August 26 Monday – Sam and Joe took a train to Locchi-Suste (Visp). They met John Dawson and wife, an English family going their way. From Visp the two hiked “6 hours through mud & rain” the ten miles to St. Nicklaus, Switzerland [MTNJ 2: 148]. Rodney: “Ensconsed in a new hotel, they changed into dry clothes and revived with a good dinner” [107].
Sam wrote from St. Nicklaus to Livy. He included a line drawing of “the great mountain profile,” and mentioned they’d made “some nice English friends, [unnamed, but may have been the Rev. Robert Eden (1804-1886) mentioned in the inscription dated Sept. 1–4; or the John Dawson family] and shall see them at Zermat tomorrow.”
“Livy darling, we came through a-whooping, to-day, 6 hours tramp up steep hills & down steep hills, in mud & water shoe-deep, & in a steady pouring rain which never moderated a moment. I was as chipper & fresh as a lark all the way & arrived without the slightest sense of fatigue” [MTLE 3: 82].
Sam did not dump his dismal opinions about the area on Livy, but fully noted the “alleys run liquid dung,” the villages, “the shackliest & vilest we have seen anywhere,” and the roads and bridges that “must have made themselves” [MTNJ 2: 148-9].