In two hours' time we are at Stalden, a village perched upon a rocky
promontory, at the junction of the valleys of the Saas and the Visp,
with a church and white tower conspicuous from afar. We climb
up to the terrace in front of it, on our way into the town. A
seedy-looking priest is pacing up and down, taking the fresh breeze,
his broad-brimmed, shabby hat held down upon the wall by a big stone.
His clothes are worn threadbare; and he looks as thin and poor as a
Methodist minister in a stony town at home, on three hundred a year.
He politely returns our salutation, and we walk on. Nearly all the
priests in this region look wretchedly poor,--as poor as the people.
Through crooked, narrow streets, with houses overhanging and thrusting
out corners and gables, houses with stables below, and quaint carvings
and odd little windows above, the panes of glass hexagons, so that the
windows looked like sections of honey-comb,--we found our way to the
inn, a many-storied chalet, with stairs on the outside, stone floors
in the upper passages, and no end of queer rooms; built right in the
midst of other houses as odd, decorated with German-text carving, from
the windows of which the occupants could look in upon us, if they had
cared to do so; but they did not. They seem little interested in
anything; and no wonder, with their hard fight with Nature. Below is a
wine-shop, with a little side booth, in which some German travelers
sit drinking their wine, and sputtering away in harsh gutturals. The
inn is very neat inside, and we are well served. Stalden is high; but
away above it on the opposite side is a village on the steep slope,
with a slender white spire that rivals some of the snowy needles.
Stalden is high, but the hill on which it stands is rich in grass. The
secret of the fertile meadows is the most thorough irrigation. Water
is carried along the banks from the river, and distributed by numerous
sluiceways below; and above, the little mountain streams are brought