Vineyards and maize, that's pleasant for sore eyes.—Clough.
THE APRICA PASS—EDOLO—VAL CAMONICA—CEDEGOLO—VAL SAVIORE—LAGO D'ARNO—MONTE CASTELLO—VAL DI FUM—VAL DAONE—LAGO DI LEDRO—RIVA—THE GORGES OF THE SARCA—VAL RENDENA—THE PRA FIORI—VAL D'ALGONE—STENICO—THE HIGH ROAD TO TRENT.
Our acquaintances might, I sometimes fancy, be roughly divided into two classes. There are some who find sympathy in inanimate nature by itself; there are many to whom the universe speaks only through the person of their fellow creatures.
With the latter, human interests and emotions are always in the front, and the most glorious landscape or the most thrilling sunset makes only a background to the particular mites in whom they are for the moment interested. Nature is just thought worthy to play a humble accompaniment to the piece—to act the part of the two or three fiddlers who are left in the orchestra to give forth soft music when the heroine dreams, or a triumphant squeak at the approach of the hero. Such dispositions, and they are often those of most strength or genius, colour nature out of their own consciousness rather than accept impressions from without.
There is much to be said at the present day for this mood. The long line of evolution so slightly alluded to in the Book of Genesis between the mud and the man has been nearly made out. Why should we waste more time over the lower developments of matter than is necessary to ascertain our own family history? The human intelligence, philosophers tell us, is the crowning flower of the universe. Let us then no longer worship stocks and stones, or invisible and inconceivable abstractions, but reserve all our attention for the highest thing we know, and concentrate ourselves on our fellow creatures. Thus perhaps we shall best urge on that true golden age, when mankind, grown less material, will burn with a purer jet of intellect, when Mr. Wallace will talk with spirits who can talk sense and Mr. Galton and artificial selection will have replaced Cupid with his random darts.
Yet we can never wholly separate ourselves from the system of which we form a part. 'Homo sum nihil humani' requires such extension as will include the universe. Positivist congregations are, I believe, in the habit of expressing their grateful acknowledgments to interplanetary space. Even advanced thinkers therefore may pardon a sentiment for such much nearer relations as the crystalline rocks.
Those, however, who deliberately prefer at all times the study of human emotion to the inarticulate voice of nature must not—unless indeed they are prepared to live, as few travellers can, amongst the people of the country—come to the Lombard Alps. Their field of observation is on the terrace at St. Moritz or on the summit of Piz Languard; and they will do well to picnic in company amongst Swiss pines rather than to wander alone under Italian beeches.
The road which links the Adamello country to the Stelvio highway, and through it to the Bernina Pass and Upper Engadine, leaves the Val Tellina midway between Tirano and Sondrio, and only a few hours' drive from Le Prese. For many miles it climbs in one enormous zigzag through the chestnut forests, until from the last brow overlooking the Val Tellina it gains a view which, of its kind, has few rivals. I have seen it twice under very different circumstances.
First in early morning, half-an-hour after a June sunrise, the air ringing with the song of birds and bells, the high crest of the Disgrazia golden in light, the long shadows of the Bergamasque mountains falling across their lower slopes, the white villages caught here and there by sunbeams, the broad valley throwing off a light cover of soft mist. Beneath us Italy, around the Alps; and when these two meet lovingly, what can nature do more?
Again on a late autumn afternoon, in dumb sultry heat, the sunlight veiled for the most part in yellow mists, but breaking forth from time to time with vivid force, and answered by lightning from the thick impenetrable pall lying over the Disgrazia, and the masses of storm-cloud gathering on the lower ranges. The valley silent and mournful, all peace and harmony gone, the mountains glaring savagely from their obscurity, as if their wild nature had broken loose from the shrinking loveliness at its feet, and was preparing for it outrage and ruin.
From the inn known as 'The Belvedere' it is still half-an-hour's ascent to the smooth meadows which form the watershed between the Val Camonica and the Val Tellina, the well-named Aprica Pass.
The descent towards Edolo lies through the green and fertile Val Corteno. As the capital of the upper Val Camonica is approached lofty snow-capped crags tower opposite. These are not part of the main mass of the Adamello, but belong to the outlying group of Monte Aviolo.
Edolo lies on either side of a strong green torrent, fed by the eternal snows, which seems a river compared to the slender streams of the Bergamasque valleys. Across the bridge on a high platform stand a large white church and campanile, backed by rich foliage and a hillside, steep yet fertile, which rises straight into the clouds. The little mountain-town is mediæval and Italian in character. The streets are narrow and shady; old coats-of-arms are carved on the walls, queer-headed monsters glower between the windows, arched loggias run round the interior courtyards. The place tells you it has a history, and one wonders for a moment what that history was. We know that German emperors came this way through the mountains, that Barbarossa confirmed the liberties of Val Camonica, and that Maximilian once halted within these walls. Further details must be sought in the works of local historians and in the libraries of Bergamo or Brescia.
Edolo has long been notorious for bad inns. Lately, however, the 'Leone d'Oro,' the house in the centre of the town, has come into the hands of a most well-meaning proprietor, who provides very fair food and lodging at reasonable prices. Unfortunately nothing seems to get rid of the extraordinarily pungent flavour of stables which has for years pervaded the premises. I can only compare it to that of an underground stall in Armenia, in which it was once my ill-fortune to spend the night. Such a smell convinces one that at least there can be no difficulty as to means of conveyance. Strangers are doubly annoyed when they discover that they are in one of the few towns in the Alps where it is often impossible at short notice to get horses or a carriage. If animals even cannot endure the atmosphere, it is surely high time to advertise 'Wanted a Hercules.'
On my last visit the demand for a carriage and pair was triumphantly met by the production of a diligence that had retired on account of old age and failing powers from public service, but was still ready to do a job for friends. Although built to contain some fifteen persons, it was so ingeniously arranged that, except from the box-seats, nothing could possibly be seen except the horses' tails and a few yards of highroad. We were compelled to cluster round the driver like a bunch of schoolboys, leaving the body of our machine to lumber along empty in the rear.
To drive down Val Camonica on a fresh summer's morning before the sunlight has lost its first grace and glitter, when, without a breath of wind, every particle in earth and air, and even our own dull frames, seem to vibrate with the joy of existence, is to have one of the most delicious sensations imaginable. The scenery rivals and equals that of the Val d'Aosta near Villeneuve. The valley curves gracefully, the hillsides are cut by ravines or open out into great bays rich with woods. Every bush stands clearly defined in the translucent air, every leaf reflects back from a lustrous surface, unclogged by damp and smuts, the welcome sunbeams with which the whole atmosphere is in a dance. Lower down the slopes sweep out in folds of chestnut forest. High overhead a company of granitic peaks stand up stiff and straight in their icy armour against an Italian sky.
Below the opening of Val di Malga there is a long straight reach of road; then Val Paisco, with a path leading to Val di Scalve, is passed on the right and a bridge crossed. Amidst broken ground and closing hillsides we approached Cedegolo, a considerable village, built between two torrents and under sheltering rocks, in a sunny romantic situation. As we drove up the street a quack doctor, taking advantage of the assembly drawn down to Sunday high mass, was haranguing a crowd of bright-kerchiefed girls and bronzed peasants from the hill villages. Women from the lower valley were offering for sale grapes, figs and peaches of the second crop, the latter red as roses and hard as bullets.
The inn here has been visited and commended by several travellers as clean and comfortable. Such praise it fully merits, but on other grounds we had much reason to complain of the Cedegolans.
The habit of asking a very great deal more than you expect to get, common in foreign, and particularly in Italian shops, is perhaps as often an amusement as a vexation. The practice is most likely a survival from the old system of barter, which must have necessarily been incompatible with fixed prices. It will always be routed when time becomes of more value to the purchaser than a possible diminution in price. Heavy denunciations of its immorality sound to me rather odd when they come from the mouths of those who themselves adopt in large affairs the very same practice they condemn in small. Why it should be dishonest to ask more than you will take for a ring or a piece of lace, but perfectly right and fair to do the same for a house or estate is a difficult question. The answer must be sought from our worthy countryman who discourses on the rascality of the Jew with whom he haggled six months for a cameo, and if he wants to get rid of a farm is ready to fight for the hundreds sterling as hardly as ever shopkeeper for the francs.
But the inconvenience of a system of bargain becomes, it must be allowed, intolerable, when it is adopted by innkeepers. Their charges differ from others in not being usually a subject of previous arrangement. From the beginning the relation is a friendly one; there is, or ought to be, a tacit understanding between host and guest that no undue advantage will be taken. An extortionate bill is felt by the traveller as a breach of good faith, and he resents it accordingly. Of course it is always open to him to settle the price of everything before he takes it. But fortunately this precaution is seldom necessary, and it is much too tiresome to be adopted generally on the chance.
However, I must, I fear, recommend this last resource to those who visit Cedegolo, or the more western Bergamasque valleys. If they do not adopt it they will often have to choose between paying five francs for a bed or having their parting delayed and embittered by a discussion, which, whatever its result weak concession or successful protest, leaves behind it nothing but unpleasant recollections.
In this respect the unfrequented German Alps are happier resorts for the wanderer. One could wish that these Italians had a little less vigour of imagination, and did not see in every foreigner a mine of unlimited wealth. If the story of the golden-egg-laying goose exists in their language, the nearest branch of the National Alpine Club would do well to distribute it as a tract throughout Cedegolo, and in one or two other villages which I should be happy to indicate.
Val Saviore, the valley which joins Val Camonica at Cedegolo, is a deep, short trough running west and east. The hillsides on the left bank of its stream are steep and uninhabited. High upon them a white spot is conspicuous against the green. It is an ice-cave, where the snow never melts from year's end to year's end. The opposite sunward-facing slopes are more gentle, and the principal villages lie high up on the mountain side. Behind them two torrents issue out of deep recesses, the Val di Salarno and Val d'Adame, the heads of which are closed by branches of the great Adamello ice-field.[37]
A short zigzag amongst the boles and roots of an old chestnut forest brought us to the level of the straight trench-like valley, from which no view is gained of the neighbouring snows. But the scenery had scarcely time to grow monotonous before we reached Fresine, a smutty charcoal-burners' hamlet on the banks of the Salarno torrent, and at the foot of the northern hillside.
A little further are the few houses of Isola, so called from their peninsular position between the torrent issuing from Val d'Adame and the smaller stream from Lago d'Arno. The hillside to be climbed before we could see this lake, shown on maps as one of the largest of high Alpine tarns, looked very long, steep and warm, and it proved considerably longer, steeper and warmer than it looked. It is one of the greatest climbs of its kind in the Alps. The Adamello valleys abound in steep steps or 'scalas,' but this surpasses all the others, near or far. From Isola to the water's edge the barometer showed a difference of level of over 4,000 feet. For two-thirds of the ascent the gradient and character of the path are the same as those of a turret staircase, and the only level places are old charcoal-burners' platforms. For the rest of the way the track, after having climbed the cliff-faces which enclose the lower falls, penetrates the mountain side by a cleft, through which the stream descends in a succession of cascades and rapids. Except for its ambition to do too many feet in the hour, the path could not be pleasanter. It winds through a shifting and picturesque foreground of wood, crag and water, behind which the far-off peaks of the Zupo, Bella Vista and Palu shine like snowy pavilions spread out against the evening sun.
It might be worth a geologist's or physical geographer's while to follow this track. On the vexed question of the share of work done by glaciers in excavating valleys and lake-basins I do not presume to offer an opinion. But I think a careful examination of the Adamello group could scarcely fail to repay the trouble and add some new materials for the discussion. In the numerous lakes scattered amongst the upper branches of Val Camonica the followers of Professor Ramsay may find support for their views. The believers in the potent action of glaciers in the excavation of valleys will see in the Val di Fum one of the few valleys in the Alps which answer to the picture fancy draws of what a nice-dug valley should be like. On the other hand they would be called on to explain how the majority of glaciers came to act in a manner so unlike planes, and left the Val di Genova, and nearly every other valley of the group, a mere flight of stairs. If the bed of the Lago d'Arno was once occupied by ice it must have presented an appearance not unlike the lowest plain of the Mandron Glacier, with a tongue curling over towards Val Saviore.
A warm glow still rested on the granite ridges and glaciers, but in the hollow all was already blue and grey, when the level of Lago d'Arno at last opened before our eyes. A long, still sheet of dark water wound away out of sight between bare hillsides, broken only here and there by a solitary pine. There was no sound but the gentle lapping of the waves or the continual murmur of a distant waterfall. The air seemed fraught with a solemn peacefulness, the strange mere to be a living thing asleep among the dead mountains. It was a scene to recall all old legends of enchanted pools, and a spectre bark or an arm 'robed in white samite' would in the falling gloom have seemed perfectly natural and in keeping.
The character of the landscape was in no respect Italian. It was scarcely Swiss, but rather, if I may judge of the unseen from painters, Norwegian. High Alpine tarns are for the most part circular or straight-sided; seldom, like Lago d'Arno, long, serpentine sheets of water. Moreover its great height above the sea, by giving sternness to the shores and bringing the snows down close upon them, naturally suggests a more northern latitude.
We hurried along the rough hillside in search of the fisherman's hut which was to be our night quarters. We found it among the boulders on the very brink of the water.
Previous experience of Adamello huts had inspired me with the deepest distrust of our prospects. But this time our shelter, if lowly in outward appearance, proved comfortable enough inside. At one end of the little cabin blazed a cheery fire, the smoke of which, for a wonder, found its way out without first making the round of the interior. At the other end was a hay-bed, arranged like a berth in two shelves, one above the other. The centre was occupied by a bench; and there were spoons and mugs stuck into odd holes and corners. Two worthy but fussy fowls cackled away under the roof, apparently embarrassed by the hospitable reflection that with their best endeavours they could hardly provide eggs for the whole party. The only other tenant in possession was a bright-eyed boy. A great many English boys would have seen in his tenement their ideal of a Robinson Crusoe home. Even to us disillusioned wanderers it looked fascinating, and had we been any of us fishermen we might have been induced to spend a day or two in paddling about in the triangular tub which was moored close by.
Daylight had barely lighted us to our goal, and now night added its mystery to this wild spot. Faint rays from a still unseen moon lit up the opposite peaks and snows, the great stars shone and were reflected in the dark depths of sky and lake which faced each other.
In the earliest dawn the fisherboy launched his craft, and soon returned with a fine pink-fleshed trout which we carried off with us. He then led us up the steep rocks behind his hut to regain the track we had left the night before.
The path from Isola is not the only route to the Passo di Monte Campo. We shortly joined a broader track, which makes a long circuit from the lower valley, and is said to be passable for horses, which the staircase we had climbed could scarcely be called, though cows were evidently in the habit of using it. When we left our boy it was quite a pleasure, after the impositions of the last few days, to see his simple delight over a piece of silver. The metal is rare in Italy in these days of paper currency.
The lake, seen from the high terraces which we were now traversing, appeared to be about three miles in length. It does not entirely fill the basin, at the upper end of which is an alp and a small pool. Higher up on the right lie the ice-fields and blunt summits of Monte Castello. The ridge to be crossed now comes into view—a long saw, the teeth of which, tolerably uniform in height, stretch from a rocky eminence (Monte Campo) on the north to the glaciers on the south. The path, running as a terrace along a steep hillside, gains, with little climbing, a broad grassy gap near the foot of Monte Campo. The ruined cabin on the crest may either be a douanier's outpost or a relic of the Garibaldian corps, which in 1866 bivouacked here with bold intentions but small result. This country has not been fortunate for the Italian Irregulars. A body who established themselves near Ponte di Legno, and talked largely about invading Val di Sole, were surprised one morning by the Austrians anticipating their visit. The unlucky volunteers were all at breakfast, scattered about the village, and before they could offer any effective resistance were crushed with great slaughter.
Beyond the level meadows of Val di Fum rose the massive peak of the Carè Alto, on this side an impossible precipice. But otherwise the view was limited, and we readily decided to add the Monte del Castello to our day's work. A most convenient goat-path, skirting the roots of the rock-teeth, brought us to the edge of the ice. The glacier was steep and slippery, and only just manageable without steps. The top proved a double-crested ridge of loose granite boulders. On the further and slightly lower point was a wooden cross, planted probably by some shepherd from the Val del Leno, the glen on the southern flank of the mountain. It would be easy to climb Monte del Castello from the level of Lago d'Arno and to descend by this valley to Boazze; and the route is recommended to mountaineers who already know Val di Fum. In itself, Monte Castello is, it must be confessed, a very inferior peak. It does not reach 10,000 feet, and it is out-topped by a southern outlier, probably Monte Frerone. But as a view-point it has merits. The long line of glaciers and peaks between the Adamello and the Carè Alto presents an imposing appearance. From the opposite horizons the Schreckhorn and Cimon della Pala, a worthy pair, exchange greetings. The Grand Paradis is also in sight; but too many famous and familiar forms are conspicuous by their absence, and one finds oneself longing for the extra 1,000 feet of height which would sink half the subordinate ridges and give true greatness its proper place.
We returned to the pass, whence a short zigzag leads down to the pasturage and brilliantly blue lakelet known as the Alpe and Lago di Caf. A broken hillside, on which scattered pines make foregrounds for a picturesque view of the Carè Alto, the prominent peak of all this country, slopes down upon the valley at the point where the torrent of Val di Fum first leaves the level and plunges into a narrow gorge.
Val di Fum is said to be a corruption of Val dei Fini, a name due to the ridge on its west being the limit between the territories of Trent and Brescia. It is a broad, level meadow some eight miles long, valuable as pasturage, and as such a subject of contention in former times. The highest alp is known as the Coel dei Vighi, from its former possessors, the commune of Vigo in Val Rendena, who drove their cows thither by a paved track leading over a pass from Val San Valentino. Over the door of the principal châlet of a lower alp is the inscription—
1656 A. d. 18 L . . . . o,
which is read '1656 addì 18 Luglio,' and records what a local writer with reason calls a 'fatto luttuosissimo.'
Then, as now, the commune of Daone were in possession of the pasturage. The Cedegolans, however, imagined themselves to have a better claim to it. With some brutality they proceeded to enforce their supposed rights by bursting in a body on the châlets, suffocating the seven shepherds in the large caldron, and cutting the legs of all the herd. After this story we no longer wondered at the greed and depravity of the modern villagers, the descendants of these ruffians. The claim so iniquitously enforced does not seem to have been practically known in recent times, but a strong tradition of it must have lingered to induce the Austrian Engineers to give the Val di Fum to Lombardy on their large map.
As usual in this part of the Alps we scarcely reach the valley before meeting a fine waterfall. At first the gorge descends in steps, separated by swampy platforms; lower down, its fall becomes more regular, gradually steepening as it approaches Boazze. The ground is broken and rugged, and the path until recent improvements must have been very bad. The Chiese is a noble torrent, green and clear despite its glacier birth, and a perpetual delight to the eyes, whether it leaps in white foam over some ash-hung crag or swirls in pure eddies in a bubbling caldron.
Boazze, a sawmill and a châlet, stands in a sharp angle under wooded cliffs. The houses are built, like villages in the Northern Caucasus, of huge, red, unsmoothed pine-trunks. The woodcutters have amused their leisure by painting imaginative titles over the various doors. Here we read 'Cafè e Billiardo,' there 'Sala di Recreazione,' or 'Buvetta.' But the thirsty traveller must not be deluded thereby into expecting anything but a glass of the very roughest of country wine.
It is a long but very beautiful three hours' walk down Val Daone to the high-road at Pieve di Buono. The mountains are not so high as those which surround Val di Genova, but they are rich in colour and picturesque in form. There are steep steps, down which the river thunders in sheets of foam, level meadow expanses, tall cliffs fringed with graceful foliage. Side-glens break through the walls on either hand, and give glimpses into an upper land of lawns and pines, from which we are being rapidly carried away towards hillsides clothed with walnuts and chestnuts and all green Italian things. Some two hours from Boazze the Chiese is left to fight its own way out through a deep ravine, and the road takes an upward inclination. On a warm afternoon one is disposed to feel strongly the egotism of the Daonians in requiring everybody to pass through their high-perched village. Although they may own the whole valley, a short cut through the vineyards would have been, one fancies, a harmless concession to public convenience.
The village overlooks a wide basin, clothed in vineyards and studded with castles and churches. A long road circling from hamlet to hamlet plunges at last upon Pieve di Buono, a double row of houses lying in the bottom along either side of the high-road. A country inn offers rest and refreshment to those who are unwilling or unable to get a carriage and push on for Tione or Condino.
Here we enter fairly on the valleys of the Giudicaria, so called in witness of certain rights early granted to the inhabitants by the Bishops of Trent. This mountain region has little in common with the Swiss Alps. The low elevation of the valleys, their sunny exposure, and the gentle slope of their hillsides, give the scenery an air of richness rarely found at the very base of great snow-mountains. The frequent and gay-looking villages, the woods of chestnuts, the knots of walnut-trees, the great fields of yellow-podded maize, the luxuriant vines and orchards, have the charm which the spontaneous bounty and colour of southern nature always exercise on the native of the more reserved and sober North. No contrast could be at once more sudden and more welcome than that offered by these softer landscapes to the eye fresh from the rugged granite of the Adamello chain.
Life here, it is evident, is not the hard struggle with a stubborn and grudging nature of the peasant of Uri or the Upper Engadine. Corn and wine grow at every man's door, and the mountains offer abundant timber and pasturage.
There remains, it is true, sufficient call for energy: torrents to be embanked, hillsides to be terraced, gorges to be pierced by high-roads. But all this lies well within the powers of a population which unites in some degree German industry with Italian grace. Massive dykes stem the stream and protect the water-meadows of Pinzolo; one of the finest roads in Europe, built entirely at the cost of the neighbouring 'communes,' traverses the two great gorges of the Sarca. Here we see no squalor, none of that sufferance of decay and ruin in whatever is old which amongst southern Europeans as well as Orientals is often found united with lavish expenditure on what is new.
The exceptional wellbeing and intelligence of the people is no doubt to some extent referable to the physical features of their country. The Northern Alps seem to have been more or less laid out according to rule; valley is severed from valley by lofty and abrupt ridges; thus isolation and seclusion are enforced on the mountain communities. Here one can imagine that nature first planned a rolling hill-country and put in the mountains as an afterthought, planting them here and there at haphazard in isolated masses. Intercourse is thus rendered easy, for the heads of the valleys are often rolling pasturages. It is in fact rather the lower gorges than the crests of the hills which sever the different districts. Val Rendena can always go to Val di Sole or Val Buona; the defile of the Sarca has been but lately pierced.
Moreover, whatever may be the value of Mr. Ruskin's remarks on the moral influence of granite, there can be no doubt of its material advantages, and some of the orderly appearance of Val Rendena is certainly due to its geology. The clean grey stone of the Adamello is ever at hand in the form of erratic boulders, and is found useful for every purpose, from a bell-tower or a dyke to a curbstone or a vine-prop.
The road which runs through Pieve di Buono leads northwards over a low pass, protected by several forts, to Tione, southwards past the shores of Lago d'Idro to Salo or Brescia. But a more tempting branch turns suddenly east and mounts through the fine gorge of Val Ampola, the scene of Garibaldi's solitary success in 1866, to marshy uplands, whence it descends on the still basin of Lago di Ledro, a Cumberland tarn as far as hill-shapes go, but girt round with all the warmth and colour of Italy. The landscape is imbued with cheerful sweetness, but without any pretence to mountain sublimity. The little 'pension' lately opened at Pieve di Ledro may, however, well detain for a few days those who can dispense for a time with snow and wild crags and find satisfaction in more homely beauties.
It is a country for strolls, not for expeditions, for idle rambles over the forested hillsides among the tall alders and untamed hedgerows which fringe the lake, or along the banks of the delicious stream which flows from it, dancing down between the boles of chestnuts and vine-trellises until under a spreading fig-tree it makes a last, bold, green leap into the broad waters of the Lago di Garda.
The air at Ledro is already, after the mountains, soft and warm, and the 2,000 feet of descent to Riva are a surprise. The road runs near the torrent through a narrow glen, between vineyards, mulberries, fig-orchards, and villages, in September a very Alcinous' garden of ripeness.
Suddenly the verdure ceases on the brink of the great mural precipice which overhangs the upper end of Lago di Garda. After several zigzags the road boldly turns on to the face of the rock. The descent to Riva is henceforth a mere groove blasted out of a smooth perpendicular cliff. Deep below lie the dark waters, flecked by white birdlike sails flying southwards before the morning breeze; opposite is the broad crest of Monte Baldo rising above an olive-fringed shore. The horses trot swiftly in and out of the tunnels and round the slow bullock-waggons creaking heavily up to the hills. Riva bursts suddenly into view, a line of bright-coloured houses and mediæval towers crowded in between the lake, red cactus-spotted cliffs, and a wealth of olive-gardens, orchards and cane-brakes—the most southern scene north of Naples.
But before the latter half of September Riva is too hot to linger in. Delicious as is an evening spent in the inn garden, where supper is served under a trellis overlooking the moonlit lake, it scarcely makes up the second time for a night spent in vain resistance to the assaults of mosquitoes. It is best to return to the mountains which are still so near at hand.
The river, which here enters the lake, will be our guide back to the snows. No stream in Europe can boast a more varied or splendid youth than the unknown Sarca, famous in its smooth-flowing old age, when it issues again from Lago di Garda, under the new name of Mincio. It is only necessary to look for a moment at the map to see what vicissitudes the Sarca encounters, and what struggles it has to go through. One is tempted to imagine that after Nature had once settled the Alpine streams of this region in their proper and comfortable beds she gave the whole country a rough squeeze, heaving up a hill here, making a huge split there, and turning everything topsy-turvy. The Adige has, I fancy, been cheated somehow out of the Lago di Garda. The Sarca clearly ought to have joined the Chiese, and flowed down into Lago d'Idro. There is something very unnatural about the eastward reach from Tione, even before one knows how prodigious a feat in hill-splitting it really is.[38]
Thanks, however, to its singular course, the scenery along the banks of the Sarca is extraordinarily varied. Roughly speaking, the river's progress may be divided into four great stages. The first, beginning from the lake, is the Val del Lago, the deep trench which forms the continuation of the Garda basin. Two or three miles through high-walled gardens and vineyards which recall the environs of an eastern city bring us to Arco, lying under a huge castled crag. After leaving behind the broad streets and cypress avenues of the hot-looking town, the drive grows monotonous. The road stretches on through the half-desolate, half-luxuriant valley, from time to time the wheels rattle over pavement, and we pass through the long, gloomy street of some roadside village. The trough is now a wilderness of fallen blocks, the road crosses a bridge, and winds along under great cliffs, which threaten further destruction. Alle Sarche, a wayside inn where the road from the Giudicaria joins that from Riva to Trent, is the end of the first stage in our journey.
The valley continues in a straight line, but our river suddenly bursts out of a deep narrow cleft in the wall of rock which has so long overhung us.
The road first climbs the cliff-face by two long zigzags, then a terrace cut in a bare bold wall of yellow rock pierces the jaws of the defile. High up on the opposite cliff runs the thin track from Molveno to Castel Toblino. The Sarca, victorious over all obstructions, glides along its narrow bed swiftly, yet smoothly, that Mr. Macgregor, or some one accustomed to those fearful feats in a 'cañon' pictorially recorded in books of North American travel, might find it possible to shoot the defile. When the walls break back a rich valley opens round us. The red crags of the Brenta chain glow for a moment in the north, then the Baths of Comano, a health-resort of local celebrity, is passed, and Stenico and its castle are seen on the right, high-perched on a green brow, holding the keys of the upper valley. The road and the river force their way side by side through an extraordinary cleft, split or cut through the heart of a chain rising on either side 6,000 feet above the gulf. The gorge is greener and less savage than the last, yet on a still more magnificent scale. Slender streams fall in glittering showers from the shelves above, and are carried under or over the road by ingeniously-contrived shafts or galleries.
The rocks at length withdraw, the hills open, and while we ascend gently amongst orchards and rich fields of Indian corn, the Carè Alto suddenly raises his icy horn over the green lower range. We are close to Tione, and at another of the great turning-points in the Sarca valley.
Tione itself is a thoroughly Italian country town, with dark narrow streets crossed by archways, large houses built round courtyards, low-roofed cafés, and miscellaneous shops. A happy sign of the times may be seen in the conversion of the large barrack outside the town into an elementary school.
Here we are but a short distance from Pieve di Buono, and a two hours' drive would complete the circle. The valleys of the Sarca and Chiese are at this point separated only by a low grassy ridge over which runs a fine high-road, defended, like every road in this country, by a chain of forts, the scene of some of the desultory skirmishes of 1866.
Above Tione the broad open basin which divides the granite and the dolomite is known as Val Rendena. Owing to its peculiar situation between two mountain-chains unconnected at their head, but little is seen of the higher summits, and the landscape is rich and smiling. The road, winding at first high on a wooded hillside, commands a charming view of the upper valley as far as Pinzolo.
Orchards and cornfields separate the rapidly succeeding hamlets, each of which resembles its neighbour. The method of construction in this country is peculiar. The lower stories only, containing the living-rooms, are built of stone; from the top of their walls rise large upright beams supporting an immensely broad roof. The spaces between the beams are not filled up, and the whole edifice has the air of having been begun on too large a scale, and temporarily completed and roofed in. The great upstairs barn is used for the storage of wood, hay, corn, and all sorts of inflammable dry goods. The roof being also of wood, the lightning finds it easy enough to set the whole mass in a blaze, and fires arising from this cause are of common occurrence. Caresolo, the next village above Pinzolo, was almost completely destroyed in a night-storm during the autumn of 1873.
The openings of two lateral glens, Val di San Valentino and Val di Borzago, are passed in quick succession. Near the latter stands the oldest church in the valley, a square box covered with ruined frescoes, and said to mark the spot of the martyrdom of St. Vigilius, a great local evangeliser and patron saint. Heathenism lingered in this remote region until the eighth century, and two hundred years earlier the first unfortunate missionary was done to death by the inhabitants of Mortaso, who, according to the tradition, finding no stones handy, used their loaves as missiles. For this unlucky piece of barbarity the perpetual hardness of their bread, even at the present day, is said to be a punishment. It is difficult, however, to believe that loaves which could kill a saint can have been very soft to begin with.
To judge from their habits and from the size and number of their churches, the people are still as remarkable for devotion to their religion as they were in pagan days. The wayfarer passing along the valley in the early morning sees a crowd both of men and women streaming out from early mass. In most cases the church seems to have been rebuilt and enlarged in modern times, and a curious effect is often produced by the juxtaposition of the huge whitewashed building and the campanile of the older structure, a little stone tower with circular-headed apertures, which scarcely reaches to the upper windows of its overgrown companion.
The river is presently crossed, and as we approach the end of our long drive and of the third stage in the Sarca's progress the mouth of Val di Genova comes into sight on the left, and the snows of the Presanella shine for a moment above the lower ridges. We are now within half a mile of Pinzolo, the Grindelwald, or Cortina of this country. But in this chapter I propose to confine myself to the southern approaches to the two groups of the Adamello and the Brenta. The excursions round Pinzolo must be reserved for future pages.
For the moment I shall ask the reader to stop short at the neighbouring village of Giustino, and return with me thence to Trent by a byway which enables us to avoid retracing our steps through Tione.
The walk from Val Rendena to Stenico, through Val d'Algone, is dismissed in the guide-books with a few words of faint praise which raise no expectation of its varied beauty. We left Pinzolo one perfectly cloudless morning, to descend to the shores of Lago di Garda, having for our companion a peasant familiar as the man who, seven years before, had led me up to the Bocca dei Camozzi under pretence of its being the pass to Molveno. To-day he was only engaged as an attendant on the donkey which carried our traps; and it was chiefly to the quadruped's sagacity that we trusted not to be misled.
We soon quitted the high-road down the valley, and climbed a steep pavé past the stations leading to a whitewashed church perched on a knoll amongst the mossy chestnut-groves. A large village, with a trim granite-edged fountain and a tall campanile, was soon left below. The ascent then became hot and tiresome for a time, where the path perversely left the woods and chose for its zigzags a loose, dusty, shadeless slope. The summit of the Presanella was now in view. The ungainly hump here representing the mountain is the greatest possible contrast to the noble mass which, with its long escarped sides and icy pinnacles, towers above the Tonale road. The Grivola is the only other peak I know of which undergoes so complete a transformation. Above the bare ascent lies a sloping shelf of meadow, dotted with hay-châlets. The path then enters the forest, the thick stems of which shut out all distant view. Suddenly they open and leave room for a smooth level glade: shut round by a green wall of pines, it is a place where an altar to Pan may have risen out of the mossy sward, and shepherds have held their sylvan revelries. This 'leafy pleasantness' is the top of the ridge known by the poetical name of the Pra Fiori. Behind us the icy comb of the Carè Alto gleamed through the branches; in front the massive form of a dolomite peak towered over the tree-tops. Bearing to the left, and descending very slightly from the pass, we came in a few minutes to a grassy brow adorned with beech-trees. A more beautiful site is hardly to be found; and here, with one consent, we built our ideal Alpine châlet.
Below us lay the smooth level of the Val d'Algone; on one side rose the bare, torn, and fretted face of a great dolomite, surrounded by lower ridges scarcely less precipitous, but clothed in green wherever trees or herbage could take root. Towards the south the distant hills beyond the Sarca waved in gradations of purple and blue through the shimmer of the Italian sunshine.
A short zigzag through thick copses took us down to the meadows. The large solitary building in their midst is a glass manufactory. At this point a good car-road begins, which, branching lower down, leads either to Tione or Stenico.
The loftier dolomites were soon lost to view behind a bend in the valley, and the road plunged down a deep and narrow glen between banks of nodding cyclamens, bold crags, and the greenest of green hillsides. About two hours' walk from the glass manufactory the gorge of the Sarca opened in front, and the road to Stenico, leaving the stream to fall into it, wound at a level round the face of perpendicular cliffs. Tione and its village-dotted valley were seen for a few moments before our backs were turned to them, and we fairly entered the gorge of the Sarca. The high-road and river thread side by side the intricacies of the great cleft; our way lay along a shelf blasted out of the cliffs a thousand feet above them. The rays of a midday sun streamed full upon us from an unclouded heaven, and every rock reflected back the glow of light and heat. Notwithstanding, we walked briskly on, for the castle of Stenico was full in view and scarcely a mile distant. Before reaching it we had to make the circuit of a gorge. From the hot golden rocks overhead a great fountain burst forth and poured down in a cool cascade, the waters of which were soon captured in channels and spread amongst terraced orchards and fig gardens, green—not as we know greenness—but with the vivid colour of Broussa or Damascus. Under the shade of the picturesque old covered bridge which crosses the stream, we halted for a few minutes to admire a view almost unique in my Alpine experience. Close beside us stood the castle of Stenico, perched high on a crag, commanding on one side the entrance to the gorge, overlooking on the other a wide sunny basin, girt by verdant ridges compared to which the shores of Como are bare and brown. The hollows and lower slopes sparkle with villages, and teem with Indian corn and trailing vines. The hills do not, as in the Northern Alps, rise in continuous ridges, but are broken up into masses of the most romantically beautiful forms. Such may have been the scenery of the fairest portions of Asia Minor before the Mahometan conquest brought desolation upon the land.
A steep car-road connects Stenico with the high-road to Trent and Riva. At Alle Sarche we left the Sarca and our old tracks, and turned sharply to the north. The little pool of Lago Toblino is rendered picturesque by its castle, an old fortified dwelling standing on a peninsula, and defended landwards by crenellated battlements. Beyond the lake a long ascent leads first through luxuriant orchards to Padernione, then through tame scenery to Vezzano, a large country town lying in an upland plain. Another climb brought us to a higher basin, still rich in vines and fig-trees. At its further end we plunged into a ravine. An Austrian fort crowned the hill above us, another was built in the bottom, right across road and stream, a scowling black and yellow-striped dragon of the defile. Rattling over its drawbridges, we followed the water for some distance through a narrow cleft, until suddenly the wide valley of the Adige broke on our eyes, backed by rich mountain-slopes. In the centre of the landscape rose the many towers of Trent, a dark ancient city surrounded by a ring of bright modern villas scattered on the neighbouring hills.
All the peaks soar, but one the rest excels;
Clouds overcome it.—R. Browning.
ENGLISH AND GERMAN MOUNTAINEERS—THE LOMBARD ALPS FROM MONTE ROSA—NOMENCLATURE—GAVIA PASS—PONTE DI LEGNO—TONALE PASS—VERMIGLIO—VAL PRESANELLA—THE PRESANELLA—PASSO DI CERCEN—VAL DI GENOVA.
The races of English and German mountaineers, after making due allowance for the exceptions which there are to every rule, will be found respectively to embody many of the characteristics of the two nations. Our Alpine Clubman affords while in the Alps an example of almost perpetual motion. His motto is taken from Clough—
Each day has got its sight to see,
Each day must put to profit be.
Provided with a congenial friend, and secure in the company of at least one first-rate guide possessed of the skill and knowledge necessary to encounter every obstacle of the snowy Alps, the English mountaineer runs a tilt at half the mountain-tops which lie in his erratic course, meeting on the whole with wonderfully few falls or failures on the way. He dashes from peak to peak, from group to group, even from one end of the Alps to the other, in the course of a short summer holiday. Exercise in the best of air, a dash of adventure, and a love of nature, not felt the less because it is not always on his tongue, are his chief motives. A little botany, geology, or chartography, may come into his plans, but only by the way and in a secondary place. He is out on a holiday and in a holiday humour. You must not be surprised, therefore, if the instruments with which one of the party has burdened himself give rise to more bad jokes than valuable observations. For the climbers are in capital training, and can afford to laugh uphill—a power which is freely used, even at moments when the peasant who carries the provision sack is appealing audibly to his saints.
On their return home it is with some secret pleasure, though much grumbling, that the leader of the party hurries off in the intervals of other business a ten-page paper for the 'Alpine Journal'—an account probably of the most adventurous of a dozen 'grandes courses,' full of misspellings of local names, and of the patois he talks to his guides, and, as his Teutonic rival would add, 'utterly devoid of serious aim or importance.'
Far different is the scheme and mode of operation of the German mountaineer. To him his summer journey is no holiday, but part of the business of life. He either deliberately selects his 'Excursions-gebiet' in the early spring with a view to do some good work in geology or mapping, or more probably has it selected for him by a committee of his club. About August you will find him seriously at work. While on the march he shows in many little ways his sense of the importance of his task. His coat is decorated with a ribbon bearing on it the badge or decoration of his club. He carries in his pockets a notebook, ruled in columns, for observations of every conceivable kind, and a supply of printed cards ready to deposit on the heights he aims at. His orbit, however, is a limited one, and he continues to revolve like a satellite, throwing considerable light on the mass to which he is attached, round the Orteler or Marmolata; while his English rival dashes comet-wise, doing little that is immediately useful, from Grindelwald, the sun and centre of the Alpine system, to the Uranian distances of the Terglou. His velocity also is relatively small; 'a German,' as Hawthorne somewhere says, 'requires to refresh nature ten times to any other person's once,' and to accommodate this sluggishness he requires to pass the night on the highest and most uncomfortable spot possible. Yet having slept or frozen—as you may prefer to call it—scarcely 3,000 feet below his peak, he manages somehow to get benighted before reaching the village on its further side. It must in fairness be admitted that this slow rate of motion is often, partially at least, owing to his dependence on the local chamois-hunter. On rocks this worthy may be, and sometimes is, all that fancy paints him; but on snow or ice the terror inherited from unroped generations possesses him. At the first ice-rift an inch wide, or at a gentle snow-slope of forty-five, he shies obstinately. The foreign mountaineer deserves well of after-comers for the pains with which at his own expense he trains this raw material, and thus founds in every valley a school of native guides. But those who carry about one Almer as an apostle, and associate with him the best local talent, do probably greater good at a less sacrifice to themselves. The party who bring with them a whole train from Zermatt or Grindelwald are of course wholly selfish, and can lay no claim to have assisted in the progress of Alpine education.
But it is not until our 'klubist' comes home after having spent a third summer in one valley that we realise the full seriousness of his pursuit. No ridiculous mouse of a flippant article is born of his mountains. We have first a solid monograph, properly divided into heads, 'orographical, geological, botanical, and touristical,' and published in the leading geographical magazine of Germany. This is soon followed by a thick volume, printed in luxurious type, and adorned with highly coloured illustrations and a prodigious map, most valuable doubtless, but, alas! to weak English appetites somewhat indigestible.
The foregoing reflections will appear fully justified after any researches into the literature of the Tyrolese Alps in general. But with regard to the Lombard Alps in particular they may seem unfounded. The papers of Lieutenant Payer, their principal German-writing explorer, are as terse as they are full of matter, and several pleasant articles have appeared in the 'Jahrbücher' of the foreign Alpine Clubs on a region which has been strangely neglected by our own countrymen.
The exertions of our German fellow-climbers can, however, scarcely justify the annexation of the district calmly carried out by one of their writers. 'In all our German Alps,' says a learned doctor, 'there is hardly a more forsaken or unknown corner than the Adamello.' 'In unseren Deutschen Alpen!' There is not in the whole Alps a region which is more thoroughly Italian than the mountain-mass of which the Presanella is the highest, the Adamello the most famous, summit. But it is only fair to the doctor to state his excuse, for the better half of the group lies in Austria, and in 1864 Austria had not yet been pushed out of Germany. The mountains of the Trentino may be still, politically speaking, Austro-Italian Alps; in every other respect they belong entirely to the southern peninsula.
What was written of their deserted condition in 1864 remains true, however, ten years later, at least as far as the mass of English and German travellers is concerned. The splendid gorges which give access from Lago di Garda and Trent to Val Rendena, the roads of the Tonale and the Aprica, are undisturbed by the 'voiturier;' the snow-fields of the Adamello are trampled but once a season by the mountaineer.[39]
To most English frequenters of the Swiss Alps the Lombard snow-peaks are known but as spots on the horizon of the extended view of some mountain-top. It was thus that I first made acquaintance with them.
The full midday glow of a July sun was falling from the dark vapourless vault overhead on to the topmost crags of Monte Rosa. A delicate breeze, or rather air-ripple, lapping softly round the mountain-crest, scarcely tempered the scorching force with which the rays fell through the thin atmosphere. Round us on three sides the thousand-crested Alps swept in a vast semicircle of snow and ice, clustering in bright companies or ranging their snowy heads in sun-tipped lines against the horizon. But we turned our faces mostly to the south, where, beyond the foreshortened foot-hills, and as it seemed at little more than a stone's-throw distance, lay the broad plains of Piedmont and Lombardy. Through a Coan drapery of thin golden haze the great rivers could be seen coursing like veins over the bosom of fair Italy, open to where it was clasped round by the girdle of the far-off Apennine.
As from our tower we watched the lower world, a small cumulus cloud here and there grew into being, some 7,000 feet beneath us, and cast a blue shadow on the distant plain. These cloud-ships would from time to time join company, and, under the favouring influence of some local breeze, set sail for the distant Alps. A few stranded on the lower slopes of Val Sesia, others floated as in a landlocked bay above the deep basin of Macugnaga. A whole fleet sailed away, across the lakes, beyond the village-sprinkled slopes of Val Vigezzo and the crest of Monte Generoso, to find a port in the recesses of a distant range, the first in the east where 'Alp met heaven in snow.'
Where and what, we asked, are these 'silver spearheads?' The answer given has both before and since satisfied and deluded many enquirers—the Orteler Spitze. But to have named these peaks might, in 1864, have puzzled a better geographer than a Zermatt guide.
Mountains are not born with names; most of them live for ages without them. It is at last often a mere matter of chance and the caprice of an engineer, to what syllables, soft or hideous, they are finally linked. The herdsmen who feed their flocks on the highest pasturages are the authorities to whom the officer in charge of the Ordnance survey most frequently appeals. These worthy peasants seldom speak anything but a patois scarcely intelligible to their educated fellow-countrymen. Very often, as in the Italian provinces of Austria, they are of a totally different race and speech to their questioners, and confusion of tongues and national antipathy are joined to the fixed notion of every peasant, that all enquiries are connected with taxes, as obstacles to any clear understanding between the parties.
Moreover, the herdsmen have often never thought before of what lies beyond their utmost goat-track. Sometimes driven to despair by cross-questions, they invent, on the spur of the moment, a name drawn from the most obvious characteristic of the peak; hence the crowd and confusion of Corno Rossos and Corno Neros, of Weisshörner and Schwarzhörner. Or they say nothing at all, and leave the map-maker to exercise his own ingenuity.
Again, every mountain has at least two sides, and it is open to the arbitrary discretion of the engineers to prefer the name given on one or the other, which is seldom, if ever, found to be the same.
Until quite recently the two highest peaks of the Lombard Alps were unnamed, and their names are still unknown to many of the people who live beneath them. Two parish priests of Val Camonica, from which the crest of the Adamello is seen for miles closing the distance, had in 1865 never heard of such a mountain. All that they knew was that there was a 'vedretta' somewhere above the summer alps. To them it was quite as remote and inaccessible as any other white cloud, and they had never thought of naming, far less of approaching, it. The word 'Adamello' is doubtless a creation of the Ordnance survey, derived from Val d'Adame, one of the glens which penetrate nearest to the base of the mountain. The people of Val di Sole called the whole mass of snow and ice—the unattainable ground—on their south, 'Vedretta Presanella.' Strangers are now teaching them to confine the title to the highest peak, and foreign custom is leading to the gradual disuse of the name Cima di Nardis, by which the peak was alone known a few years ago in Val Rendena. The kingship of the Lombard Alps was in 1864 still unconferred between these two rival claimants, the Adamello and Presanella.
On August 23, four weeks after our day on Monte Rosa, we left the Baths of Santa Catarina for the Gavia Pass. The unsettled weather coupled with the reaction after an ascent of the Königsspitze, stolen in a gleam of sunshine on the previous day, would probably in any case have made us ready to take this easy road in place of trying our fortunes over one of the snowy gaps behind the Tresero. But we had a better reason for our want of venturesomeness. It was necessary for us to ascertain the exact position and means of approach to our mountain. For this purpose our maps helped us little, if at all. We had in fact nothing to trust to but the little sheet in the 'Alpine Guide,' compiled on inaccurate authorities, and hiding ignorance under a specious, but to travellers very inconvenient, vagueness.
We knew, it is true, that the Presanella lay on the ridge south of the Tonale Pass, the carriage-road crossing the deep gap which severs the Orteler and Adamello Alps. But whether the path to it opened from the top of that pass or from some point in the upper Val di Sole we had no means to decide. To cross the Tonale with our eyes open seemed, therefore, the only prudent course.
The Gavia is but a gloomy portal to the beauties of Santa Catarina. The summit is a wild desolate plain, not cheerful even in fine weather, and deadly enough in winter snowstorms. Three rude crosses under a rock mark the spot where as many peasants overtaken by storm sought shelter in vain, and where their bodies were found and buried. Further on the path becomes a street of tombs—a 'Via Appia' of the mountains. Cross succeeds cross, each carved with rude initials and date, varied here and there by a stone pyramid, in the recesses of which, in the place of the usual picture of a virgin or saint, you find a skull and a collection of bones, open to the air and bleached by long exposure. For riders this is the only escape south-eastwards from Santa Catarina; but moderate walkers—ladies even, who do not mind snow—may find a better and brighter path by turning away to the left over the broad shoulders of the Pizzo della Mare, and descending through Val del Monte, and past the dirty bath-houses of Pejo to the upper Val di Sole.[40]
Ponte di Legno is a shabby village, and in 1864 its inn was in character. Since then, however, there has been an improvement, and a very fair country inn now offers a convenient starting-point for travellers who wish to cross the Pisgana Pass, the easiest of those leading to the head of Val di Genova and Pinzolo. During our meal—a banquet of hot water flavoured by pepper, followed by sodden veal,—we were disturbed by the entrance of a venerable personage who seemed anxious to render us assistance. As he spoke a patois Italian, and was as deaf as he was talkative, his attentions soon became embarrassing. Having listened to a long harangue on the excellence of the road and the inns between us and Trent, we ventured mildly to hint a dislike for roads and to enquire with solicitude about the Presanella. But our protest and enquiries were put aside with equal indifference. Even on the only topic of immediate interest to us, what sort of a place was the inn near the top of the Tonale, we could get no certain information. If age despised the innovating spirit of youth, youth, I am afraid, grew impatient of the resolve 'stare super antiquas vias' of age. When we found that we might as well enquire about the mountains of the moon as the Presanella, we also became deaf, and turned to our veal with such affectation of enthusiasm as that immature viand can command.
Soon after leaving Ponte di Legno, the road, a rough cart-track, climbs a wooded hillside by the steepest possible zigzags. The air was hot and steamy, and dark clouds were creeping up Val Camonica. The mists soon enveloped us, all further view was lost, and the rain began to pour as it only can pour among the mountains. Thunder boomed away behind us like heavy artillery, each report followed by a sharp fire of musketry, as the echoes ran along the crags.
The top of the pass is a wide tract of pasture, in the absence of distant view more Scotch than Alpine. At last the road, which, to avoid a swamp, rises higher than the actual gap, began to descend, and tall black and yellow posts, crowned by two-headed eagles, announced the Austrian frontier. The country road of the Italian side suddenly came to an end, and a military highway, marked by a long line of granite curbstones, wound down before us. A deep hollow, the head of Val Vermiglio, presently opened at our feet, and the road, swerving to the left, approached the Tonale Hospice, a massive, modern, whitewashed house. Unfortunately for our comfort it was crowded with labourers, employed on the new fort which the Austrians were then erecting to protect themselves against their neighbours.
The kitchen fire lighted up a picturesque scene. Over the flames hung a huge caldron of polenta, into which two dark-haired girls dashed from time to time some new ingredient, while a hungry crowd of men, young and old, sat round, watching eagerly the progress of their supper. Room was made for us in the chimney-seats, where we steamed in our damp clothes until the crowd had been fed, and some one could find time to give us our meal of potatoes and butter. By the time this was over it was already late, and we were ready to distribute ourselves between the two spare beds which the house afforded, while François went off to join the workmen in the barn. The inmates retired into an inner room, and all was still by nine o'clock, save for the ceaseless patter of the rain. Before five next morning the women came out of their chamber, and from that time there was a constant flow of company backwards and forwards through our room. Seizing on propitious intervals, we dressed in spasms, and, seeing the weather still hopeless, made up our minds to set out at once for the nearest village in Val di Sole, where we might hope to obtain better fare and possibly some further information; for at the Hospice our endeavours to learn anything of the Presanella had again been fruitless. No one had ever heard of such a mountain. One fact alone was ascertained before leaving. The stream which waters Val di Sole has its highest source in a wild glen at the back of Monte Piscanno, named in the Lombard map Val Presena. This I had believed would lead us up to the Presanella, but through the glimpses of the storm no conspicuous snow-peak appeared in that direction, and it was plain we must look further for our mysterious mountain.
On a projecting knoll, about half way to Vermiglio,[41] stands an Austrian blockhouse, mounting seven guns. It is commanded by many neighbouring heights, but would be of use against a Garibaldian inroad. As we passed it a momentary break revealed a lofty snow-peak at the head of a glen opening immediately opposite.
There at last was the Presanella. A fir-forest clothed the lower slopes; higher up a large glacier spread out its icy skirts. The vision, though sufficient for our purpose, lasted only a few moments. In clear weather the view from this spot must be one of the most picturesque glimpses of a great snow-peak anywhere to be seen from a carriage-pass. Clinging still to the northern slopes of the valley, the road presently entered Pizzano. The first house was the Austrian douane; the second, the inn. We of course gave up our passports, but François, being unprovided, handed the officers his 'livre des voyageurs,' containing his certificate as guide.[42] The Austrian, with much show of sternness, pushed it away contemptuously, and delivered himself in this wise:—'You have no passport. You must go back to your country. At any rate you can enter no further into the Imperial and Royal dominions.' Here was a serious crisis. We felt our only chance was to temporise. 'Very well,' we replied, 'if you must refuse our servant permission to enter Austria, at least there can be no objection to his getting something to eat next door before he returns.' This concession the officers did not deny; and entering the inn we ordered breakfast, and prepared to wait for better weather. A scout was posted outside by the douaniers to prevent François from giving them the slip. In the meantime we of course again enquired after the Presanella, and, almost to our surprise, everyone in Pizzano was acquainted with the name. 'Oh, yes!' said our host, 'a German Herr Professor from Vienna tried the mountain a year or two ago, and found it quite impracticable. The final peak is like the stove in this room, and all ice.' 'Well,' said I, 'but the stove is easy,' and climbed to the top. Staggered by this argument, he offered to bring the man who had accompanied the Viennese Professor in his attempt. In due time a native made his appearance, who satisfied us that he really knew where the mountain was, and could lead us to its foot; which was all we wanted.
The name of our predecessor was at the time unknown to us, but I learnt afterwards[43] that he was Dr. von Ruthner, then the Vice-President of the Austrian Alpine Club. From the account given of his attempt it is clear that he followed the same route as ourselves; our Italian in fact led us in his footsteps, up to the saddle at the north-west base of the mountain. His failure to get further was entirely owing to his guides, who, unused to such expeditions, and appalled by the sight of a broken and somewhat steep snow-slope, refused to proceed. The Italian, as our experience proved, was a poor creature, his second guide, Kuenz, though, as we are told, renowned as a keen chamois and bear-hunter, declared to Dr. von Ruthner 'that he had once in his youth descended amongst the wild chasms of the glacier which pours steeply over into Val Cercen, and that he would never do it again,' This descent we subsequently found an admirable spot for a glissade!
Watching from our window the rain, which after a deceitful lull now fell again in torrents, we saw the scout, who was still on duty, in deep converse with a friend. In a few minutes the friend sauntered casually into our room, and enquired our plans with an air of indifference. I assured him that our intention was to climb the Presanella, without thinking it necessary to add—and find a way down the other side of it. His object thus satisfactorily attained, the man soon left us, and no doubt imparted the valuable information to his brother officials, for their demeanour suddenly changed, and one of them told us that they should not object to our guide's accompanying us to the Presanella. We of course expressed ourselves duly thankful for their small mercies, and in fact felt much relieved at this happy issue of a dilemma which might easily have become serious. Soon after three o'clock the clouds grew gradually lighter, the sun struggled through, and patches of blue broke the leaden monotony of the sky. No more watery storms swept down from the Tonale, but a steady northern breeze carried away the vapours, except one or two unfortunates which had sunk so deep into the valley that they could not find the way out again. We hurried our dinner, got together our provisions, and sent the porter to look for a rope—a necessary which we were too young in Alpine travel to have brought with us from England, according to the custom of experienced mountaineers. Vermiglio did not possess a cord more than thirty feet long; but after a good deal of delay some leather thongs were procured, and about 5 P.M. we finally got off, leaving the douaniers to look out at their leisure for our expected return.
Instead of remounting the Tonale road we kept by the side of the river for half-an-hour, until it was joined by the torrent from the lateral glen which we had passed in the morning. A well-made path led up a steep hillside covered with bilberries and Alpine strawberries, and turned some precipitous rocks by picturesque wooden galleries.
After passing a group of charcoal-burners' huts the ascent ceased, and winding round a wooded brow we entered a secluded basin shut in by steep ridges, where the stream rested for a while in its troubled course before plunging into the valley. Far above gleamed the object of our expedition—the long-talked-of, and at last almost-despaired-of Presanella, no longer shrouded in mist, but sharp cut against the darkening sky. It presented an apparently level wall, turreted at either end; the western tower was of rugged rock, the eastern more massive and snow-clad, rising in the centre to a sharp shining point, evidently the true 'cima' of the mountain.
A flock of Bergamasque sheep were huddled together in our way; disregarding the protests of the shaggy sheep-dog we forced a passage through them, and reached the hut—a rough shelter, half open on one side to the sky.
Pushing back the rude door, we entered a small cabin, looking at first sight like a butcher's shop, for several carcases of departed sheep were hung up to smoke over the smouldering fire. Its occupants were three shepherds, who received us most hospitably, packed away the drying meat, and made room by the fireside. Presently one of them went out with the dog. On enquiring where the man was going so late, we were told that they were obliged to patrol by turns at night to keep off the bears; several were known to be prowling about the mountains, and one had been seen only the previous day. Our hosts took needless pains to assure us that the animals would not enter the châlet, and that there was no occasion for alarm at their vicinity.
As fresh logs were piled on, and the blaze rose higher, a horned monster with a pair of gleaming eyes was seen gazing at us from the upper gloom. It was only a patriarchal goat, stabled in a loft opening on one side into the châlet. Two of us spent the night in a bed of hay, built up on pine-logs; the third lay down with the shepherds among the skins and logs by the fireside. François scrambled into the loft, where he was welcomed by the old goat, which settled itself beside him. Later in the night the rest of the flock became boisterous, quarrelled with the biped intruder, and expelled him from their abode.
At 3 A.M. the waning moon was still bright enough to guide our steps along the zigzags of a well-marked track leading to the rocky waste, furrowed and polished by glacier action, which lies above the head of the glen. Our porter was very anxious to take us round by the spur on our right dividing Val Presanella and Val Presena, but we preferred a much more direct course over the ice. Although the valley at our feet was already bathed in golden light, the early rays still left cold the snows we were about to enter. The rain of the previous day had frozen over the glacier in a slippery crust, and made every slope into a sort of 'Montagne Russe.' We crept catwise as best we could along cracks, cutting steps when these failed us, until the more level and upper snows were safely if not quickly gained.
We were now at the very foot of the Presanella, and could judge of the nature of the work immediately before us. From the western extremity of the wall which we had seen from below, a ridge receded from us ending towards Val di Genova in a snow-dome. This secondary peak (Monte Gabbiol) with the rock turret at the angle (the Piccola Presanella) and the sharp eastern crest, probably make up the three summits to which the mass owes a local name, 'Il Triplice.' The only route open to us seemed to be to cross the lowest point in the ridge between the Monte Gabbiol and the Piccola Presanella, and then gain the eastern or highest peak by the back of the snow-wall. Dr. von Ruthner's Italian scouted the idea. 'Then,' said François, 'we must cut steps up the face of the wall.' This proposal struck our native with horror, and he protested against it as 'Molto molto impossibile!' His idea of the impossible was evidently somewhat vague, and not founded on experience. We stuck therefore to our first plan, and, walking briskly up the glacier, reached in half-an-hour a gap at its head overlooking the ice-fields which enclose Val di Genova. At this point the real attack on the mountain began. Hitherto we had only been making for a pass.
The ascent now led us over steep slopes of snow, broken by great rifts and icicle-fringed vaults, none of which, however, were continuous enough to cause any difficulty. Often a few steps had to be cut, but the delay was pleasantly spent in studying the glorious view already spread out behind us. In the foreground lay the unknown glacier-fields of the Adamello; the Orteler and Bernina ranges rose in the middle distance; on the horizon glowed Monte Rosa and the Saasgrat. Even these were not the furthest objects in view, for I distinctly recognised the Graian peaks melting into the saffron sky.
The deep moat crossed, a dozen steps had to be cut up an ice-bank; then, after climbing over an awkward boulder, we reached the ridge. Great was the anxiety as to what would be seen on the other side, for on the steepness of the back of the wall between us and the final peak our success hung. Great in proportion was the satisfaction of those below, when, as his head rose above the rocks, François shouted, 'Bien; tout est facile!'
The semicircle enclosed between the three summits of the Presanella was filled by the snow-fields of an extensive glacier which flowed away to the south-east. The snow rose nearly to the level of the lowest point of the crest connecting the Piccola Presanella and the highest peak. We quickly passed under the former, and found ourselves standing on the summit of the wall we had gazed up at the previous evening.
We now looked down upon the shepherds' hut and the Tonale road, where the Austrian blockhouse and its constructors seen through the glasses appeared like a diminutive beehive. A coping of fresh snow overhung the edge of the wall; this we dislodged with our alpenstocks, sending it whirling down 1,000 feet upon the glacier beneath.
Our hopes of immediate success now met with one of those checks, so frequent in the Alps, which test most severely the moral endurance needed, much more than physical strength, in a good mountaineer. The crest suddenly turned into hard ice; each step had to be won patiently by the axe. Careless or inefficient work might have led to an awkward tumble; an attempt such as a tyro would probably have made to make use of the snow coping would have inevitably resulted in sudden disaster. In such positions amateurs without guides most often fail. It is rare to find a party of whom some member will not utter an impatient exclamation, or suggest some tempting, but unwise, expedient to gain time; it is rarer still to find a leader who will act as a good guide invariably does—refuse to pay the slightest heed to such murmurs in his rear. Yet if he listens to them he will learn sooner or later the truth of a line which ought to be emblazoned as a text over every A. C.'s mantelpiece, 'Hasty climbers oft do fall.'
We advanced but slowly along our laboured way. Once the porter was sent to the front, but after cutting some half-dozen steps he retired again of his own accord to the rear, informing us, in passing, that 'he could do no more.' He accordingly reserved all his strength for frequent ejaculations respecting the impossibility of attaining the top under at least eight hours! François had all the work to do, and for the next two hours and a half he did it manfully. Hack! hack! went the axe, till a step was hewn out; then with a final flourish the loose ice was cleared off, and the process began again. At last the wearisome task was done, and we all stepped gladly on to a little snow-platform, about half of which was occupied by a huge cup-shaped crevasse. The final peak alone now remained to be conquered. 'Encore dix pas seulement,' said François, and he hacked away as if it was his first step. We cut across a steep ice-slope, and in five minutes stood upon some broken rocks which ran up the southern face of the mountain. Here we had to wriggle across an awkward boulder; and our porter, who had insisted on throwing off the rope, was fain to be reattached. By a vigorous haul we cut short his hesitation and drew him halfway over, but there he stuck clinging on to the rock with all his limbs spread out in different directions, like a distressed starfish. At last some one went back and stretched out a helping hand; then, aggravated by the delay, we made a rush at the last rocks, and in a few moments were treading down the virgin snows at which we had so long and wistfully looked up. The actual top was a snow-crest lying as a cap on the brow of the cliff which faces Val di Sole. The ascent from the hut had taken us eight hours—a long time for a mountain of only 11,688 feet.
As soon as the first excitement of victory was over we began to look with interest at the new mountain region spread at our feet. The central mass of the Adamello was for the first time before me in such nearness and completeness as to allow of a ready insight into, and understanding of, its character. It is a huge block, large enough to supply materials for half-a-dozen fine mountains. But it is in fact only one. For a length and breadth of many miles the ground never falls below 9,500 feet. The vast central snow-field feeds glaciers pouring to every point of the compass. The highest peaks, such as the Carè Alto and Adamello, are merely slight elevations of the rim of this uplifted plain. Seen from within they are mere hummocks; from without they are very noble mountains falling in great precipices towards the wild glacier-closed glens which run up to their feet.
Imagine an enormous white cloth unevenly laid upon a table, and its shining skirts hanging over here and there between the dark massive supports. The reader, if he will excuse so humble a comparison, may thereby form a better idea of the general aspect of the snow-plains, the rocky buttresses, and overhanging glaciers of the Adamello as they now met our view.
It was clear that the descent of the Nardis Glacier, leading in a direct line to Pinzolo, was perfectly easy, and we half regretted having left our goods on the pass.
Returning a few paces to the highest rocks we spent an hour of pleasant idleness, only broken by the duty of building a cairn in which to ensconce a gigantic water-bottle charged with our cards. About three weeks later our representative received a visitor. Lieut. Julius Payer,[44] an Austrian officer whose name has since become familiar to the English public as the leader of a North Pole expedition, had, unknown to us, been spending the summer in exploring the peaks round Val di Genova. The Presanella, owing partly to the difficulties he found with his native guides, was left to the last, and consequently, when its summit was at length reached, the astonished mountaineers were greeted, not by a maiden peak, but by a fine stoneman.
The staircase which had taken three hours and a half to hew was readily run down in forty-five minutes. On the pass, hereafter to be known as the Passo di Cercen, we dismissed our hunter, with materials for many a long story, and our kindest regards to the douaniers.
A steep, short glacier fell away from our feet into Val di Genova. The ice was at first much fissured, but by bearing towards the rocks on the right we found a slope clear from crevasses and favourable to a long glissade. Soon afterwards we left the glacier, and descended through a gully and over some rough ground till, reaching a lower range of cliffs, we bore well to the left, and discovered a faint track which led us down through underwood to the side of the stream and the first hut. From this point there is a noble view of the Adamello, with the Mandron and Lobbia glaciers[45] shooting out their icy tongues over the rocks at the head of the valley. Hence we dropped down by a good path into the bottom of Val di Genova, which was reached in two hours from the pass.
Although the description of Mr. Ball relieves me from the responsibility of standing sponsor for this wonderful valley, I cannot pass over without a tribute the long, yet though now four times trodden, never wearisome twelve miles which separate the sources of the Sarca above the Bedole Alp from Pinzolo, the first village on its banks.
The Val di Genova leaves behind it an impression as vivid and lasting as any of the more famous scenes of the Alps or the Pyrenees. It is in one aspect a trench cut 8,000 feet deep between the opposite masses of the Adamello and Presanella. From another and perhaps truer point of view it is a winding staircase leading by a succession of abrupt flights and level landings from the low-lying Val Rendena to the crowning heights of the Adamello itself. In the valley there are four such flights or steps, locally called 'scale,' each the cause of a noble waterfall; the fifth step closes the valley proper, and the fall that pours over it is of ice, the flashing tongue of the great Mandron Glacier. The last step divides the glacier from the snow region, and is partially smoothed out by the vast frozen masses which slide over it, as a rapid is concealed by a swollen flood. Besides the falls of the Sarca in the bottom of the valley, the meltings of two great ice-fields have to find a way down its precipitous sides.
Hence Nature has here a great opportunity for a display of waterfalls, a branch of landscape gardening in which as a rule she seems strangely chary of exerting her powers. The skill with which a large body of water manages to descend a mountain side at an extremely high angle without dashing itself anywhere to pieces is, I fancy, often extremely provoking to the tourist in search of a sensation.
In the Adamello country, however, the greediest sightseer will be satisfied. For 'grandes eaux' Val di Genova is the Versailles of North Italy. Besides three first-rate falls of the Sarca itself, there are two more of the torrents draining the glaciers of Nardis and Lares. But I am in danger of falling into a numerical, or auctioneer's catalogue, style of description, by which no justice can be done to the manifold charms of rock, wood, and water, which await the wanderer in this forgotten valley. We must return to the Bedole Alp and endeavour to sketch some two or three of the splendid surprises of the path to Pinzolo.
We entered the valley above its highest step on the level where the Sarca first gathers up its new-born strength. A smooth meadow-foreground, alive with cattle, spread between low pine-clad knolls from under the shelter of which issued a thin column of smoke, showing the whereabouts of the châlets. Close at hand two great glaciers poured their icy ruin into the pastoral scene, which was encompassed on all sides by bare or wooded cliffs, most savage in the direction of the river's course, where the vast outworks of the Presanella, keen granite ridges, saw the sky with their solid pinnacles.
After a few hundred yards of level we came to the brink of what we could hardly tell. The grey water which had been flowing at our side dropped suddenly out of sight amidst a mighty roar. A slender and hazardous bridge of a single log crossed the stream on the brink of the precipice.
From it, if your head is steady enough, you may watch the waters as they leap in solid sheets into the air and disappear amidst the foam-cloud, until a growing impulse to join in their mad motion warns you to regain the bank. It is as well to remain content with this impression. But those who wish to see more may easily push their way through a tangle of pine and thick undergrowth by tracks best known to the cattle who come here to bathe themselves in the cool spray. From below the fall is still noble, but it is no longer a mystery. The plunge into the infinite has become only the first step in life.
A second plain is covered with lawn-like turf or bilberry-carpeted woodland; here and there stand shepherds' huts, locally known as 'malghe,' built of ruddy unsmoothed fir-logs. Overhead tower the sheer buttresses of the Presanella, so lofty that it seemed incredible how a few hours ago we had been higher than the highest of these soaring cliffs. At the next 'scala' the foot traveller should cross by a bridge to the right bank in order to pass in front of the second Sarca fall, where the river, caught midway by a bluff of rock, is shivered into a wide-spreading veil, in which the bright water-drops chase one another in recurrent waves over the bosses of the crag.
The succeeding plain is shorter and more broken. At its lower end are some saw-mills and a group of huts, the summer residence of a worthy called Fantoma, once employed as a guide by Lieut. Payer, a great talker, and, by his own account, still greater Nimrod, having slain to his own gun seventeen bears and over three hundred chamois. Here we came on another fall of the Sarca, or rather a succession of leaps imbedded in a deep cleft crossed by bold bridges, and lit up by the scarlet berries of the mountain ash. High upon the right an unchanging cloud hangs on the mountain side where the Lares torrent hurries down to the valley. A cart-road made for the saw-mills now traverses a flat stony tract where the river for the first time breaks loose and devastates the meadows, and huge blocks, fallen from scars in the cliff-faces above, lie beside the track. Sheltered from the spray-shower between two of these we paused to admire the last great cascade, that of the Nardis, which comes shooting and shivering out of the sky down almost upon our heads in a double column. Seen once in June, when the snows were melting, it seemed to me the most beautiful of Alpine water-showers.
Some distance further, on the verge of the last descent into Val Rendena, we reached, as evening fell, the old church of Charlemagne, and looked down for the first time over the softer landscape and sylvan slopes of the lower valley. The fading light below brought out on the hillsides the delicate shades of green lost in the full blaze of the noonday sun, while high up in air the red cliffs of the Brenta, glowing with the last rays of sunset, seemed unearthly enough to form part of the poet's palace of Hyperion which,
Bastion'd with pyramids of glowing gold
And touch'd with shade of bronzèd obélisques,
Glared a blood red through all its thousand courts,
Arches and domes and fiery galleries.