The tubs for transporting water are of
the same sort. There is no level ground, but every foot is
cultivated. High up on the sides of the precipices, where it seems
impossible for a goat to climb, are vineyards and houses, and even
villages, hung on slopes, nearly up to the clouds, and with no
visible way of communication with the rest of the world.
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.
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