SOUNDS IN THE ALPS.

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but the greater part of them are covered with the debris of the mountains, giving them a dirty hue, wholly unlike the appearance one imagines they present, who has never seen them. The impression they make on the mind of the beholder, however, can never be effaced. The marks of power, of terrific struggles they carry about them, fill the mind with emotions of grandeur almost equal to the solitary avalanche and its lonely voice of thunder. They have a voice of their own, too, called by the mountaineers brullen (growlings), caused by the rending of the solid mass when the south-east wind breathes upon it. The lower portion of the Alps is full of sound and motion: even after you leave the tinkling of bells, the music of the horn and the blea ing of goats, there is the roar of the torrent, the shock of the avalanche, and the grinding, crushing sound of the mighty glacier. But when you ascend above these, all is still and silent as the sepulchre. Eternal sabbath reigns around the peaks, and solitude deeper than the heart of the forest, embraces the subdued and humbled adventurer; while the sudden flight of a pheasant from amid the snow, or the slow and lordly sweep of the Lamergeyer, in his circles upward, startle the feelings into greater intensity.

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XVI.

PASTURAGES, CHALETS, AND ALPINE PASSES.

IN passing through the higher Alps nothing has afforded me more pleasure than the green pasturages which, here and there, dot the savage landscape. Sometimes they have burst unexpect edly on me, as the fierce Alpine storm-cloud rent above them, revealing for a moment a face of gentleness and beauty, and then veiling it again in impenetrable gloom; and now greeting me from the precipitous side of some difficult pass; yet always awakening the same emotions. The bold features of Alpine scenery and the strong contrasts presented by the quiet meadow spot and the cold white glaciers that lay their icy hands on its green bosom-the secure little hamlet, surrounded by the most savage and awful forms of nature-must make an ineffaceable impression on the heart of a Swiss mountaineer, and prevent, I should think, his ever being an emigrant. I am inclined to believe very few in proportion to the whole population ever do leave the region of the Alps. I remember finding a returned emigrant on the summit of the Righi. He had trinkets of various kinds to sell, made of wood and chamois horn, &c. I do not know how it happened, but I accidentally learned that he had once been to America, and was curious to learn what had brought him back. He liked the new country, he said, very well, but he liked the Alps better. "Oh," said he, " you have no Alps in America!" He could not forget the mountains and glaciers and pasturage of his native land, and I could not blame him. And yet the poetry of a Swiss mountaineer's life is all in appearance and none in reality. So with the chalets and pasturages ;-they are picturesque things in the land

DESCRIPTION OF THE CHALET.

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A

scape, and there their beauty ends. The life of a Swiss herdsman is any thing but one of sentiment. The sound of his horn at sunrise, ringing through the sweet valley as he drives his flocks to pasture; and the song of the "Ranz des vaches" as the herds slowly wind along the mountain paths, are delightful to the ear. So is the tinkling of countless bells at evening, one of the pleasantest sounds that was wont to greet me in my wanderings in the Alps. But the herdsman thinks of none of these things. To gather together nearly a hundred cows twice a day, and milk them, and make the butter and cheese, and do all the outdoor work belonging to such a dairy, make his life one of constant toil. The chalet too, which is simply a Western log hut, built in exactly the same style, and loaded down with stone on the roof to keep it from being blown away by the Alpine blast,-though adding much to the scenery, is any thing but a comfortable home. table and bench constitute the furniture-some loose straw above, the bed, while through the crevices on every side the wind and rain enter at their leisure. To complete the discomfort, the cattle are allowed to tread the ground around it into a barnyard. There are exceptions to this rule, but this is the common chalet which meets one at every turn on a Swiss pasturage. They are built with no reference to each other, but are scattered around on the slopes as if sieved down from above, and alighted where they did by the merest chance. The number that will be scattered around in a single valley is almost incredible. As I descended into Grindelwald the thick sprinkling of these little low dark-looking chalets over the distant slopes produced a most singular effect. Their number seemed literally legion. There are ten thousand in the Simmenthal alone.

In Switzerland, Alps signifies mountain pasturage, and is used in that sense. These Alps, or mountain pasturages, are sometimes private property, and sometimes the property of the village or commune. When owned by the latter, every inhabitant is allowed to pasture a certain number of cattle for so many days upon it. I saw, near Grindelwald, one of these government pasturages, and it was literally covered with cows. The valley furnishes the first pasture in the spring, and as the summer advances, and the higher pasturages become free of snow, the herds are driven up to

them. Owners of a large number of cattle will have a chalet on every pasturage for their cowherd.

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In speaking of the customs of the Swiss in this respect, Latrobe says: They stay on the first pasturages till about the 10th or 12th of June, when the cattle are driven to the middle range of pasturages. That portion of the herd intended for a summer campaign on the highest Alps remain here till the beginning of July, and, on the fourth of that month, generally ascend to them; return to the middle range of pastures about seven or eight weeks afterwards, spend there about fourteen days, or three weeks, to eat the after grass; and finally return into the valleys about the 10th or 11th of October, where they remain, in the vicinity of the villages, till driven by the snow and tempests of winter into the stables.

"That portion of the cattle, on the other hand, which is not destined to pass the summer on the higher Alps, and are necessary for the supply of the village with milk and butter, descend from the middle pastures, on the fourth of July, into the valley, and consume the grass upon the pasturage belonging to the commune, till the winter drives them under shelter. The very highest Alpine pasturages are never occupied more than three or four weeks."

I have already, in another place, spoken of the custom of driving herds to the most inaccessible pasturages in midsummer. Herds are thus driven across the Mer de Glace, in July, to the pasturages beyond, though more or less cattle are lost in the crevices of the glaciers at every passage.

Murray says that the best cheese is made " upon pastures 3000 feet above the level of the sea, in the vales of Simmen, and Saanen, and Emmenthal. The best cows there yield, in summer, between twenty and forty pounds of milk daily, and each cow produces, by the end of the season of four months, on an average, two hundred weight of cheese." I have seen herds feeding six and seven thousand feet above the level of the sea.

I ought to add, perhaps, in justice to the Swiss, that some of the chalets, are exceptions to those I described as being both uncomfortable and dirty, and are neat and tidy as a New England farm-house. The white table-cloth and clean though

NUMBER OF ALPINE PASSES.

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rude furniture, and fresh butter and milk, and pleasant face of the hospitable mistress, make the traveller's heart leap within him, as, weary and cold, he crosses the threshold.

I have spoken of several of the Alpine passes in detail, and refer to them now merely to state that there are fifty in Switzerland alone. Those roads constructed for carriages are not allowed to rise more than a certain number of feet to a mile. Distance seems not to have entered into the calculations of the engineers who built those monuments of human skill-carriage roads over the Alps. They were after a certain grade, and they obtained it, though by contortions and serpentine windings that seem almost endless. Thus the Simplon averages nowhere more than one inch elevation to a foot, and, indeed, not quite that. Thirty thousand men were employed on this road six years. There are 611 bridges in less than forty miles, ten galleries, and twenty houses of refuge, while the average width of the road is over twenty-five feet. The cost of the whole was about $1,200,000. The Splugen presents almost as striking features as the Simplon. From these facts some idea may be gathered of the stupendous work it must be to carry a carriage road over the Alps.

In the winter they are all blocked up, and none but the bold foot traveller ventures on their track. The driving snow-storms and falling avalanches render them impassable to carriages, and perilous even to the accustomed mountaineer. I believe that the mail is carried over the Simplon, during the winter, by a man either on foot or with a mule. I think I have been told that he makes the passage twice a week, bringing to the hospice on the top the only news that reach it of the world below. For eight months in the year the inhabitants of the higher Alps might as well be out of the world, for all knowledge they have of its doings and ways.