Goeschenen, the village at the mouth of
the tunnel, is all railway sidings and haphazard villas for tourists,
post cards, and touts and weedy carriages; disorder and sterile chaos,
high up. How should any one stay there!
I went on up the pass itself. There were various parties of visitors on
the roads and tracks, people from towns incongruously walking and
driving. It was drawing on to evening. I climbed slowly, between the
great cleft in the rock where are the big iron gates, through which the
road winds, winds half-way down the narrow gulley of solid, living rock,
the very throat of the path, where hangs a tablet in memory of many
Russians killed.
Emerging through the dark rocky throat of the pass I came to the upper
world, the level upper world. It was evening, livid, cold. On either
side spread the sort of moorland of the wide pass-head. I drew near
along the high-road, to Andermatt.
Everywhere were soldiers moving about the livid, desolate waste of this
upper world. I passed the barracks and the first villas for visitors.
Darkness was coming on; the straggling, inconclusive street of Andermatt
looked as if it were some accident--houses, hotels, barracks,
lodging-places tumbled at random as the caravan of civilization crossed
this high, cold, arid bridge of the European world.
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