GOING OVER THE OLD ROADS OF EUROPE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17862, 2 June 1926, Page 12

GOING OVER THE OLD ROADS OF EUROPE.

HEROIC PAST LIGHTS. Turning over a book of engravings, I saw late!}-, for the first, time. Turner's beautiful picture of “Hannibal Crossing the Alps,” and straightway felt that here was an exposition of some of those flitting imaginations and haunting fancies that have often kept me silent and happy upon walks on the old mountain roads of Europe. For here was given back to me just that peculiar imaginative atmosphere that had seemed to me connected with the lonely, topmost windings of the great roads over the Pennine Alps—roads that, as Ruskin says, give one “an element of sensation all day long” by their goings on and gettings about . . under avalanches of stones . . . and overhangings of precipices . - - driven to all manner of makeshifts and coils to this side and the other.” Turner, whose picture is probably inspired by memories of many great rocky defiles and especially of his favourite St Gothard, seems to have shared my feelings of wonder at ever having arrived so high up and seen such torrents and precipices, such strewn boulders, and such wondrous skies, and then, with his genius for expression, to have known exactly how best to convey his . dream-vision to our thought. A vast army (tiny in scale), massed in a ravine beneath the great rocks of a high alpine valley, moves courageously and slowly forward, great winds blow icily, a stormy sky lowers overhead, and blown snow and sleet drives down in slant showers, but the heroic bands move forward toward the brighter heavens. Whether it was the artist’s intention or no, the picture conveys a grand impression of humanity battling against gigantic difficulties and passing on to victory; a thought that has a peculiar appropriateness to the scene depicted. For so often on the old high passes of Europe one comes to a solemn passage between the topmost mountain pinnacles, and looking back upon the wild crags and hillside strewn with rocky debris remembers that over this very track, through the stream and up the steep, stony mountainside, came the advance guard of civilisation, toiling, climbing, and facing all odds, and carrying with them so much that we now hold precious. I think that scholars are still rather undecided as to the exact route followed by Hannibal, but to the imagination it is all one; to the poet and painter all the high alpine roads are very similar. As to the ordinary traveller, were he set down high up on the Brenner or the Simplon or great St Bernard, I think he would be some little time in discovering which pass he was. traversing.

The heroic past lights up all these oid highroads of Europe, and it is a fine experience to climb up the sombre valleys of the northern slopes of the Swiss Alps, remembering what other travellers walked this way before us. Some, like Master Geoffrey Chaucer, bound for Florence and Genoa, riding, Resting, and laughing, and well equipped. Others, like Martin Luther and his brother monk, on foot, full of grave philosophic arguments and long-cher-ished dreams of what was to be seen and learned in the Rome of their visions.

Arduous and difficult was the road in earlier days. The sky, the air, and the landscape were practically the same as to-day except for denser forests, but no,one rejoiced in them. No doubt the stern climbing, the sharp outlook for brigands who might require ransoms, and all the obstacles of broken tracks and wrecked bridges kept the pilgrims’ attention engaged. The great roads over the Pennine and Lepontine Alps were but rude tracks for many a hundred years. But even before the first Roman armies climbed up out of the valleys, some well-known paths were used. Over the great Theodule (which is still a track), the peasant wanderer had adventured, and, long long before modern climbers rediscovered the path between Chamonix and Courmaveur, there was a tradition afloat that men had once passed over a mountain path from Geneva to Turin, and done the journey in forty-eight hours. Perhaps the legend of Brennus is the very first record we have of mountaineering. Today the smooth auto glides quickly up the bends of the good road that crosses the wilds he traversed, but the woods and the rocky crests and distant pinnacles of snow are not changed. All is as Brennus saw it, in the days before “any history that is written in any book”; Brennus, who lit his watch fires amidst the great pines, mounted to the snow-flecked crags, scaled the walls of frost and lifted towers, and arrived among those solemn mountain spires that soar and pierce the heavens. All of which may be read in Dough tv’s great epic story, “The Dawn in Brit-

Much scholarship has been bestowed upon the old Roman roads of Europe—indeed, they have been traced from milestone to milestone, from camp to camp, from old Brigantium and Lousanna over classic Monte Jovem and down to sunny Aosta (still famous for its Roman remains), and so to Milan, the old Mediolanum, and Rome wards. Reading books dealing with the old route one realises a little, the patience and industry and determination that were necessarw to carry comforts and refinements to the far western world, the packing and unpacking of the wonderful posts that brought food and clothes, and even flower seeds, from Rome to Gaul and Britain.

The great St Bernard, where I had a happy journey once on foot, like a true pilgrim, was the popular road to Rome in the Middle Ages. This is the road that John de Bremble, of Canterbury, took in 1188, and, resting at the Hospice, on its summit, wrote home to his friend Geoffrey an account of his feelings from this world of ice and snow' where the heights seemed to him to come so near to the heavens. But most interesting of all travellers over this mountain pathway is that unknown Saxon who carried with him a most precious book—a manuscript of Saxon poetry, containing the history of St Andrew, the famous story of the Rood and more epic verse, all written in the dialect of Alfred—the very book known to modern students as the Codex VerceJlensis. No one will ever know this traveller s story. Did he own the book? Or was he carrying it as a present to someone else ? Where did he come from and where was he going? All we can surmise is that he stopped ♦o rest at the monastery of Vercelli, Which was a main station on the road, «nd there was parted from his treasure, ■which remained safe and sound in this remote spot for hundreds of 3*ears; indeed, until a scholar discovered it there in 1832. and restored it to the world of letters. Of the Simplon I can say nothing, since Wordsworth has said all there is to say perfectly.