Charbrook John. He had a sister Agnate, and was son of Edwarde iforrest of the Nook End and Elen his wife. The other was the right John. He was born or baptized in the closing days of 1659, and was brother of the Edwarde above. They were sons of Edwarde ffbrrest of the Nook End and Margrett his wife. As their oldest son was born in 1651, Edward and Margrett would be born about 1630 at the latest, and it was no use looking further for them in registers which began in 1642. A search in the chest at Low- house gave another generation ; for an agreement dated 1633 was found, respecting the woods in Ambleside, to which Edward Forrest above Stock (i.e. of Nook End) and John Forrest below Stock were parties. The Stock is a stream that runs through Ambleside. One of the entries pointed to a tragedy of some kind, for the deaths at the time were far too few for a period of epidemic. Perhaps the tragic circumstances spoiled the parson's grammar: 'May the 11th was Margrett wife of Edward Forrest and Richard his son were buried.' But, indeed, having once begun with a ' was,' the entry would have made Margrett wife of both father and son, without the ' were.' Another entry pointed towards the Scottish tradi- tion : ' Gawen fforrest was baptized 18 January 1671.' Besides this Gawen, there were in the earlier genera- tions Gawen Birkett and Gawen Reay, and Robert Birkett married Janet Rea in 1682. The spellings are 248 COLLECTING ANCESTORS worth the notice of those who are interested either in the name Wray like the collector or in the name Keay. Gawen, son of 'Gawen Wrey/ was baptized November 10, 1678; his brother Thomas, son of ' Gawen Reay,' of Brathay, was baptized November 23, 1684. Here we have Rea, Reay, and Wrey for one and the same family. Near Carlisle we find a spelling which combines two of these Wreay. Again, Low Wray and High Wray and Wray*s Castle are well- known places on the banks of Tummere ; and Wrays- holme Tower near Cartmel was the fortified keep of the Harringtons, built in the fifteenth century, and for- feited at Bosworth to Henry's stepfather Stanley. Enquiry shewed that the Nook End was still a known place, and to it the collector naturally found his way. The little farmhouse was evidently much older than the earliest of the Register rolls. It is the furthest house on Tieal Head, approached by a pic- turesque road that becomes a footpath at Nook End, leadiQg to the Red Screes. The tenement is no longer the residence of a statesman. It has one roof for a large and lofty kitchen, and another for the stairs. The rest is a long rectangle. The ground floor is all one, with a partition of black panelled oak across it. A panelled door in the middle of the partition leads from the ' house ' to the ' parlour,' just as a door leads from the hall to the combination-room in the colleges in Cambridge of the older type. ^ Combination-room * is quite modern, and ' the common chamber ' is the old COLLECTING ANCESTOES 249 phrase probably because the fire was there, at which all the actual members of the society had a right to warm themselves in common. No early college in Oxford had this arrangement of rooms, the Oxford ground-plans being less like those of the domestic houses of the period. Magnificent Oxford was always more lifty than modest Cambridge. The simple division of the ground floor at Nook End into ' house ' and ' parlour ' or dining-room and withdrawing-room, as they said in later times and larger houses is the old English plan. The upper story and the stairs were all of oak, as at Townend, but very rough and rude. In none of the four bedrooms could any initials or dates be discovered. Only there was in one of them the very largest oak chest any one ever set eyes on. The tradition is that it took ten men to get it upstairs. To look at it and at the stairs, one would say it must have been built in the room. And there, at Nook End, looking down onto Tieal Water and Mossmere, the collector had to leave the shades of this line of ancestors, in all the mystery of the tradition still fresh, still held among their de- scendants that they were a fallen family and came from Scotland. Later investigations shewed that Lowfold came to the Birkheads by marriage with the heiress, Elizabeth Airey, in 1628. The Ayrays go up to Edward III., when they intermarried with the Gilpins, ancestors of Bernard Gilpin, the Apostle of the North. Lowhouse, 250 COLLECTING ANCESTORS the older of tlie two Lowhouses/ was already the home of the Birkheads in 1476, when George, probably son-in- law of Richard Gilpin, was Bailiff of Charbrook. And Robert Forrest of ' Emilsyd ' was found getting married in 1589. The Lowhouse chest further shewed that the Nook End property, curiously enough, had once gone with Lowfold. Edward Forrest had sold it before 1670 to Thomas Brathwaite of Ambleside Hall. Thomas's sister, Dorothy Sandys, succeeded to Nook End, and to her daughter Bridget Sandys it descended. She married Christopher Birkett of Lowfold about 1688, and Chris- topher's son sold Nook End in 1716; otherwise it would have descended to Robert Forrest of Lowfold, the great-grandson of Edward, who sold it to the Brathwaites. This property played an important part in the Chancery suit which caused the enactment of the Statute (29 Charles II.) of Frauds and Perjuries. Thomas Brathwaite conveyed to his sister Dorothy the lands in Ambleside above Stock, late purchased of Edward Forrest, and divers other parcels, with some complicated cross arrangements as between her and her cousin Brathwaite Otway, son of Thomas's niece. Lady Otway of Ingmire. Scholarships at St. John's, Cambridge, were concerned, and many gifts to churches and charities. The whole arrangements of Thomas so baffled the Court of Chancery, that the Statute above named was passed, to declare what contracts of this ' Shewn in the frontispiece. COLLECTINa ANCESTORS 251 kind were valid, and what were not. The only pro- perty that came out as quite correctly conveyed was the Nook End. Thomas had an eye to the Univer- sities. His collection of 322 coins of the Roman Emperors was given to Oxford in 1674. 252 PONTRESINA > There are some interesting questions about the name of Pontresina, both in itself and in its relation to the position of the place, to which satisfactory answers have not been given. And the older parts of the village, where the external traces of the past lie, present pro- blems of some difficulty. Has the name anything to do with a bridge ? Why should the place be named from a bridge, when the only bridge there ' leads nowhere ' ? Why should the old part of the village, and the old church, have been placed ' up there out of the way ' ? What was the old ' watch-tower ' meant to watch ? These questions are capable of consistent answers, and a good deal turns upon the answers ; or, rather, the answers turn upon a good many considerations, some at least of which are not devoid of general interest to any one who visits the place. The detailed features of the Upper Engadine are so familiar to thousands of people now, that deductions drawn from them will be readily followed by many readers. Whether they will be accepted is another matter. Speaking broadly, the views which it is proposed to * Natianal Beview, M&y 1895. PONTEESINA 253 maintain are these. First, that there was a great lake filling the plain between Samaden and the foot of the rising ground of Pontresina, so that there was no land- way between the two ; no means of crossing from one side to the other of the main Engadine valley here, except by boat. Second, that the approach from the Lower Engadine, and from the lower parts of the Upper Engadine, to the passage into Italy by the Bernina, was by a road which hugged the base of the mountains on the opposite side of the valley from that on which the road from Ponte to Samaden runs: This old road ran from Ponte through Camogask, and so to Pontresina round the shoulder of the Muottas Muraigl and the Schafberg. Third, that the way to the Bernina, for places between the Maloya and St. Moritz, was by a road which crossed the Inn between Campfer and St. Moritz, and passed by the Statzer See over the Muottas Celerinas, crossing the Roseg water by a low bridge, and thence over the Punt Ota the high bridge of Pontresina. Fourth, that these two roads met exactly at the place where the old five-sided tower of Pontresina now stands, with the old church and the earliest houses of the old village, and ran thence, as one road, to the Bernina. The watch-tower would thus command all the roads connected with the Bernina, standing at the point of trifurcation, and also the main road up and down the Engadine on that side of the valley. And the bridge of Pontresina would be the one key of this latter road, and also of all passage between the Bernina and 254 PONTRESINA the upper part of the Upper Engadine. From ' watch- ing nothing/ the old tower will then have watched everything. From ' leading nowhere,' the high bridge will have been second in importance to no bridge in the old Engadine. The key to the argument is the great lake between Samaden and the rising ground of Pontresina on the opposite side of the valley. It is impossible to examine, with any sort of care, the line of the Inn from Celerina to Bevers without seeing that such a lake did at one time exist. The great carriage-road from Samaden towards Pontresina is, of course, new. This road is clearly carried across a flat level, in parts still little better than a swamp, through which the Inn glides swift-foot ; it is only on very great occasions that its demeanour recalls the Iser rolling rapidly. The path- way from Celerina to the bridge at the foot of the Schlucht of the Inn has still to be carried on a raised way. These parts of the valley are almost as level as a billiard table, from the foot of the hills on one side to the foot of the hills on the other. The eminence on which the old church of St. Gian now stands, with its two picturesque towers, was evidently once an island, and completely surrounded by water. There are no buildings on this broad level, and no signs of any. The modern Samaden stands sufficiently above the lake boundary, and the old Samaden stood considerably higher up still, where the pretty little old church and cemetery now stand. The only difficulty is found P0NTRE8INA 266 in the lower parts of the village of Celerina. These lower parts would have been very near or in the water. But here tradition comes to our aid. Ludwig, with no idea of a lake, records a Yolkssage, to the effect that the village of Celerina used to stand higher up, on the hillside. Perhaps the remarkable terracing of the hill- sides, here and above Samaden, points to the petite culture of this earlier period. The phenomenon calls for some such explanation. This idea of two levels of residence, a lower level succeeding a higher, is throughout illustrated by the signs of lake boundaries. Immediately below Samaden, towards Bevers, the boundaries of a primary and larger lake, and of a secondary and smaller, are very clear. The great delta from the Beversthal, on the highest point of which stands the village of Bev-ers, forced its way gradually into the primary lake, and in time formed a dam which narrowed the lake and drove the water into a contracted course on the further side of the valley. On that further side there were two smaller deltas, from the Champagna and Musella gorges ; and in these there are plain marks of erosion, caused by the run of the narrowed water. At some time the level of the water was suddenly and greatly lowered, and the narrowed lake at this point became a rapid river. On the other side of the Bevers delta, passing down the Engadine, the lake opened out again, at a rather lower level. The effect of the intrusion of the delta was in fact almost exactly that of the intrusion of the 256 PONTRESmA great delta of Silvaplana into the lake there ; the lake below Bevers evidently corresponded very closely in its conditions to the present lake of Campfer. Below Bevers, as above, the two levels of boundary are clear. Lower down still, only one set of boundaries is marked, a primary lake having filled the whole breadth of the valley to the steep mountain foot on the left side, where the road now is, leaving perhaps on the right side room for a road. A little lower down, the great dam which formed the lower boundary of the great lake or succession of lakes is unmistakable. It is the delta of Camogask, which pushes out from the right side of the valley and meets the smaller delta of Ponte from the Albula. This forms the first effective dam since the Schlucht of the Inn at the end of the lake of St. Moritz. Here, for the first time, the water was narrow enough, and the ground firm enough, for a bridge ; hence the emphatic Ponte, or ad Pontem, which is the only name of the village, a village which in early times owed its existence to the bridge, and was in other respects of no significance. Here, then, the lake ended ; and here, accordingly, we must look into the question of the roadways. Almost immediately below Ponte, the rock comes straight down upon the present course of the river, not leaving room for a carriage-road without blasting. On the crest of this rock stands the castle Guardaval, the guardian of the valley of the Upper Engadine against PONTKESINA 257 hostile approach from the Lower Engadine, formerly part of the county of Tyrol. It was on this account that the Bishops of Chur, lords of the Upper Engadine, built the fortress and named it Guardaval. It guarded the road from the Lower Engadine, and the bifurcation just above, at Ponte, where one branch followed the course of the present road to Samaden, while the other, now practically disused, crossed the Inn, and passed through Camogask to Pontresina, and so to the Bernina. Modern conditions have made Ponte a more impor- tant place than Camogask. But that is a complete in- version of their former positions ; indeed, Ponte may be said not to have existed in comparison with Camogask. The Albula route, as every one knows, comes down into Ponte, and there joins the great road up and down the Engadine, not using the bridge of Ponte at all. Camo- gask lies quite away on the other side of the water and of the valley, practically having nothing to do with the Albula, or the road up and down the Engadine, or any other road of any sort of importance. But when the Romauntsch Statutes of the Upper Engadine were made, Camogask was responsible for the Albula, and Ponte was not mentioned in this or in any other con- nection. Statute 125, of the Civil Statutes, orders that villages which have the roads of the passes shall protect them ; these villages are, Chiamuesg per Alvra, Pontra- sine per Bernina, 8ilvaplana per Jullia, that is, Camo- gask for the Albula, Pontresina for the Bernina, Silva- plana for the Julier. Thus Camogask was treated as s 258 PONTRESINA the village at the foot of the Albula, with no mention of Ponte. Indeed, Statute 122 declares that the duty of Camogask in respect of this pass was set out in an instrument of arrangement between it and the Grand Commune. This throws the centre of gravity, or of importance, to the right (southern) side of the Upper Engadine at this point. Not only so. There is interesting evidence that even for the road on the left side of the valley, where the present great road runs from Ponte to Bevers, Camogask had responsibility, while Ponte was not even men- tioned. The evidence is found in Statute 114 of the Civil Statutes. My quotations are made from the very handsome manuscript copy in the possession of Madame Saratz, formerly of the Steinbock, which Madame allowed me to study at my leisure, day after day, in her pretty rooms at the upper end of the village. Statute 114 regulates the Bridge on the great road at the Fontana Merla, ' the throstles' spring ; ' or, as there are no throstles, ' the spring in the morass,' as Kymric scholars unromantically say. This bridge the heirs of Antoni Itaun were bound to make and maintain, as well as the way over it, to the satisfaction of a representative of Bevers and a representative of Camogask. Thus, though Camogask is now, so far as main roads are con- cerned, a completely deserted place, and the bridge of Ponte, once so important that it stamped its name on the village that grew up about it, * leads nowhere,' as they say of Pontresina bridge, except to Camogask, PONTRESINA 259 Camogask was originally the place of main importance. That is an important link in our argument, as we shall see later. The great lake, or succession of lakes at descending levels, which can thus be argued out from the appear- ance of the ground, receives an unexpected support from Campell's History of Kheetia, printed in German in 1849 from Campell's Latin Manuscript of 1570, preserved at Chur. Speaking of Madulein and Camogask, which he knew intimately, he remarks that according to tradition there was once a great lake, occupying the valley from this point to Celerina, before the Inn broke its way through the rocks below Scanfs. Taking the lake, or series of lakes, as an established fact, there would be no direct access by road from the Samaden side to the Pontresina side, at any point between Camogask and St. Moritz. That means that the road to the Bernina passed through Camogask, keep- ing along the lower parts of the foot of the mountains till it reached Pontresina. This old road can be seen still, near Pontresina itself, and it leads straight to the old watch-tower there. That the road should keep as high up above the lower ground as the mountain sides would allow it to do, was a necessity of the situation which is of general importance in considering the pro- bable course of old roads. The lower part of the ground between the rock and the water-courses and lakes must have been soaking in water. You find it out at this very spot, if you are tempted to walk across the pretty s M 260 I>0NTRESINA meadows of the Ada Stifler, carpeted with flowers that warn the skilled explorer. The Romauntsch ground-plan of the commune marks the place Paluds, very signifi- cantly. From the tower, the continuation of the old road may still be seen, passing on towards the Bemina above the present road. And, also from the tower, a third old road, described now in parts as only a way for cattle, passagio per bestiame, goes down by zig-zags to the Punt Ota of Pontresina, passing thence across the Roseg water, and by the Statzer See and St. Moritz to the bridge which has probably from very early times existed over the Inn between St. Moritz and Campfer. Thus the tower of Pontresina stood at a trifiircation of road, each road of the three being a road of chief importance. Three of its five faces, those which include the rectan- gular part of the tower, exactly front these three roads. Its position and function are thus accounted for. The tower of Guardaval commanded in like manner a tri- fiircation of road, one leading to the Lower Engadine, and the others taking diiFerent sides of the lake. In each case, too, a bridge played an important part, the bridge of Ponte, and the bridge of Pontresina. Guar^ daval guarded also the Albula, indirectly. The evident signs of a large primary lake and smaller secondary lakes, none of them now existing, in- dicate two great catastrophes : two great burstings of dams somewhere. It is probable that we have the key to these catastrophes in the lake of St. Moritz, and it is PONTRESINA 261 possible that Pontresina contributed something. On the north side of the lake of St. Moritz, comparatively high up on the way to the Kulm road, there is an old delta, from the little gorge above the village. It is now left high and dry far above the surface of the lake ; but its level top shews the height at which the water of the lake stood when the delta was being formed. In those days the rocky dam at the head of the Schlucht was of course much higher than now. The first bursting of the great dam, when the lake stood at the level of the old delta, would let down into the lake of Samaden an enormous volume of water, that would carry all before it when its pressure was applied at the dam of Camogask. The second level of the lake of St. Moritz, at which it must have stood for a long time, is quite as clearly marked. A second catastrophe, due to a second burst- ing of the dam at the head of the Schlucht, would clear away the lowered dam at Camogask, and it possibly gave to that place its name of Campovasto. The lakes of Silvaplana and Sils would not appear to have been largely affected by the second of these physical changes, if the interesting delta of Isola may be taken as an in- dication of the old level. The primary lake, at least, probably filled the valley from the Maloya to St. Moritz. The great chalet town of Gravas Alvas, which so few people visit, shews where the main road used to run, quite above the present valley. It is just possible that the Statzer See is a relic of the original lake of St. Moritz, which must have extended far in that direction. 262 PONTRESINA Even in historic times, long since the secondary- series of lakes ceased to exist, there have been great catastrophes due to the influx of water. Chiampel could never look at the bridge of Siis without tears. For there, on August 28th, 1566, his wife was carried off the bridge itself by a vehement flood, and washed away. Her body was found with a mass of debris, but quite uninjured, twelve leagues down the river, in Tyrol. How well the day and the month, August 28th, tell those who know the Engadine that there had been the wonted fall of snow, only heavier than usual, followed by a blaz- ing sun ! It remains to shew that the bridge of Pontresina was the only means of crossing the water by road, between the Morteratsch and the great lake of Samaden. Persons wishing to reach the Bemina from the Enga- dine, and not comingby wayof Camogask, must in those days cross at some point the stream which runs through Pontresina, and is called the Bemina, the Flatz, and other local names. And they must cross it at some point between its embouchure in the lake of Samaden, and the point where the Bernina Fall and the water from the Morteratsch join. Now, when the ground, so familiar to English people, is examined, it is seen that the whole of this line of water-system was occupied by two lakes, with the great gorge of Pontresina between them ; and that a bridge over the gorge was the only means of get- ting across by road. In this case, as in the cases already dealt with, there PONTRESINA 263 are clear and interesting indications of a primary and secondary lake. Below Pontresina the stream evidently found itself, on issuing from the gorge, forming part of a long and not very broad lake, into which the water from the Roseg also flowed. On one side of this lake the ground is the property of Celerina ; on the other, of Pontresina. This may probably be taken as indicating that at some point of the lower part of the Inn-Schlucht there was a light bridge, so that the Celerina people could get round the head of the lake of Samaden, and cross the Inn at the Schlucht, to reach their more dis- tant possessions across the water. This lower of the two Pontresina lakes extended as far as the natural dam of rock still to be seen below the Ada Stifler, with a Schlucht on a small scale still traversing it, making a curiously sharp angle halfway through. Almost im- mediately below the outlet from this ancient dam, the stream ran into the marshy side of the lake of Samaden, as can be seen clearly on inspection. It is an interest- ing confirmation of this theory that the territory of the commune of Pontresina ends exactly here, where once the lake evidently began ; so that the old boundaries of Pontresina were the water-course or narrow lake down to the embouchure, and then the margin of the great lake. They still keep to those lines. The primary lake between this point and Pontresina was of much larger dimensions so far as breadth and depth were concerned. Above Pontresina there was the same arrangement a secondary lake, long and rather narrow ; a primary 264 PONTEESINA lake, much broader and deeper. The signs of this at the point where the water now enters the very striking gorge of the Schlucht are of great interest. The water rushes in these days through a chasm which was once solid rock and formed the dam of the secondary lake. It must have poured over this dam in a fine fall, until at length a sufficient amount of disintegration had taken place, and the dam burst, reducing the lake to the present stream. The dam of the primary lake was some few yards further down the gorge. The rock which formed it stands up boldly still, and down below, at the level of the water in the gorge, the remains of this earlier dam are still to be seen. When the primary lake was in existence, there must have been a magnifi- cent fall of water, over this great barrier of rock, into the unapproachable depths of the Schlucht. Passing up the valley, towards the foot of the Mor- teratsch, it is quite clear that the existing fields are the bottom of a lake gradually shallowing towards the inflow of water. The lake was no doubt narrowed by the great delta from the rocks between Piz Chalchagn and Piz Misaun, but a good deal of this is comparatively late. The Romauntsch name of the broad level of low- lying ground here, and of the wooden bridge that now spans the stream, is Runtumas ; and this word appears to have some connection with the smoke or vapour of water. The fields which lie higher, on a level with the present Bernina road, are all called Islas, Mas dadains la resgia (beyond the saw mill), Islas sur^ Islas suott, and PONTKESINA 265 SO on, pointing to a time when the secondary lake was still, to some extent, in existence, and the stretches of higher ground were recognised as islands. When these two lakes, the one above and the other below Pontresina, were full of water, the bridge, which must in very early times have been thrown over the beautiful gorge of Pontresina, was clearly the only means of getting across between the Morteratsch glacier, in its then more advanced state, and the great lake of Samaden. The fortress represented by the old tower of Pontresina, standing exactly at the junction of the road crossing the bridge with the road from Camogask to the Bernina, would thus completely command the access to the Bernina pass, from whichever direction people came ; and would command with equal completeness the passage up and down the Engadine, on this, the southern side of the chain of lakes which ran from the Maloya to Camogask. Its importance was thus second to none in those regions, not even to that of Guardaval itself. It may, perhaps, seem that too much is made of the traffic, in early times, from the Maloya and the Val Bregaglia to the Bernina. But, as a matter of fact, there was an important amount of it. Thus, the com- mune of Bondo, in the Val Bregaglia, had considerable holdings of pasturage on the hills which overhang the Bernina road, some miles above Pontresina. They still hold this pasturage ; and the herdsmen of Bondo, with their sheep and cattle, make the long journey each spring and autumn. Statute 1 24 fixes on Bondo the 266 PONTRESINA maintenance of a part ot the Bemina road, Ruotta d'Bamina. ' A 1588 di 8 Magio siin instantia da M^ (Mastrael) Lurainz Yietzell, da que temp M^ dell' comoen, haun 'Is Sig" Vicari Joan Salis, M* Gudaintz Flori Planta, et M^ Martin Rascher da Samedan, cumando et arbitro intraunter la viP* da Pontrasine da I'una et la vil^ da Buond da I'otra vart, sec seque.' Pontresina is to maintain the Punt d'Arlas, still a well-known bridge on the Bemina road ; and the men of Bondo are to keep the road as far as their alps extend. The tower of Pontresina was probably built before Guardaval ; indeed, the evidence makes it practically- certain that it was, and this evidence is so interesting a warning against scepticism about ^ancient remains,* that it is worth mentioning. The masonry of the tower is rude, as compared with the masonry at Guardaval, or at Sus and Zernetz, at each of which places there are old towers of careful masonry incorporated with houses in the village. It happens, and it is a very fortunate chance, that all of the six towers referred to are men- tioned by Chiampel, writing in 1570.* One of them was the home of his mother's family, at Siis, where he lived for many years, beginning his ministry 350 years ago. He exactly describes the two towers still standing in Siis, and he calls them, even in his time, ' very old.' In the same way at Zernetz, he describes the two towers, again as ' very old.' The tower of Guardaval he does not describe as * very old ; ' he merely says it was built in 1250 by Bishop Volkart of Chur. It was PONTKESINA 267 only 320 years old when he wrote, only 290 when he first knew it, and that he did not call ' very old.' The others were much older than 1250. At Pontresina he says, there used to be a fortress, of which traces remain. This exactly suits the marks of rude repair which have been regarded as puzzling features of the tower of Pontresina ; and the evidence generally is, as was re- marked above, a great warning against incredulity. The towers were * very old ' 350 years ago, in the opinion of a man who knew very well what really old towers were. They date fronilong before 1250. As a further example of the small amount of change which has taken place since his time, it may be mentioned that he describes, just as it is, the solitary wirthshaus of las Agnas, the Alders, where the Hochgerichtsver- sammlungen of the Upper Engadine were. And he tells his readers that not far from the highest point of the Bernina were three public-houses, still called the Bernina-hou ses . The name of the old tower at Pontresina is said to be Spaniola. It has therefore been credited with a Spanish origin. That would make it very modern for a tower that was probably an old part of the residence of Tobias de Ponte Zarisino, at the time of his expulsion from the Chancellorship of the County of the Upper Engadine, in May, 1244. The two very ancient towers in the Episcopal Court at Chur are called Marsol and Spinol, names which Chiampel referred to the Eoman conquest and occupation of Khastia, as meaning Mars in 268 PONTRESINA oculis and 8pi7ia in oculis, respectively war and a thorn in the eyes of the Rhaetians. To this derivation Badeker still stands. Martiola and Spiniola, or Spinola, are more probable ; and the latter name may well have made its way to Pontresina, which was so closely representative of Chur in the Engadine. A diminutive formed from a spine or ridge of rock at the foot of the mountain, is not an unsuitable name for a tower built of large stones in such a position. As to Pontresina itself, the arguments advanced above fully entitle it to a name derived from the bridge. The bridge and its position are so striking, that, apart from questions of importance, we might have accepted that origin for the first syllable of the name. It is, however, a little startling to find that the meadows above the street of Pontresina are called Pontraschins, as though here lurked the real origin of the name Pontresina. Thus, the legal description of the field in which the English Church stands is Pontraschin ziava gio Vova della magna, ' the meadow along the water- course of the scar.' But no one seems able to explain this word, Pontraschin, except as being the same as Pontresina; and not even the most Kymric scholar derives Pontresina from anything but a bridge. The Latin documents, from 1139 onwards, call the place Pons Sarisina, Pons Saracenus, and so on ; and the document still exists by which Otho I. gave property in 940 to the Bishops of Chur, to recoup them for losses inflicted by the Saracens. The Pallioppi, father and PONTEESINA 269 son, reject this derivation, and go to the Kymric for Pons ercynia, the high bridge, or to the Latin for Po7is Sarcince, the toll bridge. Of the latter it may be said that the payment of toll was so well understood from very early times, throughout the middle ages, that the loss of the idea conveyed by sarcince and its replacing by saracenus, is practically out of the question. From the time of the touching inscription at Zurich to the little son of the superintendent of the Eoman toll of two-and-a-half per cent, on goods passing into Gaul, down to only the other day, tolls on bridges were never an unknown or uncommon thing. Another view might be taken by persons interested in the early Etruscans who presumably peopled the Engadine ; their own name for themselves was Rasenna; and that termination enna and ena was characteristic. Pontresina might be the bridge of the Rasenna, or it may have been that Pontraschin was the pronunciation of Pontem rhdtinum or rhazinum. A study of the early forms of Romauntsch words certainly seems to shew that the final um and am were dropped in ordinary conversation, and not elided in verse only. In documentary fact, however, Pontem Saracenum holds the field. After all, may not the name have been originally more simple than any of these? Who can say with any certainty where is the beginning of the river Inn ? At the Maloya, which is not in the Engadine but in Bregaglia, they shew a poor little stream which they call the Inn, Ova d'Oen. At Sils Maria they claim that 270 PONTRESINA the Fex-thal is the source of the Inn. To the Latin- speaking Italian coming over the pass from Poschiavo, which place the returning traveller named Post claves, as coming next affcer the keys of the pass, the question on arriving at Pontresina was, Which route did he take ; that to Camogask, or that across the river? The river and its lakes were to him at least as important as either of the other sources of the Inn, and he may well have called it the village ad pontem trails cenum. Pon- trasine, the old Romauntsch spelling, favours that ; and as for the modern name, tres is now the Romauntsch form of trans. Some writers have maintained that the first syllable of ^ Engadine ' contains the name of the river Inn, but the arguments are on the whole in favour of the last syllable. The Romauntsch derivation is in cho (UOen, ' at the head of the Inn,' and they pronounce the name ' Endjadine.' Celerina probably takes its name from the Oenus, and jbhe earliest spellings of Samaden, in 1139 and 1177, are Samadene and Samadenus. Porta spells it Summadoenus, but he is late, and not in this respect of derivations trustworthy ; Chiampel, two hundred years before him, had given Summo d'Oen as the derivation j but he again is not a trustworthy guide in this respect. Looking at it all round, there is a good deal to be said in favour of ' the bridge across the Inn.' ' Murray,' by the way, robs the bridge of one of its traditions. Speaking of Capella, near Scanfs, that ex- cellent book says, * it was from this chapel . . . that PONTEESINA 271 the images were cast into tlie river, and not at Pontresina, as is often said.' The fact is that the Eeformation in the Engadine turned in many places upon getting rid of the images, and a bridge over a roaring torrent was a good means of getting rid of them. The images of Pontresina were thus thrown over the high bridge into the torrent. Porta gave the detail of the story in 1770 from the old chronicler. On these quaint stories of the Eeformation in the Engadine we have said a good deal in a previous paper. RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED CIRCULATION DEPARTMENT This book is due on the last date stamped below, or on the date to which renewed, books are subject to immediate recalL 'JUN16 1976 I gE&ClB, Ml 72 _ 1 LD21 32m 1,'75 General Library (S3845l)4970 University of CaKfornia , Berkeley 1 YB 26137 Ml59986 3)q^ b7 THE UNIVERSITY OF CAUFORNIA UBRARY A