the month of august was drawing to a close when i swung my wardrobe of the city over a shoulder and, wandering down the boulevard st. germain, struck off to the southward. a succession of noisy, squalid villages, such as surround most cities of the old world, lined the way to mélun. beyond, tramping was more pleasant, for the route swung off across a rolling country, unadorned with squalling urchins and mongrel curs, towards fontainebleau. the foot-traveler in france need have no fear of losing his way. from paris to the important cities and frontier towns radiate “routes nationales,” each known by a certain number throughout its length. signboards point the way at every cross-road; kilometer posts of white stone keep the wayfarer well informed of the progress he is making—almost too well, for when he has grown foot-sore and ill-tempered, each one greets him with a sardonic smile that says as plainly as words, “huh! you’re only a kilometer further on, and a kilometer is not a mile by a long way.”
they are excellently built, these national highways; the heaviest rain barely forms upon them a perceptible layer of mud. but one could pardon them a little unevenness of road-bed if only they would strike out for their goal with the dogged determination of our own axle-cracking turnpikes. they wind and ramble like mountain streams. they zigzag from village to village even in a level country. the least knoll seems to have been sufficient reason in the minds of the constructing engineers for making wide detours, and where hills abound, there are villages ten miles apart with twenty miles of tramping between them.
thus far i had tramped the highways of europe alone. beyond nemours, my second night’s resting-place, i came upon two wayfarers in the shelter of a giant oak, enjoying a regal repast of hard bread which they rendered more palatable by dipping each mouthful in a brook at their feet. on the plea of an ample breakfast i declined 27an invitation to share the feast, but our routes coincided and we passed on in company. the pair were young miners walking from normandy to the great coal-fields of st. etienne. thanks to the free-masonry of “the road,” formalities were quickly forgotten, and before the first kilometer post rose up to greet us we were exchanging confidences in the familiar “tu” form. i soon added to my vocabulary the nickname of the french tramp. my new comrades not only addressed me as mon vieux, but greeted by that title every wayfarer we encountered, until it came to have as familiar a sound in my ears as the “jack” of the american hobo. its analogy to our “old man” is at once apparent.
there are stern laws in france against wandering from place to place. a lone traveler may sometimes escape attention, but well i knew that in trio we should often be called upon to give an account of ourselves. we were still some distance off from the first village beyond our meeting-place when an officer appeared at the door of the gendarmerie and, advancing into the highway, awaited our arrival.
“où allez vous autres?” he demanded, with officious bruskness.
“a st. etienne.”
“et vos papiers?”
“voilà!” cried the miners, each snatching from an inside pocket a small, flat book showing signs of age and hard usage.
the gendarme stuffed one of the volumes under an arm and fell to examining the other. between its greasy covers was a complete biography of its owner. the first leaf bore his baptismal record, followed by a page for each of his three years of military service, all much decorated with official stamps and seals. then came affidavits of apprenticeship, variously endorsed and viséd, and last a page for every firm that had employed the miner, giving dates, wages, testimonials, and reasons for leaving or dismissal. the miner bore the scrutiny with fortitude. with his official book at hand the french laborer has little dread of the officers of the law. after each term at his trade he may, if he sees fit to travel a bit, give variations of the old “looking-for-work” story, though as the date of his last employment grows more and more remote, the gendarmerie becomes an increasing obstacle.
without some such document no one may tramp the highways of france. he who travels on foot for other reason than poverty, or who, being poor, will not make his way by begging, is an enigmatical 28being to any race but the anglo-saxon. to the french gendarme his mode of travel is proof absolute that he is a misérable sans-sous to whom every law against vagrancy must be strictly applied.
the officer ended the examination of the books and handed them back with a gruff bien.
“maintenant, les v?tres,” he growled.
“here it is,” i answered, ignoring the plurality of the french pronoun, and i drew from my pocket a general letter of introduction to our consular service, signed by the secretary of state. the gendarme, who had expected another book, opened the paper with a perplexed air which increased to blank amazement when, instead of familiar french words, his eyes fell on a half-dozen lines of incomprehensible hieroglyphics.
“hein! que diable!” he gasped. “qu’est-ce que c’est que ?a?”
“my passport,” i explained. “je suis américain.”
“ha! américain! diable! and that is really a passport? never before have i seen one.”
it was not really a passport by any means. i had none. but monsieur le gendarme was in no position to dispute my word had i told him it was a patent of nobility.
“very good,” he went on, “but you must have another paper. foreign vagabonds cannot journey in france without a document to prove that they have worked.”
here was a poser. it would have been easy to assert that i was a traveler and no workman, but it would have been still easier to guess where such an assertion would land me. i rubbed my unshaven chin in perplexity, then struck by a sudden inspiration, snatched from my bundle the cattle-boat discharge.
“bah!” grumbled the officer, “more foreign gibberish! what is that vilaine langue the devil himself couldn’t read?”
“english,” i replied.
“tiens, que c’est dr?le que cette machine-là,” he mused, holding the paper out at arm’s length and scratching his head.
however, with some assistance he made out one date on the document, and, handing it back with a sigh of resignation, gave us leave to pass on.
“a propos!” he cried, before we had taken three steps, “what country did you say you come from?”
“america,” i answered.
29“l’amérique! and being in america you come to france? oh, mon dieu, what idiocy!” and waving his arms above his head he fled for the shade of his office.
the ways of my companions would have made them the laughing-stock of american roadsters. they looked forward to no three meals a day. the hope of a “set-down” never intruded upon their field of vision. in fact, they considered that the world was going very well with them if they collected sous enough for one or two lunches of bread and wine daily. yet wine they would have, except for breakfast, or they refused to eat even bread. like almost all who tramp any distance in france, they “played the merchant” and were surprised to find that i ventured along the highways of their country without doing likewise. that is, they carried over one shoulder a bundle containing shoe-strings, thread, needles, thimbles, and other articles in demand among rural housewives. the demand was really very light. they did make a two or three-sous sale here and there, but the market value of their wares was of least importance. by carrying them, the miners evaded the strict laws against vagrancy. without the bundles they were beggars, with them they ranked as peddlers. the ruse deceived no one, not even the gendarme. but it satisfied the letter of the law.
still engrossed in discussing the character of the officer who had delayed us, we reached a large farmhouse. with one of the miners i lingered at the roadside. the other entered the dwelling, ostensibly to display his wares. a moment later he emerged with a half-loaf of coarse peasant’s bread. madame had needed nothing from his pack, but “she made me a present of this lump.”
it was while they were canvassing a village in quest of sales, or crusts, in the dusk of evening that i lost sight of the miners. i had passed the village inn, and, being always averse to retracing my steps, continued my way alone. had i suspected the distance to the next hamlet, i might have been less eager to press on. fully three hours later i stumbled into les bussières and, having walked sixty-nine kilometers, it was not strange that i slept late next morning. besides, the day was sunday, and what with satisfying the curiosity of a company of peasants in the wine-room and drinking the health of several of them, i did not set out until the day was well advanced. beyond the village stretched the broad, white route, endless and deserted. the long journey before me would have been less lonely in 30the company of the miners; but we had parted and i plodded on in solitude, wondering when i should again fall in with so cheery a pair.
in passing a clump of trees at the roadside, i was suddenly roused from my revery by a shout of “holà! l’américain!” what could have betrayed my nationality? i halted and stared about me. my eyes fell on the grove and i beheld my companions of the day before hastily gathering their possessions together.
we journeyed along as before, producing our papers at each village and being once stopped in the open country by a mounted gendarme. the miners played in poor luck all through the morning. a single sou and an aged quarter-loaf constituted their gleanings. gaunt hunger was depicted on their countenances before we reached briare in the early afternoon and, breaking the silence of an hour, i offered to stand the compte of a meal for three.
there was in briare, as in every town in france larger than a hamlet, an inn the proprietor of which catered to the vagabond class. none but a native tramp could have found the establishment without repeated inquiries; but the miners, needing no second invitation and guided by some peculiar instinct, led the way down a side street and into a squalid cul de sac. the most acute foreign eye would have seen only frowning back walls, but my companions pushed open the door of what looked like a deserted warehouse and we entered a low room, gloomy and unswept. around the table, to which we made our way through a very forest of huge wine-barrels, were gathered a dozen peasants and a less solemn pair who turned out to be of “the profession.”
the first greetings over, the keeper set out before us a loaf of coarse bread and a bottle of wine, demanded immediate payment, and having received it, resumed his seat on a barrel. his shop was, in reality, the wine cellar of a café the gilded fa?ade of which faced the main street. in it the liquor that sold here for four sous the litre would have cost us a half-franc. one of the miners, having gained my consent to the extravagance, invested two sous in raw, salt pork which he and his companion ate with great relish. i was content to do without such delicacies, for the wine and bread made a very appetizing feast after hours of trudging under a broiling sun.
canal-boats laden with lumber from nièvre entering paris
“they are excellently built, the routes nationales of france”
in the course of the afternoon i photographed the miners, a proceeding which caused them infantine delight, both declaring that this was the first time in their begrimed existence that they had ever 31been tirés. we found lodging in a peasant’s wheat stack. i was a bit chary of spending the night in so deserted a spot with two such vagabonds, for the kodak and the handful of coins from which i had paid for our dinner was a plunder worth a roadster’s conspiracy. my anxiety was really ungrounded. morning broke with my possessions intact and, after an hour’s work in picking straw and chaff from our hair and clothing, we set off at sunrise.
i left my companions behind soon after, for their mode of travel resulted in far less than the thirty miles a day i had cut out for myself, and passed on into the vineyard and forest country of nièvre. harvest was over in the few fertile farms that were not given up to the culture of the grape; the day of the gleaners had come. in the fields left bare by the reapers, peasant women gathered with infinite care the stray wheat stalks and, their aprons full, plodded homeward. to the thrifty french mind there is nothing so iniquitous as to waste the smallest thing of value. before this army of bowed backs one could not but wonder whether it had ever occurred to them that labor also may be wasted.
the most extravagant of its inhabitants were already lighting their lamps when i entered the village of la charité. to whatever benevolence the quiet hamlet owes its name, it was typical of those rural communities that line the highways of france. a decrepit grey church raised a time-mellowed voice in the song of the evening angelus. squat housewives gossiped at the doors of the drab stone cottages lining the route. from the neighboring fields heavy ox-carts, the yokes fastened across the horns of the animals, lumbered homeward. in the dwindling light a blacksmith before his open shop was fitting with flat, iron shoes a piebald ox triced up on his back in a frame.
in lieu of the familiar sign, ici on loge à pied et à cheval, the village inn was distinguished from the private dwellings by a bundle of dried fagots over the door. i entered, to find myself in a room well-stocked with wooden tables, with here and there a trio of villagers, over their wine and cards, blowing smoke at the unhewn beams of the ceiling. in answer to the customary signal, the tapping of pipes on the tables, an elderly woman appeared and inquired bruskly wherein she could serve me.
“you have lodgings, n’est-ce pas?”
a sudden, startling silence greeted the first suggestion of foreign accent. cards paused in mid-air, pipes ceased to draw, tipplers craned their necks to listen, and madame surveyed me deliberately, even a 32bit disdainfully, from crown to toe. satisfied evidently, with her inspection, she admitted that she had been known to house travelers and hurried away to bring the register, while the smoking and the drinking and the playing were slowly and half-heartedly resumed. madame scrutinized intently each stroke of the coarse pen as i filled in the various blanks, puzzled several moments over my “passport,” and dropping all her stiff dignity, became suddenly garrulous:
“what! you are an american? why, another american has lodged here. it was in 1882. he was making the tour of the world on a bicycle. he came from boston”—she pronounced it with a distressing nasal—“but i could not understand his french. he did not pronounce the r. he said ‘foncé’ when he meant ‘fran?ais.’ for ‘terre’ he said ‘tèah.’ i will give you his bed. he had not many hairs on his head. do you eat rago?t also in america? he wore such funny pince-nez. fine wine, n’est-ce pas? he had hurt his foot—” and thus she chattered on, through my supper and up the stairs to my chamber.
the room once graced by the man from boston was stone-floored, with whitewashed walls, and large enough to have housed a squad of infantry. of its two beds, hung with snow-white curtains, i preferred the one nearer the window. unfortunately, my compatriot of the pince-nez had chosen the other and madame would not hear of my violating the precedent thus established. the price of this lodging, and the usual one in the rural inns of france, was fifteen cents.
there were times when my zealous efforts to spend for lodging as few sous as possible brought me to temporary grief. the night following my sojourn in la charité is a case in point. i reached st. pierre le moutier some time after dark, and, upon inquiry for the cheapest auberge, was directed up a dismal alleyway. on the fringe of the open country i stumbled upon a ramshackle stone building, one end of which was a dwelling for man, while the other housed his domestic animals. inside, under a sputtering excuse for a lamp, huddled two men, a woman and a girl, around a table that canted up against the wall as if it had borne too much wine in its long existence and become chronically unsteady on its legs thereby. so preoccupied was the quartet in devouring slabs of dull-brown bread and a watery soup from a common bowl in which floated a few stray cabbage-leaves that my entrance passed unnoticed.
advancing to attract attention i brought disaster. for in the semi-darkness i stepped on the end of a board that supported two legs of 33the tipsy table, causing the bowl of soup to slide into the woman’s arms, and the loaf to roll about on the earth floor. the mishap, evidently no new experience, aroused no comment, but it gained me a hearing and brought me into the conversation. of the two men, one was the proprietor and the second a traveler of the tramp variety who, though posing as a parisian, spoke a decidedly mongrel language. with the fluency of a stranded tragedian he launched forth in a raging narration of his misfortunes. french at all resembling the educated tongue had become as familiar to me as english, but the patois and slang in which the fellow unfolded the story of a persecuted life would have daunted an international interpreter. i caught the drift of his remarks by making him repeat each sentence twice or thrice, but he ended with a: “heing! tu comprinds ma’reux le frin?ais;” and i was forced to admit that if the jargon he got off were “frin?ais,” i certainly did.
the younger, and consequently less begrimed of the females, led the way to my “room,” which turned out to be a hole over the stable, some four feet high, approached by an outside stairway, and containing two of the filthiest cots a vivid imagination could have pictured. to my disgust i found that one of the beds was reserved for my friend of the uncouth tongue. a half-hour later, unstable after a final bottle of wine with the aubergiste, he stumbled into the den and proceeded to make night hideous—awake, by his multiloquence, asleep, by a rasping snore. a dozen times i awoke from a half-conscious nap to find him sitting cross-legged in his cot, puffing furiously at a cigarette, above the feeble glow of which glistened his cat-like eyes as he stared at me across the intervening darkness. at daybreak he was gone and i departed soon after.
there is really no reason why the french roadster should go hungry in autumn. that he does, is due to a strange national prejudice unknown in america; for at that season half the highways of france are lined with hedges heavy with blackberries. at first i looked with suspicion on a fruit left ungathered by the thrifty peasantry, but, coming one morning upon a hedge unusually burdened with berries, i satisfied myself as to their identity and fell to picking a capful. a band of peasants, on the way to the fields, halted to gaze at me in astonishment and burst into uproarious laughter.
“mais, mon vieux,” cried a plowman. “que diable vas tu faire de ces choses-là?”
“eat them, of course,” i answered.
34“eat them!” roared the peasants, “but those things are not good to eat,” and the notion struck them as so droll that their guffaws still came back to me long after they had turned a bend in the highway. every frenchman i approached on the subject held the same view. the two miners traveled for hours with a gnawing hunger, or invaded lonely vineyards at imminent risk of capture by the rural gendarmerie, to eat their fill of half-ripe grapes, sour and acrid. but when i, from my safe position outside the hedge, held up a heavily-laden bush, their answer was always the same: “ah, non, mon vieux. not any for me.” obviously i could not regret the bad repute in which the fruit was held, for when hunger overtook me i had but to stop and pick my dinner, and except for the few sous spent for bread and wine, my rations from fontainebleau to the swiss frontier cost me nothing.
my tramp continued past nevers and moulin, down through the department of allier to the city of roanne, stretching along both banks of the upper loire. a few kilometers beyond, the highway began a winding ascent of the first foothills of the alps. even here the cultivation bespoke the thrift of the french peasant. far up the rugged hillside stretched terraced farms, each stone-faced step of the broad stairways thickly set with grapevines. higher still a few wrinkled patches in sheltered ravines gave sustenance to the most sturdy toilers. here it is that may be seen the nearest prototype of that painful figure known far and wide, that stolid being who leans on his mattock, gazing helplessly away into meaningless space; nearest, because his exact original no longer dwells in the fields of france: he has moved southward. down a glen below the highway the trunk of a tree, broken off some six feet above the ground and with a huge knot on one side, stood out in silhouette against the distant horizon. but for a crudeness of outline one might have imagined the stump a clumsy, ragged peasant, with a child astride his shoulders. i stood surveying this figure, wondering what forces of the elements could have given a mere tree so strange a likeness to a human form, when it suddenly started, moved, and strode away across the gully.
the highway continued to climb. the patches of tilled ground gave way to waving forests where sounded the twittering of birds, and here and there the cheery song of the woodsman or shepherd boy. some magic there is inherent in the clear air of mountain heights that calls forth song from those that dwell among them.
a typical french roadster who has tramped the highways of europe for thirty years
the two french miners with whom i tramped in france. notice shoe laces carried for sale
with sunset came the summit. the road began to descend, the forests fell away, the tiny fields appeared once more, and the ballad 35of the mountaineer was silent. a colony of laborers, engaged in the construction of a reservoir, gave me greeting from the doors of their temporary shacks, and lower still i turned in at an auberge half-filled with a squad of soldiers.
he is an interesting figure, the french conscript. in his make-up is none of the boisterous braggadocio of the american trooper and of tommy atkins, never that scorn for civilians so often characteristic of the voluntary, the mercenary soldier. he feels small inclination to boast of his wisdom even in military matters, for well he knows that the jolly innkeeper may be able to tell a tale of his own days sous le drapeau that makes the conscript’s favorite story weak and insipid by comparison. then, too, it is hard to be boastful when one is sad at heart; and the french conscript is not happy. to him conscription is a yoke, akin to disease and death, which fate has fastened upon the children of men. he dreads its coming, serves under unexpressed protest, and sets it down in his book of life as three years utterly lost.
there is, indeed, a note of pessimism everywhere prevalent among the masses of france. it is not a universal note, not even a constant one: loud-voiced “calamity-howlers” are less in evidence than in our own optimistic land. but even amid the merry chatter there hovers over every gathering of french workmen a gloominess, an infestivity that speaks of lost hope, of fatalistic despair. briefly and unconsciously, a craftsman of chance acquaintance summed up this inner feeling of his class: “ah, mon pauvre pays,” he sighed, “elle n’est plus ce qu’elle était.”
chattering groups of lyonese, mounting to the freer air of the hills in sunday attire, enlivened my morning tramp down the descending highway. by early afternoon i came in sight of the second city of france and the confluence of the soane and rh?ne. the vineyards ceased, to give place to mulberry trees. even on this day of merry-making the whir of silk-looms sounded from the wayside cottages, well into the suburbs of the city. the humble dwellings were succeeded by mansions; the national highway, by a broad boulevard that led down to the meeting-place of the two rivers, and the first stage of my journey to southern europe was ended.
from lyon i turned northeastward towards geneva and the alps. a serpentine route climbed upward. often i tramped for hours around the edge of a yawning chasm, having always in view a rugged village and its vineyards far below, only to find myself at the end of that time within stone’s throw of a long-forgotten kilometer-post. 36near the frontier hovered a general air of suspicion. the aubergiste of the mountain hamlet of moulin chabaud hesitated long and studied every dot and letter of my papers before offering me a chair under the big fire-place; he remained surly and distraught all through the evening, as if convinced in spite of himself that he was harboring one whose career had not been unsullied. when i awoke, a mountain rain was falling, cold and ceaseless; but preferring always a certain amount of physical discomfort to sour looks, i pushed on, splashing into geneva long after nightfall.
it would doubtless require a frequent repetition of such experiences to stifle that indefinable dread, akin to fear, which oppresses the weary pedestrian who, entirely unbefriended, enters an unknown city in the darkness of night. limping aimlessly through the streets of geneva in my water-soaked garments, i felt particularly dismal and forlorn. genevese, huddled under their umbrellas, pushed me aside when i attempted to speak to them or snapped a few incoherent words over their shoulders. in vain i attempted to escape from the district of jewellers’ shops and watch-makers’ show-windows, little suspecting that i was virtually on an island given over almost entirely to business houses and rich dwellings.
a slippery street led to a bridge across the rh?ne, and a policeman beyond pointed out the district gendarmerie as the proper place to prosecute my inquiries. from a window of the building shown a dim light, and within sounded a brisk “entrez” in answer to my knock. two police sergeants, engrossed in a game of cards, turned to scowl at me across the room.
“eh bien, toi! qu’est-ce qu’il y a?”
“i am looking for a lodging house and the policeman—”
“lodging! at this time of night? do you think the city provides a hotel de luxe for vagabonds, that they may come and go at any hour—?”
“but i intend to pay my own lodging.”
“pay! quoi! tu as de l’argent?”
“certainly i have money!” i cried indignantly, though to tell the truth the weight of it was not making me stoop-shouldered.
“ah!” gasped the senior officer, speaking the word high up in his mouth after the fashion of frenchmen expressing supreme astonishment. “que je vous aie mal jugé! i thought you were asking admittance to the night shelter.”
the shock of hearing one he had taken for a vagabond admit that 37he had money was clearly a unique experience in the sergeant’s constabulary career. he had by no means recovered when i turned away to the inn he had pointed out.
three days later i boarded a steamer that zigzagged between the cities flanking blue lac léman, and descending at villeneuve, set out along the valley of the upper rh?ne. here all was free and open as the mountains bordering the fertile strip, for the close-hedged fields of france are not to the taste of the swiss peasant. no gendarme waylaid me at each hamlet; i had but to step off the highway to gather apples under the trees or to escape from the glaring sun.
night overtook me at st. maurice, a sure-footed mountain village, straddling the rh?ne where it roars through a narrow gorge on its way to the lake beyond. even within doors the villagers speak a high-pitched treble, so fixed has become the habit of raising their voices above the constant boom of the cataract. in my lodging directly above, the roaring intruded on my dreams, and in fancy i struggled against the rushing current that carried me down a sheer mountainside.
church-bound peasants fell in with me along the route next morning, peasants lacking both the noisy gaiety of the french and the gloominess of the sunday-clad german. wayside wine-shops, or a pace too rapid for a day of rest cut short my acquaintance with each group, but i had not far to plod alone before the curiosity of a new band gave me companionship for another space.
at martigny the highway bent with the river to the eastward; the mountain wall crowded more closely the narrow valley, pushing the road to the edge of the stream that mirrored the rugged peaks. here and there a foot-hill boldly detached itself from the range, and taking its stand in the valley, drove off the route on a winding detour.
two such hills gave sion a form all its own. an ample paradplatz in the foreground held back the jumble of houses tossed upon an undulating hillside. back of the village, like gaunt sentinels guarding the valley of the upper rh?ne, stood two towering rocks, the one crowned by the ruins of an ancient castle, the other by a crumbling church that gazed scornfully down on the jostling buildings of modern times. a sunday festival was raging on the parade-ground. around the booths and puppet-shows surged merry countrymen in gay attire; from the flanking shops hung streamers and the flags of many nations.
i had barely reached the town when a rumble of thunder sounded. dense, black clouds, flying before a wind that did not reach us in the 38valley, appeared from the north, tearing themselves on the jagged peaks above. close on the heels of the warning a storm broke in true alpine fury. the festooned multitude broke madly for the shelter of the shops, the gaudy streamers and booths turned to drooping rags, the puppets humped their shoulders appealingly, and the parade-ground became a shallow lake that reflected a bright sun ten minutes after the first growl of thunder.
the oppressive heat tempered by the shower, i rounded the greater of the sentinel rocks and continued up the valley. rolling vineyards stretched away on either hand to the brink of the river or the base of the enclosing mountains. a burning thirst assailed me. almost unconsciously i paused and picked two clusters of plump grapes that hung over the stone coping of a field above the highway.
a stone’s throw ahead, two men stepped suddenly from behind a clump of bushes and strolled towards me.
“do you know what that is?” demanded one of them, in french, as he waved a small badge before my eyes.
i certainly did. it was the official shield of the rural gendarmerie.
“yes,” i admitted.
“back you go with us to sion!” roared the officer. he was a lean, lank giant who, evidently in virtue of his length, assumed the position of spokesman. his companion, almost a dwarf, nodded his head vigorously in approval.
“eh bien?” i answered, too weary to argue the matter.
“yes,” blustered the spokesman, “back to sion and the magistrate—” he paused, squinted at the dwarf, and went on in dulcet tones, “unless you pay thirty francs.”
“thirty francs! where on earth should i get thirty francs?”
in my excitement i somewhat bungled my french.
“where go you?” asked the pocket edition of the law. his voice was soothing and he spoke in german.
“to italy. i am a workman.”
“ja! und in deinem lande—in your land you may pick grapes when you like, was?” shouted the long one.
“a couple of bunches? of course!”
“was! in italien?” in his voice was all the sarcasm he could call up from a tolerably caustic nature.
“i am no italian. i come from the united states.”
“united states!” bellowed the gendarme, looking around at his companion. “what is this united states?”
39“ah-er-well, there is such a country,” suggested the midget, “but—”
“and in this country of yours you do not speak french, nor german, nor yet italian?” snapped the officer, relapsing unconsciously into french.
“no, we speak english.”
“mille diables! english! what then is that?”
“ja. es gibt so eine sprache,” ventured the dwarf.
the spokesman ignored him.
“well, pay fifteen francs and we have seen nothing.”
“impossible.”
“then back to sion and the gendarmerie.”
“very well, en route.”
the pair scowled and turned aside to whisper together. the tall one continued, “my comrade says, as you are a pauvre diable on foot—five francs.”
“five francs for two bunches of grapes, comme ?a?” i gasped holding them out.
“ach! ein, unglücklicher kerl,” urged the dwarf. “say three francs.”
“no!” i cried, “c’en est trop. two bunches, like that? i have here two francs—”
the leader shook his head, glanced at his mate, and took several steps in the direction of sion.
“ah! a poor devil on the road,” breathed the other.
“well, two it is,” growled the moving spirit.
i took two francs from my pocket and dropped them into the outstretched palm. the officer jingled the coins a moment, handed one to his companion, and pocketed the other with the air of a man who had well performed an unpleasant duty. his threatening scowl had vanished and a smile played on his lean face.
“merci,” he said, dropping his shield into a side pocket and turning back to his hiding-place, “au revoir, monsieur!” and the small man, following close on his heels, turned to add, “bon voyage, monsieur l’américain.”
i plodded on into the dusk, eating the high-priced grapes, and wondering just where the owner of the vineyard entered into the transaction.
somewhere near the treacherous clump of bushes i passed the unmarked boundary between french and german switzerland. thus far 40the former tongue had reigned supreme, though pedestrians often greeted me with “bon jour,” “guten tag.” but the voice of the street in sierre, where i halted for the night, was overwhelmingly teutonic, and the signs over hospitable doors no longer read “auberge,” but “wirtschaft” and “bierhalle.” there i lay late abed next morning, and once off, strolled leisurely along the fertile valley, for a bare twenty miles separated the town from brieg, at the foot of the simplon pass.
you who turn in each evening at the selfsame threshold, you who huddle in your niche among the cave-dwellers of great cities, you who race through foreign lands in car and carriage as if fearful of setting foot on an alien soil, can know nothing of the exhilaration that comes in tramping mile after mile of open country when life blooms forth in its prime on every hand. a single day afoot brings delight. yet only he who looks day after day on an ever-changing scene, who passes on and ever on into the great weltraum that stretches unendingly before him, can feel the full strength of the wanderlust within. to stop seems an irreverence, to turn back a sacrilege. in these days of splendid transportation we lose much that our forefathers enjoyed. there is a sense of satisfaction akin to self-pride, a sense of real accomplishment that thrills the pedestrian who has attained a distant goal through his own unaided efforts, a satisfaction which the traveler by steam cannot experience.
the highway over the simplon, constructed by napoleon in 1805, is still, in spite of the encroachment of railways, a well-traveled route, though not by pedestrians. the good people of brieg burst forth in wailing sympathy when i divulged my plan of crossing on foot. traffic between the village and domo d’ossola in piedmont has for generations been monopolized by a line of stage-coaches. there was more than the exhilaration of such a tramp, however, to awaken my revolt against this time-honored means of transportation, for the fare on one of these primitive bone-shakers ranged from forty to fifty francs.
with a vagrant’s lunch in my knapsack i left brieg at dawn, for the first tramontane hamlet was thirty miles distant. before the sun rose, the morning stage rattled by and the jeering of its drivers cheered me on. the highway showed nowhere a really steep grade, though it mounted seven thousand feet in twenty-three kilometers. with every turn of the route the panorama grew. three hours up, brieg still peeped out through the slender tannenb?ume, far below, yet almost 41directly beneath; and the vista extended far down the winding valley of the rh?ne, back to the sentinel rocks of sion and beyond. across the chasm sturdy mountaineers scrambled from rock to boulder with their sheep and goats, as high as grew the hardiest sprig of vegetation. far above the last shrub, ragged, barren peaks cut from the blue sky beyond figures of fantastic shape; peaks aglow with nature’s most lavish coloring, here one deep purple in the morning shade, there another, with basic tone of ruddy pink changed like watered silk under the reflection of the rays that gilded its summit.
beyond the spot where brieg was lost to view began the réfuges, roadside cottages in which the traveler, overcome by fatigue or the raging storms of winter, may seek shelter. in this summer season, however, they had degenerated one and all into dirty wine-shops where squalling children and stray goats wandered about among the tables. i peered in at one and inquired the price of a bottle of wine. a spidery female rose up to fleece me of my slender hoard and i beat a hasty retreat, thankful to have come prepared against the call of hunger, and content to drink the crystalline water of wayside streams.
the roadway found scant footing in the upper ranges, and burrowed its way through several tunnels. high above one of them a glacier sent down a roaring torrent sheer over the route, and through an opening in the outer wall of the sub-torrential gallery one could reach out and touch the foaming stream as it plunged into the abyss far below.
light clouds, that had obscured the sterile peaks during the last hours of the ascent, all but caused me to pass unnoticed the hospice of st. bernard that marks the summit. i stepped inside to write a postal to the world below, and turned out again into a drizzling rain that soon became a steady downpour. but the kilometers that had been so long in the morning fairly raced by on the downward journey, and a few hours brought me to the frontier.
as if fearful of losing sovereignty over a foot of her territory, italy has set a guard-house exactly over the boundary line, amid wild rocks and gorges. a watchful soldier stepped out into the storm and hailed me while several yards of switzerland still lay between us:
“any tobacco or cigars?”
i fished out a half-used package of swiss tobacco, wet and mushy. the officer waved a deprecatory hand.
“what’s this?” he demanded, tapping the pocket that held my kodak.
42“a picture machine,” i explained, showing an edge of the apparatus.
“bene, buona sera,” cried the officer, as he ran for his shelter.
at nightfall i splashed into the scraggy village of iselle. from a yawning hole in the mountainside poured forth a regiment of laborers who scurried towards a long row of improvised shanties, hanging, on the edge of nothing, over a rushing mountain river. having once been a “mud-mucker” in my own land, i followed after, and struck up several acquaintanceships over the evening macaroni. the band was engaged in boring a tunnel, thirteen miles in length, from brieg to iselle. with its completion the simplon tourist will avoid the splendid scenery of the pass; the stage-coaches will be consigned to the scrap-heaps they should long since have adorned; and an hour, robbed of sunshine and pure air, will separate italy from the valley of the rh?ne. then will the transalpine voyager degenerate into the subalpine passenger.
