“Although Leysin is a resort for invalids for whom all violent exercise is forbidden, yet it should not be forgotten that out of these 4000 winter residents there are at least 1000 onetime patients who have been completely cured, and who return year after year to the slopes that gave them back their health. This explains a seeming paradox—the immense enthusiasm for winter sport and the number of sensational victories that stand to the credit of Leysin’s sportsmen. By reason of its altitude (1450 metres) and its unique position sheltered from the winds, Leysin is assured of good snow everywhere, excellent ‘runs’, and smooth ice on its rinks. All sports are popular—Bobsleighing, Tobogganing, Ski-ing, Skating, Hockey, Clay-pigeon Shooting, and Rifle Shooting; and all is directed by the Sporting Club de Leysin, one of the most important of its kind in Switzerland. The club was formed ten years ago (1903), at an epoch when engineered runs were unknown and sportsmen and sportswomen were content with the homely, modest luge. Davos had only begun to know the bobsleigh in 1902, and Leysin, not wishing to be behindhand, joined two luges together with a board, and thus was À la mode. The success of this contrivance, rushing down the slopes, spreading consternation and terror among oldfashioned lugeurs, and beating all records for speed, was immediate and enormous. The example of this pioneer bob was quickly followed, and then it was that the Sporting Club offered its first Challenge Cup, and soon began to carry off cups from rival centres. Its list of victories is indeed significant of its members’ prowess. For instance, at Davos, in 1904, the Coupe de France was won by the bob La France (Captain Bonford), and the same year the same Leysin captain won the championship of Vaud and also the championship of the Vaudois Alps. This latter championship was won again a few years later by the bob Russie (M. Coussis). In 1910 M. Renaud de la FregeoliÈre, on his bob Jeanne d’Arc, carried off the Coupe du PrÉsident de la RÉpublique, creating a record that has not yet been beaten; and the same bob won the Coupe du Mont Blanc at Chamonix. In 1913, with M. Coussis at the steering wheel and M. Ewald at the brake, the bob Russie won the Challenge Cup of the Association Suisse Romande des Clubs de Bobsleigh against fifty competitors. Leysin, indeed, is in the front rank of bobsleigh racing, and the club actually offers, besides innumerable lesser prizes, six Challenge Cups for this one form of sport: The Coupe de Leysin, Coupe Hansmann, Coupe Handicap Garlakass, Coupe du Sporting Club de Leysin, Coupe RÉgionale, and Coupe de l’Association Suisse Romande.

“But if bobsleighing takes the lead at Leysin, the other sports are not by any means neglected. The hockey team is a strong one, and in 1910-11 Leysin was the scene of the first round in the tournament for the Swiss National Championship, and will be the scene of the second round in the tournament for 1913-4. The Captain of the Swiss National team, M. Bernard Bossi, was for two years President of the S. C. L., and no fewer than three Leysin players were in the International Hockey Tournament at Chamonix in 1913. Ski-ing is not, perhaps, in such high favour as at Villars and Morgins, yet it has no lack of devotees, for whom there are gymkhanas as well as two running competitions carrying two Challenge Cups. There are, too, gymkhanas and carnivals for skaters, and in the long list of prizes in this section are a Challenge Cup for racing and another for figure skating. Nor is the modest lugeur forgotten in these contests; and, in this regard, one day is set apart especially for the villagers.[16] And over and above all this activity are the shooting matches, pigeon shooting, or ball-trap being particularly popular here in winter, attracting some of the finest shots in Switzerland. Rifle shooting, also, is admirably installed, and meets with keen support, the winners in the numerous competitions receiving gold, silver, and bronze medals.

“To say that apart from the Challenge Cups already mentioned, there are seventy other cups to be won, is to say that Leysin flourishes remarkably in the realm of winter pastimes.

“L. A. EMERY

“President of the S. C. L.”

Looking across the Rhone valley to the Dent du Midi, a rift in the hills can be seen through the blue haze: that is the Val d’Illiez, whither we must now turn our steps in order to gain Morgins and ChampÉry, tucked cosily away almost upon the frontier of Savoy. As we leave the sunny slopes of Leysin to take train for Aigle, there comes a striking demonstration of the healthful beneficence of snow when treated sanely. In the hot sunshine, upon the glistening snowfield, little children, boys and girls, wearing nothing but bathing-drawers, hat, and snowshoes, are ski-ing bravely, or are snowballing each other, boisterously happy in the stinging warmth of it all. They are the tiny patients of a doctor who is proving in miraculous fashion the health-giving power in Switzerland of what in England gives us the shivers and compels us to put on extra clothing. It is distinctly reminiscent of what snow can do for chilblains and frostbites—the glow of life that it imparts; but I must not be supposed to be advocating it as a general and pleasurable practice to be followed by all and sundry in the Alps in winter.

Once back at Aigle, we must take the little local railway that crosses the Rhone and lands us at the quiet market town of Monthey, in Valais, and at the foot of the Dent du Midi, whence an electric mountain railway will take us to ChampÉry. The fault about mountain railways connected with the railways of the plain is that you are apt to go right through to your destination, thus missing much that is of interest en route. This applies to Monthey; for all around this cigar-manufacturing bourg there is much that really repays a halt. So halt we will.

Passing through the marketplace and crossing the old covered wooden bridge spanning the ViÈze—a swift little river hurrying to join the Rhone, and whose source is in the mountains beyond ChampÉry—and following the road which rises straight in front of us across steep chestnut-shaded slopes, we come to the delightful hamlet of ChoËx, the elegant white steeple of whose small white church is so prominent a landmark from Bex. In spring and early summer this quiet retreat, perched high among the rolling woods at the base of the Dent du Midi, and with its broad view across the Rhone valley to Villars, Leysin, the Tour d’AÏ, and the Diablerets, is very charming. There is here, too, a wonderful wealth of flowers beneath the chestnut trees and in the woods and fields; indeed the neighbourhood of Monthey is quite as interesting in this respect as is the neighbourhood of Bex, and it can produce certain gems that are strangers on the other side of the valley. Not far from the road at Fin du Bruit an ancient Druid’s altar has been discovered: great formidable rocks placed mysteriously as if on purpose, with an underground cavern beneath, containing, among other prehistoric objects, a stone coffin with a skeleton inside. Also in this subterranean chamber may be seen a crack that extends upwards in the rock to beneath the altar-rock above-ground, and some years ago I was told by the custodian that it was through this crack that the priests shouted up the messages of the gods to the assembled and trembling people. This may have been so, for it only follows the lines of the old Egyptian oracles; but unfortunately the tendency is to fake, or to supplement by the aid of plausible imagination, all that is authentic in such remains as these, particularly when a charge is made for viewing them. At any rate I believe I am right in saying that the stone-coffined skeleton, although genuinely prehistoric, was not discovered where it now lies, but in the quarries on the other side of Monthey. However, it is possible that the owner of this skeleton in life was one who worshipped in fear and trembling at this sacrificial altar; and it is a fascinating process to picture on these quiet, flowered slopes the quaking half-clad crowd, the human victim prone upon the great rock-slab, the white-bearded, white-robed priest with fanatic eye and gleaming knife upturned to the heavens—and all the awful ritual of those ancient heathen ceremonies.

And now we must push on to