Читать книгу Letters from Switzerland and Travels in Italy - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - Страница 24

Next we had to ascend a steep height, from which we soon saw the open country of Valais, with the dirty town of Valais lying beneath us. These little towns are mostly stuck on the hill sides; the roofs inelegantly covered with coarsely split planks, which within a year become black and overgrown with moss; and when you enter them, you are at once disgusted, for everything is dirty; want and hardship are everywhere apparent among these highly privileged and free burghers.

We found here our friend, who brought the unfavourable report that it was beginning to be injudicious to proceed further with the horses. The stables were everywhere small and narrow, being built only for mules or sumpter horses; oats too were rarely to be procured; indeed he was told that higher up among the mountains there were none to be had. Accordingly a council was held. Our friend with the horses was to descend the Valais and go by Bee, Bevay, Lausanne, Freiburg, and Berne, to Lucerne, while the Count and I pursued our course up the Valais, and endeavoured to penetrate to Mount Gotthard, and then through the Canton of Uri, and by the lake of the Forest Towns, likewise make for Lucerne. In these parts you may anywhere procure mules, which are better suited to these roads than horses, and to go on foot invariably proves the most agreeable in the end. Our friend is gone, and our portmanteaus packed on the back of a mule, and so we are now ready to set off and make our way on foot to Brieg. The sky has a motley appearance, still I hope that the good luck which has hitherto attended us, and attracted us to this distant spot, will not abandon us at the very point where we have the most need of it.

Brieg, Nov. 10, 1779.

Evening.

Of to-day's expedition I have little to tell you, unless you would like to be entertained with a long circumstantial account of the weather. About 11 o'clock we set off from Leuk., in company with a Suabian butcher's boy, who had run away hither, and had found a place where he served somewhat in the capacity of Hanswurst (Jack-Pudding), and with our luggage packed on the back of a mule, which its master was driving before him. Behind us, as far as the eye could reach, thick snow clouds, which came driving up the lowlands, covered everything. It had really a threatening aspect. Without expressing my fears I felt anxious lest, even though right before us it looked as clear as it could do in the land of Goshen, the clouds might nevertheless overtake us, and here, perhaps in the territory of the Valais, shut in on both sides by mountains, we might be covered with the clouds, and in one night snowed up. Thus whispered alarm which got possession almost entirely of one ear; at the other good courage was speaking in a confident tone, and reproving me for want of faith, kept reminding me of the past, and called my attention to the phenomena of the atmosphere before us. Our road went continually on towards the fine weather. Up the Rhone all was clear, and as a strong west wind kept driving the clouds behind us, it was little likely that they would reach us.

The following was the cause of this. Into the valley of Valais there are, as I have so often remarked already, many ravines running down from the neighbouring mountain-chains, which fall into it like little brooks into a great stream, as indeed all their waters flow off into the Rhone. Out of each of these openings rushes a current of wind, which has been forming in the inner valleys and nooks of the rocks. When now the principal drift of the clouds up the valley reaches one of these ravines, the current of the wind does not allow the clouds to pass, but contends with them, and with the wind which is driving them, and thus detains them, and disputes with them for whole hours the passage up the valley. This conflict we often witnessed, and when we believed we should surely be overtaken by the clouds, an obstacle of this kind would again arise, and after we had gone a good league, we found they had scarcely stirred from the spot.