THE SPRING-SUMMER OF THE 

 ALPS 



AN English newspaper has crossed the sea, traversed 

 France, fallen in Lausanne, skirted the Lake of Geneva, 

 mounted by the brawling Rhone in its flat little valley 

 not long since a larger river-bed, twisted perilously up 

 by the Val d'Anniviers, and climbed to our summer 

 resting-place just under the snows of the Weisshorn. 

 Our English paper tells us of nipping winds and fierce 

 assaults of hail, and of millions compelled to take their 

 holiday pleasures sadly because they had no possible 

 excuse to take them gaily. In full-blown spring, a 

 time that most Britons are willing to recognise as 

 summer, men must shiver and refuse the kindly 

 invitation of mossy bank or flowery hillside. 



Alpine spring is spring and summer all in one. 

 Five days ago, as we climbed up here by the only 

 mule-track, we walked into a sprinkling of snow about 

 two hundred feet below one five-thousand-feet-high 

 village. When we woke up, the pines and other trees 

 beneath the windows were crusted inch-deep on every 

 twig, and the mountains across the little valley were 

 white over all their rocky heads, with long white 

 fingers reaching down to the brawling Navigenze. 

 But while breakfast went forward, the trees shook 

 99 



