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I could not hope for a more prosperous season; and indeed I made such use of it, that between the months of January and March I crossed six passes of the Alps in open sleighs the Fluela Bernina, Splügen, Julier, Maloja, and Albula with less difficulty and discomfort in mid-winter than the traveller may often find on them in June.
It was the stillness rather of untroubled health, of strength omnipotent but unexerted. From the Hochspitz of the Fluela the track plunges at one bound into the valley of the Inn, following a narrow cornice carved from the smooth bank of snow, and hung, without break or barrier, a thousand feet or more above the torrent. The summer road is lost in snow-drifts.
Sunset was fading out upon the Rhætikon and still reflected from the Seehorn on the lake, when we entered the gorge of the Fluela dense pines on either hand, a mounting drift of snow in front, and faint peaks, paling from rose to saffron, far above, beyond. There was no sound but a tinkling stream and the continual jingle of our sledge-bells.
Not one but carried on his face the memory of winter strife with avalanche and snow-drift, of horses struggling through Fluela whirlwinds, and wine-casks tugged across Bernina, and haystacks guided down precipitous gullies at thundering speed 'twixt pine and pine, and larches felled in distant glens beside the frozen watercourses.
Davos is within very easy reach by the Rhaetische Railway of all the Parsenn runs. The side valleys, Fluela, Dischma and Sertig, all offer innumerable good runs to the energetic runner who does not object to climbing, and there are endless Nursery slopes.
Jealousies between the natives of rival districts spring up; and there are men alive who have fought the whole way down from Fluela Hospice to Davos Platz with knives and stones, hammers and hatchets, wooden staves and splintered cart-wheels, staining the snow with blood, and bringing broken pates, bruised limbs, and senseless comrades home to their women to be tended.
In some cases, however, even this is not sufficient protection as the whole slope may go at once. In old days before the railways had tunnelled through the passes we were driving over the Fluela above Davos on our way to Italy in March.
At the end of January, my friend Christian and I left Davos long before the sun was up, and ascended for four hours through the interminable snow-drifts of the Fluela in a cold grey shadow. The sun's light seemed to elude us.
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