Note 33 — VALDUNA

Since then, the same reason has been given me by two other natives, both of whom are in a position to know. I call it “interesting,” because observations of a recent change of climate—and always in the direction of moisture—have been recorded in other parts of Europe. In the Shetland Islands, for instance, they will point out to you stretches of moor and heather once covered with grain which, owing to increased dampness, could no longer be got to mature. The same phenomenon has struck me also, but, on thinking it over, I attributed it to my own imagination; hot summers, I said to myself, and clear snowy winters, are far more likely to impress a child than rainy weather; hence we conclude rashly that in the days of our youth the climate was more continental. Yet how explain a state of affairs like this: vines were cultivated here by the Romans (even during the Stone Age, among the pile-dwellers on Lake Constance) and, assiduously, as early as the eleventh century; in 1615, again, there were no less than one hundred vineyards at Bludesch alone. The site of all of them is now nothing but grassy slopes. Can hay be more remunerative than wine? If not, there is perhaps something to be said for the change-of-climate theory. They seem to have been gay people, by the way, in those bibulous days. Many are the complaints of illicit dancing and outrageous swearing, of “Versoffenheit und Tabakfressen”—drunkenness and tobacco-chewing.