A Tramp Abroad — Volume 06

by Mark Twain

  An English gentleman who had lived some years in this region, said itwas the cradle of compulsory education. But he said that the Englishidea that compulsory education would reduce bastardy and intemperancewas an error--it has not that effect. He said there was more seductionin the Protestant than in the Catholic cantons, because the confessionalprotected the girls. I wonder why it doesn't protect married women inFrance and Spain?

  This gentleman said that among the poorer peasants in the Valais, it wascommon for the brothers in a family to cast lots to determine whichof them should have the coveted privilege of marrying, and hisbrethren--doomed bachelors--heroically banded themselves together tohelp support the new family.

  We left Zermatt in a wagon--and in a rain-storm, too--for St. Nicholasabout ten o'clock one morning. Again we passed between those grass-cladprodigious cliffs, specked with wee dwellings peeping over at us fromvelvety green walls ten and twelve hundred feet high. It did not seempossible that the imaginary chamois even could climb those precipices.Lovers on opposite cliffs probably kiss through a spy-glass, andcorrespond with a rifle.

  In Switzerland the farmer's plow is a wide shovel, which scrapes up andturns over the thin earthy skin of his native rock--and there the man ofthe plow is a hero. Now here, by our St. Nicholas road, was a grave, andit had a tragic story. A plowman was skinning his farm one morning--notthe steepest part of it, but still a steep part--that is, he was notskinning the front of his farm, but the roof of it, near the eaves--whenhe absent-mindedly let go of the plow-handles to moisten his hands, inthe usual way; he lost his balance and fell out of his farm backward;poor fellow, he never touched anything till he struck bottom, fifteenhundred feet below. [This was on a Sunday.--M.T.] We throw a halo ofheroism around the life of the soldier and the sailor, because of thedeadly dangers they are facing all the time. But we are not used tolooking upon farming as a heroic occupation. This is because we have notlived in Switzerland.

  From St. Nicholas we struck out for Visp--or Vispach--on foot. Therain-storms had been at work during several days, and had done a deal ofdamage in Switzerland and Savoy. We came to one place where a stream hadchanged its course and plunged down a mountain in a new place, sweepingeverything before it. Two poor but precious farms by the roadside wereruined. One was washed clear away, and the bed-rock exposed; the otherwas buried out of sight under a tumbled chaos of rocks, gravel, mud,and rubbish. The resistless might of water was well exemplified. Somesaplings which had stood in the way were bent to the ground, strippedclean of their bark, and buried under rocky debris. The road had beenswept away, too.

  In another place, where the road was high up on the mountain's face, andits outside edge protected by flimsy masonry, we frequently came acrossspots where this masonry had carved off and left dangerous gaps formules to get over; and with still more frequency we found the masonryslightly crumbled, and marked by mule-hoofs, thus showing that there hadbeen danger of an accident to somebody. When at last we came to abadly ruptured bit of masonry, with hoof-prints evidencing a desperatestruggle to regain the lost foothold, I looked quite hopefully over thedizzy precipice. But there was nobody down there.

  They take exceedingly good care of their rivers in Switzerland and otherportions of Europe. They wall up both banks with slanting solid stonemasonry--so that from end to end of these rivers the banks look like thewharves at St. Louis and other towns on the Mississippi River.

  It was during this walk from St. Nicholas, in the shadow of the majesticAlps, that we came across some little children amusing themselves inwhat seemed, at first, a most odd and original way--but it wasn't; itwas in simply a natural and characteristic way. They were roped togetherwith a string, they had mimic alpenstocks and ice-axes, and wereclimbing a meek and lowly manure-pile with a most blood-curdling amountof care and caution. The "guide" at the head of the line cut imaginarysteps, in a laborious and painstaking way, and not a monkey budged tillthe step above was vacated. If we had waited we should have witnessed animaginary accident, no doubt; and we should have heard the intrepid bandhurrah when they made the summit and looked around upon the "magnificentview," and seen them throw themselves down in exhausted attitudes for arest in that commanding situation.

  In Nevada I used to see the children play at silver-mining. Of course,the great thing was an accident in a mine, and there were two "star"parts; that of the man who fell down the mimic shaft, and that of thedaring hero who was lowered into the depths to bring him up. I knew onesmall chap who always insisted on playing BOTH of these parts--and hecarried his point. He would tumble into the shaft and die, and then cometo the surface and go back after his own remains.

  It is the smartest boy that gets the hero part everywhere; he is headguide in Switzerland, head miner in Nevada, head bull-fighter in Spain,etc.; but I knew a preacher's son, seven years old, who once selecteda part for himself compared to which those just mentioned are tameand unimpressive. Jimmy's father stopped him from driving imaginaryhorse-cars one Sunday--stopped him from playing captain of an imaginarysteamboat next Sunday--stopped him from leading an imaginary army tobattle the following Sunday--and so on. Finally the little fellow said:

  "I've tried everything, and they won't any of them do. What CAN I play?"

  "I hardly know, Jimmy; but you MUST play only things that are suitableto the Sabbath-day."

  Next Sunday the preacher stepped softly to a back-room door to see ifthe children were rightly employed. He peeped in. A chair occupied themiddle of the room, and on the back of it hung Jimmy's cap; one ofhis little sisters took the cap down, nibbled at it, then passed it toanother small sister and said, "Eat of this fruit, for it is good." TheReverend took in the situation--alas, they were playing the Expulsionfrom Eden! Yet he found one little crumb of comfort. He said to himself,"For once Jimmy has yielded the chief role--I have been wronging him, Idid not believe there was so much modesty in him; I should have expectedhim to be either Adam or Eve." This crumb of comfort lasted but a verylittle while; he glanced around and discovered Jimmy standing in animposing attitude in a corner, with a dark and deadly frown on his face.What that meant was very plain--HE WAS IMPERSONATING THE DEITY! Think ofthe guileless sublimity of that idea.

  We reached Vispach at 8 P.M., only about seven hours out from St.Nicholas. So we must have made fully a mile and a half an hour, and itwas all downhill, too, and very muddy at that. We stayed all night atthe Hotel de Soleil; I remember it because the landlady, the portier,the waitress, and the chambermaid were not separate persons, but wereall contained in one neat and chipper suit of spotless muslin, and shewas the prettiest young creature I saw in all that region. She was thelandlord's daughter. And I remember that the only native match to herI saw in all Europe was the young daughter of the landlord of a villageinn in the Black Forest. Why don't more people in Europe marry and keephotel?

  Next morning we left with a family of English friends and went by trainto Brevet, and thence by boat across the lake to Ouchy (Lausanne).

  Ouchy is memorable to me, not on account of its beautiful situation andlovely surroundings--although these would make it stick long in one'smemory--but as the place where _I_ caught the London TIMES dropping intohumor. It was NOT aware of it, though. It did not do it on purpose.An English friend called my attention to this lapse, and cut out thereprehensible paragraph for me. Think of encountering a grin like thison the face of that grim journal:

  ERRATUM.--We are requested by Reuter's Telegram Company to correct anerroneous announcement made in their Brisbane telegram of the 2d inst.,published in our impression of the 5th inst., stating that "Lady Kennedyhad given birth to twins, the eldest being a son." The Company explainthat the message they received contained the words "Governor ofQueensland, TWINS FIRST SON." Being, however, subsequently informed thatSir Arthur Kennedy was unmarried and that there must be some mistake, atelegraphic repetition was at once demanded. It has been received today(11th inst.) and shows that the words really telegraphed by Reuter'sagent were "Governor Queensland TURNS FIRST SOD
," alluding to theMaryborough-Gympic Railway in course of construction. The words initalics were mutilated by the telegraph in transmission from Australia,and reaching the company in the form mentioned above gave rise to themistake.

  I had always had a deep and reverent compassion for the sufferings ofthe "prisoner of Chillon," whose story Byron had told in such movingverse; so I took the steamer and made pilgrimage to the dungeons of theCastle of Chillon, to see the place where poor Bonnivard endured hisdreary captivity three hundred years ago. I am glad I did that, for ittook away some of the pain I was feeling on the prisoner's account. Hisdungeon was a nice, cool, roomy place, and I cannot see why he shouldhave been dissatisfied with it. If he had been imprisoned in a St.Nicholas private dwelling, where the fertilizer prevails, and the goatsleeps with the guest, and the chickens roost on him and the cow comesin and bothers him when he wants to muse, it would have been anothermatter altogether; but he surely could not have had a very cheerlesstime of it in that pretty dungeon. It has romantic window-slits thatlet in generous bars of light, and it has tall, noble columns, carvedapparently from the living rock; and what is more, they are writtenall over with thousands of names; some of them--like Byron's and VictorHugo's--of the first celebrity. Why didn't he amuse himself readingthese names? Then there are the couriers and tourists--swarms of themevery day--what was to hinder him from having a good time with them? Ithink Bonnivard's sufferings have been overrated.

  Next, we took the train and went to Martigny, on the way to Mont Blanc.Next morning we started, about eight o'clock, on foot. We had plenty ofcompany, in the way of wagon-loads and mule-loads of tourists--and dust.This scattering procession of travelers was perhaps a mile long. Theroad was uphill--interminable uphill--and tolerably steep. The weatherwas blisteringly hot, and the man or woman who had to sit on a creepingmule, or in a crawling wagon, and broil in the beating sun, was anobject to be pitied. We could dodge among the bushes, and have therelief of shade, but those people could not. They paid for a conveyance,and to get their money's worth they rode.

  We went by the way of the Tete Noir, and after we reached high groundthere was no lack of fine scenery. In one place the road was tunneledthrough a shoulder of the mountain; from there one looked down into agorge with a rushing torrent in it, and on every hand was a charmingview of rocky buttresses and wooded heights. There was a liberalallowance of pretty waterfalls, too, on the Tete Noir route.

  About half an hour before we reached the village of Argentiere a vastdome of snow with the sun blazing on it drifted into view and frameditself in a strong V-shaped gateway of the mountains, and we recognizedMont Blanc, the "monarch of the Alps." With every step, after that,this stately dome rose higher and higher into the blue sky, and at lastseemed to occupy the zenith.

  Some of Mont Blanc's neighbors--bare, light-brown, steeplelikerocks--were very peculiarly shaped. Some were whittled to a sharp point,and slightly bent at the upper end, like a lady's finger; one monstersugar-loaf resembled a bishop's hat; it was too steep to hold snow onits sides, but had some in the division.

  While we were still on very high ground, and before the descent towardArgentiere began, we looked up toward a neighboring mountain-top, andsaw exquisite prismatic colors playing about some white clouds whichwere so delicate as to almost resemble gossamer webs. The faint pinksand greens were peculiarly beautiful; none of the colors were deep, theywere the lightest shades. They were bewitching commingled. We sat downto study and enjoy this singular spectacle. The tints remained duringseveral minutes--flitting, changing, melting into each other; palingalmost away for a moment, then reflushing--a shifting, restless,unstable succession of soft opaline gleams, shimmering over that airfilm of white cloud, and turning it into a fabric dainty enough toclothe an angel with.

  By and by we perceived what those super-delicate colors, and theircontinuous play and movement, reminded us of; it is what one sees in asoap-bubble that is drifting along, catching changes of tint from theobjects it passes. A soap-bubble is the most beautiful thing, and themost exquisite, in nature; that lovely phantom fabric in the sky wassuggestive of a soap-bubble split open, and spread out in the sun. Iwonder how much it would take to buy a soap-bubble, if there was onlyone in the world? One could buy a hatful of Koh-i-Noors with the samemoney, no doubt.

  We made the tramp from Martigny to Argentiere in eight hours. We beatall the mules and wagons; we didn't usually do that. We hired a sort ofopen baggage-wagon for the trip down the valley to Chamonix, and thendevoted an hour to dining. This gave the driver time to get drunk. Hehad a friend with him, and this friend also had had time to get drunk.

  When we drove off, the driver said all the tourists had arrived andgone by while we were at dinner; "but," said he, impressively, "be notdisturbed by that--remain tranquil--give yourselves no uneasiness--theirdust rises far before us--rest you tranquil, leave all to me--I am theking of drivers. Behold!"

  Down came his whip, and away we clattered. I never had such a shaking upin my life. The recent flooding rains had washed the road clear away inplaces, but we never stopped, we never slowed down for anything. We toreright along, over rocks, rubbish, gullies, open fields--sometimes withone or two wheels on the ground, but generally with none. Every now andthen that calm, good-natured madman would bend a majestic look over hisshoulder at us and say, "Ah, you perceive? It is as I have said--I amthe king of drivers." Every time we just missed going to destruction,he would say, with tranquil happiness, "Enjoy it, gentlemen, it is veryrare, it is very unusual--it is given to few to ride with the king ofdrivers--and observe, it is as I have said, I am he."

  He spoke in French, and punctuated with hiccoughs. His friend wasFrench, too, but spoke in German--using the same system of punctuation,however. The friend called himself the "Captain of Mont Blanc," andwanted us to make the ascent with him. He said he had made more ascentsthan any other man--forty seven--and his brother had made thirty-seven.His brother was the best guide in the world, except himself--but he,yes, observe him well--he was the "Captain of Mont Blanc"--that titlebelonged to none other.

  The "king" was as good as his word--he overtook that long processionof tourists and went by it like a hurricane. The result was that we gotchoicer rooms at the hotel in Chamonix than we should have done ifhis majesty had been a slower artist--or rather, if he hadn't mostprovidentially got drunk before he left Argentiere.