Chapter IV: Part 4

Indeed, shifting material of every kind is objectionable and fraught with peculiar horrors. Up behind Bludenz you may see a row of limestone cliffs called Elser Schröfen, whose foot is defended by a “talus” of rubble which has slowly dropped down from the heights above; and a pretty thing it is, by the way, when you look closely at natural features like this talus, to observe with what flawless accuracy they have been constructed; how these fragments of detritus pass in due order through all gradations of size down the slanting surface, from minute particles like sand at the top to the mighty blocks that form their base. Once, long ago, I conceived the playful project of crossing this rubble-slope from end to end, just below the cliffs. I started on its inclined plane, but had not gone far before realizing the situation. The talus reposed, as it naturally would repose if left to accumulate undisturbed; that is, at the sharpest allowable angle against the cliffs, its upper barrier. It soon struck me as being rather a steep gradient, and not only steep but ominously alive--ready to gallop downhill on a hint from myself; the mere weight of my body could set the whole mass in movement and hurl me along in a rocky flood. While making this sweet reflection I found, with dismay, that it was already too late to turn back; the least additional pressure on one foot might start the mischief; once started, nothing would arrest that deluge; its beginning, without a doubt, was going to be my end.

I was in for a ticklish business. Rush down the slope diagonally and evoke the landslide but anticipate its arrival? Even that was courting disaster. I preferred to remain in the upper regions and there finished the long journey, with curious deliberation, on all fours, in order to distribute my weight; and then only by a miracle. It was one of those occasions on which one has ample leisure to look into the eye of death, and I now wish somebody could have taken a photograph of me--a colored one, by preference; one would like to possess a record of the exact tint of one’s complexion during half hours of this kind. Whoso, therefore, intends to traverse the same place would be well-advised to adopt my method of locomotion; the upright posture is not to be recommended. A pleasant farewell to all things! Never a button of you to be seen again; to be caught in a swirl, a deafening cataract of stones and, after snatching _en passant_ a few grains of scientific comfort at the thought that your human interference had modified--if only temporarily--the angle of a talus, which is not everybody’s affair, to be buried alive at the bottom under an imposing heap of débris.[21] ...

Now boys seem to make a point of doing risky things, whereas a man of my father’s age and experience should have made a point of not doing them. What can have induced him to act as he did? He was well acquainted with this particular shale; in that very paper on the Rothe Wand which is the origin of our trip to Formarin, he remarks that the only troublesome part of the ascent was a steep tract of the “soft, crumbling, blackish _Algäu-Schiefer_, which continually slipped away under our feet,” adding that “for the rest, no part of the climb could be called dangerous or even difficult.” (The present route up there is another and really easy one.) Was it downright bravura? That is not impossible! He had led an enchanted life among the rocks and ice, and a friend of his, an old gentleman whom I saw the other day in Bludenz and who was with him once or twice in the mountains, spoke to me of his contempt of danger; he said that while climbing he “seemed to tread on air” and could not be made to understand what people meant by giddiness. Or was he stalking some particular chamois? In that case the tragedy grows almost intelligible; there are few things a man will not do under those circumstances.

Two others accompanied him on this expedition, Dr. Dürr of Satteins and his own _Jaeger_ Fetzel, a native of our village; both have died long since and neither, I believe, was actual eye-witness of what happened at the fatal moment. Many journalistic cuttings and letters relative to this affair, and doubtless giving adequate accounts, were contained in that bundle which disappeared together with other literary and family papers when a certain portmanteau was broken open on its journey; it is a loss I shall never cease to deplore. The ground is supposed to have given way under him; certain it is that he fell from the height, as we were then told, of _many, many church steeples_--a phrase that stuck in my mind; from the height, I should reckon, of some thousand feet. There was nothing about him that was not shattered; his gun, his watch, were broken into fragments. Strangest of all, even his alpenstock was picked up in several pieces, which gave rise to the conjecture that this implement had betrayed him and snapped under his weight as he leaned on it for support; how else explain the splintering of such light and resilient material? Be that as it may, they carried his remains to Dalaas down the steep and savage Radona-tobel, and anybody who has been there will wonder how they achieved this task.[22] He was laid to rest in the Protestant cemetery of Feldkirch; for the first time in history the bells of all the countryside were tolled at the funeral of a “Lutheran”....

His article on the Rothe Wand is one of several which he contributed to the Journal of our Alpine Club; they can be traced in the files, together with his presidential addresses to the Vorarlberg section, of which I also possess four; one of the most interesting of these papers describes an ascent of the Piz Linard (3416 meters) and Piz Buin and the crossing of the Silvretta and Sagliain glaciers, the latter of which had never been traversed before; it presented _no difficulty_. These writings betray a strong love of nature, and all the exhilaration consequent upon “living dangerously.” He was also interested in the scientific aspects of alpinism, as I can see from his marginal annotations to Forbes’ “Theory of Glaciers.”

More important are two archæological monographs which reveal another facet of his mind; I wish I knew whether he wrote any other such things and where they are to be found; does the library at Bregenz perhaps contain them? The first one (1865, with two diagrams) deals with his excavations on a strangely shaped eminence near Mauren--a village in Liechtenstein, just across our frontier--which he held to be a Celtic hill-fort; his surmise was proved correct by the discovery of certain bronze relics. The other treats of the Roman occupation of this province.[23] It is in the shape of an address to the Museum Society of Bregenz with which he was connected; an exhaustive and conscientiously written memoir, full of ripe speculations of his own, enriched with copious footnotes and citations from those authorities, ancient or modern, who had hitherto touched upon these matters; and defining all remains of antiquity excavated here up to that day (some noteworthy new finds have since been incorporated into the Bregenz Museum). It has given me a feeling difficult to describe, to go through this paper again; I seem to be reading my own lucubrations, for at the same time of life I was writing in the same style on subjects of the same kind; a scholarly digression, for instance, on the Roman roads of the district, _no trace of which exists_, is done quite in my manner of that period. I observe that he contradistinguishes between Celts and Rhætians (p. 6 and note to p. 10);[24] that he takes Lindau, and not either of the other two islands, to have been the one occupied by Tiberius; and holds the _Vallis Drusiana_, the Walgau, the heart of our province, to be called not after the Roman general and stepson of Augustus, seeing that the name Druso is of Celtic or Rhætian

origin--pre-Roman, in short, and indigenous to this country, whence localities like Drusenfluh, Drusenthor, Druseralp, Druserthal.[25]

Of peculiar interest to me, among my father’s writings, are forty or fifty manuscript essays, long and short, on a variety of themes; mere “asides” written, to please himself, in three different languages: English, French and German. French he studied at Geneva; German at the gymnasium of Augsburg, and so successfully, that he learnt to handle that tongue with more freedom and elegance than many a native writer of the country. Most of these miscellanies date from the late fifties or early sixties when he was still young; he doubtless continued to compose them to the end, and the later ones would have a greater value; they are lost. The titles testify to considerable intellectual curiosity: On ambition--The first snowdrop--A woman’s thoughts about women--On a passage in Pascal--The carnival--To the memory of ancient Rome--On a comet--Voices of Nature--Friendship--A characteristic of the German language--Dreaming of sounds--On certain pictures in the National Gallery of Scotland--The Lake of Geneva by night--Palleske’s Life of Schiller--Suicide--The thunderstorm--Spiritualism--Sunset in autumn--On the want of the habit of writing--The study of Natural Science; and so forth; a heterogeneous collection! One or two, such as a passionate lament for the death of some little boy-friend, are set in lines as if they were poetry, but there is no poetry about them save a certain rhapsodical elevation of sentiment. Those written in English prove that he had not yet excreted the poison of a German (metaphysical) schooling, which lays fetters upon our thought and dims the candor of literary expression. Immature stuff for the most part, heavy in diction and saturated with the conventional wisdom of youth, although here and there one alights upon something more esoteric, such as (in a “Fragment on Style,” 1858): “A noble thought always commands powerful and harmonious expression.... When a truly great thought is clothed in language unworthy of it, the mind which dictated the words can have conceived it only imperfectly”--which strikes me as an unexpected pronouncement, for a youngster of twenty. Altogether, the perusal of these things is a groping, twilight adventure into the soul of a dead man; vainly I ask myself along what lines he would have developed had his life been spared.

* * * * *

Hardly had we reached home again, after a long walk down from Formarin over Lagutz and Marul and Raggal, before Mr. R., who has a sweet nature but is apt to be pig-headed at times beyond the common measure of man, began to complain bitterly that I had shown him no chamois, proceeding thereafter to hint that all my accounts of such animals might well be pure inventions; the chamois-race was doubtless as extinct as the ibex I had shown him at Innsbruck; otherwise, why were they not on the spot, “where they ought to have been,” like those marmots? As if the country were a kind of perambulating menagerie! I am all for humoring young people up to a certain reasonable point, but it was a little more than I had bargained for, to start off climbing again that moment. Had he expressed any such wish at Formarin, we might have wandered towards Lech and entered some side-valley on our left, and possibly espied a beast or two among the crags. He said not a word about it up there. And now it was nothing but:

“Show them! Show them! What am I here for?”

“To learn English.”

“And to see the sights of the country. Such was our bargain. All you talk about chamois--ah, ah! I begin to understand.”

“I showed you a wild roe-deer in the Lutz forest last week, the first you ever saw in your life; and the devil’s own job it was to get you to see it. Won’t that do?”

“There you made a mistake. You ought to have called it a chamois. Then I should have believed that chamois still exist.”

“_Still exist?_ Why, we had chamois only the other day for luncheon.”

“It might have been bad mutton.”

“What next! It was delicious; and no more like mutton than--than----”

“I see what it is. You are afraid of climbing rocks. You have lost your nerve; I noticed it long ago on the cliffs at Scanno, but there are certain subjects one does not like to dwell upon between friends. _Troppo vino._ You comprehend?”

“Nothing of the kind. And if it were _troppo vino_, what object do you gain by being offensive about it?”

“To shame you into showing them.”

“Well, after that, I suppose you will have to see them. As to climbing rocks---- I think I can show chamois to people without climbing at all.”

So I did; by a stroke of luck which was surely not undeserved. Knowing Mr. R.’s character only too well, and how that there would not be another moment’s peace for me until those legendary creatures had been proved to exist, I called to mind, after some little thought, a place where chamois could almost invariably be seen, and we left home then and there, over Bludenz and Brand and the Zalim alp towards the Strassburger hut which lies under the Scesaplana, between a precipice and a perennial snow-field; arriving just as the sun went down.[26] Near the end of our march we turned a little to the right and glanced about us. There they were, three young beasts, almost straight below; unmistakable chamois, and as close at hand as any one could wish. Straightway Mr. R., whose familiarity with precipices is only surpassed by his familiarity with English grammar, proposed scrambling down a sheer wall of several hundred feet, and then throwing stones at them from behind. Who knows? A chance hit on the head, and we might bag one or the other. What a lark, if we did! The novelty of the idea was so alluring that I might have succumbed, if the animals had not scented us--as they would have done ere this, had we been standing below them--and made off amid a resounding clatter of stones. Mr. R. formally declared himself to be satisfied.

“Thank God for that,” I replied. “And, now that we are here, I will be able to show you something still funnier and more interesting to-morrow. Butterflies on this snow-field.”

“Why not pelicans?”

“Some folks are hard to please.”

There are nearly always frozen butterflies to be found up here. They have been wafted from their green meadows into these barren Arctic regions on the upward-striving blasts of the Fön.

Meanwhile we passed the night in the well-heated Strassburger hut, where we discovered as objectionable a crowd of Teutons as I have ever seen gathered together; and I have seen not a few. A fierce argument was proceeding between two of these bullet-headed ones as to whether the snowfield was a _Ferner_ or a _Gletscher_. The _Ferner_ man was right (though the Tyrolese use the word “Fern” for a glacier); but his opponent also came in for some share of applause. He had the louder voice of the two.

Up the Scesaplana next morning in time for the sunrise, where Mr. R. grew silent and respectful. Naturally enough. For there is something oppressive to the spirit on being thus islanded, for the first time, in a glittering ocean of Alpine peaks, and breathing the icy air of dawn at 3000 meters. I greeted old friends that arose up round us, and my glance, turning eastwards, rested at last upon the stainless white dome of the Ortler, fifty or sixty miles away. I called to mind that short snow-arête just before you reach the summit, knife-like and not even level; would I now care to run along it as I did then? Well, that was in the eighties and perhaps they have built a railway up the Ortler by this time; in the eighties, while we were touring on old-fashioned high bicycles over the Stelvio pass--a record, I fancy: there was a notice of it in the C. T. C. Gazette; over the Stelvio into Italy and back by the Splügen, riding home in one day from the Post at Splügen over Thusis and Chur and Ragatz and Feldkirch--which was also something of an achievement for the wretched machines of those days.

On the way down we stepped for a moment into the Lünersee hut, where Mr. R. had a look at the large photograph of my father after whom the place had been named, then followed the Rellsthal towards Vandans under that formidable flank of the Zimba on which the other tourist had died of sheer fright. During this descent my companion, unfortunately, began to relapse into something like his normal frame of mind; that is to say, our pleasure was nearly marred by persistent jocular allusions to that London hat of mine which has not yet ceased to provoke his merriment. Some time ago I was under the impression that he had forgotten this trivial and well worn theme of mirth. Far from it. Young people never will realize when a joke has grown threadbare, and he now distilled so much fresh laughter out of its shape, its color, its brim and other details of construction, its general fit, its suitability to my particular style, likening me at one time to his own countryman Napoleon and at another to a certain old female cousin of whose existence I had hitherto been unaware, that I was on the verge of getting annoyed when I hit upon the genial expedient of making him translate his miserable witticisms into the English tongue.

Then, and not till then, did they become really amusing; it was my turn to laugh.

JORDAN CASTLE

_Jordan Castle_

We often walk past that decrepit castle of Jordan. Situated on the hill above Bludesch, it is a landmark visible from afar, and was never a castle at all but a pretentious kind of villa. My mother told me that the builder had been a Dutch political refugee, and that the red violets growing on the inside of its westerly wall were planted by him. Those violets may be found to this hour--their leaves, at least; and you may find white ones along the path that leads down eastwards out of the orchard here--you could, at least.

Since then I have learnt a little more, but not nearly enough, about this strange-looking ruin. There used to be a small, two-roomed house on the site in olden days; this was bought, and converted into a splendid palace--_splendidum exstruxit palatium_--by Georg Ludwig von Lindenspeur, who lived there till his death in 1673. The plan of the building is as regular as can be, and thoroughly uninteresting; it has an artificial terrace in front, supported on massive substructures. The place continued to remain in good state till 1843 when it changed hands, and the new proprietor, having no use for it, took off the roof and carried away everything else that served his purposes. Who Lindenspeur was, I cannot say; the name does not sound altogether German or Austrian, and is unknown to me. He it was, I imagine, who for his own convenience or that of his visitors built or enlarged the path that leads up, some few hundred yards to the east of the ruin, from the driving-road in the valley below; this path, then broad enough for a carriage, with sustaining walls on both sides, has now grown quite narrow from disuse. He also founded a charity for several villages which exists to this day. The yearly income, for our particular one, is twenty-two florins; before the war, one might have helped a few poor people with this sum. Who is going to pick it up nowadays?

Such is the history of the “Jordanschloss.” I should like to learn more about the mysterious Lindenspeur; where he came from, and what induced him to settle in these outlandish regions and there to live to the day of his death. I have heard of no one else doing such a thing in the seventeenth century. He may well have been a refugee of some kind; a recluse, an original, in any case, and a wealthy one. So Jordan has been a ruin only for the last eighty years. One would never think so; for it already wears a hopelessly decayed look, as if it had been abandoned for a couple of centuries at least. That is because it lacks the solid masonry of our feudal remains. It crumbles away all the time, and I suspect that the farmhouse near at hand has been built with its stones.

We had a good look at Jordan yesterday afternoon, and agreed that it was an uncommonly transparent fabric. “The old gentleman must have been fond of windows,” observed Mr. R. True! There are more open spaces than stones in its ostentatious front; a row of eleven windows, all exactly alike, and young trees are sprouting out of them. This is what made Mr. R. christen the place “Château aux fenêtres.” And this name, in its turn, gave occasion for a simple question on my part, a question that led to a prolonged and painful discussion, in the course of which some little light was thrown on Mr. R.’s progress in the English language. I enquired as I should have done:

* * * * *

_D._ Now what is the English for “Le château aux fenêtres”?

_R._ The castle to the windows.

_D._ Castle to the windows? Try again. I am the most patient teacher in the world. And we have the whole afternoon before us. So don’t hurry and don’t disappoint me. Think!

_R._ Let me see.... “Château” may sometimes be rendered by “country-house.” The country-house to the windows. I know my _vocables_.

_D._ Your stock of words will pass; and such praise as is due to you for having gotten them by heart should not be withheld. But you will never learn English. “Castle to the windows” is treating our language in your usual brigandish fashion; _de haut en bas_. How often have I told you that a language must be courted, like a lover!

_R._ Never learn English? Are you serious? If so, allow me to say that I have already learnt more than enough to pass my examination. I know my _vocables_, as you yourself admit. I am also acquiring a little more polish, which I confess may still be needful. And latterly--how I have learnt to converse!

_D._ Yes; how! This is most discouraging, after all my efforts. Castle to the windows--good God! It might drive a less optimistic tutor crazy. Let us sit down on this stone for a moment, and I will tell you something that has just occurred to me. There was once a Greek poet and grammarian called Palladas, who was favored, like myself, with promising pupils of your style; who was a teacher, I mean, and nearly committed suicide in consequence----

_R._ They never do it, those fellows, although one wishes they would. It is the pupils who sometimes kill themselves. Your Pylades is probably alive to this day. Well?

_D._ Well, during one of his fits of depression at their extraordinary intelligence, he wrote a little couplet which still exists to prove the depth of his despair. Believe me, I can sympathize just now with the unhappy Palladas. The castle to the windows.... Would you like to translate his two short lines? They are very easy. And then you will understand the state of my feelings.

_R._ Not if you write in Greek. Put them into French, and I will translate anything you please. Here is a scrap of paper.

_D._ ...There now! Go ahead. No, no, no. I must have it in writing. You are too slippery, _viva voce_. And please try to do it carefully, for a change.

_R._ Voilà!... _I was ramble nude to the earth, and I will ramble nude underneath her. And why I dredge in vain, viewing the nude finish?_ So that is the state of your feelings. You seem to have forgotten to put your clothes on.

_D._ I was ramble nude----

_R._ You may say “stroll” instead of “ramble”; I am not particular! Or “saunter.” All these are better words than “walk” or “promenade”; they are more adapted for poetic uses. That is why I chose “dredge” instead of “labor”; it sounds less common. You see what come of knowing one’s _vocables_.

_D._ Drudge; not dredge. I was ramble nude. This is appalling. I mean to preserve that document as a _pièce justificative_. There may be some trouble, you know, about the way you have spent your time out here. Ramble nude--God Almighty! Why, the poet means to say that he walked, that he was born, naked into this world; don’t you see?

_R._ _Ça se peut bien._ In that case, he was perhaps not the first. There is nothing very original in baby-poets being born naked. Now if he had worn a felt hat on that occasion----

_D._ This is hardly the moment, is it? Your English, I must insist on telling you, leaves a great deal to be desired. And I should like to ask: what are we going to do about it?

_R._ If the baby-poet had suddenly come to light, wearing that London hat of yours ... ah, the doctor’s explanations----!

_D._ Laugh away. There will be a nude finish. You will never pass the test.

_R._ And why not? Only a camel would bother to learn all those useless idioms. I was always first in our English class at college. I knew more than the _profs_, and they were high-class people.

_D._ Was you ramble nude there?

_R._ _Allons_; just a little more polish ... ah, ah! The horrified _sage-femme_ ... her face ... ah, ah, ah!...

From this transparent “castle to the windows” we “rambled” yesterday, always to the westwards, always along the brow of the hill; crossed the Tiefis-Bludesch road and, about a quarter of a mile further on, turned to the right and followed a field path that goes first uphill and then down. It leads to the village of Schlins.[27]

The meadow region ends in a dank spot, almost a swamp, surrounded by forest on three sides. We were amazed at the multitude of butterflies crowded into this narrow space: I have never seen so many swallowtails gathered together. The mead is henceforward to be known as “pré des papillons,” and it was here that Mr. R. propounded a puzzling question. What happens to all the butterflies, he asked, when the grass is cut and the flowers gone? Where do they go? What do they find to eat? I have no idea. There are butterflies everywhere just now. In a fortnight or so, there will be none left, save a few peacocks and red admirals moping about the fallen fruit in orchards. Have they migrated upwards into Alpine quarters, where the fields are mown at a later season? Do they perish?

Here, at the end of the “pré des papillons,” you enter a noble forest which continues as far as Schlins. We used to call it the wood of the----. No; I refuse to open up that chapter of infantile nature-worship. Suffice to say, that the forest was properly dedicated to this potent but capricious deity, both by reason of its immeasurable distance from home (nearly an hour’s walk) and consequent unfamiliarity to us, and of the deep gloom which pervaded it in those days. It has since been thinned out; even to-day it remains one of the finest in the district and many of the firs reach a height of forty meters. Lower down and to the south there runs through the same wood another path, also to Schlins. It follows the base of one of those waterless east-west vales which are so contrarious, because, instead of at right angles, they lie parallel to our main valley. This used to be a terrifying track in those days; so narrow and deep was the dell, so tall and thick the trees on either side, that twilight reigned here in bluest noonday; and its length was interminable! The whole glen has now been reafforested and sunshine penetrates into all its recesses; but you can still discover the decaying stumps of those old giants, encrusted, many of them, with _Elfenbecher_ (fairy goblets)--minute mossy growths, shaped and tinted like chalices of frosted silver.

As we traversed this lovely wood of the----, we were startled by a disquieting din on our right. It was only a frolicsome shower, pattering deliciously among the beeches yonder. Soon it reached us and drove us under a fir. Here, as the drops were trickling through the branches, my companion drew from his pocket that talisman, that _vade mecum_ and _sine qua non_, and performed a selection of pieces grave and gay; I went to inspect a small cross that stood close at hand--one of four which are erected in this forest to the memory of woodcutters who have perished at their trade. It is dated 1867 and records that the victim was 63 years old. There is another, bearing a naturalistic representation of the accident; a wife on her knees, the husband lying dead beside her, with a massive log of timber stretched across his middle.

Now the loud rain dropped suddenly to a whisper and we went forth again towards Schlins, inhaling the aromatic odors of those essential oils which it had wakened out of the damp ground. The way is marked by colored signs against the trees; they have not been renewed since the war, and are fast fading away. This is a relic of the activities of the Blumenegg “beautification-society” which was started in emulation of that of Bludenz and, like it, expired in consequence of the war. The society did a good deal in its short life in thus marking tracks and even building benches here and there, that now molder pleasantly away; the whole wood from St. Anne church to Nenzing, for instance, is provided with marks, and whoever does not know the country might well be grateful for them. They also built the road down to Blumenegg waterfall, a delightful spot; that along our big waterfall was made by my brother and inaugurated, amid much speechifying and beer-drinking, on the 31 July, 1898.

Schlins lies prettily tucked away on a green level between the hills and the projecting woodland ridge of Jadgberg. We soon found ourselves at the Krone inn, where I have been an habitué for more years than I care to remember and where Mr. R. devoured his customary two eggs and cider, while I indulged in a long chat with the proprietress, who is a particular friend of mine. It does one good to be with such people, so blithe and natural and intelligent; I could go on talking to her for ever and ever; and I nearly did.

Then up, at last, through the firs to the venerable ruin of Jagdberg. Hard by the castle they have erected the so-called “Josefinum”--a kind of refuge and school for poor children of both sexes, waifs and strays, the scum of the province. It contains about fifteen girls and fifty boys, many of questionable parentage or none at all, ailing in body and mind--squint-eyed and one-legged and tuberculous and mangy and feeble-minded and depraved. They are sometimes spoken of as the “Verbrecherle,” the little criminals, and a few may perhaps deserve that name. One of these, not long ago, certainly displayed a rare tenacity of purpose. It was a boy-orphan who, at the age of fourteen, left the establishment where (according to his own account) he had been grossly and systematically ill-treated. When he was eighteen he considered himself strong enough to carry out a long-meditated project of revenge, and stole into the place one night with the intention of setting fire to it and of murdering the director with a dagger or revolver, both of which he carried on his person. They caught him before much damage could be done, and he was sentenced to eight years’ imprisonment. The son of a gypsy, it was said; which may be an _ex post facto_ explanation of his original conduct. In every case, he cannot but have suffered under an oppressive sense of injustice to be able to nurse his rage through four long years. Perhaps, after serving his sentence, he will have another try at the director....

As at Blumenegg, there is nothing left of Jagdberg save its outer wall, its shell; and on entering this hoary shell we were amazed to find therein a modern swimming-bath of cement, surely the most unexpected use to which a feudal ruin can be put. A handful of boys were splashing about here, together with some school-children from Schlins, every one of whom is obliged to learn to swim. This bath and the Josefinum and its plantations have impaired the charm of Jagdberg, as I knew it long ago; it was then a slumberous, world-forgotten place. I am glad they have at least not troubled to tear down its magnificent growth of ivy. True, it always lacked the seclusion and dreaminess of Blumenegg; on the other hand, it is more spacious, more solid, more grandiose. Like that ruin, it dates from about the twelfth century, was destroyed by the Appenzellers in 1405, and afterwards rebuilt; within its walls stood a famous chapel dedicated to St. Michael. It must now have lain abandoned for many long centuries. One would like to know why Herr Georg Ludwig von Lindenspeur, who seems to have had more money than was good for him--why he did not settle down in this wonderful place, instead of erecting his flimsy and pompous barrack at Jordan? Who would not live at Jagdberg, if he could? Such thoughts occur involuntarily, on visiting any of these old sites. Who would not live at Jagdberg, especially in that earlier period? Then down with that warren of rickety and vicious bastards, and up with the gallows!

Charitable projects....

* * * * *

And yet----

And yet these lords of Jagdberg and other men of the past may not have been altogether the simpletons one used to think them. When they risked their lives, they did it in their own interests and on their own responsibility; not, like our warriors of to-day, for the sake of enriching people of whom they had never even heard. When they robbed, they robbed to some purpose that was at least seemingly sane and seemingly profitable. They had not much use for the brotherhood of all men: “God save us from such brothers!” we can hear them saying. And so much one may observe without bitterness, that if one dream can be called more absurd than another, this of universal brotherhood is surely the absurdest that ever sat in our poor deluded brain, and the present state of the world a luminous commentary on it. I imagine it would have puzzled those old feudals--our Oriental preoccupation with other folk, our craving to lean up against each other for mutual support and betterment. Flabbiness, they might have called it. We call it “solidarity.”... A little trick of ours.... We invent such words to shadow forth a desire more or less vague, more or less reasonable; and forthwith flatter ourselves that we have succeeded in creating a thing. Solidarity! Mankind is a jellyfish. How comes a jellyfish to want a backbone?

Such individualistic ideals may come into fashion again. Meanwhile, they are out of date. The castles lie in ruins and their occupants, the human wolves, have been hunted out of the land. Let us be sheep. The loves and hatreds of these wolfish creatures must have been narrow and limited in their range. On the other hand, they were doubtless personal, fervent. They were kept clean. Our loves and hatreds are no longer kept clean. They have ceased to be personal; we love and hate in the herd, the mass. Endeavoring to identify our most intimate aspirations with those of other men, we produce that incongruity of feeling and outlook, that haziness of moral contour, which is a feature of modern life--to what end? Solidarity! By all means adopt a fellow-creature’s greatcoat, or lend him your own. Why adopt his character? Is a bundle of self-contradictory inhibitions worth adopting? Love your neighbor as yourself. Now what has that gentleman done, to deserve our love?

Philanthropic musings, engendered by the spectacle of Jagdberg and its Josefinum....[28]

ROSENEGG

_Rosenegg_

Another of these castle-ruins is the massive old tower of Rosenegg near Bürs (Rhæto-Roman _Puire_), opposite Bludenz. It also dates from the twelfth century; like the others, it was sacked by the Appenzellers in 1405; unlike them, it was never rebuilt--not till the other day. For six long centuries it stood desolate and forlorn. Then, quite lately, somebody bought the place and converted it into a residence; with good taste, so far as one can judge from the outside. All the same, it is annoying to see that he has planted a few exotic conifers in the grounds; they will doubtless prosper there, but they are out of harmony with their Alpine surroundings. I must come and pull them out, one of these nights.

The Rosenegg I knew was a truly “somber pile,” decaying alone up there, far from the habitations of men, on its sunless hillock under the shadow of those mighty Rhætian peaks. Nobody ever seemed to go near the place. There was a shattered window at a good height on the eastern flank, and you could get in here by climbing a wild cherry tree and then jumping on to its ledge. The interior was a moldering chaos of stones. Round about we used to find certain favorite plants: the rose-and-white immortelles with silvery leaves, and “fox-tail” moss, and the globular amber-hued ranunculus of spring, deliciously fragrant. Then flowers were dropped in favor of butterflies; after that, the stone-period began and Rosenegg was again frequented, for the whole neighborhood happened to be strewn with crystalline erratics great and small, and in some of them you might find brown garnets, but not in all; far from it! You had to look for them pretty closely.

That was long ago.

And now, at the other end of life, one returns anew to Rosenegg on a sunny afternoon, purged of the mists of middle years and, delving into memories of that clear dawn and seeking to recapture its spirit, marvels at the feverish joy which greeted discoveries such as these degenerate little garnets, not a single one of which had the right color, nor made the faintest pretense at being the rhombic dodecahedron it should have been. How one changes!

This was always, alas, a bad country for “stones.”... Silver ore near Dalaas of questionable worth, and rock crystals in several quarries, and gypsum beyond St. Anton, and a poor kind of amethyst at the Hanging Stone; the fossils were likewise meager--corals in the limestone of Lorüns, univalves under certain rocks at Hohenems, those oysters in the ruddy Nagelfluh (Middle Miocene) at Bregenz; last, not least, the fucoids of the Flysch (Eocene) which you could find nearly everywhere, pretty to look at, but terribly fragile. That was all. There were legends, mere legends, of ammonites being seen in the local red marble; we never saw them![29] Ah, if our father had still been alive, he might have told us where to find this or that; his stone-collection was our delight, our despair. Not everybody had his luck, we often said, to stumble in the Scesa-torrent upon a huge writhing mammoth tusk that required two or three men to carry--how had he done it, and why couldn’t we do it too?[30]

Stones were dropped when birds and beasts began, and during that slaughter-epoch Rosenegg became once more famous for producing the first stoat that ever fell to my gun, and a falcon as well. There was a pair of them here, and once, resting on that green terrace with my mother, I saw the male bird dash off the ruin overhead, and swiftly took aim at him (I refused to be parted from my gun, even during family walks). Down he fluttered and fell, stone dead, at our feet. I recall that afternoon as if it were yesterday. My mother said nothing; she suffered more intensely than did the falcon, but had long since abandoned all hope of curing my murderous instincts. I remember, too, passing alone once through the woods below this tower and becoming aware of an unusual sound at my side. Who could have guessed its origin? It was a putrid fragment of a stag, so alive with worms as to make itself heard.

At the back of Rosenegg a little path descends through the wood; here, one morning before sunrise, I came face to face with a fox who was returning from some nocturnal visit to the poultry yards of Bürs; it was a question of who should step aside to let the other pass. The fox was not to be outdone in politeness; he vanished ere I had time to slip the gun from my shoulder. This is the path we followed yesterday, proceeding thence always eastwards at the foot of the Rhætikon mountains; at their roots, one might say, for they rise up straight from the level, as does a tree. Walking along, Mr. R. encountered a tiny creature that scared him considerably; indeed, he was transfixed with astonishment and stepped a pace or two backwards; he had never yet seen anything of the kind, either on land or in water.

“A crocodile?”

“Not quite; a Quadertatsch. Pick him up and make friends with him.”

“His hands are cold.”

Cold they are, like those of a Hindu; and he himself is blacker than any Hindu, or any nigger; black as the devil, with a luster as of patent-leather boots; black but comely. It looks as if his first shape had been remodeled by some thoughtful craftsman who added a row of decorative bosses along sides and back, and pinched his tail till it became slightly quadrangular in form; creating, with these few masterly touches, something heraldic and distinguished out of quite a commonplace original. A vast improvement! And his manners are in keeping. He nods his head sagely on making your acquaintance, and at once begins climbing up your arm with a comical precision of movement, a deliberate jauntiness, that reminds one of some retired _maître de ballet_ whose limbs have grown a little creaky with age and rheumatism, but who is determined to show off his faded graces to the best advantage.

Perhaps I ought to explain that the Quadertatsch is what the Tyrolese call a Tattermandl. The last syllable of this word proves that they have also noticed certain human traits in his demeanor. The Tattermandl is a universal favorite among Alpine folk. In his home up there, you seldom see one of them alone; they are social beings, often to be found in companies of a dozen or more. And what was this one doing here, all by himself? Like several others I have met, he has been the victim of an accident; always the same accident! He was swept off his legs in the recent torrential rains and whirled two or three thousand feet down, into our tropical regions, along one of the gullies that seam these mountains. He will have a long walk home again; and all uphill.[31]

Two hours later we had crossed the Ill at Lorüns and found ourselves, after a good while, walking up the picturesque village of Rungalin; it leans against the hillside near Bludenz in the shape of the letter Y, and should be viewed in spring, when its brown houses are all smothered in creamy apple blossoms. Thence, always uphill, past the little spring called “Halde Wässerle” and along the summit of those fine cliffs at whose foot lies the Bährenloch cavern, turning sharp to the right and emerging finally at Obdorf, beside the upper bridge that spans the Galgen-tobel.

Just across this torrent, where the path begins to climb to Latz, stands a modern peasant house which I never fail to visit with pleasure and even respect. It has a suggestive history. Years ago, there was a poor man who went, with all his family, as a dayworker to the cotton-mill at Bürs, and there earned what he could. Such people are everlastingly in want, since for some reason or other all their gains have to be spent forthwith; this particular family was no exception. The father watched his children growing thinner and paler from day to day, and stupider and wastefuller in character, and saw no prospect of any betterment in the future. “This must end,” he suddenly said, as if an inspiration had come to him; and, borrowing a little money, bought for next to nothing the tract of ground here which was then almost a marsh (nobody would believe, nowadays, that you could pick handfuls of the large single gentian on the spot), and drained it, and built a small cottage. The family became agriculturists then and there; not a single member returned to the factory, not for a day. Every year something new was done to their domain; a cow purchased, another strip of land bought, a fresh room added, and so on; with the result that these people, instead of empty heads and spendthrift habits and weakened constitutions, have now acquired prosperity and self-respect and decent manners and good health. Here was one, at least, who refused to be beguiled by the tomfoolery of industrialism.

We descended to Nüziders down the gentle slope of that deltoid tract mentioned on p. 148. It had grown late, and my companion was proportionately hungry after his long walk; he insisted on refreshing himself at the “Bädle” inn which in olden days used to be an excellent tavern run by a Swiss--as children, we were once quarantined within its walls for a week or two, to escape an epidemic of measles, and all in vain! Immediately overhead are the ruins of Sonnenberg castle, another of our feudal nests and not the least famous of them; to judge by prints, it must have been a lordly structure. It was destroyed by fire, and nothing remains upright save a wall with a couple of trees growing out of its masonry. The last survivor of this noble family ended in ignoble fashion; he was murdered by another count whom he had enraged with some saucy speech.

It was dark and moonless night before Mr. R. could be brought to confess that he had eaten enough for the time being; none the less, we risked taking the uphill path which starts at the “Bädle” and traverses the wooded saddle behind the Hanging Stone, to end near the church of St. Martin on the other side of that ridge. The now defunct “beautification-society” of Bludenz did much to improve tracks like this and those we had followed earlier in the afternoon; their labors were then lost on us, everything was pitch black before our eyes; there was no break whatever in the forest, and a man might well go astray here at a late hour, particularly at a certain point where, instead of turning to the left, he would be tempted to go straight on, and presently find himself on the edge of a nasty cliff. The place, however, was still familiar to me, since it was up here that I used to lie in wait with the saturnine Mattli, at nightfall ages ago, trying to poach roe-deer. I can still hear him whispering to me, on such an occasion, in that sepulchral voice of his:

“You know what happened there?”

“Where?”

“Down in that hollow,” and he pointed with his gun in the direction of a sunken patch, a dingle, at our feet; it lies in the center of the saddle.

“What happened?”

“_They killed the last wolf._”

“Oh!”--and I felt a little shudder running down my back.[32]

I was thinking yesterday of Mattli and his last wolf, as we moved forward through the night, and thereupon began to puzzle over a question which seems to have puzzled no one else, namely, how it comes about that this animal is extinct in all the Alpine region, notwithstanding its enormous area of inaccessible territory, whereas in relatively populous districts such as the Dordogne it is still common enough to be something of a nuisance, in spite of ceaseless persecution on the part of man. I concluded, perhaps wrongly, that the wolf has been extirpated hereabouts not so much by the human race as by hunger; his natural prey (hares, wildfowl, etc.) having grown much scarcer of late--scarcer than they are in Scandinavia or Russia, while sheep and goats and dogs, which he can still pick up in places like the Vosges or Apennines, are not so easy to capture during the severe alpine winter, being mostly kept within doors. If he could go to sleep like the bear, or had the cunning of the fox, he might have survived to this day.

At last we emerged on the level again and, passing the church of St. Martin, found ourselves under the lights of Ludesch. Never before had that village seemed so endlessly long.

* * * * *

Those gray, weather-beaten erratics of which I spoke have been gradually disappearing from the landscape since my Rosenegg days. They used to be quite a feature of the countryside. When you crossed our petrifying stream, for instance, you beheld a horde of them scattered over the slanting field below the road, and some were of prodigious size, bearing bushes and little trees on their backs. Not one of those is left; I know of only a single remaining block which is decorated with timber; you will never find it, though you may certainly pass a spot, not far from Jordan castle, where twenty-three can still be counted lying about--dwarfs, mostly, or half submerged in the earth. The peasant makes war on these things; he shatters them in pieces with dynamite or splits them with wedges; for they take up room, they interfere with his mowing operations, their stone is admirably adapted for building purposes. And here is another little puzzle. Sometimes, in a thick wood, one may stumble upon the conscientiously piled-up fragments of what used to be a block of this kind, all forgotten and overgrown with moss; why go to the trouble of breaking up this fractious material, and then do nothing with it? Mystery!

The wall of the road leading up from the Bludesch church of St. Nicholas towards Tiefis consists largely of the primitive rock of erratics which formerly strewed the surrounding land; so does that which leaves Tiefis in the direction of our own village.

Which reminds me of our last, and most disappointing, visit to the “innkeepress and his beautiful girl.” There was no question, that day, of the _embrassez-moi_ on which Mr. R. has set his simple heart, for the baby was absent, having gone for a brief “Sommerfrische”--as if Tiefis were not fresh enough already--up to Thüringerberg, to stay with a sister of her mother’s, who comes from there. She would be back in a few days, we were told. A piece of downright bad luck for him! He seemed to be really upset; so much so, that I had to promise we should return again soon. Then he suddenly recalled my undertaking to show him over the Valduna asylum; it would be an agreeable diversion and fill up the time; we could run down to Bregenz too, as he had never seen a great inland water like the Lake of Constance.

My passion for idiots having waned of late, I was hoping he had forgotten about Valduna. But no. He may forget the past participle of every one of our irregular verbs; the prospect of an exhibition of three or four dozen lunatics is the kind of thing he can be trusted to remember. So be it. After all, there is no harm in going there; no harm whatever. The sight of those poor wretches may medicine his youthful bumptiousness and make him more contented with his own lot in life which, once a week or so, gives occasion for some ludicrously savage outburst.

VALDUNA

_Valduna_

Valduna was a surfeit of idiots. Mr. R. waxed grave; he has gained, I think, a definite acquisition of humanity. That is as it should be. Such sights of anguish are a tonic for the soul; they make us serious about things that are worth being serious about; they deepen and broaden our sympathies.

The cheery doctor became still more cheery on hearing my name--he is a local alpinist--and did not omit a single patient save one or two of the women who, presumably, were taking sun-baths in _impuris naturalibus_, as was also one of the males, a robust and pretty boy of sixteen; he had a clouded, far-away look, and could not be induced to utter a word. We saw them all; the unclean patients, the unquiet patients, as well as the simple lunatics, sad or glad. There are no violent ones here just now, but some of those who suffered from hallucinations of hearing were sufficiently abusive.

“Hello, Madam,” said the doctor to one of the ladies, “what may you be doing here? I don’t seem to have seen your face before.”