MONTE ROSA 267 



plausible explanation of the presence on the pastures at the head 

 of the Italian valleys of Monte Rosa of a German-speaking 

 population. He attributed it to their aptitude for pastoral 

 pursuits being greater than that of the neighbouring Piedmontese 

 peasantry. Mr. Coolidge, however, has pointed out that in the 

 thirteenth century the same family, the Counts of Biandrate, be- 

 came Lords both of Visp and of the southern vales, and took steps 

 to shift the population from one side of the chain to the other in 

 either direction . This may account for the Germans in Val Anzasca, 

 but it is a little difficult to believe that Gressoney and Alagna 

 (Allemagna) as well as Macugnaga could have been colonised by 

 any arbitrary act of authority. The Cure's explanation is plausible, 

 and may be supported by similar instances elsewhere. 1 



In the character of the inhabitants the de Saussures noted 

 many points of interest. Their native tongue being German, the 

 peasantry of Macugnaga found themselves of necessity bilingual, 

 a circumstance which aided them greatly in the wanderings 

 to which the very limited resources of their own district com- 

 pelled a considerable proportion of the population. On the women 

 left behind was thrown all the labour of cultivation, and even of 

 transport. De Saussure mentions that when, anxious to send 

 down to Vanzone a box of geological specimens, he inquired for a 

 porter, he learnt that there was no man ready to carry it, and that 

 it was at once given to a woman. Most recent travellers have 

 had the same experience. Yet he found the sex more than equal 

 to their tasks. He tells how he met a party of six girls crossing a 

 high pass on their way home from a religious festival : 



' Accustomed to cross the mountains loaded with their enormous 

 burdens, it was play for them, unladen, to make the journey twice on 

 the same day. They ran, chased one another, scrambled gaily on the 

 heights beside our path, got every now and then two or three hundred 

 paces in front of us, and amused themselves by picking flowers, or 

 singing under the shadow of a rock, to fly off again like a flock of 

 birds the moment our slow and uniform pace brought us up to them.' 

 [Voyages, 2224.] 



Plain living was a virtue these simple people carried perhaps to 

 excess. Fresh meat was unknown ; this is still the case in winter 



1 See Murray's Handbook for Swtzerland, 1904, for reference to authorities 

 on this question. 



