Chapter II: Part 2

This great reserve has added a unique attraction to the Engadine. The idea was for a long time the aspiration of an elect few, leavening public opinion and pestering the Government. At last they had their reward. For years the authorities that in an admirable reciprocity govern and are governed by the population of Switzerland cautiously committed themselves to the enterprise. In 1906 they appointed a Naturschutzkommission to report on a desirable region to be sequestrated. In 1909 a Naturschutzbund was formed to supplement official efforts. The commission negotiated rights in first one fragment then another of the selected and authorized area: from the commune of Zernez in 1909 the Val Cluoza, in 1910 the Val Tantermozza and the northern and western slopes of Piz Esan; from the commune of S-chanf in 1911 the southern slopes of Piz Esan and {46} Piz Quatervals, the Val Muschauns, and part of the right side of Val Trupchum; from the commune of Scuol and the pastoral league of Tavrü most of the east side of the S-charl district; from Zernez in 1913 the Praspol, Schera, and Stavelchod districts. All concessions were with option of renewal. Right of emption was also secured over the region linking the two unequal areas into which the appropriations fall. This is termed the Verbindungsgebiet, roughly speaking the Val Nuglia, the upper Val Plavna, and the heights bordering both. In 1914 a resolution of the Federal Council gave legislative seal to the transactions, banning to human enterprise some fifty square miles. The addition of the linking domain will bring the area up to about eighty square miles. Of course, the figures give the horizontal projection on the map; the surface measurement would be considerably more, as anyone who has had to do with real property that is 'mostly on end' will realize.

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As to the locality of this forbidden land, public opinion has unanimously endorsed the choice of the commission. In no part of Switzerland is there an equal area that could be given over to untrammelled natural agencies with so little social or economical derangement. It is wholly without permanent human habitation, there is no tillage and but little pasturage to be disestablished, while the hardly less important Fremdenindustrie has barely touched the hem of the great reserve, which boasts none of the {48} transcendent charm that has made the rest of Switzerland the playground of Europe; with the exception of a short reach below the Fuorn Pass, no rail or post-road threads its savage solitudes, it cradles no enchanting lake, it enshrines no soaring peaks or shining glaciers, its valleys, which enjoy such uninviting names as Val del Diavel, Sassa, Cluoza, Nuglia, Sainza bon (I will not insult the reader's ingenuity by translating them), though full of wild charm, are little haunted by artist and photographer; wood-cutting, hunting, and scanty and sporadic pasturage are the only industries that will be interfered with. This unkempt, unused wilderness at the eastern edge of the Confederation has the further recommendation that, partly from this isolation and neglect, partly from lying on the borderland of distinct botanic zones, it exhibits a varied and comprehensive flora, and has given asylum to sundry odds and ends of vanishing fauna.

Though, following precedent elsewhere, the term 'reserve,' which was first employed for the sequestrated area, has officially given place to that of National Park, the former better expresses the aim of the scheme. The proposed object of such sequestration in other countries has been public enjoyment, but this is only incidentally an object of the Swiss enterprise, which is rather a great scientific experiment in the interplay of unimpeded natural agencies. Nature is to be given a free hand, and man, his hands {49} behind his back, will look on and see what she makes of it.

Of course, the field of unsophisticated nature is not, when closely looked at, the peaceful paradise dreamed by the artless philosophy of a century ago. The beneficent mother pictured by sentimental idealists has been revealed to these latter days as a soulless monster, red in tooth and claw with ravin, working blindly under the impulsion of inexorable tendencies that know not truce nor ruth. To make a sanctuary where she shall have her way without let or hindrance amounts to keeping the ring for a free fight of flora and fauna, only the meddlesome hand of her supreme masterpiece--whom it is rather amusing we should exclude from our conception of nature--being ruled out.

As regards flora, I believe the procedure has been mainly thus to let things alone, but the administration are introducing much that is new, or that has disappeared, in the way of fauna. To a large extent, indeed, they have introduced themselves with that telepathic percipience of a sanctuary so remarkable in hunted creatures. Already in October, 1913, a large bear appeared in the Park. Their former presence is attested by sundry place-names--Val del Orso, Bagn del Uors--and in the Val Cluoza and elsewhere old timber bear-traps still stand. Bears, however, are too expensive guests to be welcomed. Not sixty years ago their ravages among sheep and cattle were {50} still considerable, and the administration has engaged with the neighbouring communes not to harbour them.

A former denizen of the Alps whose successful re-establishment has been hailed with universal acclamation is the lordly ibex, or, as Engadiners call it, the Capricorn (bouquetin, steinbock). Throughout Switzerland there is a sentiment of romance connected with this stately goat, who for over three centuries has had only an heraldic existence in his ancient fastnesses; his imperially horned head is the emblem of the canton, and swings as sign of innumerable inns; he capers amid thistles on the seal of the commune of Zernez and prances rampant on either side of armorial devices frescoed on the walls of old houses. In 1920 seven young Capricorn were let loose in the Cluoza-Spol section, and their number has increased in spite of foreign marauders, but here we are on delicate ground, and it is well to emulate the diplomatic reticence of the Federal authorities. The stock is to be reinforced this year by a pair from the Zoological Gardens at Interlaken.

The Park started with a good stock of chamois of several types and some deer, and more have flocked to it as the good news of a sanctuary was passed round in ways that man knows not; in fact deer may be said to have taken possession of the S-charl district. Marmots abound, and will still more abound. Moreover, {51} affiliated to the Park, the only patch of it on the left of the Inn is a sanctuary established for the droll little rodents on the Godgod slopes between S-chanf and Capella well back in last century. During the construction of the railway the Italian workmen wrought sad havoc among them with snares, which they had become too confiding to avoid; but they have since regained their paradise, and the discreet wanderer may watch their engaging antics at work and play. Their surplus progeny is no doubt making its own Verbindungsgebiet with the Park.

It must not be supposed, from what has been said, that the great reserve is a forbidding region of interest only to the naturalist. It is replete with charm and full of a variety that blends in wide harmonies, or surprises with sudden contrasts; a region of still forest sanctuaries, of wild ravines and savage gorges, of eager streams flashing white in cascades and torrents or rushing green and smooth in deep-worn beds; of many-hued rocks piled in chaotic ruin or set in mazy labyrinths or strewn splintered on the slopes; lonely tarns shine on emerald uplands or sleep in stony wildernesses; the lofty lawns are starred with flowers and sentinelled with immemorial trees; in sequestered dells rivulets wind and whisper amid blossoming herbage, or creep and croon in leafy coverts; great grey stones dream under the hoary trees of Druidic glades; a land of pristine seclusion, of gracious solitudes, of high, silent places where {52} earth and heaven seem to meet. And over all plays the wizardry of the clear mountain air and the fleeting mountain weather, weaving a glamour of shifting splendour and gloom over peak and vale, stream and forest, lighting the landscape into a prodigal enchantment of detail or wrapping it in mystery and portent.

In common with all who are interested in the National Park, I am greatly indebted to Dr. Stefan Brunies, Secretary and Treasurer of the Heimatschutz, who has made the subject his own in various delightful books replete with nature- and folk-lore. Therein are given a number of itineraries for exploring the Park and studying its plants, birds, and beasts, in all which the wanderer will find Dr. Brunies an invaluable and entertaining companion.

S-chanf is, he thinks, the best starting-point for traversing the Park. Crossing the Inn by the Livigno road, a path on the left crosses the Varusch stream and follows up its right bank to Alp Purcher. Here, on the left, a path enters the Park, and runs up the Alp Müschauns under the chasmed heights of Piz Esan; on the steep grassy slopes below them the practised eye will seldom fail to locate chamois browsing. Passing on the right a long narrow tarn fed by a tongue of glacier we reach a low saddle that leads into the appropriately named Val Sassa, in the steep screes of which the path is lost till it reappears on the broad valley floor, where, crossing a wooden {53} bridge, we find, ensconced in dense forest, the Cluoza blockhouse.

Here are eight beds and supplementary sleeping accommodation on hay; the warder supplies meals at a fixed tariff. Chamois, and now and then deer, may be marked on the slopes above, where salt-licks have been placed for their delectation. Any wayfarer may pass two nights at the blockhouse in the heart of the great reserve; for a longer stay authority must be obtained from the Naturschutzkommission at Bale.

We commence next day's walk by mounting steeply on the east to the Murter Alp, a plateau of flowery pasture buttressed round with precipices. Here we have a survey of the upper Val Cluoza and its three savage head-valleys: Diavel, Sassa, and Valetta. Descending eastward to the old sheep-pastures of Laschaida, we come to the first outposts of forests, hoary, battered larch, which, as the path drops steeply down, gradually give place to fir. At the bottom we emerge on the pastures of Praspol by the turbid Spol, one of the largest tributaries of the Inn, rich in trout, and a last refuge of the hard-bested otter, who can now live and multiply there in peace, doubtless giving a wide berth to the right bank for the two miles along which the Spol forms the Park boundary. It will be interesting to note if fish do the same; the right of fishing from this bank is reserved to the commune of Zernez. We may cross {54} the stream by the Punt Praspol, leaving the Park for a while, or we may take on the right a lonely and bewitching forest path that runs above the left bank of the Spol, crosses it by the Punt Purif, and descends to the point where, half an hour below Fuorn, the post-road re-enters the Park.

Those not in a hurry will do well to spread this walk, with digressions that will readily suggest themselves, over the second day, passing the night at Fuorn. If pressed for time, however, an early start from the blockhouse will enable good walkers to get on to S-charl or Tarasp. A quarter of an hour above Fuorn on the road to the Pass, by the second bridge, which crosses a gully, a footpath on the left through the forest brings us into the Val del Botsch, abounding in chamois, and ascends steeply to the Fuorcletta, a low saddle between towering dolomite peaks. Looking back as we ascend is an ever-widening prospect of serried summits and savage gorges. Very striking, too, as we thread the stony trough, is the contrast between the stark desolation around and the soft rich hues of the Lower Engadine, with a crowded host of peaks rising behind and about them. The path then leaves the Park, and is for a while in the Verbindungsgebiet, descending to Alp Plavna, turning to the left, ascending, and re-entering the Park at the pleasant col of Sur il Foss; then descending the Val Minger, it strikes the Clemgia a couple of miles below the lone, forest-begirt hamlet of S-charl. The {55} once busy iron-smelting village has dwindled to a dozen houses with their little church on a holm of the rushing Clemgia. The name of the secular Jurada forest on the left records an ancient reserve banned to axe and saw as a protection from avalanches. To the south the wild and beautiful valley is closed by the snow-flecked dolomite peaks of the Pisoc. A half-day's walk down the right bank of the stream, along the eastern edge of the Park, takes us by the Clemgia Gorge to Tarasp.

'The course of nature' as exhibited in such experiments as the Swiss National Park irresistibly calls to mind the headlong history of the world during the ten years that have passed since its inauguration. The teaching of nature had been studiously assimilated by a great nation to which the world is deeply indebted in every field of thought, science, and research; it was made the basis of their national policy, and put in practice with every resource of skill and deliberation. The results have been catastrophic, and would seem to show that when man became a social being--and we may perhaps extend the statement to all society, however inchoate, from the pack and the herd to the hive and the ant-heap--he entered a new plane of evolution, and that those who would apply to it the crude methods of selection that operated in more primitive and individual stages are fighting against the stars in their courses.

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Some such thoughts as these shaped themselves in my mind into the following lines in the second year of the war.

EVOLUTION

They said: Behold, battle is earth's high law,
Turn where we will is ruthlessness and strife,
Beast against beast, and plant with plant wage war,
Through havoc only gain we ampler life.

The strong leaf ousts the weak leaf from the sun,
Root strangles root in wrestle for the soil,
Close-shelved in rock lie types whose race is run,
Cast out in the eternal stress and moil.

Thus painfully, by force and guile and hate,
From flaccid forms that lurked in primal ooze,
Life, in advance from low to high estate,
Ever the weak rejects, the strong doth choose.

Shall man alone shirk universal rule,
And bind the peoples with his petty codes
That shield rank growth of weakling and of fool
And crush the hero under caitiffs' loads?

Truth is a figment, charity a myth,
Life gives its crowns to strength and craft and greed,
Why should we weave, to stay our hands therewith,
A moral net at variance with our need?

We will forswear the outworn, craven creed
That blessed the peacemakers and pure in heart,
And take the lesson taught by beast and weed
To guide our feet in court and camp and mart.

And thus they placed their land all else above,
Suckled their sons at iron paps of war,
Made mock of honour and a God of love,
Trampled on covenant and scoffed at law.

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And God gave unto them their hearts' desire,
And poured into their cup the wine they sought
That turns the soul to stone, the brain to fire,
And brings the centuries' slow work to naught.

Gave strong delusion to believe a lie,
Gave them seared heart, sealed mind, and pervert sense,
The straitened outlook of the earth-bound eye
That sees no kingdom that is not from hence.

On from delusion to delusion hurled,
They worked out madly to its utmost cost
The doom on those whom, though they gain the world,
It profits nothing, for their soul is lost.

The gain is futile and the world is small
That can be bought by barter of the soul,
A new time dawns and gleaming portents call
For fresh means, changed ideals, altered goal.

VI

WINTER

The attraction of the Alpine winter, which till lately was a pious cult of the elect, has become a common-place of advertisements and agencies. Every year a larger crowd gathers in what used to be considered frost-bound solitudes, and some new resort is opened for the Christmas holiday-maker. Among such resorts the Engadine, with its dry air, clear sky, and brilliant sunshine, takes a foremost place. At no {58} time is it more lovely and enjoyable, more unlike the surroundings we have left at home, more recuperative to jaded denizens of the town. It would be difficult to find a gayer and busier scene than its frozen lakes and snow-clad slopes present in winter. Even the work that goes on partakes of the general exhilaration. Sleighs and toboggans replace carts and barrows, lightening the labour of man and beast, and adding a novel animation to transport and locomotion. Bound and buried though Nature be, the work of those who deal with her is by no means at a stand-still; the universal snow, instead of staying it, inaugurates a general transport system, converting rough mountain roads into smooth and facile descents; little more than guidance and gravitation is needed to bring the hay mown in summer and the timber felled in autumn from the distant uplands to the villages and homesteads where they should be. Nothing is more enjoyable than to take a passage down on a sleigh laden with hay or faggots, to rush through the keen air over glistening slopes, or along winding forest ways, or in the trough of steep gullies that centuries of similar traffic have cut through copse and wood; most admirable is the adroitness with which a practised mountaineer pilots his wayward and unwieldy craft, which, if once it 'take charge,' runs a mad career as fatal to its crew as to wayfarers in its path.

Sports are organized in the most business-like {59} manner, and are as cosmopolitan as the human crowd; northern and mountain lands in all quarters of the globe have contributed to them, and when the short sunny day is over, keen brilliant nights, carnival balls on the illuminated lakes, theatricals, dancing, and unlimited miscellaneous fooling prolong the strenuous enjoyment.

And then the setting of it all. The exceeding beauty and strangeness of the snow-clad earth, spotless and radiant, like a bride adorned for her husband, and the enchanting details that surround us, wander where we will. On every side cold and heat, wind and moisture, play fantastic tricks before high heaven, stereotyping cascades on the precipices, casing in crystal the swirls and falls of streamlets, draping cliffs and caves with iridescent fringe and lacework of ice. Snow decorates the sombre towers of pine and fir as with jewelled fleece, and bows to an added grace the pliant larch-limbs on which remnants of autumn foliage still linger in brushes of tawny gold; hoar-frost weaves fairy-like embroidery over twigs and leaves; shadows chequer the stainless ground with exquisite pencilling; all the familiar objects of wayside, croft and fell suffer a winter change into something rich and strange.

He who would see all this at its best and at his ease must take to skis, for the gift of which the Alps owe an incalculable debt to Norway. The introduction is comparatively recent, but the alacrity with {60} which it has been taken up shows how thoroughly it met a want. Detachments of the Swiss army are exercised on skis every winter, and the citizen soldiers have taken the accomplishment back to their mountain homes, where it has been eagerly adopted. Children may be seen on home-made skis trooping to the often distant school, or having the time of their lives on slopes and plateaux.

Those who do not cultivate it as a spectacular sport may welcome ski-ing as a means of locomotion, enabling them to go to places otherwise inaccessible, to pass swiftly and lightly over snow in which unskied bipeds would flounder up to the knees, if not over the head. What matters it to the humble novice that his course seem but shambling and shuffling to the winner of cups and breaker of records. What is that to him as he brushes over the sparkling slopes and threads the cloistral hills? He will find himself on shining plateaux bathed in hazy light and walled in the shimmering distance with ethereal ramparts. He will pass into solemn depths of forest where the winding way is edged and arched with pines that stretch on either hand into illimitable aisles. Sometimes his path will lead him to a radiant sanctuary where Nature seems taking her winter rest in undisturbed repose; no breath of wind breaks the stillness, nor note of bird, nor human footfall; the earth as he ascends is transfigured with new and strange magnificence, the heaven deepens to a diviner blue and the shadows to {61} more mystic purple, the peaks close round and rise cathedral-like on every side: a cathedral vast and soaring, vaulted with unfathomable sky, piled and pinnacled, sculptured and wrought, beyond any architect's imagining, and clothed with light as with a garment.

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INDEX

Agnas, Las, 33
Aguagliouls, 30
Albriz, Piz, 12
Albula, Pass, 10
Alv, Lej, 31
Piz, 30
Anglican Church, 16, 25
Architecture, 21
Ardez, 40
Assa, Val d', 44

Badrutt Park, 14
Bears, 49
Bernina Falls, 30
Hospice, 31
Houses, 31
Pass, 31
Val, 12, 20, 27-32
Bevers, 11
Val, 11
Bishopric of Chur, 42, 43
Bitabergo, Lago di, 25
Bregaglia, Val, 26
Brunies, Stefan, 52

Calven, 33
Campell, 15
Camfer, 17
Capella, 36
Capricorn, 50
Cavloccio, Lago di, 25
Celerina, 12
Chalchaign, 12
Chamois, 50
Charnadura Gorge, 12
Chastè, 23
Chesa Gregori-Gilli, 34
Juvalta, 35
Planta, 34
Chiesa, 22
Chur, 10
Cluoza blockhouse, 53
Val, 45, 49, 50
Cresta, 12
Crusch, 42

'Diavolezza Tour,' 31
Deer, 50

Electricity, 18
Eren, Piz, 11, 50
Eschia, Val, 34
Etruscan villages, 40
Evolution, 55

Fedoz, 22, 24
Fex, Val, 22, 24
Finstermünz Pass, 45
Flaz, 12
Fontana Merla, 33
Ftan, 40
Fuorcla, Surlej, 20

Gian, San, 12
Giarsun, 28
Godgod, 51
Guarda, 40
Guardaval, 34
Güerg, St., 36

Hartmann, Nichol, 13, 15, 21
Heimatschutz, 13, 36, 52
Horace, 9, 10
Huxley, 24

Ibex, 50
Inn River, 12, 17, 20, 25, 37-39, 44
Islas, Las, 35
Isola, 24

Julier Pass, 19
Piz, 20
Jurada Forest, 53
Juvalta, Anna, 35

Kesch, Piz, 34

Lagalb, Piz, 30
Lakes, 17, 27, 33
Language, 9, 10, 35
Lauguard, Piz, 29
Laret, 28
Lavin, 40
Linard, Piz, 39
Lunghino Lake, 25
Piz, 26

Madulein, 33
Maira, 26
Malenco, Val, 22
Maloja, 24
Margna, Hôtel, St. Moritz, 13
Sils Baselgia, 21
Marmorè, 23
Marmots, 50
Marozzo, Val, 26
Martina, Punt, 44
Martinsbruck, 44
Moritz, St., 4
Bad, 15
Dorf, 13
Morteratsch Glacier, 29, 30, 32
Muotlas Muraigl, 29
Muraigl, Punt, 29
Museum Engiadinais, 15

Nair, Lej, 30
National Park, 11, 39, 45
Nietzsche, 23

Ordlegna, 25
Ot Piz, 39
Otter, 53

Padella, Piz, 12
Palü, Piz, 12
Pers, Glacier, 31
Planta, 33, 34
Ponte, 33
Pontresina, 12, 28, 32
Poschiavo, Lago di, 31
Punt Ota, 37

Ramuosch, 43
Raphael, 14
Roman Conquest, 9
Rosegg, Glacier, 29

Samaden, 11, 12
S-chanf, 35
Schaffberg, 29
S-charl, 54
Schlucht Promenade, 28
Segantini, 14, 29
Sent, 42
Sgrischus, Lej, 23
Sils Baselgia, 21
Maria, 12
Silvaplana, 9, 18
Sinestra, Val, 42
Sinuos-chel, 37
Skis, 59
Sondrio, 22
Spiert, 22
Spinas, 40, 42
Springs, 40, 42
Strada, 44
Sur-en, 42
Surlej, Fuorcla, 20
Susch, 39

Tarasp, 42, 55
Trout, 20, 23, 53
Tschanuf, 42
Tschlin, 44
Tuoi, Val, 40

Val d' Assa, 44
Bermina, 12, 20, 27
Bevers, 15
Bregaglia, 26
Val Cluoza, 45, 49, 50, 53
Eschia, 32
Fex, 22, 24
Malenco, 22
Marozzo, 26
Sinestra, 42
Tuoi, 40
Valtelline, 22
Vulpera, 41

Watershed of Alps, 26
Winter, 36, 57-61

Zernez, 38, 39
Zuoz, 33, 34, 36

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