The New Pass.

Tuapeka Times, Volume IV, Issue 220, 18 April 1872, Page 9

The New Pass.

BY THE AUTHOR OP "BARBARA'S HISTORY."

The circumstance I am am about to relate happened just four autumns ago, when I was travelling in Switzerland with my old school and college friend, Egerton Wolfe.

Before going further, however, I wish to observe that this is no dressedup> narrative. I am a plain, prosaic man; by name Francis Legrice — by profession a barrister — and I think it would be difficult to find many persons less likely to look upon life from a romantic or imaginative point of view. By my enemies, and sometimes, perhaps, by my friends, I am supposed to push my habit of incredulity to the verge of universal scepticism; and indeed I admit that I believe in very little that I do not hear and see for myself. But for these things that I am going to relate I can vouch ; and in so far as mine is a personal narrative, I am responsible for its truth. What I saw, I saw with mine own eyes in the broad daylight. I offer nothing, therefore, in the shape of a story ; but simply a plain statement of facts, as they happened to myself. - I was travelling, then, in Switzerland with Egerton Wolfe. It was not our first joint long-vacation tour by a good many, but it promised to be our" last; for Wolfe was engaged to be marriedthe following spring to a very beautiful and charming girl.'the daughter of a north-country baronet. He was a handsome fellow, tall, graceful, dark-haired, dark-eyed; a poet, a dreamer, an artist — as thoroughly unlike myself, in short, as one inatij having arms, legs, and head can be unlike another. And yet we suited each other capitally, and were the fastest friends and best travelling companions in tbe world.

We had begun our holiday on this occasion with a week's idleness at a place which I will call Oberbrum — a delightful place, wholly Swiss, consisting of one huge wooden building, half water-cure establishment, half hotel, two smaller buildings called dependences, a tiny church, with a bulbous steeple painted green, and a handful of village, all perched together on a breezy mountain-plateau, some three thousand feet above the lake and valley. Here, far from the haunts of the British tourist and the Alpine Club-man, we read, smoked, climbed, rose with the dawn, rubbed up our rusty German, and got ourselves into training for tbe knapsack- work to follow.

At length, our week being up, we started — rather later, on the whole, than was prudent, for we had a thirty miles' walk before us, and the sun was already high. For some distance our path lay along the mountain side, through pine woods and by cultivated slopes where the Indian corn waa ripening to gold, and the late hay harvest was waiting for the mower. Then the path wound gradually downward — for the valley lay , between us and the pass we had laid out for our day's work— and then, through a succession of &oft green slopes and ruddy apple-orchards, we came to a blue lake fringed with rushes, where. we hired a boat with a striped awning like the boats on Lago Maggiore, and were rowed across by a boatman who rested on his oars and sang a jodel-soug when we were half-way across.

Being landed on the opposite bank, we found our road at once begun to trend upwards ; and here, as the guide informed us, the ascent of the Hohenhorn might be said to begin. " This, however, meine Herren," said he, "is only part of the old pass. It is ill-kept ; for none but country folks and travellers from Oberbrun come this way now. But we shall strike the new pass higher up. A grand road, meine Herren — as fine a road as the Simploli, and good for carriages all the way. It has only been open since the spring."

" The old pass is good enough for me, anyhow ?" said Egerton, crowding a handful of wild forget-me-nots under the ribbon of bis hat. "It's' like a stray fragment of Arcadia."

And in truth it was wonderfully lovely and secluded — a mere rugged fr.ick winding steeply upward in a soft green shade, among large forest trees and moss-grown rocks covered with patches of velvety lichen. By-and-by, when we had been following this path for nearly an hour, we came upon a patch of clearing, in the midst of which stood a roughuprightmonolith, antique, weather-stained, covered with rude carvings like a Runic monument — the primitive boundary-stone between the Cantons of Uri and Underwaldeu.

" Let us rest here ?" cried Egerton, flinging himself at full length on the grass. '• Eheu fugaees ! — and the hours are shorter than the years. Why not enjoy them ? "

But the guide, whose name is Peter Kauffmann, interposes after the manner of guides in general, and will by no means let us have our own way. There is a mountain inn, he urges, now only five, minutes distant — "an excellent "little inn, where they sell good red wine." ;So we yield to fate and Peter Kauffmann, and« pursue our upward way, coming presently, as he promised and predicted, upon a bright open space and a brown chalet on a shelf or plateau overhanging a giddy precipice. Here, sitting under a vine-covered trellis built out on the very brink of .cliff, we find urvountianeer^ dja-

cussing a flask of the good red wine aforesaid. In this picturesque eyrie we made our mid-day halt. A smiling madchen brought us coffee, brown bread, and goat'B milk cheese; while our guide, pulling out a huge lump of the dryest schwarizes brod from his wallet, fraternised with the mountaineers over a balf-flask of his favourite vintage. " There must be surely moments, " said Egerton Wolfe, after a while, " when even such men as you, Prank — men of the world, and lovers of it — feel within them some stirrings of the •primitive Adam ; some vague longing for the idyllic life of the woods and fields that we dreamers are still, in our innermost souls, insane enough to sigh after as the highest good. " " You mean, don't I sometimes wish to be a Swiss peasant-farmer, with sabots ; a goitre ; a wife without form as regards her person, and void as regards her head ; and a cretin grandfather a hundred and three years old? Why, no. I prefer myself as I am." My friend smiled, and shook his head. " Why take it for granted, " said he, " that no man can, cultivate his brains, and his paternal acres at the same time ? Horace, with none of the adjuncts you name, loved a country life., and turned it to immortal poetry. " Tbe world has gone round once or twice since then, my dear fellow, " 1 replied, philosophically. " The best poetry comes out of cities nowadays." '* And the worst. Do you see those' avalanches over yonder ! " Following the direction af his eyes, I saw something like a tiny puff of smoke glide over the shoulder of a huge mountain on the opposite side of the It was followed by another and another. We could neither see whence they came or whither they went. We were too far away to hear the sullen thunder of their fall. Silently they flashed into sight, and as

silently they vanished. Wolfe sighed heavily. " Poor Lawrence ! " said he. " Switzerland was his dream. He longed for tlm Alps as ardently as other men J^Ked for money or power. " was a younger brother of m^vvhom I had never seen — a lad of great promise, whose health had broken down at Addiscombe some ten or twelve years before, and who had soon after died of rapid consumption at Torquay. " And he never had that longing gratified, had he ? " " Ah, no — he was never out of England. They prescribe bracing climates now, I a*n told, for lung disease ; but not so then. Poor, dear fellow, I sometimes fancy he might have lived if only he had had his heart's desire." "I would not let such a painful thought enter my head, if J. were you," said I hastily. " But I can't help it ! My mind has been running on poor "Lawrence all morning ; and, somehow, the grander the scenery gets, the more I keep thinking how he would have exulted in it. Do you remember those lines by Coleridge, written in the Valley of Charaouni ? He knew them. 'Tvvas the sight of yonder avalanches that reminded me. Well, I will try not to think of these things. Let us change the subject." Just at this moment the landlord of the chalet came out — a bright-eyed, voluble young mountaineer about five or six-and-twenty, with a sprig of Edelweiss in his hat. " Good day, meine Herren," he said, including all alike in his salute, but addressing himself especially to Wolfe and myself. ".Fine weather for travelling — fine weather for the grapes. These Herren are going on by the New Pass ? Acb, Herr Gott ! a grand work ! a wonderful work !—! — and all begun and completed in less than three years. These Herren see

it to-day for the first time? G-ood

They have probably been over the

TeteNoir? No! Over the Splugen? Good — good. If. these Herren have been over the Splugen they can form an idea of the New Pass. The New Pass is very like the Splugen. It has a gallery tunnelled in the solid ?ock, just like the gallery on the Via Mala, with this difference, that the gallery in the New Pass is much longer, and lighted by loop-holes at regular intervals. These Herren will, please to observe the view both looking up and down the pass, before entering tbe mouth of the tunnel ; there is not a finer view in all Switzerland."' "It must be a great advantage to the people hereabouts, haying so good a road carried frpm valley to valley," said I, smiling at- his enthusiasm. " Oh, it is a veiy fine thing for us, mein Herr," he replied. " And a fine thing for all this part of the Canton. It will bring visitors' — floods of visitors! By the way, these Herren must not omit to look out for the waterfall above the gallery. Holy St. Nicholas ! the way in which that waterfall has been arranged ! " " Arranged ! " echoed Wolfe, who was as much amused as myself. " Diavolo ! Do you arrange the waterfalls in your country 1 " j "It was the Herr Becker," said the landlord, unconscious of banter, "the eminent engineer who planned the New Pass. The waterfall, you see, meine Herren, would not be suffered to follow its old course down the face of the rock through which the gallery is tunnelled, or it would have flowed in at the loopholes and flooded the road. What, therefore, cUd the Ilerr Becker do ? " t •" Turned tfie course of .the fall,

5 and brought it down a hundred yards further on," said I, somewhat imss patiently. i ".Not so, mein Herr — not so ! The i Herr Becker attempts nothing s.o ex- , pensive. He permits the fall to keep '< its old coulior and come down its old way — but instead of letting it wash the ■ outside of the gallery, he pierces the rock in another direction — vertically — behind the tunnel ; constructs on artificial shoot or conduit in the heart of the rock ! and brings the fall out below the gallery, just where the cliff overhangs the valley. Now what do the English Herren say to that 1 " " That it must certainly be a clever piece of engineering," replied Wolfe. "And that, having rested long enough, we will push on and see it," added I, glad to cut short the thread of our host's native eloquence. Sowe paid our reckoning, took a last look at the view, and plunging b ick into the woods, went on our way refreshed. The path still continued to ascend, till we suddenly came upon a burst of daylight, and found ourselves on a magnificent high road some thirty feet in breadth, with the forest and the telegraph wires on the one hand and the precipice on the other. Massive granite posts at close intervals protected the edge of "the road, and the cantonniers were still at work here and there breaking and laying fresh stones and clearing debris. We did not need to be informed that this was the New Pass. Always ascending we continued now to follow the road, which at every turn commanded finer and finer views across the valley. Then by degrees the forest dwindled, and was at last left far below ; and the giddy precipices to onr left grew steeper ; and the mountain slopes above became more and more barren, till the last Alp-roses vanished, and there remained only a carpet of brown and tan moss scattered over here and there with great boulders — some freshly broke away from the heights above, others thickely coated with lichen, as if they might have been lying there for centuries. Wo seemed here to have reached the highest point of the New Pass, for our road continued at this barren, level for several miles. An immense panorama of peaks, snowfields, and glaciers lay outstreched be1 fore us to the left, with an unfathomable gulf of misty valley between. The hot air simmered in the sun. The heat and silence were intense. And now the grey rock began to crop out in larger masses close beside our path, encroaching nearer and nearer till at last the splintered cliffs towered straight above our heads, and the road became a mere broad shelf along the face of the precipice. Presently, on turning a sharp angle of rock, we saw "before us a vista of i*oad, cliff, and valley — the road now perceptibly on the decline, and vanishing about a mile ahead into the mouth of a small cavernous opening (no bigger, as it seemed from that distance, than a goodsized rabbit-hole) pierced through a huge projecting spur, or buttress, of the mountain. " Behold the famous gallery ! " said I. " Mine host was right — it is something like the Splugen, barring the much greater altitude of the road and the still greater width of the valley. But where is the waterfall ! " " Well, it's not much of a waterfall," said Wolfe. " I can just see it —a tiny thread of mist wavering down the cliff a long way on, beyond the mouth of the tunnel?" " Aye; I see it now — a sort of inferior Staubbach. Heavens! what power the sun has up here ! At what time did Kauffmann say we should get toSchwartzenfelden ? " " Not before seven, at the earliest — and now it is nearly four." • "Humph! three hours more; say three and a half. Well, that will be a pretty good day's pedestrianising, heat and all considered.." Here the conversation ended, and we plodded on again in silence. Meanwhile the sun blazed in the heavens, and the light, struck back from white rock and whiter road, was almost blinding. And still the hot air danced and simmered before us, and a windless stillness, as of death, lay upon all the scene. Suddenly, quite suddenly — as if he had started out of the rock — I saw a man coming towards us with rapid and eager gesticulations. He seemed to be waving us back ; but f .was so startled for the moment by the unexplained- way in which he made his appearance- that I scarcely took in the" meaning of his gestures. " How odd ! " I exclaimed coming to a halt. " How did he get there 1 " " How did who get there 1 " said Wolfe. " Why, that fellow yonder. Did you see where he came from ! " " What fellow, my dear boy ? I see no one but ourselves." And he stared vaguely round, while all the time the man between us and the gallery was waving his arm above his head and running on to meet us. " Good heavens ! Egerton," I said impatiently, " where are your eyes 1 Here — straight before vs — not a quarter of a mile off — making signs as hard as he oan, - Perhaps we had better wait till he comes up." My friend drew his race-glass from its. case, adjusted it carefully, and took a long, steady Jook down tire road.

Seeing him do this, the man stood still, but kept his light hand up all the same. "You see him now, surely?" said I. "No." "I turned and looked him in the face." 1 could not .believe my ears.

" Upon my honour, Frank" he said earnestly. " I see only the empty road, and the mouth of the tunnel beyond. Here, Kauffmann?"

Kaufftnann, who was standing close by, stepped up and touched his cap. " Look down the road," said Wolfe. The guide shaded his eyes with his hand, and looked. " What do you see?" "I see the entrance to the gallery, mein Herr."

And still the man stood there in the road — even came a step nearer! Was I mad?

"You still think you see some one yonder?" said Egerton, looking at me very seriously. "I know that I do." He handed me his race-glass.

" Look through thut," he said, "and tell me if you still see him."

" I see him more plainly than before."

" What his he like ?"

"Very soft — very slender — fair — quiet — young — not more, I should saj , than fifteen or sixteen — evidently an Englishman."

"How is he dressed ?"

" In a gray suit — his collar open, and his throat bare. Wears a Scotch cap witb a silver badge in it. He takes his cap off, and waves it ! — he has a whitish scar on his right temple. I can see the notions of his lips — he seems to say, 'Go back?' Look for yourself— you must see him ?"

I turned to give him the glass, but he pushed it away.

"No no," he said hoarsely. " It's of no use. Go on looking. * * * What more, for God's sake ?"

I looked again— the glass all but dropped from my hand.

'•'Gracious heavens'?" I exclaimed breathlessly, "he is gone 1 ?" "Gone?"

Aye gone. Gone as suddenly as he came — gone as though he had never been. I could not believe it. I rubbed my eyes. I rubbed the glass on my sleeve. I looked, and looked again: and still, though I looked, I doubted. '

At this moment, with a wild unearthly ci y> aru l a strange sound as of some heavy projectile cleaving the stagnant air, an eagle plunged past upon mighty wings, and swooped down in the valley.

"Ein adlier?" shouted the guide," flinging up his cap and running to the britik of the precipice. Wolf laid his hand upon his arm, and drew a deep breath.

" Legrice " he said very calmly, but with a white, awe-struck look in .his face, " you described my brother Lawrence — age, height, dress, everything; even to the Scotch cap he always wore, the silver badge my uncle Horace gave him on his birthday. He got that scar in a cricket match at Harrowi»ate."

"Your brother Lawrence?" I faltered.

" Why you should be the one permitted to see him seems strange," he went on speaking more to himself than to inb 1 ? *' Very strange 1 I wish * * * but there? perhaps I should not have believed my own eyes. I must believe yours."

" I wili never believe that my eyes saw your brother Lawrence," I said resolutely. " We must turn back, of course," he went on, taking no notice of my answer. " Look here, Kauffmann; can we get to Sch war tzenfelden to night by the old pass, if we turn back at once?"

"Turn back!" I interupted. "My dear Egerton, your are not serious 1 ?"

" I was never more serious iv my life," he said, gravely.

"If these Herren wish to take the old pass," said the astonished - guide, " we cannot possibty get to Schwartzenfelden before midnight. We have already come seven miles out of the way, and the old pass is twelve miles further round."

" Twelve and foxirteen are twentysix," said I.' "We cannot add twentysix miles to our original thirty. It is out of the question."

" These Herren can sleep at the chalet where we halted," suggested the guide.

" True— l had not thought of that," said Wolfe. "We can sleep at the chalet and go on as soon as it is day."

" Turn back, sleep at the chalet, go on in the morning, and lose full half a da-y, with one of the finest passes in Switzerland before us, and our jouruey twothirds done," "I cried. " The idea is^ too absurd."

" Nothing shall induce me to go on, in defiance of a warning from the dead," said Wolfe, hastily. "And nothing," I replied, "shall induce me to believe that we have received any such warning. I either saw that man or I laboured under some kind of optical illusion. But ghosts I do not believe in."

"As you please. You can go on if you prefer it, and take Kauffmasin witb you — I know my way back."

" Agreed — except as regards Kauffmann. Let him take his choice." Kauffmann, having the matter explained to him, elected at once to go back with Egerton Wolfe.

" If the Herr Englishman has been warned in a vision," he said, crossing himself . devoutly, "it is suicide to go on. Obey the blessed spirit, naetn Herr.'* But nothing aow would have in-

duced me to turn back, even if T had felt inclined to do so. .Agroefiig to meet next day at SchwartzenfVldcn, mj friend and I said good-bye. " God grant you may come to no harm, dear old fellow," said Wolfe, a* he turned awar.

"I don't feel like harm, I assure you," I replied, laughing. And so we parted. I stood still and watched them till they were out of sight. At the turn of the road they paused and looked back. "When Wolfe waved his hand for the last time, and finally disappeared, I could not repress a sudden thrill — he looked so like the figure of my illusion !

For that it was an illusion I did not doubt for a moment. Such phenomena, though -n,ot uncommon, are by no means unneard of. I had talked with some eminent physicians on this subject, and I remembered that each had spoken of cases within his own experience. L would never disbelieve in hallucination again. He that I made up my mind ; but as for ghosts — pshaw ! how could any man, above all such a man as Egerton Wolfe, believe in ghosts ?

Seasoning thus, and smiling to myself, I tightened the shoulder-straps of my knapsack, took a pull at my wineflask, and set off toward the tunnel.

And now, witb every step which I took, the mouth of the tunnel grow larger, and the depth of shade within it blacker and more mysterious. • I was by this time near enough to see that it was faced with brickwork, that it spanned the full width of the road, and that it was more than lofty enough for an old-fashioned, top-heavy diligence fo pass under it. The next moment, being within half a dozpn yards of it, I distinctly heard the cool murmur of the more distant waterfall, (now hidden by the great mountain spur through which the gallery was carried), and the next moment after that I had plunged into the tunnel. It was the transition from midday to midnight. The darkness was profound", and so intense the sudden thrill, thit for the first second it almost took m v breath away.

Tbe roof and sides of the gallery, and the road beneath my feet, were all hewn in the solid rock. A sharp, ar/owy gleam of light, shooting athwart the gloom about fifty yards ahead, marked the position of the first loophole. A second, a third, a fourth, aa many perhaps as eight or ten, gleamed faintly in the distance. The tiny bine speck which showed where the gallery opened out again upon the day looked at least a mile away. The path under foot was wet and slippery ; and as I went on, and my eyes became accustomed to the darkness, I saw that every part of the tunnel was streaming with moisture.

I pushed on rapidly. The first and second loop-holes were soon left behind, but at the third I paused for a moment to breathe the outer air. Then for the first time I observed that every rut in the road beneath my feet waa filled with running water.

I hurried on faster and faster. I shivered. I felt the cold seizing me. The arched entrance through" which I bad just passed had dwindled already to a shining patch no bigger than my hand, while the tiny blue speck on ahead seemed far off as ever. Meanwhile the tunnel was dripping like a showerbath.

All at once my attention was arrested by a sound — a strange, indescribable sound — heavy, muffled, as of mighty forces at w »rk in the heart of the mountain. I stood still — I held my breath — I fancied I felt tbe solid rock vibrate beneath my feet. Then it flashed upon me that I now must be approaching the part of the gallery behind which the waterfall is conducted, and that what I heard was the muffled roar of its descent. At the same moment, chancing to look down at my feet, I saw that the road was an inch deep iv water running wall to wall.

Now, lawyer as I am, and ignorant of the first principles of civil engineering, I felt sure that this muchpraised Becker should at least have made his tunnel watertight. That it leaked somewhare wa? plain, and that it should be suffered to go on leaking, to the discomfort of travellers, was simply intolerable. An inch of water, for instance, was more than — an inch did I say? G-racious heavens ! since the moment I looked it had risen to three — it was closing over my boots — it was becoming a rushing torrent !

In that instant a great horror fell upon me — the horror of darkness and sudden death. I turned, flung away my alpenstock, and fled for my life. Fled blindly, breathlessly, wildly, witb the horrible grinding sound of the imprisoned waterfall in my ears and the | gathering torrent at my heels. Never while I live shall I forgot the agony ©f those next few seconds — the icy numbness seizing on my limbs — the sudden, frightful sense of impeded respiration — the water rising, eddying, clamouring, pursuing me, passing me, — the swirl of it, as it flashed past each loop-hole in succession — the rush with which (as I strained on to the mouth of the gallery, now not a dozen yards distant) it leaped out into the sunlight like a living thing, and dashed to the edge of the precipice ! At that supreme instant, just as I darted out through the echoing arch and staggered a few paces up the road, a deafening repost, crackling, huriried, tremendous, like the explosioir

j i if a mine, rent the air and raised a ; hundred ci-hr-es. It was followed by a | moment of strange and terrible suspense. Then with a drep find sulhn : roar, audible above all the rolling thunders of the mountains round, a mighty wave smooth and solid, glassy, like an Atlantic wave on an English Western coast, came gleaming up the mouth of the tunnel, paused, as it were, upon the threshold, reared its majestic crest, curved, flooded the road for yards be- , rock like a limpet, rushing back again, , yond the spot where I was clinging to the us the wave rushes down the beach, hurled itself over the cliff, and vanished I in a cloud of mist.

After this the imprisoned flood came pouring out tumultously for several minutes, bringing out with it fragments of rock and masonry, and filling the road with debris ; but even this disturbance presently subsided, and almost as soon as the last echoes of tbe explosion had died away the liberated waters were rippling pleasantly along their new bed, sparkling out iuto the sunshine as they emerged from the gallery, and gliding iuto a smooth, eontinous stream over the brink of the precipice, thence to fall into *multitudinuous wavy folds and wreaths of prismatic mists into the valley two thousand feet below.

For myself, drenched to the skin as I was, I could do nothing but turn back and follow meekly in the track of Egerton Wolfe and Peiter Kauffmann. How I did so, dripping and weary, and minus my alpenstock ;. how I arrived at the chalet about sunset, shivering and hungry, just in time to claim my share of a capital omelette Jaud a dish of mountain trout; how the Swiss Press rang with nry escape for at least nine days after the event; how the Ilerr Becker was liberally censured for his defective engineering; and hovv Egerton Wolfe believes to this day that his brother Lawrence came back from the deud to nave us from utter destruction, are matters upon which it were needless to dwell in these pages. Enough that I narrowly escaped with my life, and thaf, had we gone on, as we doubtless should have gone on bet for the del&y consequent upon my illusion, we should most probably have been in the heart of the tunnel at the time of the explosion, and not one left to tell the tale.

Nevertheless, my dear friends, I do not believe, and I have made up my mind not to believe — in ghosts. B. Edwards.