Читать книгу Letters from Switzerland and Travels in Italy - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - Страница 33

On the mountains there is no more tiresome a fellow-traveller than a train of mules; they have so unequal a pace. With a strange instinct they always stop a while at the bottom of a steep ascent, and then dash off at a quick pace up it, to rest again at the top. Very often too they will stop at the level spots which do occur now and then, until they are forced on by the drivers or by other beasts coming up. And so the foot passenger, by keeping a steady pace, soon gains upon them, and in the narrow road has to push by them. If you stand still a little while to observe any object, they in their turn will pass by you, and you are pestered with the deafening sound of their bells, and hard brushed with their loads, which project to a good distance on each side of them. In this way we at last reached the summit of the mountain, which you can form some idea of by fancying a bald skull surrounded with a crown. Here one finds oneself on a perfect flat surrounded with peaks. Far and near the eye falls on nothing but bare and mostly snow-covered peaks and crags.

It is scarcely possible to keep oneself warm, especially as they have here no fuel but brushwood, and of that too they are obliged to be very sparing, as they have to fetch it up the mountains, from a distance of at least three leagues, for at the summit, they tell us, scarcely any kind of wood grows. The reverend father is returned from Airolo, so frozen that on his arrival he could scarcely, utter a word. Although here the Capuchins are allowed to clothe themselves a little more comfortably than the rest of their order, still their style of dress is by no means suited for such a climate as this. All the way up from Airolo the road was frozen perfectly smooth, and he had the wind in his face; his beard was quite frozen, and it was a long while before he recovered himself. We had some conversation together on the hardships of their residence here; he told us how they managed to get through the year, their various occupations, and their domestic circumstances. He could speak nothing but Italian, and so we had an opportunity of putting to use the exercises in this language which we had taken during the spring. Towards evening we went for a moment outside the house-door that the good father might point out to us the peak which is considered to be the highest summit of Mont Gotthard; but we could scarcely endure to stay out a very few minutes, so searching and pinching was the cold. This time, therefore, we shall remain close shut up within doors, and shall have time enough before we start to-morrow, to travel again in thought over all the most remarkable parts of this region.

A brief geographical description will enable you to understand how remarkable the point is at which we are now sitting. S. Gothard is not indeed the highest mountain of Switzerland; in Savoy, Mont Blanc has a far higher elevation and yet it maintains above all others the rank of a king of mountains, because all the great chains converge together around him, and all rest upon him as their base. Indeed; if I do not make a great mistake, I think I was told at Berne, by Herr Wyttenbach, who, from its highest summit, had seen the peaks of all the others, that the latter all leaned towards it. The mountains of Schweitz and Unterwalden, joined by those of Uri range from the north, from the east those of the Grisons, from the south those of the Italian cantons, while from the east, by means of the Furca, the double line of mountains which enclose Valais, presses upon it. Not far from this house, there are two small lakes, one of which sends forth the Ticino through gorges and valleys into Italy, while from the other, in like manner, the Reuss proceeds till it empties itself in the Lake of the Forest towns.2 Not far from this spot are the sources of the Rhine, which pursue an easterly course, and if then we take in the Rhone which rises at the foot of the Furca and runs westward through Valais, we shall find ourselves at the point of a cross, from which mountain ranges and rivers proceed towards the four cardinal points of heaven.