LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.

A HOLIDAY IN THE TYROL AND SWITZERLAND. VI.—ST. Moarrz TO BERNE.

[TO THIS EDITOR OF "THE SPECTATOR."] Berne, ,September 10, 1870.

Sin,—Can you tell me whether the French Republic will acknow- ledge a Cook's return ticket from London to Paris given under the Empire? Shall I admit that we have been staying here all this time, although the Rhine has been long open, because I could not find it in my heart to let Henry sacrifice, with his usual pecuniary rashness, the prepaid cost of the return journey from Paris to London,—and now a horrible doubt strikes me whether, as M.

Jules Fevre is said to repudiate so much that was done by the French people under the Empire, the Chemin de fer de I'Ouest will not also repudiate the engagements made with Mr. Cook under the old regime? If a siege of Paris should really intervene,

I suppose we must give it up ; but if peace is made under the walls of Paris, could you not suggest to Count Bismarck to pat in a clause impressing on the various railways of France the necessity of keep- ing their obligations to Mr. Cook's tourists ? Is this suggestion very womanish? Perhaps it is, but really, you know, it would be horrid, after waiting all this time, to find any hitch about the ticket, after all. Henry wanted to go back by the Rhine, but besides the pecuniary sacrifice, Mr. Ripley, that excellent gentleman who superintends some of Mr. Cook's tours for him, tells us here that French peasants (francs-tireurs, I suppose) have been firing on the Rhine trains ; and though Mr. Ripley seemed to think his dis- closures likely to be generally attractive to tourists,—I suppose, as giving them a faint taste of the excitement of war without any exertion,—they did not strike me in that light, and I set my face entirely against Henry's proposal to run the gauntlet of such dangers. If, indeed, we had a Cook's ticket by that line of rail- way, I might be tempted to run the risk ; but, as it is, I must pro- test against a step which combines extravagance and danger. We cannot help believing here that King William is going to Paris only to conclude a peace before its walls. By all accounts, the French will give up a good deal, though they will not give up territory; and Swiss opinion is naturally very warm in their favour, now that they are both republican-minded and disposed to sur-

render a standing army, and rely, like the Swiss themselves, on a drilled people for self-defence. The Germans, Victor Hugo magnificently says, cannot be going " to personify barbarism decapitating civilization," or, as he puts it in still more striking language, " Germania " cannot be going " to lift the axe against Gaul ;" and, of course, when you use the Latin names for the two countries, you see how much greater a crime it is than when you use the modern names. Switzerland does not seem to have any public writer who knows how to write quite like that, but there is, nevertheless, a pretty strong business-like feeling that to destroy Paris only to squeeze out a cession of territory,

would be voluntarily buying a great calamity for Germany, as well as paying a vast price for it But to return to our Cook's ticket, the interesting point for me just now ; Victor Hugo says, indeed, "Paris is nothing else but one immense hospitality," which may be true, but seems an inaccurate description of the fashion in

which Paris (not the Emperor or his Government) recently treated the poor German residents there ; but still it may, at all events, mean that Cook's tourists will be welcome. Only this great organ of Republican feeling goes on to say :— " The Empire is dead. It is well :

We have nothing in common with this corpse.

It is the past: we are the future.

It is hatred : we are sympathy.

It is Capua and Gomorrha : we are France,"

and much else quite too eloquent to be understood; but I want to know if the future is going to take up the obligations of the past,—if France is going to take up the obligations of Capua and Gomorrha (no doubt, a formidable thing to propose); and so forth.

If it won't, I don't think either Count Bismarck, or Cook's tourists will be Quite satisfied ; and it's really no use being even " one immense hospitality " just on the eve of a bombardment.

But I must relieve you from my gossip, which I will try to do quickly. One afternoon, at St. Moritz, Henry and I mounted into the banquette of the Chiavenna diligence,--a delightful seat it was on the top of the diligence, only holding two persons, and separated by the whole roof of the carriage and the piled luggage from the other seats,—and swept away past the four emerald lakes and the grim glaciers to the Maloja pass, down which the six horses dived with wonderful courage, the great unwieldy vehicle behind them very nearly taking the posts set to mark more distinctly the points

of the zigzags. Each of the four wheels was clogged with a great shoe, or the big coach must have rushed against the horses' heels and driven them and us too to destruction; but, as it was, we got safe to the bottom, and with long, thirsty intervals of stopping for the mails, alleviated by frothing ale,—during which it amused me much, after we were really in Italy, to watch the groups of young girls knitting and talking together, some of whom, not twelve years old, used gestures as eager and flashed forth glances as eloquent as if they had been sitting on committees of public safety,—and after a glorious evening drive beneath multitudes of green alps and the grandest mountain ridges, past graceful groves of twisted chestnuts, towards the richest of purple distances, we drove into Chiavenna, where the driver executed a grand super- fluous circuit in order to show off his horses and his skill in driving, and then deposited us at a very pleasant inn, the new arrange- ments of which, with its light, elegant furniture, bare floors, the little tripods to hold the basins, the multitudes of doors and open windows, and the ample sense of space, with the large balconies, inner courtyard, and wide passages, gave us an immediate feeling of a new land and a great desire to stay in it if we could. But it would not do. The heat was tremendous, so tremendous that we could not sleep. The party at the late dinner, in spite of the room being open to the air all round, looked like Peter Bell's celebrated "party in the parlour," "all silent and all damned;" and I felt sure that even a day or two of such weather at Como, would make me as limp as if I were a mere wisp of feeble good- nature, and give me a sick headache into the bargain. So we re- sisted Como, and ordered an early Einspanner for the Spliigen, which accordingly we crossed the next day, repassing from heat through sharpish cold, to the pretty village of Spliigen, where the Hinter-Rhein rushes down from the Bernardino. A lovely walk we had that night on the green mountain-side towards a lonely thread of waterfall which we could see for some miles off, in full view of the great snow-fields of the Einshorn, and with thin, fiery clouds chasing each other swiftly along the summits of the moun- tains, as if intent on trailing a pencil of flame over their outlines, to fix them on our memory.

Then we followed down the course of the Hinter-Rhein to its junction with the Vorder-Rhein at picturesque Reich- enau, where the wide valley, in the angle between the two meeting rivers, is dotted thick with low, puddingy hills, all covered for miles and miles with thick woods, while vineyards (this year sadly burnt up with the fierce sun) run along the low banks of the infant Rhines, and glacier-patches in the region of the Oberland tower up faintly in the west whence the Vorder-Rhein comes down. I have delightful memories of that long drive from Reicheuau to Dissentis beside the dwindling stream of the Vorder-Rhein, which we crossed and recrossed repeatedly on the way ; and of the dreary, frightful precipices of the " Mother-of-God " mountain, so called apparently from the complete absence of anything lovely, feminine, or sweet about it ;—certainly, savager fortresses of nature I never beheld. Delightful, too, was our climb among great patches of the flaky cotton-plant, over the pass of the Oberalp, and by the shores of its lonely tarn, talking from time to time with a handsome Swiss who was driving before him three goats bound to some alp above Andermatt for change of air, and who gave us his views on the war, which were far from complimentary to either Franco or Prussia. The furious Reuss, raging between those huge Uri mountains and tearing under the Devil's Bridge, —the misty heights above the Furka,—the majestic sweep of the Rhone-glacier, with its crowd of minarets and domes and fantastic battlements, all cut as it were in lapis lazuli,—so deep is the blue of the ice-cataract as it topples over from the ridge of the great mountain,—were all new to me, though so familiar to the ordinary tourist in Switzer- land, and all unforgetable. As we whirled down the zigzags by the edge of the great glacier I have just mentioned, I thought of

Shelley :—

" There many a precipice Frost and the sun in scorn of mortal power Have piled,—dome, pyramid, and pinnacle, A city of death, distinct with many a tower And wall impregnable of beaming ice. Yet not a city, but a flood of rain Is there, that from the boundary of the sky Rolls its perpetual stream.

Below, vast caves Shine in the rushing torrents' restless gleam, Which from those secret chasms in tumult welling Meet in the vale, and one majestic river, The breath and blood of distant lands, for over Rolls its loud waters to the ocean waves, Breathes its swift vapours to the circling air."

A wet pilgrimage to the hospice of the Grimeel, chiefly associated in my mind with the lonely cry of the ptarmigan,—for the deep sea of mist hid even the brink of the precipice from view,—and a brief sojourn by the eerie lake there,—a momentary sun-gleam on that sublime meeting of the waters at thellandeckFalls, where a slender, fair, and lucid column of water, 200 feet high, called the Arlenbach, casts in its lot with the muddy, fierce, and turbid Aar, in the very crisis of its equally tremendous and far more desperate and violent leap,—a wild and stormy ride on a wonderful little grey horse, over great blocks of granite and bleak patches of snow where there was no sign of a track, while the mist hung low, and the wind howled through it, back to Obergestelen, in the valley of the Rhone,—a swift bowling along by the side of the vehement, shrunken river, to Leak, and a sharp climb up the narrow glen that leads to Leuker-bad,--a giddy ascent on a perfect love of a mule of the terrible mountain fastness of the Gemmi, where, as Matthew Arnold says, "the awful Alpine track crawls up its rocky stair,"—and a long, delight- ful day spent in gazing at the lake of Thun, as thunderstorm after thunderstorm swept over its surface, and the great snowfields of the Bliimlis Alp (or "White Woman") now vanished into the heart of the tempest and now shone out again through its parting shadows,—these are the bright points in my memory during the rest of our journey here. And what of the dark points ? Well, they

would be, perhaps, a few steamy tables where the jabbering and the crowd of faces sometimes quite daze me, and I hardly know what all those grotesque masks of unknown natures really signify, while the beat, the din, and the gnashing of teeth become quite hideous to me,—and a few anxious hours about that self-willed Henry, who walked himself quite ill on the Gemini, in spite of my clearly pointing out to him the duty of having a mule, and lay in bed at Thun for a day or two afterwards, in a feverish stupor, hardly able even to look at the mountains or the lake. I was positively obliged to go down one day to the table (Mote alone, as "lone and born a creetur " as Mrs. Gummidge, and much more helpless. Henry always tells me what the dishes mean. I have been ever since Thun haunted by a terrible fear that that day I partook of "brains" without knowing it. That is a trap they are always setting for you. And now, as Dr. Johnson said of the utility of wearing nightcaps, " I do not know, Sir, perhaps no man shall ever know," whether I have eaten " brains " or not. And it is unplea- sant to lose one's self-respect even hypothetically. If Henry would only not indulge that silly masculine vanity which makes men so reluctant to admit they are not strong enough for a great fatigue, he would not expose me to these terrible contingencies.

And now let me conclude with a few counsels to those of my countrywomen who, while, like me, they are by no means ambitious of getting into danger, really enjoy getting beyond those beaten tracks where every beauty of nature pays a high rent, and the Swiss communes farm out their waterfalls and their glaciers to speculative publicans, who charge the visitors so much a head for keeping the wooden scaffoldings, and other such facilities for " the bloated tourist," in repair. I should say, then, in the first place, take really light luggage with you, such as a mule or one or two " bearers" could easily carry, and travel as much as possible by side-valleys penetrated only by char-roads, mule-tracks, and the like, but never allow your husband or brother to take you where your luggage cannot follow. Of course, if you carry about small wooden huts full of things, like the American ladies in Switzerland, you must either not see anything, or separate from your heavy baggage for weeks together,— a most agitating thing in itself, and, moreover, sure to give rise to annoyances, since you always leave what you most want at the depot,—for you might as well prepare to take a siege-train with you to the height of 10,000 feet as boxes of that kind. Indeed, they are often too big to get into the hotel rooms, and you see them standing in the passages, blockading the doors of the dressy travellers, where they have frequently reminded me of that angry cat Charles Dickens described in his Italian journey, which he saw standing outside its hole near Genoa, "with such a tremendous tail that it had to wait ten minutes to cool down before it could get in again." Only these peacock tails of dressy tourists never do go down, but remain tremendous, and a permanent hindrance to the attainment of comfortable quarters to the last. Still, when you have really reduced your luggage to a minimum, my advice is that you should never consent to the anguish of even a temporary parting, because it really furnishes a " material guarantee " against what they call " mountaineers' passes." Do they not talk of " handicapping" strong horses by heavy weights, so as to bring them down to the level of weaker horses? Well, it has been my rule to handicap Tyrolese and Swiss guides in this way. Though timorous enough, I have always found it quite safe to go where any Swiss or Tyrolese with a hundredweight or so in the basket on his back can lead the way ; and so long as it is really safe, the less the route is used by ordinary tourists, the more of the real life of the country you see, and the less you find of those vulgar and adventitious " attractions" for tourists,—like Bengal lights on waterfalls, and coloured frames of glass through which to view the landscape. But whenever Henry wishes me to part with my modest luggage on the ground that nothing so heavy can be carried over a pass, I have always stood firm. " Where neither a mule nor a bearer' can get," I have said, " I am sure you and I cannot get safely." No ropes and steps cut in the ice for me, thank you. Women and sedentary people attempt these things only out of spiritual pride. They are unbearable after they have achieved a real mountaineers' pass, and had almost better have perished in the attempt, so pernicious is their subsequent moral influence in society. They " exalt their horns " till they become intolerable, even at a table d'hote. There was just such a terrible young man at the Rhone Glacier, whose self-righteousness for three successive days made our meals hideous to us, though the retired chandler's daughter opposite fell an easy victim to the love-knot which he tied with his mountaineer's rope, and the subduing flashes of his ice- axe. There is no spiritual pride so dangerous in its approaches and so intolerable as that of the amateur mountaineer. But the char-roads, mule-paths, and passes used by the country people carrying goods from one valley to another are perfectly safe, and if chosen with a view to scenery, are twice as delightful as the regular tourist-roads.

Next, don't suppose that rain and mist destroy the pleasure of high passes. No doubt you miss much scenery. Scarcely half of our eight high passes this year were passed in bright weather, but if you are well prepared against cold and rain, and especially if you are on a good mule, bad weather, though it robs you of some delight to the eye, does not much diminish, if it does not even increase, the exhilaration of mountain air. I really think I enjoyed the wet passes the most. The sun was so hot and glaring on the fine days. And there is a certain grandeur and desolation in stormy weather on the mountain-top which add to the imagina- tive charm of mountain scenery.

Again, let me advise you to take a small stiff blotting- portfolio with you, and keep a look-out for rare flowers. It is quite an object in a day's travelling, and if you keep a good deal to the out-of-the-way roads and valleys, you are sure to find some lovely ones, and not a few very rare. It is a pity my dear, good Henry is so shortsighted, and so invincibly ignorant about flowers. He delights in them, and has got quite a passion for finding me new ones,—but then his blunders ! Only think, on the pass of the Oberalp, above Ander- inatt, he was for picking me a fine potatoe-jlower, such as Frank had his first lesson on in Miss Edgeworth's story, as something quite new and fascinating ! I asked him if we should dry it, and take it home labelled " Solanum tuberosum Alpinum,—habitat, ploughed fields and rifts of the lower Alps." Was not that delicious ? However, when I was on a mule, he really got me a good many pretty flowers when they were carefully pointed out to him.

Last, as to food, in the rougher valleys, one or two rules will be found useful. You must take a little etna, or " quick-boiler," (Schnellsieder), as the Germans call it, and buy bottles of spirit

Spiritus zum Ausbrennen '), which you can get in any little Swiss or Tyrolese or German town over the size of a small village. Then, with your own tea, you are guaranteed against the worst that fate can do for you. Next, in all uncivilized places you may rely much more absolutely on the eggs than in the towns. They are sure to be pretty fresh in the wild valleys, for there are so few that they are consumed as fast as they are laid. We always found the eggs bad in civilized hotels, and very fresh and sweet in village inns. Of course they will underboil them, but you can boil them again in the etna. As to other food, it is better to prepare a list of vetos than to demand special dishes. Always veto egg soup. It is a loathsome German institution, the eggs swimming greasily about in it, and worse than Sauerkraut. We had to veto " Nudelsuppe " (vermicelli soup) this time,—they do put such a horrid spice in it, and the wriggling vermicelli is such an aggravation of warm water. Then we always vetoed ham ; Germans, Tyrolese, and Swiss are alike ignorant what ham and bacon are, though they eat so much of it. Generally their ham is raw, and always nasty. As for their bacon, it is gritty leather. Veal it was impossible to veto, or it would sometimes have meant a veto of all animal food ; but pro- test against it, and if reduced to it, denounce cotelettes,' and tell them to bring it cut in thin slices, very well done. But if possible,

get game,—you often can get venison, often chamois, very often roe in the wilder parts, and not unfrequently moor-cock or other wild birds. And game is always good. And almost always in the Tyrol and Germany (though not in Switzerland) you can get very tolerable sponge-cake, which they call meal-food (Mehl- speise), and serve as pudding. This is a great resource. Then the wine is always drinkable and the milk always good. With a judicious list of vetos ready on your tongue, and a great profession of readiness to eat anything whatever not in that index expurga- torius, you will really get on capitally in out-of-the-way places, and not often be, like your poor countrywoman in Berne,

AN ENGLISHWOMAN IN DIFFICULTIES.