Читать книгу Working my Way Around the World - Harry Alverson Franck - Страница 8

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I tramped through several villages, and came to the bank of the Upper Loire River. A short distance beyond, the road began winding up the first foot-hills of the Alps. Along the way every rocky hillside was cut into steps to its very top, and every step was thickly set with grape-vines.

As I continued climbing upward I left the patches of grape-vines below me, and came to waving forests where sounded the twitter of birds and now and then the cheery song of a woodsman or shepherd boy.

At sunset I reached the top. The road led downward, the forests fell away, the tiny fields appeared once more, and the song of the mountaineer was silent. Lower still, I spent the night at a barracks half filled with soldiers.

The next day was Sunday. As I tramped down the mountains I met groups of people from Lyon, chattering gaily as, dressed in their Sunday clothes, they climbed to the freer air of the hills. I continued my downward journey, stopping now and then to look about me. The grape-vines disappeared, to give place to mulberry trees. From my height I could see the city of Lyon at the meeting-place of the rivers Soane and Rhône. Even on this day of merrymaking the whir of silk-looms sounded from the wayside cottages, well into the suburbs of the city.

From Lyon I turned northeastward toward the Alps. A route winding like a snake climbed upward. Often I tramped for hours around the edge of a yawning pit, having always in view a rugged village and its vineyards far below, only to find myself at the end of that time within a stone’s throw of a sign-post that I had passed before. But I kept on, passed through Geneva, and in a few days’ time came to the town of Brig, at the foot of the Simplon Pass which crosses the Alps.

The highway over the Simplon Pass was built by Napoleon in 1805. It is still, in spite of the railways built since, a well traveled route, though not by foot travelers. The good people of Brig cried out against it when I told them I was going to cross on foot.

With a lunch in my knapsack, I left Brig at dawn. Before the sun rose the morning stage-coach rattled by, and the jeering of its drivers cheered me on. With every turn of the route up the mountain the picture below me grew. Three hours up, Brig still peeped out through the slender pine trees far below, yet almost directly beneath. Across the pit sturdy mountain boys scrambled from rock to boulder with their sheep and goats. Far above the last shrub, ragged peaks of stone stood against the blue sky like figures of curious shapes, peaks aglow with nature’s richest coloring, here one deep purple in the morning shade, there another of ruddy pink, changing like watered silk in the sunshine that gilded its top. Beyond the spot where Brig was lost to view began the roadside cottages in which the traveler, tired out or overcome by the raging storms of winter, may seek shelter. In this summer season, however, they had been changed into wine-shops, where children and stray goats wandered among the tables.

Higher up I found scant footing on the narrow ledges. In several places the road burrowed its way through tunnels. High above one of these, a glacier sent down a roaring torrent right over the tunnel. Through an opening in the outer wall I could reach out and touch the foaming stream as it plunged into the abyss below.

Light clouds, that had hidden the peaks during the last hours of the climb, almost caused me to pass by without seeing the hospice of St. Bernard that marks the summit. It is here that those wonderful St. Bernard dogs are trained to hunt for and give aid to travelers lost in the snow. I stepped inside to write a postal card to the world below, and turned out again into a drizzling rain that soon became a steady downpour. But the miles that had seemed so long in the morning fairly raced by on the downward trip, and a few hours later I reached the boundary line between France and Italy.