The Delectable Mountains

THE CONTRIBUTORS’ CLUB

Now it can be told. For years I have kept my secret to myself, unwilling to jeopardize the conduct of the war, or to weaken the morale of the American Army of Occupation, by imparting it to the world. But the time has come when I must speak out, let the international consequences be what they may. My favorite book, my first choice for quiet reading on that desert island on which every literary critic expects some day to be cast up, my fireside friend in the long winter evenings, my solace in time of trouble, is Baedeker’s Switzerland. Karl Baedeker may have been a German, but I for one am willing to waive that. He wrote a prodigious book.

Don’t think that I would state dogmatically that his Switzerland is his finest literary performance. I myself confess to a liking for Baedeker’s Great Britain. I am intrigued by his Canada. I have not a word to say against his Northern Italy or his Eastern Alps. I even find a strange relish in reading his United States. But in these matters a certain latitude must be granted to individual taste. After a day spent at the office, in the sort of arduous mental effort for which I am noted, it is not to the British Museum that I would have Mr. Baedeker conduct me, as I sit comfortably by the fire, too weary to read connectedly, but not too weary to let my imagination travel to far places; nor even to the ‘Boston * Subway, a wonderful piece of engineering designed to relieve the traffic of the congested districts by affording an underground passage for the electric cars.’ No, Switzerland is my choice.

Sometimes, when I pick up the little red-covered volume, with its red and green bookmarks, I work up sufficient ambition to plan a trip through Switzerland, and soberly I decide between Route 71 and Route 85, and plan my ascents, and judge whether it would be better to stop at the ‘Hôt. Pension des Alpes, or the Stern & Post (well spoken of) ’; and wonder how all that I want to do and see in Switzerland can be packed within the possible limits of even the most exaggerated vacation. But more often I simply browse. I begin anywhere and ramble along, opening out the long engraving of the ‘Panorama vom Eggishorn,’ and feasting on the remembered outlines of the Bernese peaks; or examining the quaint maps, with their reddish-brown caterpillarlines indicating mountain slopes, their clusters of tiny dots indicating groups of chalets, their fine shadings of light blue indicating snow fields and glaciers, and their tremendous resounding names. And I take little walks with Mr. Baedeker through the pages of his text.

It must be granted that Mr. Baedeker’s descriptive style is not of the highest order. When he feels it incumbent upon him to lavish an appreciative paragraph upon the view, his best efforts are about on a level with those of the publicity man of the Boston and Maine Railroad. But happily he does n’t often let himself go. His technique is different. His passion is for facts.

‘The path,’ he writes, ‘descends over débris and patches of snow into the Augstbord Valley. We then skirt the Steintalgrat, to the right, where soon (8060艂) opens a magnificent * Panorama: to the left the Ticino Alps and Monte Leone; straight ahead the Ried Glacier and the Mischabel, then the Lyskamm, Brunegghorn, and Weisshorn; far below lies the Nicolai valley. We now descend past the junction of the path from the Jung Pass (see below) to (2¾ hrs.) Jungen (6390艂; p. 402), and (1½ hr.) the rail, station of St. Niklaus (p. 402).’

Now you see his method. It is that of suggestion. Let me give you the facts, says Mr. Baedeker, and you may use your imagination for yourself. And I, recalling how the Lyskamm looked as I saw it from the slopes above Zermatt eleven years ago, seem, as I read, to feel under my feet the roughness of the débris and the slippery softness of the snow, as I saving down along the slope into the Augstbord Valley. The sun is hot on my neck; my boots are soaked from sloshing through melting snow; my pack thumps on my back. Watch your footing there — the rocks are loose underfoot! Careful of the edge of that snow-patch; this is no place to slip, and sprain an ankle. Here we are out on the grass again, still high above timber line, with the pinnacle of the Weisshom touching the blue sky above us, and with a little gravelly path to follow to the Steintalgrat, where the Alpine flowers cover the hillside. Pull out your Baedeker and find out what those snow-peaks are at the head of the purple valley. The path begins to zigzag here as it dives into the deep woods, and we plunge into the cool shade, bound for St. Niklaus —

I have never in my life actually been to the Augstbord Valley, and in all probability I never shall go there; but the painstaking Mr. Baedeker has set my imagination free to roam there, and already the tinkle of cowbells is in my ears, and I am watching the afternoon shadows creep along the mighty ridge of the Mischabel.

One of the most amazing qualities of Mr. Baedeker is his omniscience. No fact concerning Switzerland is too unimportant for him to include it. Would you wish to know about the Engadine Valley, its topography, its vegetation, its climate, its transportation facilities, its roads, its paths, its peaks? He tells everything. Every statement is backed up with exact figures. He describes the dialect spoken by its 11,773 inhabitants; he gives tables of comparative temperatures.

‘The forests,’ he explains, ‘are chiefly of larch and the pinus cembra, or Swiss stone pine (Ger. Arve), a stately tree sometimes called the “cedar of the Alps,” but commoner in the Pyrenees, the Carpathians, and the south of Siberia than in Switzerland. Its light, close-grained wood, white in color and of a pleasant fragrance, is very durable, and is much esteemed for cabinetwork. The kernels of the cones have an agreeable flavor, not unlike that of the pineapple. On the higher mountainpastures a rich display of Alpine flowers delights the visitor in spring and early summer.’

And so on. How Mr. Baedeker collected all these facts it is impossible to guess; but while I am willing to admit that he may have taken somebody else’s word as to the esteem in which the wood of the stone pine is held for cabinet-work, I like to think that he himself tasted the kernels of the cones, and made a special trip to southern Siberia to see whether there were more stone pines there than in the Engadine. What is more, I am perfectly certain that, if Mr. Baedeker had felt there was any doubt on this question, he would have personally counted all the stone pines in southern Siberia and have given us the complete statistics, very quietly and without the slightest fuss. ‘The stone pines,’he would have written, ‘are commoner in the south of Siberia than in the Engadine (414, 352 as against 395,269)’; and then he would have passed on quite simply to his discussion of the mineral springs of St. Moritz (strongly impregnated with carbonic acid and alkaline salts, and extolled by Paracelsus as early as 1539, though not systematically used for medicinal purposes until 1853).

But Mr. Baedeker is not only omniscient — he is an author of sober judgment. It must be a nervous time for Swiss hotel-keepers when he is about, counting the beds in their hostelries, compiling his figures as to the price at which they serve meals, and deciding whether to mark them with the asterisk, which is his token of highest commendation, or to dismiss them with the dismal word ‘unpretentious.’ I picture the proprietor of the Hotel Oberalp & Post sitting in a perfect blue funk while his good wife feverishly turns the pages of a new edition of Baedeker. Are we starred? No — and the Bellevue is. We are merely ‘well situated above the town.’ What have we done to deserve this? Do you suppose that that solemn gentleman who complained of the coffee can have been Mr. Baedeker? Well situated, indeed! That reprobate who runs the Bellevue will get all the business. Yes, it must have been the coffee.

Mr. Baedeker speaks with a mighty authority. Climbers know the difference between ‘guide 8fr., not indispensable for experts,’ and ‘difficult, for adepts only, with capable guides.’ And when he declares that ‘the *Albula Gorge amply repays a visit,’ one feels that Cæsar hath spoken; the future of the Albula Gorge is secure.

As I write, with the Baedeker lying open on the table before me, I realize how absurdly impossible it is to explain to anybody who has never seen Switzerland the magic which this book has for me. I suppose I ought to have la-

beled this dissertation, ‘Only for Those Who Love the Alps: All Others Excused.’ For certainly there is nothing magical in the way in which Mr. Baedeker presents the facts which he collects by the wayside, as with deliberate and ponderous foot he marches through the mountains. ‘We now reach the (½ hr.) Restaurant Bodmen (5800') on the shady Almagell path, with fine viewdown the valley.’ What is there in that sentence to get excited over? And yet, if you ever took rolls and honey and coffee at the Restaurant Bodmen, as I did, and have not forgotten the little ironwork tables and chairs on the terrace, and the sheer white peak which rises beyond the pines; or if you ever stopped at any one of the innumerable other tea houses which make Switzerland a land flowing with milk and honey, that awkward sentence does the trick. It calls the whole thing back. You may not stir from your chair all the evening long; all that you see with the physical eye may be the page of a small red book, the tables and chairs and walls of your own house, the windows that look out on the darkened street of an American city; but with the eye of the spirit you will see the white spire of the village church below you in the valley, and the snow shining clear on the summits of the Alps.