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Leaving the horse-sledges on the verge of some high hill-road, and trusting oneself to the little hand-sledge which the people of the Grisons use, and which the English have christened by the Canadian term 'toboggan, the excitement becomes far greater. The hand-sledge is about three feet long, fifteen inches wide, and half a foot above the ground, on runners shod with iron.
In the midst of all this foreign service he never forgot his old dream of conquering the Valtelline; and in 1547 he made proposals to the Emperor for a new campaign against the Grisons.
That the Umbrians were after obstinate struggles driven back from the north and west into the narrow mountainous country between the two arms of the Apennines which they subsequently held, is clearly indicated by the very fact of their geographical position, just as the position of the inhabitants of the Grisons and that of the Basques at the present day indicates the similar fate that has befallen them.
Then each Swiss fought as though victory depended on his single arm; for Switzerland and Swiss glory, each flew joyously to meet danger and death, and counted not the number of the enemy. And wherever a Swiss banner floated, there was more than one like John Wala of Glarus, who, near Gams in Rheinthal, measured himself singly with thirty horsemen. The Grisons, also, fought with no less glory.
To prevent any doubts concerning the veracity of these translations, I must here declare, that I am indebted for them, and for several anecdotes concerning that language, to a man of letters, who is a native and has long been an inhabitant of the Grisons, and is lately come to reside in London.
Every door, however, was shut in his face, for no one wished to have any more to do with him. Embittered by this treatment, he vowed never to set foot in Domleschg again, and he then came to Dorfli, where he continued to live with his little boy. His wife was probably a native of the Grisons, whom he had met down there, and who died soon after their marriage.
At the same time he undertook to provide the necessary supplies for its maintenance during the transit. The rumor of this arrangement roused the Huguenots, the Genevese, the Swiss, and the Grisons. The Prince of Conde and the Admiral Coligny entreated Charles IX. not to neglect so favorable a moment of inflicting a deadly blow on the hereditary foe of France.
In April, 1799, the people of Schwyz took four hundred French prisoners; those of Uri, under their leader, Vincenz Schmid, stormed and burned Altorf, the seat of the French and their adherents; those of Valais, under the youthful Count Courten, drove the French from their valleys, and those of the Grisons surprised and cut to pieces a French squadron at Dissentis.
Monte Boscero is unveiled; the semicircle of the Piedmontese and the Swiss peaks, covering Lake Orta, behind, on along the Ticinese and the Grisons, leftward toward and beyond the Lugano hills, stand bare in black and grey and rust-red and purple. You behold a burnished realm of mountain and plain beneath the royal sun of Italy.
The same corruption, or coalescence, which gave rise to the Gallic Romance, and to that of the Grisons, must also have produced in Italy a language, if not perfectly similar, at least greatly approaching to those two idioms.
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