It was a most extraordinary Bacchic procession--a pomp which, though
undreamed of on the banks of the Ilissus, proclaimed the deity of
Dionysos in authentic fashion. Struggling horses, grappling at the
ice-bound floor with sharp-spiked shoes; huge, hoarse drivers, some
clad in sheepskins from Italian valleys, some brown as bears in rough
Graubünden homespun; casks, dropping their spilth of red wine on the
snow; greetings, embracings; patois of Bergamo, Romansch, and German
roaring around the low-browed vaults and tingling ice pillars;
pourings forth of libations of the new strong Valtelline on breasts
and beards;--the whole made up a scene of stalwart jollity and
manful labour such as I have nowhere else in such wild circumstances
witnessed. Many Davosers were there, the men of Andreas Gredig, Valär,
and so forth; and all of these, on greeting Christian, forced us to
drain a _Schluck_ from their unmanageable cruses. Then on they
went, crying, creaking, struggling, straining through the corridor,
which echoed deafeningly, the gleaming crystals of those hard Italian
mountains in their winter raiment building a background of still
beauty to the savage Bacchanalian riot of the team.

How little the visitors who drink Valtelline wine at S. Moritz or
Davos reflect by what strange ways it reaches them. A sledge can
scarcely be laden with more than one cask of 300 litres on the ascent;
and this cask, according to the state of the road, has many times to
be shifted from wheels to runners and back again before the journey
is accomplished. One carter will take charge of two horses, and
consequently of two sledges and two casks, driving them both by voice
and gesture rather than by rein. When they leave the Valtelline, the
carters endeavour, as far as possible, to take the pass in gangs, lest
bad weather or an accident upon the road should overtake them singly.
At night they hardly rest three hours, and rarely think of sleeping,