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Italian Alps

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Title: Italian Alps

Author: Douglas William Freshfield


        
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ITALIAN ALPS


London: Printed by
Spottiswoode and Co., New-Street Square
and Parliament Street


  [Illustration: THE CIMA TOSA,
   From Val di Brenta.

   F. F. Tuckett delt.]


ITALIAN ALPS

Sketches in the Mountains of Ticino, Lombardy, the Trentino,
and Venetia

by

DOUGLAS W. FRESHFIELD

Author of 'Travels in the Caucasus and Bashan' and
Editor of 'The Alpine Journal'

   Over the great windy waters, and over the clear-crested summits
   Unto the sun and the sky, and unto the perfecter earth    _Clough_

[Illustration: THE PUNTA TRUBINESCA AND CIMA DI TSCHINGEL,
FROM ST. MORITZ.]








London
Longmans, Green, and Co.
1875

All rights reserved




     TO THE
     MOST CONSTANT OF MY COMPANIONS

     FRANÇOIS JOSEPH DEVOUASSOUD




NOTE.


The First Chapter is reprinted with corrections and additions from
'Fraser's Magazine.' The Thirteenth and fragments of one or two others
have previously appeared in the 'Alpine Journal,' from which three of
the illustrations have also been borrowed. The remaining seven have
been engraved for this work under the care of Mr. G. Pearson.

       *       *       *       *       *

The heights throughout the book and in all the maps are given in
English feet.




PREFACE.


I owe a double apology for the publication of this volume; in the first
place to the public, secondly to my friends.

'Mountaineering' has been by this time fully described by very
competent writers. No new book is likely to have any chance of
rivalling the popularity of the first series of 'Peaks, Passes, and
Glaciers,' or of the dramatic story of the Matterhorn, as told and
illustrated by Mr. E. Whymper. There is no longer the least novelty
in the small feats of gymnastics annually performed, or supposed to be
performed, by members of the Alpine Club. Few readers, I think, outside
that body of enthusiasts, are eager to hear anything more of guides
and glaciers, arêtes and séracs, cols, couloirs and crevasses. Such
subjects recur more often than I could wish in the following pages. But
in attempting to give any adequate picture of a mountain region it is
impossible to leave out the snow mountains. My object has been to keep
them as far as possible in their proper place in the landscape. I could
not, like some tourists, ignore everything above the snow-level, but I
have not, I trust, written as if the world began only at that point and
everything beneath it was also beneath notice.

The sketches here brought together are a patchwork from the journals
of seven summers. Their chief claim to interest lies in the fact
that they deal with portions of the Alpine chain, about which English
readers have hitherto found no information in their own language except
in guide-books. General experience proves that the British mind--the
remark does not, I believe, hold equally good of the German--will
not readily take in a new lesson through this medium. Few of our
fellow-countrymen turn their steps towards an unknown region unless
directed thither either by the report of friends or by some book less
technical and abstruse than a Dictionary of Peaks and Passes. Such a
book, I venture to hope, the present volume may be found.

The gap which it is intended to fill has long remained one of the
broadest in our English Alpine literature.

We have already two works of permanent value dealing with the southern
side of the Alps. But Val Formazza was the eastern limit of the late
Mr. King's 'Italian Valleys of the Pennine Alps.' The authors of 'The
Dolomites' did not go west of the Adige. The exquisite valleys round
the head of Lago Maggiore, so easily accessible from the lake or the
St. Gothard road, have been completely passed over. The mountains of
Val Masino and Val Livigno, distant respectively only a day's journey
west and east of the crowded Upper Engadine, are still left to their
bears and Bergamasque shepherds. The Punta Trubinesca, a noble peak,
which, seen from Monte Generoso, heads the army of the Rhætian Alps,
has been but once ascended, although it is accessible to anybody who
can cross the Diavolezza Pass or climb the Titlis. In the highlands of
Lombardy and the Trentino--speaking roughly, the country between Lago
di Como and Trent--Italy and Switzerland seem to join hands. There,
under an Italian sky and girt round by southern flowers and foliage,
the fantastic rock-ridges and mighty towers of the Brenta stand
opposite the broad snow-plains of the Adamello. Yet the beauties of
this region, one of the most fascinating in the Alps, have, but for a
stray mountaineer or a scanty notice in the 'Alpine Journal,' remained
unsought and unsung.

The few friends and companions who have hitherto shared with me its
enjoyment may here ask, 'And why could not you let them remain so?' I
will at any rate offer none but honest excuses. I can make no pretence
to having been overcome by any benevolent feeling towards the public
at large. Had there seemed the smallest reasonable hope of our haunts
remaining undisturbed I should have been disposed still to keep the
secret I have already guarded for some years. But unfortunately, at
least from our point of view, a spirit of enterprise has sprung up
amongst the people of the country, roads are being made, new inns
opened, old ones furbished up, and as a result English visitors are
becoming less and less rare. In the ordinary course of events it
was hardly possible for another year to pass by without some monthly
tourist, with a facility in bookmaking, penetrating the Lombard Alps.

If it was inevitable that these mountains should be brought before
the world, it seemed better that they should be introduced by one
who had with them a friendship of some years' standing rather than
by a new acquaintance. Moreover there was a very obvious advantage
in making the revelation myself. I have outgrown the rash enthusiasm
which leads discoverers to overrate all the merits and understate
half the disadvantages of their last new discovery. I have, so far as
I know my own mind, no desire to deceive anybody. I am prepared, as
new-comers seldom are, to attach at least their due importance to all
difficulties of climate or of transport, from want of accommodation or
from want of guides. In short, I mean to frame a friendly invitation
to those who know how to travel which yet shall not allure the crowd
who tour. As an eclectic wanderer I can afford to state, with perfect
frankness, my conviction that, if you can put up with the crowd,
there is no place where great snow-peaks are so well seen as in the
Bernese Oberland--that there is no climbing which equals that to be
had within twenty miles of Zermatt--that the ice scenery on Mont Blanc
is unsurpassable in Europe, and the climate of the Upper Engadine the
most bracing south of the Arctic circle. And I can heartily agree in
the conclusion that everyone who, wishing for nothing more, crosses
the frontier of Italy, commits an act of folly. I write only for those
who do wish for something more--who, like myself, feel at times in a
mood for less austere society. The Swiss peaks sit erect in a solemn
white-robed row of Monks and Virgins, most noble and inspiring to
contemplate. The Italian Alps I may venture to compare to a gay and
gracious company robed in blue, red, and purple pomp, and setting off
the costume by that most becoming artifice, well-powdered heads.

I have only to add a few words on matters of detail. The first eleven
chapters deal with ground new[1] to English readers. The twelfth
contains information not given elsewhere, and likely to be useful now
that a large inn is opened at San Martino di Castrozza, in the most
beautiful situation of any stopping-place in Italian Tyrol.[2] The
Pelmo, as in many respects a unique mountain, has a certain novelty.
The last chapter is an expostulation for which the present moment seems
particularly opportune.

In order to meet a difficulty which most authors must have felt, I
have ventured in one respect on an innovation on the ordinary form
of books of Swiss travel. The details as to inns, ascents or paths,
necessary on the spot, are tiresome when a book is read at home; on the
other hand, when travelling it is often difficult at a moment's notice
to extract from the body of the work the exact fact wanted. Such new
remarks therefore as I had to offer on these matters, I have embodied
in an appendix where, without being obtrusive, they will be readily
accessible.

The list of illustrations and maps will explain itself, and show
that by Messrs. Longman's liberality the volume is in these respects
unusually well provided.

My best thanks are due to my friends Mr. J. Gilbert and Mr. F. F.
Tuckett for the use of the accurate sketches which have furnished most
of the illustrations.

Two of the district maps and part of the third are extracts from the
as yet unpublished south-eastern sheet of the Alpine Club map of the
Central Alps. The hill-engraving being still incomplete, the mountains
have been put in from a stone.

The Brenta group is now laid down for the first time with any approach
to accuracy, and some pains have been taken to render this addition
as far as possible worthy of the map of which it forms a natural
extension. For assistance in my endeavours to ascertain the correct
nomenclature I have to thank the Trentine Alpine Society, who appointed
a special committee to make enquiries on the spot,[3] and Mr. M.
Holzmann. I regret to be obliged to add that owing to the churlishness
of the Viennese authorities I have been unable to profit in any way by
the results of the great Survey of the Trentino and South Tyrol lately
executed by the Austrian engineers.


FOOTNOTES:

     [1] The Livigno district has been touched on in two works, _A
     Summer Tour in the Grisons_, by Mrs. H. Freshfield, and _Here
     and There in the Alps_, by the Hon. F. Plunket, but the route
     here described was not previously known. There is a pleasant
     description of Val di Sole, in _On Foot through Tyrol_, by
     Walter White. Chapman and Hall, 1856.

     [2] See Appendix F on 'Tyrol v. Tirol.'

     [3] See Appendix E for further details on this subject.




CONTENTS.


  CHAPTER I.

  VAL MAGGIA.
                                                                   PAGE

  Val Maggia--Bignasco--Val Lavizzara--The Basodine--Val              1
  Bavona--Piz Campo Tencca--Val di Prato

  CHAPTER II.

  VAL VERZASCA AND VAL CANOBBINA.

  Passo di Redorta--Val Verzasca--A Broken Road--Locarno--Val        28
  Canobbina--Val Vigezzo

  CHAPTER III.

  _WEST OF THE BERNINA._

  THE PEAKS AND PASSES OF VAL MASINO.

  The Mountains of Val Masino--The Aversthal--Madriser Pass--Val     41
  Bregaglia--Zocca Pass--Promontogno--Val Bondasca--Passo di
  Ferro--Bagni del Masino--Passo di Monte Sissone--The Forno
  Glacier

  CHAPTER IV.

  THE PEAKS AND PASSES OF VAL MASINO (_continued_).

  Chiareggio--Passo di Mello--Passo di Bondo--Cima del Largo--Val    68
  Masino--Punta Trubinesca--Monte della Disgrazia--The Approach to
  Sondrio--A Reply

  CHAPTER V.

  _EAST OF THE BERNINA._

  TARASP AND THE LIVIGNO DISTRICT.

  The Prätigau--Verstankla Thor--Tarasp--Piz Pisoc--Passo del        94
  Diavel--Livigno--Monte Zembrasca--Passo di Dosdè--Val Grosina

  CHAPTER VI.

  THE BERGAMASQUE MOUNTAINS.

  Val d'Esino--The Grigna--Introbbio--Forcella di Cedrino--Val      121
  Torta--An Old Traveller--Val Brembana--Branzi--Passo di
  Gornigo--Gromo--Val Seriana--Bondione--Monte Gleno--Val Belviso

  CHAPTER VII.

  VAL CAMONICA AND THE GIUDICARIA.

  The Aprica Pass--Edolo--Val Camonica--Cedegolo--Val               154
  Saviore--Lago d'Arno--Monte Castello--Val di Fum--Val
  Daone--Lago di Ledro--Riva--The Gorges of the Sarca--Val
  Rendena--Pinzolo--The Pra Fiori--Val d'Algone--Stenico--The High
  Road to Trent

  CHAPTER VIII.

  THE PRESANELLA AND VAL DI GENOVA.

  English and German Mountaineers--The Lombard Alps from Monte      182
  Rosa--Nomenclature--Gavia Pass--Ponte di Legno--Tonale
  Pass--Vermiglio--Val Presanella--The Presanella--Passo di
  Cercen--Val di Genova

  CHAPTER IX.

  THE ADAMELLO AND CARÈ ALTO.

  A Tyrolese Porter--The Bedole Alp--The Adamello--Val Miller--Val  208
  di Malga--Val di Borzago--The Carè Alto--A High-level
  Route--Passo di Mandron--Val d'Avio

  CHAPTER X.

  PINZOLO AND CAMPIGLIO.

  Pinzolo--The Churches of Val Rendena--History and Legends--Val    229
  Nambino--The Brenta Group--La Madonna di Campiglio--Hospice and
  Pension

  CHAPTER XI.

  THE BRENTA GROUP.

  Val di Brenta--Bocca dei Camozzi--Val d'Agola--Passo              248
  d'Ambies--Val di Sole--Ginevrie Pass--Cima di Brenta--Passo di
  Grostè--Val Teresenga--Molveno--Cima Tosa--Bocca di Brenta

  CHAPTER XII.

  THE PASSES OF PRIMIERO.

  The Lower Passes--Paneveggio--San Martino di Castrozza--The       279
  Paths to Agordo--Val di San Lucano--Passo di Canale--Passo delle
  Cornelle--Passo di Travignolo--Cima di Vezzana

  CHAPTER XIII.

  THE PELMO AND VAL DI ZOLDO.

  The Venetian Tyrol--Val di Zoldo--Passo d'Alleghe--San            308
  Nicolò--Campo di Rutorto--On the Pelmo--A Lady's Ascent--The
  People of Val di Zoldo

  CHAPTER XIV.

  MEN AND MOUNTAINS.

  Men and Mountains--Mountain-haters--A Literary Example--Poets     327
  and Painters--The Place of Art--Alpine Scenery and Art--The
  Variety of the Alps--The Snow World--Mons. Loppé's
  Pictures--Conclusion




APPENDICES.


  Appendix A.
                                                                   PAGE
  Notes for Travellers                                              347

  Appendix B.
  Pictures and Antiquities of the Bergamasque Valleys               367

  Appendix C.
  Routes from Santa Catarina to Val di Sole                         369

  Appendix D.
  The Churches of Val Rendena                                       370

  Appendix E.
  The Nomenclature of the Brenta Group                              378

  Appendix F.
  Tyrol _v._ Tirol                                                  380

  INDEX                                                             381




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS.


WOOD ENGRAVINGS.

  1.   The Cima Tosa from Val di Brenta                  _Frontispiece_

  2.   The Punta Trubinesca and Cima di Tschingel
         from above St. Moritz                               _Vignette_

  3.   The Monte della Disgrazia from the Bernina
         Group                                         _to face p._  69
  4.   The Head of Val di Genova                           "        205
  5.   From the Adamello--looking East                     "        213
  6.   San Stefano and the Cima di Nafdisio                "        232
  7.   Val di Brenta--from the road to Campiglio           "        236
  8.   Molveno                                             "        273
  9.   The Cimon della Pala and Cima di Vezzana            "        295
 10.   On the Pelmo                                        "        317


MAPS.

  1.   The Locarno District                                "          1
  2.   The Val Masino District                             "         41
  3.   The Adamello and Brenta Groups                      "        155
  4.   The Primiero Group                                  "        279
  5.   General Map                                             _at end_




  [Illustration: THE LOCARNO DISTRICT.

   Stanford's Geogl. Estabm., 56, Charing Cross, London
   London: Longmans & Co.]




CHAPTER I.

VAL MAGGIA.

     Huge mountains of immeasurable height
       Encompass'd all the level valley round
     With mighty slabs of rock that sloped upright,
       An insurmountable enormous bound;--
     That vale was so sequester'd and secluded,
     All search for ages past it had eluded.     HOOKHAM FRERE.

VAL MAGGIA--BIGNASCO--VAL LAVIZZARA--THE BASODINE--VAL BAVONA--PIZ
CAMPO TENCCA--VAL DI PRATO.


The typical Alpine Clubman has been somewhere described by Mr. Anthony
Trollope as cherishing in his bosom, through the ten months of each
year in which the business of life debars him from his favourite
pursuit, an ever-gnawing desire for the beloved mountains.

For myself, whenever, as I often do, I vent

           ---- an inward groan
     To sit upon an Alp as on a throne

it is accompanied, as in Keats' sonnet, by 'a languishment for skies
Italian.' The bright recollections which at once console and harass me
during the fogs and snows of our Cimmerian winters owe their existence
as much to Italian valleys as to snowy peaks. After a week of hard
mountaineering at Zermatt or in the Oberland, the keen colourless air
of the Riffel or Bell Alp begins to pall upon my senses; the pine-woods
and châlets to remind me, against my will, of a German box of toys.
I sigh for the opal-coloured waves of atmosphere which are beating up
against the southern slopes of the mountains, for the soft and varied
foliage, the frescoed walls and far-gleaming campaniles of Italy. In
such a mood, after a morning spent upon the snows of Monte Rosa or the
Adamello, I plunge with the keenest delight amongst the vines of Val
Sesia or Val Camonica.

For this morbid tendency, as it is considered by some vigorous friends,
I do not propose to offer either defence or apology. Still less do
I wish to become a public benefactor by leading on a mob to take
possession of my pleasure grounds. But there is ample room for a few
congenial spirits, and towards these I would not be selfish.

In truth the unequivocal warmth of the valleys of the southern Alps
in August, the English travelling season, will serve to check the
incursions of cockneydom; for the modern British tourist professes
himself incapable of enjoying life, much less exercise, under even a
moderate degree of heat. Everybody knows how the three warm days which
make up an English summer are received with more groans than gratitude,
and the thunderstorm which invariably ends them is saluted by a chorus
of thanksgiving adequate for a delivery from some Egyptian plague. The
sun so dreaded at home we naturally shun abroad. Italy and the Levant
are already deserted at the season when they become most enjoyable. An
Italian valley suggests to the too solid Englishman not the glorious
glow of summer and a profusion of 'purple grapes, green figs, and
mulberries,' but fever, cholera, and sundry kinds of dissolution.

Lago Maggiore is a name well known to thousands, but I doubt whether,
even in the Alpine Club, ten could be found ready to point out off-hand
the whereabouts of Val Maggia. Yet the valley offers a type of beauty
as rare and worth knowing as the lake into which its waters flow.[4]

Behind Locarno, at the head of Lago Maggiore, is the outlet of a
network of valleys, forming the veins of the mountain mass, Italian
by nature, though Swiss by circumstance, which divides the Gries and
the St. Gothard. The longest and deepest of these valleys is that of
the Maggia. Yet, despite its length, it leads to no pass over the main
Alpine chain. The gaps at its head open only on the high pasturages of
Val Bedretto. It has been thus cut off by nature from any share in the
traffic which has flowed for centuries on one or the other side of it.

I must now ask the reader to imagine himself seated beside me on the
box of the country omnibus which plies daily through this valley. Some
three miles from Locarno in the picturesque defile of Ponte Brolla our
eyes, accustomed to the murky grey of most glacier streams, are first
greeted by the marvellous waters of the Maggia, shining with intensity
of blue out of deep caves and hollows in the heart of the smooth white
granite. But for many miles to come the scenery of Val Maggia does not
rise above the ordinary boldness of a granite district, here graced by
a slender cascade, there marred by a stony waste.

About sixteen miles, or three hours, from Locarno the road crosses
for the first time to the right bank of the stream, and passes through
Cevio, the political centre of the neighbouring valleys, standing on
the confines of the three districts of Val Maggia, Val Lavizzara and
Val Rovana. We drive across an open space, like an English village
green, surrounded by houses more pretentious than are commonly seen in
the mountains.

It was on this spot that De Saussure, while taking an observation
to ascertain the height of the place above the sea, was greeted and
invited to enter by the baillie or chief magistrate of the valley.
I cannot resist quoting the amusing account of the interview which
followed.

'It being some time,' writes De Saussure, 'since I had had any news
from the civilized world, I accepted the invitation, hoping to learn
some. What was my surprise when the baillie told me that though it
was long since he had had any letter from the other side of the Alps,
he should be happy to give an answer to any inquiry I might wish to
make. At the same time he showed me an old black seal, and this was
the oracle which answered all his questions. He held in his hand a
string, to the end of which this seal was attached, and he dangled the
seal thus fastened in the centre of a drinking-glass. Little by little
the trembling of the hand communicated to the thread and seal a motion
which made the latter strike against the sides of the glass. The number
of these blows indicated the answer to the question which the person
who held the string had in his mind. He assured me with the seriousness
of profound conviction that he knew by this means not only everything
that was going on at home, but also the elections for the Council of
Bale and the number of votes each candidate had obtained. He questioned
me on the object of my travels, and after having learnt it, showed me
on his almanac the age which common chronology gives the world, and
asked me what I thought about it. I told him that my observations of
mountains had led me to look on the world as somewhat older. "Ah,"
he answered with an air of triumph, "my seal had already told me so,
because the other day I had the patience to count the blows while
reflecting on the world's age, and I found it was four years older than
it is set down in this almanac."'

Near Cevio the landscape takes a more romantic character. The
valley-walls close in and bend, and huge knobs of ruddy-grey rock
thrust themselves forward. The river, confined to a narrow bed,
alternately lies still in pools, whose depth of blue no comparison can
express, or rushes off over the white boulders in a clear sparkling
dance. Chestnut-trees hang from the crags overhead; higher on the hills
every ledge is a stripe of verdure fringed with the delicate shapes of
the birch and larch. In the far distance a snow-peak in the range above
Val Leventina gleams behind the folds of the nearer mountains.

But up to the last moment nothing foreshadows the wonderful surprise
in store. As we draw near the first scattered houses of Bignasco,
the mountains suddenly break open, and reveal a vision of the most
exquisite and harmonious beauty, one of those master-pieces of nature
which defy the efforts of the subtlest word-painters, and are perhaps
best left alone by a dull topographer. Yet I cannot refrain, useless
as the effort may be, from at least cataloguing some of the details
which come together in this noble landscape. The waters at our feet
are transparent depths of a colour, half sapphire and half emerald,
indescribable, and, the moment the eye is taken away, inconceivable, so
that every glance becomes a fresh surprise. In the foreground on either
bank of the stream are frescoed walls and mossy house-roofs; beyond is
a summerhouse supported by pillars, and a heavily laden peach-orchard
lit with a blaze of sunflowers. At the gate of Val Bavona a white
village glistens from amidst its vineyards. Sheer above it two bold
granite walls rise out of the verdure, and form the entrance to a long
avenue of great mountain shapes. Behind these foremost masses the hills
fall valleywards in noble and perfectly harmonious lines. Each upper
cliff flows down into a slope of chestnut-muffled boulders in a curve,
the classical beauty of which is repeated by the vine-tendrils at its
feet. In the distance the snows of the Basodine seen through the sunny
haze gleam, like a golden halo, on the far-off head of the mountain.

Is human interest wanted to give completeness and a motive to the
picture? As daylight faded I have watched the swinging torches and
low chaunt of those who carried the Host to some passing soul. In the
morning-glow I have seen a white-robed procession pour slowly with
banners and noise of bells from the yet dark village, then suddenly
issuing into the sunshine, surge, a living wave of brightness, over the
high-arched bridges.

Bignasco lives in my memory as one of the loveliest spots in the
Italian Alps. Planted at the meeting-place of three valleys, the view
up Val Bavona is only the fairest of the fair scenes which surround
it. In every direction paths strike off through the woods. Across the
river rises a bold bluff of rock; behind it the hillside curves in, and
forms an ample bay filled with chestnut forest; at intervals a sunny
spot has been cleared and planted as a vineyard, the unstubbed ground
is covered by a carpet of Alpine rhododendron, here tempted down to its
lowest limit in the chain.[5] Little tracks, wandering in alternate
'forthrights and meanders' from one haybarn to another, lead at last
to a white chapel placed on a conspicuous brow. By its side stands an
older and humbler edifice. The gates of both are bolted, but the bolt
is held fast only by a withered nosegay, and it is easy to make an
entrance into the smaller chapel and examine its frescoes. They have
been atrociously daubed over; but the pattern of the child's dress in
the central picture, and a certain strength in the figures and faces
on the side walls, still bear witness to a time when the great wave
of Italian art spread even into Val Maggia. A date in the first twenty
years of the sixteenth century may be read above the altar.

We are here on the verge of the chestnuts; a few hundred feet above
us the woods change into beech and ash groves; higher still birch and
larch feather the mountain spurs. The valleys meet at our feet. On the
left, sloping lawns fall away abruptly into a deep torrent-worn ravine;
far beneath are the white houses of Cevio. Val Bavona with its mountain
curves and crowning snows lies immediately opposite.

Why, we ask, as we sit on the chapel steps, does this combination of
rocks and trees touch our senses with so rare and subtle a pleasure?
On the lakes we have left landscapes more 'softly sublime, profusely
fair.' But those belonged to the class of hill-scenery; even the waving
crests were to their tops clothed in green and the whole landscape
pleased and contented us by its aspect of unbroken domestic repose and
richness. Here the bold dark outlines of the granite precipices hanging
over the luxuriant yet untamed loveliness of the valley appeal to our
emotions with the strong power of contrast. The majesty of the central
ranges wedded to the beauty of Italy excites in us that enthusiasm
beyond tranquil admiration which is our tribute to the highest
expression of the Romantic whether in Art or Nature. We can contemplate
calmly a rich lake-scene or an Umbrian Madonna; we feel disposed to cry
out with delight before a figure of Michael Angelo or this view in Val
Maggia.

For in this valley the strength of granite is clothed in the grace of
southern foliage, in a rich mantle of chestnuts and beeches, fringed
with maize and vines, and embroidered about the skirts with delicate
traceries of ferns and cyclamen. Nature seems here to have hit the
mark she so often misses--to speak boldly but truly--in her higher
efforts: she has avoided alike the trough-like uniformity which renders
hideous much of the upper Engadine and diminishes even the splendours
of Chamonix, the naked sternness of Mattmark or the Grimsel, the rough
scales of muddy moraine and torrent-spread ruin which deface Monte Rosa
herself, where she sinks towards Macugnaga and Italy.

It is easy to return more directly down the face of the rocks. In these
valleys the industry of centuries, by building up stone staircases
from shelf to shelf, has made paths in the least likely spots. Even
the narrowest ledge between two cliffs is turned to profit. Across
the bridge behind the inn rises an abrupt crag, up the face of which
a dwarf wall runs at a very high angle. This wall, at first sight
purposeless, proved to be in fact a stone ladder, the flakes of
gneiss which projected along its top serving as steps for the active
peasantry. The ascent to some of the alps lies up stone staircases,
three hours--to measure distance in the local manner--in length.
To these the wiry little cows of Canton Ticino speedily accustom
themselves. Indeed, so expert do they become in getting up stairs
that the broad flights of steps leading to the church doors have to be
barricaded by posts placed at narrow intervals to prevent the parting
herd from yielding to a sudden impulse to join in a body in morning
mass, or a stray cow from wandering in unawares to browse on the tinsel
vegetation of the high altar.

The greater part of the population of Bignasco cluster closely under
the hillside, where a long dull village street squeezed in between
two rows of stone walls opens out here and there into a tiny square or
'piazzetta,' with a stone bench and a stone fountain overshadowed by a
stone-propped vine. These houses resemble in nothing those of a Swiss
hamlet. The abandonment of the use of wood in favour of an equally
handy and more solid material, joined to something in the external
construction of the houses, carried my thoughts, on our last visit, far
away to the stone towns of central Syria. Here, as there, I noted that
the principal entrance to each tenement was by a gateway eight to ten
feet high, and proportionately broad. Remembering how in my youth I had
been taken to task by a worthy missionary for not recognising in such
doors the work of giants, I enquired eagerly for traditions of some
local Og, perhaps a link between the giant of the Mettenberg and the
present Swiss. But such was the ignorance of the country folk that I
could obtain no further answer than that the gateways were a convenient
size for a laden mule.

The well-to-do people of Val Maggia seem to be sensible of the charms
of the spot where the waters of Val Bavona and the main valley meet.

On the promontory between the two rivers, each crossed just above the
junction by a bold arch, stands a suburb of what would be described by
an auctioneer as 'detached villas,' houses gay with painted shutters
and arched loggias, where grapes cluster and oleanders flush. One
of these, commanding from its upper windows the perfect view up Val
Bavona, is the 'Posta,' the home of Signor Patocchi, who entertains
the rare strangers who visit the village. Our host is a man of high
standing and substance in his own country. For three generations the
office of President of the United Districts of Val Maggia has remained
in his family. He has represented Ticino on public occasions and is a
member of the Cantonal Council and of the Swiss Alpine Club. The energy
of the race is represented also by a vivacious active sister who dwells
with family pride on her brother's successes in life, and most of all
on a bridge for the new St. Gothard railway, for which he had accepted
the contract; a 'cosa stupenda,' a 'vera opera Romana.'

The example of their foregoers has assuredly not been lost on the
modern Italians. Not only in great works such as the Mont Cenis tunnel
or the coast railway from Nice to Spezzia, but also in the country
roads of remote valleys the traveller finds frequent evidences of
the survival of the Roman tradition and genius for road-making.
The industry and skill displayed in opening and improving means of
communication by the most obscure communes--frequently, it is true,
when they expend themselves in the laborious construction of pavés,
misdirected--contrast very favourably with the sloth in the same matter
of many northern 'Boards' apt to pride themselves on their energy.

Sometimes, however, this inherited zeal outruns discretion, witness the
following story taken from a local newspaper. Caspoggio is a hamlet
perched high on a green hillside in Val Malenco, at the back of the
Bernina. The lower communes had in 1874 just completed a new road
to which Caspoggio naturally desired to link itself. There were two
ways of effecting this, one estimated to cost 40,000 lire (£1,600),
the other 15,000 (£600); the cheapest road was, however, twenty-two
minutes the longer. The bold patriarchs of Caspoggio were all for
saving time as against money. Whereon the 'Corriere Valtellinese'
solemnly protested against the intended extravagance, and pointed
out its inconsistency with the facts that the annual income of the
commune was not more than £80 a year, and that it could only afford its
schoolmaster and mistress annual pittances of £6 apiece. 'My good sirs
of Caspoggio,' said this sensible adviser, 'is it worth while to create
a communal debt in order to bring your butter and cheese a few minutes
earlier to market?' How Caspoggio decided I have yet to learn.

To return to Val Maggia and its President. Signor Patocchi is a man of
position among his neighbours, and his house shows it. But he is also
a Southerner, and his floors show it. Having confessed this, however,
the worst is said, and for the rest English people accustomed to travel
will find little to complain of. The beds are clean, fish and fowl
the neighbourhood supplies, and a few hours' notice will collect ample
provisions for the carnivorous climber.

But it is time for us to leave Bignasco and follow the road up the main
valley henceforth known as Val Lavizzara.

For four or five miles we mount through a picturesque ravine, where
the mountains rise in rugged walls tier above tier overhead. Yet every
cranny is filled with glossy foliage, and the intervening ledges are
no monstrous deformities, only fit to be 'left to slope,' but each
a meadow closely mown, and dotted with stone haybarns. If some gash
is noticed in the cliffs it is only as a brighter streak of colour;
the ruin wrought below has long been buried out of sight, cottages
grow against the fallen rocks, and vines fling themselves over their
roughnesses. The river, no murky grey monster--like those fitly
transformed into dragons by the legends of the northern Alps--runs
through a narrow cleft, in the depths of which we catch alternate
glimpses of deep blue pools or creamlike falls.

A little farther the defile opens, the stream flows more peaceably, and
we shall see fishermen armed with huge jointless rods strolling along
its banks. Though still early morning, some are already returning,
amongst them a curé with a well-filled basket for his Friday dinner.

Several clusters of houses hang on the hillside, but the first village
is Broglio, shaded by groves of gigantic walnuts; a mile beyond the
valley bends, the shoulders of the hills sink sufficiently to allow
their rugged heads to come into view, and a glen opens on the right
backed by the jagged snow-streaked range of the Campo Tencca. The first
sunbeams which have reached us stream through the gap, and bathe the
forest in a golden flood of light. A great pulpit-shaped boulder rises
beside the road, and is seized on as a post by the telegraph wire. Soon
after we cross the stream and enter two adjoining villages. Beyond them
is a small cemetery, decorated with paintings in somewhat better taste
than those usually found in the mountains. There is further evidence
of culture in the couplet from Dante, which under one of the frescoes
takes the place of the usual Latin text.

Amidst a rocky waste, where the torrent from Val Peccia joins the
larger stream, stands the dirty hamlet of Peccia. The glen to which it
gives a name seems here the true head of the valley, but the entrance
to the longest branch is by a steep ascent up the right-hand hillside.
Above the first level, a grassy dell occupied by some saw-mills, the
river has cut its way through a rock-barrier. Here on my first visit
the air resounded with the hammering and sawing of a large company of
labourers, some clinging on the rocks and boring, others wheeling away
the rubbish, whilst another party were building up the piers of a lofty
bridge. The excellent and boldly engineered road then in construction
is now completed, and leads as far as Fusio.

We are now at the limit of the romantic Italian valley, and are
leaving behind us not only the vine and the chestnut, but also the
granite. The mountains as we approach them seem to sink before us. The
precipices of the lower valley give place to smooth lawns shadowed by
spreading beeches. The gentle hillsides which surround the headwaters
of the Maggia rise up into low rounded crests, and the scenery is only
redeemed from monotony by the rich variety of the foliage and verdure.

The highest village, Fusio, is a cluster of houses crowded round a
church, and clinging to a steep slope, at the foot of which flows the
blue torrent in a deep bridge-spanned cleft. The inn ten years ago
was of the most primitive kind. It was kept by a worthy couple whose
shrewd puckered faces recalled some portrait of an early German master.
But they were as lively as they were old, and no emergency, not even
the arrival of three hungry Englishmen, found them without resources.
On the occasion in question they boldly proceeded to sacrilege on our
behalf. The village knew that the curé was going to have a fowl for
dinner; the good dame hurried off to the parsonage, and like David
robbed the tables of the priest.

The old inn and its owners are no longer to be found. A new hotel has
lately been built, and is said to be frequented by Italians seeking
refuge from the summer heat of the Lombard plain.

Thus far we have simply followed the main valley. Of its numerous
tributary glens, Val Bavona and Val di Prato are the most likely to be
visited by mountaineers, for they lead to the two highest summits of
the neighbouring ranges, the Basodine and Piz Campo Tencca. But their
beauties ought to attract others besides those who may wish to use them
as means to a higher end--in a literal and Alpine Club sense.

The finest entrance to Val Maggia is through Val Bavona. The traveller
descending from the cold heights and bleak pasturages of the Gries
finds a warm welcome from the storm in the little inn opened some years
ago on the very edge of the cliff over which the Tosa rushes in the
most imposing cataract of the central Alps.[6] An afternoon is well
spent in resting on the rocks beside the tearing, foaming flood, and
watching the endless variety of the forms taken by the broken waves
in their wild downward rush. Waterfalls are too seldom studied at
leisure. Such a view is far more impressive than the hurried glance
ordinarily taken from some point whence the cascade is seen in face,
and all detail is sacrificed to a general effect, which often fails to
be either imposing or picturesque.

The host of the inn will with pleasure undertake to place you next
morning in from three to four hours on the top of the Basodine. The
ascent is simple, and not at all tedious; a steep path up a moist
flower-sprinkled cliff, rolling alps commanding views of the red
mountains of the Gries, then steep banks of frozen snow, and a short
exciting scramble up the highest rocks.

The mountain is a natural belvidere for the Bernese Oberland and
Monte Rosa, and rising a good head above its fellows, must give a
glorious view towards Italy. But to me the mountains of Val Maggia are
unfriendly. Here as on Piz Campo Tencca I saw only a stoneman and a
world of seething mists.

The night before our ascent had been black and wild. The wind had
roared against the waterfall, and the thunder had rocked the house
as though it had a mind to shake it bodily over the cliff. But the
grey sad sunrise was not without hope; the scarves of mist which
still clung about the mountains seemed remnants of an outworn grief;
the upper sky, pale and tremulous, rather spoke of a storm past than
threatened further ills to come. But the crisis had been more violent
than we dreamt at the time, and twenty-four hours of reparation were
needed before the face of heaven could again shine in its full summer
fairness.

The loss of the view was not our only disappointment. It had been
determined to find a new and more direct way down to San Carlo through
Val Antabbia. But in a blind fog it is best to avoid precipices, and
we knew there were plenty in that direction, so we quietly returned
to the gap between our peak and the Kastelhorn, and put on the rope
preparatory to descending the Cavergno Glacier.

The slopes of snow, cut here and there by deep rifts, offered easy
passage until hardening into blue ice they curled over steeply. Some
rocks stuck out on our left, and at their base, at a depth of several
hundred feet, abysses innumerable gaped through the mists. This was an
unexpected difficulty, and we should have been perplexed what to do had
not the wind slightly shifted the cloud-curtain, and shown enough to
enable us to understand our exact position.

The glacier is divided into two terraces by a wall of rock, which
towards the base of the Kastelhorn is covered over by an icefall,
passable no doubt with ease near that peak. We had descended too
directly, and were to the right, or south, of the fall. We must either
remount and go round, or else get down the rocks. With a little trouble
we found a passage, and François, boldly taking advantage of a narrow
bridge between two ice-pits, led us safely on to the lower branch of
the glacier.

Its surface was broken only by contemptible crevices, and we ran down
without interruption to the huge terminal moraine. Sitting amongst its
blocks, we looked back at the great shining slope, on which the sun was
already shining. High up under the Basodine long shadows fell from an
isolated group of snow-towers or 'séracs,' amongst the most prodigious
I had seen in the Alps; a glacier Karnac of ponderous columns and huge
propylons. The smoothness of the surrounding ice, like the flatness of
the Egyptian plain, added to the effect of this mountain temple.

We wished we had missed our way a little more and passed through
its midst. Had we done so we might have followed out the upper or
southern branch of the glacier, and found our way into the glen below
the meeting of waterfalls afterwards mentioned. Close to the ice, in
a sheltered basin, spread with a carpet of verdure, and watered by a
smooth-flowing stream, we found the highest châlets. Great was our
surprise when our eager enquiries for milk were answered in broken
English. The herdsman had worked as a miner in Cornwall, and had now
returned in good circumstances to his native valley.

The narrowness of their granite walls drives the Val Maggians far
afield in search of subsistence.[7] A wayside chapel in Val Bavona has
been recently erected, as its inscription narrates, with Australian
gold, and the driver of the Locarno omnibus in 1873 had learnt English
in the Antipodes. Most of these wanderers come back, some rich, to
build large, white, cheerful houses--'palazzi' their friends call
them--amongst the familiar chestnut-groves; others, like our friend,
less successful, but still not wholly unrewarded, to revert contentedly
to the old solitary life on the hills with the cows and goats.
There can be no stronger proof of the real fascination of mountains
over minds which have grown amongst them than the fidelity of these
peasants, who hurry back from all the excitements of the Antipodes to
the monotony of the alp in summer and the hamlet in winter.[8]

Beyond the huts, path and stream make a sudden plunge into a deep
hollow, the meeting-place of the waters which, springing from the
tarns and snows that lie on the upper shelves, rush over the granite
precipices in a succession of noble falls. The shadeless glen is
closed at its lower end by a buttress projecting from the eastern
mountain. On climbing the spur we saw deep below us a trough-like
valley. Steep mountains encircled the basin, and its floor was strewn
with huge masses torn from their rugged sides. High overhead rose the
southern bulwarks of the Basodine, gigantic cliffs, on whose topmost
verge sparkled a glittering ice-cornice. At our feet San Carlo, the
highest village in Val Bavona, peeped out from amidst rich foliage.
Many women were scattered over the meadows, cutting and gathering in
their hay; and, as we rested, a boy came up from them, and told us
that to reach the valley we must return and cross the stream. A rough
path on the right bank led us through beautiful copses, where the
beech and birch mingled their branches with the pines, and tall ferns
and bright-berried bushes wove a luxuriant undergrowth. Chestnuts and
walnuts greeted us for the first time as we approached the high-arched
bridge leading to San Carlo.

The path, now a good cart-track carried on a causeway between purple
boulders and gnarled old chestnuts, passed by the way a brightly
coloured chapel and two villages. Near the second, a cluster of poor
huts hemmed in by enormous blocks of granite, a pretty jet of water
shoots out of the western cliff, the valley bends, and the sunlit
mountains behind Bignasco close the distance.

A short plain, ruined by a torrent which has recently carried away
half a hamlet, is now passed. To such disasters Val Bavona is always
exposed, and a law formerly forbad any one to live in it through the
winter.

Henceforth, keeping beside the clear blue waters, we descended with
them, through a tangle of white stream-smoothed boulders, and under the
shadow of the prodigious cliffs from which they have fallen. One of the
blocks bears this simple record: 'Qui fu bella Campagna,' and the date
1594. Yet despite the ruin and destruction of which the defile, within
an even historically modern epoch, has been the scene, its beauty is
in no way of a stern or savage nature. If the mountain shapes are as
majestical as those of Giotto's Duomo, their walls are also decorated
with the most lavish hand; and even where the granite is bare time
and weather have tinted it with the mellow hues of an old Florentine
façade.

No more typical passage from the Alps to Italy can possibly be found
than that we had chosen. A few hours ago we had been in the frigid zone
among the eternal snows, and above the level of all but the hardiest
plants. Now the green pastures and the pines were already past, the
chestnut had become our companion, and the first vine threw its long
branches over the rude woodwork of a sheltered hut. Soon three or four
were found in company under the sunny side of a heat-reflecting rock,
until as we drew near Cavergno the whole slope became a vineyard,
and the path an overarched alley between a double row of tall granite
pillars, from which the ripe clusters hung down into our faces in too
tempting luxuriance.

       *       *       *       *       *

A straight line drawn from Faido, on the St. Gothard road, to Bignasco
nearly passes through Piz Campo Tencca, the three-domed snow-crest
which dominates the eastern range, and, like its loftier rival, the
Basodine, peers down on that charming halting-place. The pass between
the two highest of these summits was, therefore, clearly the proper
path for two mountaineers coming from the east to Val Maggia.

To the driving public Faido is known for an excellent inn and a
waterfall, the latter the outflow of the glacier we proposed to cross.
A much-used track climbs in a long zigzag to the cultivated tableland
which lies above the steep slope overshadowing the village. Beyond
the large upland hamlet of Dalpe, our path pursued the stream into the
hills, mounting steeply by its side to an upper plain, whence several
tracks, some for goats and some for cows, led over broken ground to the
Crozlina Alp, a broad pasturage at the base of a wall of rocks, over
which the streams falling from the upper glaciers shiver themselves
into spray. A few yards south of a boldly projecting crag, and by the
side of one of the cascades, we found it easy to scramble up the broken
rock-faces until the level of the ice was reached; then it seemed best
to bear to the right, and follow a long ridge connecting the buttress
and the highest peak.

The morning had been uncertain, and now the clouds, which we had hoped
were only local and passing, fell upon us with a determination which
promised little chance of deliverance.

What is the duty of a traveller and his guides overtaken on the
mountains by bad weather is a question which the sad death on the Mer
de Glace brought not long ago prominently before the public, and which
will be argued as often as some fatal accident calls attention to the
subject. It is one which does not admit of any offhand answer. Climbers
are of various constitutions, there are mountains and mountains, and
divers kinds of bad weather. Still it may be useful to endeavour to
lay down such leading principles as will probably meet with general
consent.

Where the travellers are new to high mountains, and uncertain of
their own powers of endurance, the guide, in every case where going
on involves long exposure to storm, should suggest, and his employers
agree to, a retreat. The moral courage necessary for this is one of
the requisites of a guide's calling; and if by its exercise he may
sometimes expose himself to the hasty ridicule of an ignorant tourist,
he will not suffer in his profession or in the estimation of real
climbers.

Again, an attempt on one of the more difficult peaks, such as the
Schreckhorn or the Weisshorn, ought not to be persevered with in
doubtful weather; that is, by perseverance in such a case the risk to
life becomes so serious that, whatever the travellers' own value of
themselves may be, they have no right to ask guides to share it. For
it should always be remembered that it is where difficulties prevent
rapid movement that the bitter cold grasps its victim. Except, perhaps,
in the very worst, and fortunately rare, _tourmentes_ circulation can
always be maintained by constant motion.

Thirdly, exposure to this worst kind of storm, which comes on with an
insupportable icy blast, should be as far as possible shunned even on
a mule-pass. The simple monuments which line the track of the Col de
Bonhomme and the Gavia Pass, near Santa Catarina, bear witness to the
dangers of such weather, even on a comparatively frequented route.

There remain, however, a large class of cases where more or less
seasoned climbers are overtaken by clouds, rain, or snow, in each of
which the decision must depend on the circumstances, and for which no
general rule can be laid down. A wet day in the valley is often far
from intolerable above the snow-level, where the gently falling flakes
sink slowly through an air of moderate temperature. In such weather
many high passes may be safely accomplished by men of sufficient
experience, who understand how to apply their local knowledge, or to
use a good map and compass.

Of course, it will be asked, _Cui bono?_--why wander amidst the mists
when you might be comfortable below them? The answer is, that when
the day changes the traveller is often far on his way. It is a case,
perhaps, of going back four hours or going on five; there is, besides
the natural disinclination to return and to have had one's walk for
nothing, the hope, often justified, that the change for the worse may
be only temporary. These are motives which must strongly influence
everyone in such a position.

Besides, the inside of a cloud is not quite so dismal a place as might
be thought, and the snow-region, even when the distant view is hidden,
offers attractions for those who have learnt to appreciate it. The
fretted ice-chasms, the toppling towers and fragile arches of the upper
glacier, the keen white pyramid seen suddenly through a wreath of mist,
or the snow-wave caught in the act of breaking over the highest crest,
have a loveliness of their own as delicate as, and from its strangeness
to inhabitants of a temperate zone sometimes even more fascinating
than, the charm of streams and forests. It is not, it is true, visible
to all eyes. A Reverend Principal lately instructed his audience that
'a more hideous spectacle than a yawning crevasse, with its cold,
blue, glassy sides, can scarcely be conceived.' But Mons. Loppé and the
Alpine Club know better than this. Most of us can probably remember, in
the Regent's Park Colosseum, a sham Switzerland: what that in a sorry
enough way attempted to be to the reality, the reality is to the Polar
regions--a specimen near home of Arctic scenery. Much of this beauty
can be seen even in a partial fog. But there is also the chance of
that most glorious of transfigurations of earth and sky, when towards
evening some breath of air sweeps away the local storm, and through the
melting cloud-wreaths we see the wide landscape glittering with fresh
rain, and the new snows shining opposite the setting sun--a scene the
full splendour of which can scarcely be recalled even in the memory of
those who have often witnessed it.

In the present instance two hours would, we knew, put us well on the
other side of the mountain, where our friends were waiting for us; and,
though neither my guide nor I knew anything of the ground, we could
trust to General Dufour's map. The Swiss traveller has here an enormous
advantage over his brother in Great Britain. If anyone is rash enough,
in Wales for instance, to put his faith in the English Ordnance Survey,
and to seek a passage where light shading seems to indicate an absence
of precipices, he will soon find himself brought to a standstill.
The present state of our national maps is far from creditable to our
Government and our engineers.

For the moment all we had to do was to stick to the ridge, which must
and did lead us straight to the stoneman, in such weather the only
indication of the summit. A short halt for the chance of a break in the
clouds and to settle clearly our route on the map, and we started on
the unknown descent. The first point was to strike the gap south of the
peak. A few minutes sufficed for this, then we had only to descend with
a constant bearing to the left. The ground was steep and rough, and
there were cliffs in every direction, but we managed to avoid them. In
half an hour we had reached the lower skirts of the cloud, and passed
out of gentle snow into pitiless rain.

Cattle tracks now led us past the highest huts to a cabin from the
chimney of which smoke issued. The solitary herdsman welcomed us with
a courtesy and coffee worthy of an Eastern sheikh. The pouring rain,
perhaps, flavoured the beverage, but François Devouassoud and I both
fancied that, west of Constantinople, we had never tasted so aromatic
a draught.

The head of the valley seemed to be a basin surrounded on all sides by
rugged cliffs; in the present weather it was nothing but a caldron of
mist. How should we escape from it? The hill-shoulders pressed us in
on all sides; yet the shepherd promised a _strada buona_. In a quarter
of an hour we were at the meeting-place of the mountain-torrents,
where from their union sprang a stream, the bluest of all the blue
waters of Val Maggia, full of a life now bright and dashing, now calm
and deep, such as might fitly be personified in a Naiad. This was
the fairy who would unbar the gates of our prison. We followed the
guidance of the waters into the jaws of the mountain, where they had
seized on some flaw or fissure to work for themselves a passage. But
the stream had thought only for itself. No room was provided for a
path, and the ingenuity of a road-making population had evidently been
taxed to the utmost to render the ravine passable for cows as well as
water. A causeway was built up on every natural shelf, and, where the
level could no longer be kept, the hanging terraces were connected
by regularly-built stone staircases. A rough balustrade formed a
protection on the outside, and prevented a hasty plunge into the gulf,
where the brilliant waters wrestled with the stiff crags which every
now and then thrust out a knee to stop their flow, and gave them a
tumble from which they collected themselves at leisure in a deep still
pool before dancing off again to fresh struggles and fresh victories.
From the shelves above the bright-berried mountain ash and delicate
birch stretched out their arms to the stream, which, as if impatient
for the vines, hurried past them and at last broke away with a bold
leap, flying down over the rock-faces to the lower valley in a shower
of foam and water-rockets.

Near the junction of a glen through which the track of the Passo di
Redorta climbs over to Val Verzasca, a steep descent beside the fall
leads to the hamlet of San Carlo. The path here crosses a bridge and
keeps henceforth along a broken, richly wooded hill-side until, having
swerved to the right, it joins at Prato the main valley.

And so down the moist high-road under the dripping walnuts of Broglio,
and again, after ten years, back to Bignasco, beautiful even under the
grey cloud-pall with its hill-shapes only suggested between the mists.
Most beautiful when with the sunset a northern breeze gathered up the
vapour-wreaths and a full moon shone down into Val Bavona marking
with clearest lights and shadows all its buttresses, and drawing a
responsive gleam from the pure snows at its head. A change too sudden
to last. For while sitting on the bridge we watched the moonbeams
strike over the southward hill, and fall full on the eddying water
at our feet and the flowery balconies on either hand, a white drapery
stretched slowly round the Cevio corner, and, as in the immortal Chorus
of Aristophanes, a gleaming company of clouds sailed up on their way
from the deep hollows of the lake to the wood-crowned heights of the
mountain. The leader advanced but slowly with misty folds clinging to
each crag; but it had scarcely passed when the whole body was upon us,
and the bright upper heaven was obscured by their fleecy forms.

After midnight we were awakened by the rush of mountain rain and the
crash of thunder, while in the white blaze we saw the Maggia blue no
longer, but turbid with the grey granite atoms which it was hurrying
down to swell the delta of Locarno. The storm spirits were in earnest,
and in the morning every cliff had its cascade, bridges had been swept
away, and great heaps of mud and stones, washed out of the overhanging
crags, blocked even the high-road which offers the only escape from the
mountain world.


FOOTNOTES:

     [4] I have not succeeded in discovering any connection
     between the word, Maggia and Maggiore.

     [5] Bignasco is only 1,400 feet above the sea.

     [6] The falls of Krimml in Tyrol are probably on the whole
     the Alpine cataract in which height of fall, force of water,
     and picturesque surroundings are most thoroughly united.
     There are many falls in the Adamello group which a painter
     would prefer to the cascade of the Tosa.

     [7] Between the years 1850-56, one-eighth of the whole
     population, and one-fourth of the male population, left their
     homes. Amongst the emigrants were 324 married men, only two
     of whom took their wives with them!

     [8] The herdsmen of these châlets have a way to the Val
     Formazza without crossing the Basodine. The 'Bocchetta di Val
     Maggia,' a gap in the rocky ridge at the north-eastern corner
     of the Cavergno glacier, brings them on to the pasturages
     near the San Giacomo Pass, whence either Airolo or the Tosa
     Falls can be gained without further ascent.




CHAPTER II.

VAL VERZASCA AND VAL CANOBBINA.

     On our other side is the straight-up rock,
       And a path is kept 'twixt the gorge and it
     By boulderstones, where lichens mock
       The marks on a moth, and small ferns fit
     Their teeth to the polished block.     R. BROWNING.

PASSO DI REDORTA--VAL VERZASCA--A BROKEN ROAD--LOCARNO--VAL
CANOBBINA--VAL VIGEZZO.


Val Maggia is not the only unknown valley which opens on the famous
lake. Close beside it, and hemmed in between its mountains and those
on the west of Val Leventina, lies a still narrower and more obscure
recess, Val Verzasca. In olden days the natives of this glen bore a bad
name. In 1490 a writer speaks of them as 'homines sylvestres sparsim
ferarum ritu degentes;'[9] and the reputation for wildness so early
acquired still sticks to them. Knives are said to be more frequently
drawn among them, and with worse consequences, than in any other
district of Ticino. But there is no record of a stranger ever having
suffered from this tendency to blood-letting, and the ill-repute of the
valley can hardly be held accountable for its neglect by travellers.

So great has been this neglect that the Federal map was to us the
chief and almost the only source of information. Thus studied, the
peculiarities of Val Verzasca are seen to be the shortness of the side
glens which branch off the main stem, and the uniformly great elevation
of the surrounding ridges. From Bignasco a tolerably direct path leads
over to Brione by Val d'Ossola, and from what we saw I recommend the
next visitor to try this way in preference to the longer circuit which
we were induced to take by a conscientious desire to see the head
of the main Val Verzasca and an unfounded fancy that a carriage road
implied vehicles of some sort.

From San Carlo in Val di Prato a track leaving the path to Piz Campo
Tencca circles round the westward-facing hillside, and, above a
waterfall, traverses beside the torrent a narrow glen. Beyond some
châlets we penetrated a sombre funnel, choked with avalanches. It
expanded at its upper end into a basin floored with snow and hemmed in
by cliffs picturesquely broken and green with underwood. The stream
which poured down them was received at the bottom under a snow-arch,
bold in its span as an old Italian bridge. A few yards east of the
water-channel a goat track, sometimes difficult to follow, climbs the
steep slope and the rocks above it, where the easiest course is only
marked by the goats' droppings. Hands as well as feet are useful, but
there is no difficulty for anyone accustomed to mountains.

Above the cliff we found a wide sloping meadow covered with cows. At
first sight their presence seemed only to be accounted for by magic or
a medium-like faculty in the herd for self-elevation. But I believe
due enquiry would have established the existence of a rationalistic
explanation in the shape of a roundabout staircase not beyond the
powers of an Italian heifer.

The lowest saddle in the high ridge before us was the Passo di Redorta.
Despite the beauty of the day there was little distant view and no peak
near enough at hand to tempt to further exertion. Val Maggia itself was
almost hidden by the vertical lines of a bold, many-headed buttress,
and the eye ranged over the wilderness of its mountain-ridges, a savage
expanse of ruined gneiss naked of snow and void of prominent peaks
or bristling ridges. The rock cannot, like the firmer granites of Val
Masino or the Adamello, offer any stubborn resistance to the action of
the atmosphere. Hence the mountain-tops are one mass of comparatively
level ruin. Those who have looked down from some Syrian hilltop on an
ancient city, of which the ponderous materials cumber the ground, while
not a column is left standing, may exactly picture to themselves the
scene of desolation now offered on a vastly larger scale to our eyes by
the ranges of Val Maggia. In contrast the head of Val Verzasca, lying
as it were at our feet, was green, bright, and inviting.

We were joined on the pass by a young Verzascan, returning from a visit
to relatives at Peccia, laden with a store of simple delicacies, such
as white bread, honey and cheese. The pains he was at to transport such
a burden suggested comparative poverty in the land we were entering. We
descended together, but there was no need of any guide, as the valley
lay always straight before us, and the ground, though excessively
steep, was not precipitous. Near the foot of the descent a pretty fall
tumbles off the right-hand hillside.

A mile further, at a waters-meet, stands Sonogno, a deserted
savage-looking cluster of dingy stone houses, which, but for the
whitewashed church, might be in Ossetia. There were no inhabitants in
the streets, and those indoors, with the first instinct of savages and
wild animals, hurriedly thrust their heads back again through their
little square windows when we asked questions. It was with difficulty
we succeeded in getting one word, a simple negative, in reply to our
demand for a carriage.

For to this extreme corner of the mountains civilisation advances
in the shape of a road which has been carried up from the lake at an
expense of over £15,000, shared between the cantonal government and
the communes. Its engineers would seem to have determined to make no
needless ascent, and at the cost of cuttings, embankments, and lofty
bridges, they have carried out their purpose in the most thorough
manner. The workmanship of this remote track would bear comparison
with most of the highways of Europe. But the proverb of the ass taken
to the water's brink seems to apply to Val Verzasca. No force seems
capable of inducing the upper villages to use the boon intended for
them. As in the East a few years ago the old camel-track over Lebanon
was still trodden bare, while the grass grew on the new road made by
French enterprise, so here no wheels seemed ever to have worn in the
fresh stones. The nine miles to Lavertezzo must be walked.

The upper branch of the valley, although hemmed in by bold mountains,
is somewhat monotonous, and the foreground is too often defaced by
a broad torrent-bed. At the village of Brione Val Verzasca displays
the first landscape which is likely to leave any lasting impression.
The range on the right suddenly breaks off in a perpendicular crag
of singular boldness; and as the road, raised on a lofty embankment,
crosses a tributary stream a long vista of receding lines of cliff
and chestnut trees is seen for some minutes. This is Val d'Ossola,
through which runs the shortest and probably the most beautiful path to
Bignasco.

From this point to the lake for some fifteen miles the bed of the
Verzasca is simply a narrow cleft in the mountains, sinking deeper and
deeper, until at last it opens upon Lago Maggiore, at the village of
Gordola, opposite Magadino. Below Brione a great barrier, probably a
mountain-fall, is thrown right across the valley, which at the same
time drops considerably. The road makes a zigzag amidst the wildest
tangle of boulders and chestnut-trees, then leaps boldly on to the
opposite rocks, and creeps along a shelf blasted beside the blue
tumbling stream.

As far as Lavertezzo the trench is wide enough at the bottom to give
room for a few fields and houses. But this is not an agricultural
district. The natives we met, a strong, wild-looking race, were all
stone-quarriers, woodmen, or charcoal-burners. Many of them were
employed where a timber slide, built on an unusual scale, falls over
the cliffs from the mouth of a side-glen in the western range, through
which a hill-path leads over to Maggia.

For the next few miles the valley bends constantly, and Lavertezzo
seems to be always round the next corner. As at last we approach
the village the river, sliding out from amidst huge grey boulders,
two of them joined by a slender arch, is suddenly checked. The water
rests motionless in a chain of the most delicious pools--deep-green,
transparent bubbling crystals--contained in basins of the whitest
granite, smooth and polished as if made for a Roman bath. Henceforth it
glistens no more in the sunshine, but roars or rests deep in a hidden
cleft until it flows out to the fever-stricken plain of Gordola.

Lavertezzo itself consists of a campanile, a church, and a few white
houses, crowded into a green corner above the meeting of two streams.
Its name is adorned in maps with one of those curly horns which
indicate a post-station. Here at least we reckoned on finding something
on wheels. But a difficulty hitherto only dimly foreshadowed now met
us full in the face with stunning force. Our hopes were crushed by a
universal outcry of 'strada rotta.' But we still did not comprehend the
full force of the emphasis laid on the last word, and while accepting
the fact that our legs must carry us over the remaining eighteen
kilomètres to Locarno, looked for nothing more than the ordinary amount
of breakage caused by a mountain-storm--one bridge gone, or at most
two. What we had seen in the upper valley was not of a character to
prepare us for any very serious damage.

But the whole force of the great thunderstorm three nights before had
concentrated itself on the ridges round the head of Lago Maggiore. The
rain-torrents rushing with unrestrained fury from these lofty crests
(7,000 to 8,000 feet) down the barren hillsides, and gathering impetus
with every foot of fall, had filled and overflowed all the channels,
tearing as they went huge rocks out of either bank, mixing themselves
with the soil till they became as much earth as water, and sweeping
away every obstruction which lay across their path.

Everywhere the steep slopes, saturated by the terrible deluge, had
given way. The road might be said to be effaced rather than broken. For
mile after mile two-thirds of its breadth was buried in mud washed down
from the upper hillsides.

The post-house of Vogorno, a solitary farm by the roadside, was in a
lamentable plight. The stables had been carried away, and the whole
front of the house was blocked with mud. At every few yards we came on
immense barricades, the work of some puny trickle which now wandered
almost invisible amongst the ruin it had wrought. In the least exposed
spots stones as big as a hat-box were lying in the middle of the road.
The larger torrents, thought worthy of bridges, had carried away the
arches set over them, leaving deep gaps to be clambered round. Even
a magnificent bridge, standing at a height at least 200 feet over
a lateral ravine, had been undermined and swept bodily away. It was
necessary to descend into the torrent-bed and scramble up the opposite
bank. Another still loftier arch, one of the most striking works of
its kind in the Alps, had alone escaped the general destruction, owing
to its piers being built into the solid rock about 150 feet above the
ordinary water-level.

Yet, though the road was destroyed and the hillside scored in many
places by the terrible paths of the rocks and torrents, the general
aspect of the landscape was hardly affected. The left bank, round
the deep ravines of which the road, or what was left of it, circled
incessantly, was always steep and broken. But across the river the
chestnuts and rocks yielded, as the hills rose, to vineyards and fields
of maize. The valley was all ravine, but high on the mountains were
sunny bays and promontories, shining with villages bright and festal as
only Italian villages are. A horizontal streak drawn across the face of
a range of mural cliffs was the road linking these communes to Locarno.
In the variety and boldness of its scenery this portion of Val Verzasca
seemed to us equal to any of the southern defiles of the Alps.

At last the gorge expanded, and the broad surface of the most beautiful
of the Italian lakes spread across the centre of the landscape.
The most beautiful, for to me it seems that spaciousness of shining
surface--the quality which made Thrasimene so dear to Perugino--is
an essential in lake scenery. In narrow, many-winding lakes the
multitude of straight shore lines is apt to cut off harshly all the
mountain shapes, and to be an offence to the eye, which would be
better contented by the accidents of a green valley than with the
smooth water-floor. The landscapes of Como, fascinating in their rapid
changes--now picturesque and gay, now wild and severe--are too confined
and crowded for perfect beauty. Garda is noble in its sealike expanse,
but the shapes of its hills cannot compare with the stately Greek charm
of the mountains round Baveno.

Above Gordola a whole hillside had given way, and the great earthslip
had spread desolation amongst the lower vineyards. The brown ruin made
a sad foreground to the exquisite view over the pale evening lake and
the glowing hills. We took a short cut through the broken-down terraces
to the bridge over the Verzasca, where we joined the high-road from
Bellinzona to Locarno. Between us and the lake ran, in all the ugliness
of unfinished novelty, a railway embankment.

Still three miles to Locarno, and no carriage on the road or boat
on the water. In the morning we had walked over a seven hours' pass,
including an ascent of 6,000 feet; since midday we had covered some
eighteen miles of road. Yet, although all more or less way-weary, we
accepted the further march without much murmur. At a certain stage in
the day the muscles become dogged and go on with machine-like energy,
and to maintain the power of enjoyment it is only necessary to keep
the mind from worrying itself with idle speculations as to details
of time and distance. It is the old story. The sad or the impatient
heart collapses, while the contented one 'goes all the day;' and in an
Italian dusk on the shores of Maggiore it is easy to be contented.

Locarno itself had suffered severely from the storm. The channel of
the small stream which divides the town had been overfilled by a deluge
of horrible black mud, which, bursting out like a lava flood into the
streets, had flowed down them, breaking into the shops on the ground
floor, and finally spreading itself out in a pool several feet deep
over the wide open space in front of the Albergo della Corona.

Locarno is pretty well accustomed to violent catastrophes. A few
years ago the roof of the principal church gave way under a heavy
fall of snow, and, crashing in during mass, killed or wounded half
the congregation. Inundations are almost as frequent as earthquakes at
Torre del Greco, and here, as on the Bay of Naples, familiarity with
the outrages of nature seems to breed indifference, if not contempt.
The population of Locarno took the damage done as much as a matter of
course as the 'Times' reader in September a shocking railway accident.
The men in their broad felts and the women with their fans were, as
we entered, all abroad for the evening stroll, chatting and looking
on cheerfully at the labourers still at work removing the rubbish.
Shopkeepers had already reopened their stores, and were endeavouring to
remove from their wares the traces of the recent mud-bath.

No lives had been lost here, but across the water at Magadino the storm
had been more fatal. Several houses had been carried into the lake, and
so suddenly that in one case the inhabitants were drowned.

Next to Val Maggia, Val Centovalli is the largest of the valleys which
open on the fertile plain behind Locarno.[10] It is, in fact, not so
much a valley as a broad line of depression through the hill-region
separating the basin of Domo d'Ossola from the lake. The opening thus
offered by nature has, owing probably to political jealousy, never
been taken advantage of. The lower Val Centovalli is Italian, the
upper basin of the Melezza and the short eastern Val Vigezzo Swiss,
and no road passable for wheeled vehicles crosses the frontier. On the
whole, however, lovers of nature gain. But for political exigencies Val
Canobbina might never have been pierced.

This glen, as its name implies, opens behind Canobbio, a town reached
in two hours from Locarno, by a most beautiful road along the western
shore of the lake. On the hillside facing north, and a mile inland,
is a large bathing establishment or summer health-resort known as 'La
Salute,' and chiefly frequented by Italians. The situation is charming,
high enough to command over a green foreground the whole upper bay of
the lake closed by the bold mountains of Val Verzasca.

Val Canobbina is rather a tangle of glens than a valley. The road
climbs at once into a deep dell, refreshed by perpetual waters and
green with verdure only broken where the jagged rocks close in on the
stream to form a gorge, or 'orrido' in the local phrase. Oak thickets
and chestnut copses clothe the slopes; cyclamens, common as daisies at
home, bend their graceful heads on every sunny bank.

At one spot four valleys join, and it is impossible to guess which
will be chosen. The road plunges into the narrowest, and forces its
way near the torrent, until, suddenly turning in steep zigzags to
scale the hillside, it breaks off altogether.[11] The carriage halts,
the driver shouts, and tall, handsome girls drop down the stairs from
the neighbouring village of Orasso, and eagerly grasp the luggage.
The ascent is continued by a rough path, which circles terrace-like
for several miles between white hamlets and green hills. Nature shows
herself here very friendly, but also very southern, and full of a
delicate subdued beauty quite apart from the more homely charm of
northern scenery.

The glen again twists round on itself, and we almost fancy ourselves in
an issueless labyrinth, when the road suddenly reappears at our feet,
and boldly rushes into a tunnel which might not be much on a railroad,
but is a great work for a country byway.

On the further side the road, blasted out of the face of the rock,
makes its entrance into an upland basin, still part of Val Canobbina.
On a brow in its centre rises the village of Finero. The festival
of the patron saint of the church had collected thither all the
neighbourhood, and given occasion for a very tournament of bowls, a
game which in the lives of Northern Italians fills the place occupied
by croquet in those of some of our curates and officers.

Beyond Finero a broad low ridge sends down a stream northward into the
Italian head of Val Centovalli, and the road rapidly descends through
pine forests. We are no longer in a mountain-maze, the hills stand
back and leave in their midst a happy oasis crowded with cultivation
and life, and blest with the gifts alike of mountain and of plain,
the fresh Alpine breeze and water, and the sun and fertility of
Lombardy. In the midst of maize-fields lie spacious well-built towns;
on the slopes, shaded by their walnut and chestnut groves, a score of
brilliant whitewashed villages.

What a living brightness in southern lands is the white which in the
north, among our duller colours and opaque atmospheres, is only a dead
chill! Beyond the Alps it seems the appropriate colour for men's homes.
We in England can ill afford to dispense with the suggestion of warmth
and dryness given by red brick and tiles. But domestic architecture is
a subject too painful for the victims of ninety-nine years' leases and
speculative builders to think about. Few Londoners can bear to look
without a shudder on the outside of what they call 'home.' If the old
fashion of white paint was chilly, it was at least better than the new
stucco squares and streets, the exact colour of our native fogs and
roadways. Why should we live in a monotone of mud, as if we were some
species of snail whose only chance in the struggle for existence lies
in making itself and its shell undistinguishable from the surroundings?

The plain in which stand the prosperous towns of Malesco and Santa
Maria Maggiore, though called Val Vigezzo, sends down its torrent to
Locarno. Such an imperceptible bank of heather as divides the Drave
from the Pusterthal still severs us from the western Val Vigezzo. In
clear weather Monte Rosa must shine upon this upland basin; in the
pouring rain all I saw of the drive to Domo d'Ossola was a narrow
picturesque river-bed and a wide sodden plain, at the end of which a
ferry close to the town gates carried us and our carriage across the
swollen waters of the Tosa.


FOOTNOTES:

     [9] Domenico Macaneo, in his _Verbani lacus locorumque
     adjacentium chorographica descriptio_, quoted by Studer,
     _Physische Geographie der Schweiz_. These notices suggest
     that the Val Verzascans may be a relic of some primitive
     tribe, but I have no authority for imputing to them
     ethnological importance.

     [10] Between the two valleys mentioned above is Val Onsernone
     (see _Alpine Guide_, p. 315, and Appendix) penetrated for
     some distance by a carriage-road. In a lively article in
     the fifth Jahrbuch of the Swiss Alpine Club, Herr Hoffmann
     Burkhardt describes the scenery as most varied and charming,
     and the road 'as a magnificent example of a mountain-road,
     and a most striking evidence of the talent of the Tessiners
     in this department of human industry.'

     [11] The carriage-road was expected to be finished throughout
     in 1875.




  [Illustration: THE VAL MASINO DISTRICT.

   Stanford's Geogl Estabt, 55 Charing Cross, London
   London: Longmans & Co.]




CHAPTER III.

_WEST OF THE BERNINA._

THE PEAKS AND PASSES OF VAL MASINO.[12]

     Il montera, descendra, traversera, remontera, redescendra,
     retraversera, etcetera.--_French Play._

     And when I most go here and there,
       I then do most go right.      SHAKESPEARE.

THE MOUNTAINS OF VAL MASINO--THE AVERSTHAL--MADRISER PASS--VAL
BREGAGLIA--ZOCCA PASS--PROMONTOGNO--VAL BONDASCA--PASSO DI FERRO--BAGNI
DEL MASINO--PASSO DI MONTE SISSONE--THE FORNO GLACIER.


To the crowd, which having sat down in a draught on the roof of Europe
spends its time mostly in bemoaning the cold, to the water-drinkers of
St. Moritz or the pensioners of Pontresina, the mountains of Val Masino
are unknown. Yet had they eyes to see they might often be attracted
by the vision of two square towers rising far beyond the blue lakes
and the green ridge of the Maloya, and shining like an enchanted keep
through the warm haze of Italy.[13] They are indeed the ramparts of
Paradise, for on the further side they look down upon the gardens of
Lago di Como.

Even to climbers this western wing of the Bernina has remained little
known. So long ago as 1862 Messrs. Kennedy and Stephen carried at
the second assault its proudest peak, the Monte della Disgrazia. But
I could count on my fingers the names of all the Englishmen who have
since penetrated Val Masino. Foreign Alpine Clubs have for the most
part held aloof. The Swiss have found enough to do elsewhere, and
have not as yet chosen Val Bregaglia--politically a Swiss valley--as
the 'gebiet' of one of the summer 'excursions' in which they contrive
to combine so happily the features of a prolonged picnic and a
mountain-battue. That practical, and in some respects energetic, body,
the Italian Alpine Club, is only beginning to turn its attention to a
district containing one of the few wholly Italian peaks of over 12,000
feet.

Those who have been already somewhat disappointed in the Upper Engadine
and the heart of the Bernina will perhaps argue that there cannot be
much worth seeing in its extremities, where the peaks are lower and
the ice-fields as a whole less extensive. Such an assumption, however,
would be ill-founded. For scenic effects, every one will allow, the
measurement of a mountain must be taken, not from the sea level, but
from its actual base. Moreover the lower the base the richer and more
varied will be the contrast in vegetation. On applying this test we
find that the Punta Trubinesca[14] towers 8,500 feet above the chestnut
trees of Promontogno, while Piz Bernina itself rises 1,000 feet
less, and far more gradually, above Pontresina. The icy ridges of the
Disgrazia soar 11,000 feet above the vineyards of the Val Tellina, or
as much as Mont Blanc above Courmayeur.

The peaks, moreover, are of a durable granite. They have, therefore,
that combined boldness of outline and solidity which often belongs to
this hardy rock. Other mountains have the air of having been built up;
granite peaks seem rather to have been rough-hewn like a sculptor's
block out of a larger mass. In glaciers the group possesses almost
every known variety. The Bondasca and the eastern glaciers of the
Disgrazia worthily represent the frozen cataract type, tumbling in
broken billows from cope to base of the mountain; the Albigna is an
ice-lake fed by huge snow-basins; the Forno a stately stream surpassing
in length the Morteratsch.

Here, however, I gladly break off from the conventional tone of
recommendation in which discoverers are apt to assert their own merits.

For the people who either cannot or will not walk, the large class
which, taking advantage of the shade of contempt already attached
to the epithet by Vatican infallibility, I may venture to call the
'Subalpine Club,' Val Masino has few attractions. Inaccessible on three
sides except to pedestrians, this valley will probably remain for long
a sure refuge for the misanthropic climber driven away from the peaks
of the central Bernina by the demands of the guides or the clatter of
his fellow-countrymen.

In the summer of 1864 I set out from Splugen with two companions and
François Devouassoud for the Bernina. Our route led us through the
Avers Thal, a cross-road of travel still but little frequented, though
no better reason than fashion can be assigned for its neglect. For mile
after mile the Averser Rhein, a strong blue-grey torrent, leaps and
roars between masses of marble crag tinted with lichens, and clasped
about by huge pine-roots. Tributary streams rush down from the rugged
precipices towering on either side the gorge, and shoot with a creamy
rush into the deep cleft which holds the larger flood.

Above the long defile lies a broad grassy upland dotted with some of
the highest villages in Europe, and encompassed by green slopes which
divide the waters of three seas. The landscape is, it is true, tame to
the eye; but on a sunny August morning, when the vast hayfield is alive
with mowers and the air fragrant with the smell of ripe grasses, it
contains much to tickle other senses than sight.

We turned up a side branch of the valley, the Madriser Thal. Near
its head a white line seamed the slopes we had yet to surmount. On
nearer approach this resolved itself into a laboriously-built stone
staircase, showing that we were on what was once a frequented passage
for beasts of burden. Judging from the solidity and care with which it
had originally been put together the 'pavé' might have been Roman. I do
not venture to say it is. More probably in the middle ages this was an
alternative route for the Septimer. Perhaps the indefatigable explorer
and describer of his native Alps, Herr Theobald, or some other curious
enquirer, has told the date and story. If so I have failed to fall on
the passage.

It was from the ridge which divides the Rhine from the Maira that I
gained my first general view of the mountains of Val Masino. Opposite,
and separated from our stand-point, the Madriser Pass, only by the deep
but narrow trench of Val Bregaglia, a great mountain-mass glowed in the
afternoon sunshine. Its base was wrapped in chestnut woods, its middle
girt with a belt of pines, above spread a mantle of the eternal snow.
The sky-line was formed by a coronet of domes and massive pinnacles
carved out of grey rocks, whose jagged yet stubborn forms revealed the
presence of granite. Full in front the curving glacier of Val Bondasca
filled the space beneath the smooth cliff-faces, and at one spot a gap
between them irresistibly suggested a new pass for the morrow.

The descent on the southern side of the Madriser Pass, long, rough,
and extremely steep, leads to the village of Soglio, which rests on a
terrace high above the valley, and commands a noble view of the granite
peaks. Here stands a deserted villa belonging to the old Grisons family
of De Salis, surrounded by ruinous gardens and tall poplars, an Italian
intrusion on a landscape otherwise Alpine. Mossy banks shaded by old
Spanish chestnuts slope down to the high-road and the river. On the
opposite side, near the tunnel from which it takes its name, we found
the 'Albergo della Galleria,' which provides clean rooms and moderate
fare for those who are bent on penetrating the Val Bondasca, the most
beautiful of the side glens of Val Bregaglia.

It was not my first visit to this valley. Long before Mr. Ball had
written his handbook I had found in Professor Theobald's excellent
little volume on Canton Graubrunden[15] a most exciting description
of the waterfalls and ice-tables of the Albigna Glacier and the rocky
splendours of Val Bondasca. At the same time the appearance on maps
of the Forno Glacier as a long ice-stream equal to the Morteratsch
had excited in me keen curiosity. But my companions in 1862, although
induced to halt a day at Vico Soprano, and to venture as far as the
level of the Albigna Glacier, could not be persuaded that the Zocca was
'fit for ladies,' and my explorations were reduced to an ineffectual
race against time to reach a point overlooking the Forno.

The Upper Bregaglia, seen from a carriage, is a green Alpine valley
showing, except in such additions as man has made to the landscape,
little trace of the approach to Italy. Pines are still the prevailing
trees; near at hand the mountains are green; higher up naked grey
pinnacles saw the sky or cut through the vapour-wreaths.

A mile or two above Vico Soprano clouds of sunbeam-painted foam shoot
up round the base of a white column, and the tourist, driven by the
first cold days of September from the hill-barracks of the Engadine to
the lake-palaces, takes out his 'Guide' and his notebook and ticks off
as 'visited' another waterfall.

This is the fall of the Albigna, and close at hand the track to the
Zocca branches off through the woods. It is a forest-path known only to
smugglers and shepherds (and, I may add, chamois, for I once met two
here within a mile of the high-road). Every passer-by, who has a real
love of nature, and can endure for it a night in a clean country inn,
is strongly recommended to leave the road and climb at least as far as
the foot of the glacier.

The scenery is best seen as a descent. From the wild bare crags of
the inmost recesses of Val Masino and from the cold snows and savage
ice-peaks of the Albigna, the traveller suddenly plunges over the edge
of the uplands into a region of mountain-sides broken up by deep chasms
fringed with pines and broad-leaved trees, and resonant with the roar
of the great glacier torrent, which, scarcely released from its icy
cradle, 'leaps in glory' down a stupendous cliff.

The Zocca Pass itself I have never crossed, but the omission can be
supplied by the experience of friends. In ordinary years it is a simple
glacier pass. But that it is not to be attempted without a guide or a
rope the following history shows.

Two young converts to mountaineering set out from Val Masino for the
pass, guideless, ropeless, axeless. The top was easily reached, but
only a few yards below, on the northern side, a huge ice-moat, or
'bergschrund,' as a German guide would have called it, yawned suddenly
at their feet. My friends hesitated, but clouds were rapidly gathering
round the peaks, and a snowstorm impended. There was no time to be
lost. The upper lip of the chasm was too steep to stand on until, by
dabbling with the points of their alpenstocks, they had succeeded in
making some sort of a staircase down to the brink at the point where it
seemed best to take off for the jump. How they jumped or tumbled over
they have never been able clearly to explain, but each maintains he did
it in the best possible way, and both agree it was very uncomfortable.
In many seasons this moat is entirely closed, but it is evidently an
obstacle not to be altogether disregarded, and unseen might be more
dangerous than when gaping for its prey.

To return to Promontogno and 1864. Although the political frontier
lies beyond Castasegna, several miles further down, the rocky spur
which here closes the valley is the natural gate of Italy, the barrier
between the pines and the chestnuts. The afternoon hours lingered
pleasantly away as, stretched on the knoll behind the inn, we gazed up
at the impending cliffs of the granitic range or fed our eyes with the
rich woods of the lower valley and the purple hills beyond Chiavenna.

François meantime had gone off to the neighbouring village of Bondo
to look for a porter who would consent to accompany us over a pass
utterly unknown to the people of the country. For the 'Passo di Bondo'
of the map became more mythical at every step. To cross the Bondasca
Glacier to Val Masino was at least in the estimation of all Bregaglians
to make a new pass; and this was to us Alpine novices a matter of no
small contentment; for beginners ten years ago were not so audacious
as those of the present day, who are satisfied with nothing short
of the Weisshorn and Schreckhorn. Yet I cannot help thinking that by
venturing only into moderate difficulties, where one guide among three
could help us through, we learnt as much as by tying ourselves to two
or three first-rate men and daring everything through the strength of
our guides.

We knew pretty well what was before us, for from the Madriser Pass the
whole route had been displayed. François, remembering that an unknown
icefall had to be dealt with, was anxious to be off early, and our
own enthusiasm was sufficient to carry us through the ordeal of a
night breakfast with less than the usual moroseness. By two A.M. the
provisions were packed and we were on the march.

There was no moon, but the heaven was throbbing with large white stars,
and coronets sparkled on the heads of the dim giants of the southern
range. Leaving behind us the sleeping hamlet of Bondo, the path climbed
steeply through a fir-wood until it reached the short stretch of level
ground, which is called Val Bondasca. An expanse of grass and wood is
here spread out as a carpet at the very base of the granite cliffs.
Scarcely in the Alps are there finer precipices than those that lead up
the eye to the far-off brows of the Cima di Tschingel and Trubinesca.
In front the glen is closed by steep rocks, over which the glacier
pours in a long cascade.

As we strolled over the dewy lawns we had full leisure to watch the
first signs of the coming day. A faint gleam spread over the eastern
sky, and was reflected on the pinnacles above us, gradually drawing
forth their forms out of the shadow, until at last a rosy blush played
for a few moments on their crags; then the clear light of daybreak was
shed upon peak and valley, and ice and rock alike were bathed in the
universal sunshine.

Near another group of chalets we crossed the stream a second time. A
well-contrived path, winding up by steep zigzags amidst underwood and
creeping pines, lifted us from the glen to the upper alp, a sloping
shelf of pasturage on the east of the glacier. Bearing to the right we
made for the edge of a level portion of the ice, where it rests for
a space between the upper and lower falls. Our porter had halted at
the highest hut to get some milk from the solitary man who tended the
goats and pigs. The herdsman, who now saw us turn our backs upon the
only pass he knew, the gap leading over to the Albigna Glacier, hurried
after us, _jödelling_ at the top of his voice, and pointing violently
in the direction opposite to that we were taking.

He was too far below for words, and signs he would not comprehend, so,
after some fruitless endeavours to quiet his mind, we went on our way,
causing 'le bon garçon' (as François called him) to give vent to a last
expostulatory chaunt before he returned to his goats to meditate upon
our probable fate.

The usual rough borderland between earth and ice scrambled over, we
halted for breakfast on a smooth piece of ice conveniently furnished
with stone stools and tables. Over our heads towered a range of
pinnacles, one of which is known as Piz Cacciabella. In form and
grouping they closely resemble, on a smaller scale, the Chamonix
Aiguilles, as seen from the 'Plan.' Divided from them by a snowy
bay, the source of the glacier, rose the splendid peak of the Punta
Trubinesca. Only granite could show such a tremendous block, free from
flaw or joint, and hopeless to the most fly-like climber. Its broad
grey precipices looked as smooth as if they had been planed; and, Mr.
Ball having pronounced the summit inaccessible on the other side, it
seemed to us at the time a pretty problem for rising Alpine Clubmen.

Our ambition, however, had never soared to such a conquest, and we
were content to discuss a matter nearer at hand, the upper ice-fall
which separated us from the supposed pass. Opinions differed; François
prophesied difficulties and five hours' work to the top; a sanguine
spirit set it down as half an hour's walk. The rope was soon put on,
and we prepared to face the unknown.

I presume everyone who cares to take up these sketches has already felt
sufficient interest in the Alps to endeavour to realise, even if he
has not seen, the nature of an ice-fall. If he has not, he had better
go and look at Mons. Loppé's pictures. No word-painting can give an
idea of anything so unlike the usual phenomena of our temperate zone. A
cream-cheese at once squeezed and drawn out, so that the surface split
and isolated blocks stood up, might, if viewed through a magnifying
glass, slightly resemble in form, though not in colour, the contorted
ice. But the imagination would have to look on from the point of view
of the smallest mite.

The lower ice-falls differ considerably from the highest. In one case
the material is hard ice; in the other, closely compacted snow. In the
ice the rifts are longer, narrower and more frequent, and fewer towers
rise above the general level; the snow or névé opens in wider but
less continuous chasms, sinks in great holes like disused chalk-pits,
and throws up huge blocks and towers, which the sun slowly melts into
the most fantastic shapes. The higher fall is generally both the most
imposing and formidable to look at, and the easiest to get through.
The maze here is less intricate, and the very size of its features
makes it easier to choose a path. But it is unsafe to shout before you
are well out of the wood. At the very top, where the strain caused by
the steepening slope first cracks the glacier, one huge rent often
stretches across from edge to edge, and unless Providence throws a
light causeway or a slender arch across the gulf, there will be work
for the ice-axe before you stand on the upper edge. Some crack in the
pit's wall must be dug into steps, the huge disorderly blocks which
make a floor must be got through, and then escape must be found in the
same way that entrance was made, by a ladder of your own contriving.
Such a passage may often cost an hour's hard work.

The Bondasca Glacier above where we struck it was riven by a network
of small crevasses. Some could be jumped, and the larger clefts were
generally bridged, and thanks to a sharp night's frost the arches
were in good bearing order. With occasional step-cutting and frequent
zigzags we got clear of the thickest labyrinth and stood victorious on
the upper snow-fields. They rose before us in a succession of frozen
banks to a well-defined gap flanked by two snow hummocks. The western
was connected by a long curtain of rock with the Punta Trubinesca.
After skirting the highest snow-bowl, we crossed the deep moat which
marks the point where the true mountain-form rises out of the folds
of its snowy vestment, and in a moment more stood on the crest of a
curling wave, fringed with icicles for spray.

Where we had expected to see only the rock-surrounded basin of the Val
dei Bagni, we looked down on a deep, long valley, running southwards
towards the Val Tellina.

At the second glance our eyes were caught by an enormous object lying
in the centre of a grassy meadow. We were at once assured as to the
identity of the valley. The block could be nothing else than the
'natural curiosity' of Val Masino, the biggest boulder in the Alps.
Its dimensions are given by Mr. Ball as--'Length, 250 feet; breadth,
120 feet; height, 140 feet;' or as tall as an average church tower,
and large enough to fill up many a London square. Legend has nothing
to tell about this monstrous block, and we are left to determine as
we like, whether it fell from some neighbouring mountain going to ruin
in the course of nature, or was dropped by the devil, on one of those
errands of mischief which are always so fortunately interrupted by the
opportune appearance of the pious peasant.

We had only been two hours from our last resting-place, and the day was
still young, so that we could well afford a halt. As there are some
tourists whose chief object is to get to the end of their tours, so
there are climbers who throughout the day seem to long only to arrive
in as few hours as possible at the end of it. But peaks and passes and
not inns were our goal, and we had no desire to hurry on. We chose a
warm corner in the sun-facing rocks, whence by lifting our heads we
looked over intervening ridges to the Alps of Glarus, and raked the
Punta Trubinesca and its neighbours, now viewed end on, as weird a pile
of granite as I have seen in many a long day's wanderings.

From the snow-dome on our right a lofty and extraordinarily jagged
ridge stretched out at right angles to the main chain, the barrier,
probably, between the two branches of Val Masino.[16] I wanted to climb
the dome and reconnoitre, but clouds had partially covered the blue
sky, and were whisking, now one way now the other, as the gust took
them, as if playing a wild game of hide-and-seek amongst the granite
towers. A storm seemed probable, and François thought it foolish to
waste time.

We were clearly not on the legendary Passo di Bondo,[17] but on another
'Col' of our own contriving, leading somewhere into the Val di Mello,
the eastern branch of Val Masino. The descent looked practicable. Why
not attempt it and complete the pass? The distance to be retraced along
the valley to our sleeping quarters, the 'Bagni,' could scarcely be
worth considering. So after erecting a solid stoneman, and trusting him
with the usual card-filled bottle, we set out.

The last man had not set foot on the ice when François disappeared
to his shoulders beneath the surface. Looking through the hole he had
made we could appreciate the use of the rope. A dark green chasm, some
thirty feet wide, yawned beneath us, its depths scarcely visible in the
light thus suddenly let in upon them. The glacier we were descending
fell away steeply, and became so broken and troublesome that we tried
the rocks on the left. The change was for the worse, and we soon came
back and cut our way through the difficulties.

As soon as the rocks ceased to be precipitous we took to them again.
But they were not pleasant footing. We found ourselves committed to a
slope of boulders so shockingly loose that the slightest provocation
sent half-a-dozen rolling from under our feet, and piled at so high an
angle that when once started they bounded away at a pace which promised
to take them straight to the valley. In such places an impetuous
companion always insists on stopping to take off his gaiters and then
following at a run. You have scarcely missed him before his return is
announced by a whole volley of grape rattling about your ears, while a
playful shout warns you to make way for a 100-pounder boulder which is
ricochetting down on your heels with the force of a cannon-ball. Then
your friend comes up with a pleased air, as much as to say, 'Didn't
I come down that well?' and it is hard not to remonstrate with him in
language the use of which should be restricted to divines.

Halting beside some water which filtered out at the foot of the
boulders, we enjoyed a beautiful view of the Disgrazia and the wild
range behind us. On our right was a long comb, whose teeth had been
tortured by time and weather into all sorts of quaint shapes; one rock
bent over like a crooked finger, in another place a window was pierced
through the crest. At a hasty glance one might have compared the
fantastic shapes to those assumed so frequently by dolomitic limestone,
but closer observation showed the tendency to curving outlines and
to sharpness of edge peculiar to crystalline rock. In the dolomite
districts the separate crags, cut up as they may be by flaws at right
angles to the lie of the strata, have not, except from considerable
distances, the same flamelike outlines. In any near view the layers of
which they are built up become conspicuous, and often, as in the Brenta
chain, have all the appearance of courses of masonry.

Bearing to the left from the first huts on the Alpe di Ferro, we
crossed a stream just below a tempting pool, in which five minutes
later we were all plunging. At the next step in the descent our path
re-crossed the water, and zigzagged steeply down the hillside, which
was covered with broom and Scotch heather. Passing a succession of
pretty cascades, we entered the Val di Mello, near a group of châlets,
whence a stony mule-road led us in half an hour to San Martino, the
village situated at the fork of the valley. It is a cluster of untidy
stone houses, with nothing to delay the passer-by except a douanier's
bureau and a tobacco store.

We now met a car-road running up the Val dei Bagni--the western fork
of the valley. The floor of the glen soon rises suddenly--a granite
valley, like the national prosperity, always advances by leaps and
starts--and the road indulges in a couple of short zigzags. We are
again in the heart of the mountains, hemmed in by pine-clad slopes and
cliffs too steep to allow any view even of the summits behind them. In
this _cul-de-sac_ there are no signs of a village. It is a spot where
one would expect to find no one but a Bergamasque shepherd with his
longtailed sheep. But shepherds do not make roads, nor do they often
receive visitors such as the portly dame who advances towards us,
supported by a scarcely perceptible donkey, and herself overshadowed
by a vast crimson umbrella resembling the mushroom of a pantomime.
Shepherds, moreover, are not in the habit of constructing little paths
like those, too faltering and purposeless for any practical use, which
wander off here and there into the woods; nor do they employ their
leisure hours in planting stems of fir-trees in a futile manner along
the sides of the road, and covering their branches, as the foliage
withers away, with tricolour flags.

The meaning of these attempts to fasten a little paltry embroidery
on nature's robes is explained when as we turn a corner and enter the
bowl-shaped hollow which forms the head of the glen we discover under
the hillside a long, low building--the Bagni del Masino. The presence
of a sulphur spring has caused this remote spot to be chosen as one of
the summer retreats of Northern Italian society.

The bath-houses in the Lombard Alps do not in any way add to the
beauty of the landscape. The consistent regard for economy shown
in the simplicity of their architecture and the roughness of their
construction may possibly delight the heart of some shareholder, and
would perhaps have commended them to the favourable notice of a late
First Commissioner of Works. But to the common eye the result is
not attractive. Outside we see a long two-storied barrack built with
unshaped stones and abundance of mortar, the surface of which, never
having been finished in any way, has a dusky-brown hue and ruinous
aspect; unpainted woodwork; balconies unbalustraded, and to the last
degree perilous. Internally and on the ground floor a long range of
dingy fly-spotted rooms, devoted respectively to smoke, billiards,
literature, and eating, and decorated with portraits of the reigning
family of Italy and full-blown lithographic beauties. Above, equally
long passages, and nests of scantily furnished, but tolerable and, so
far as beds are concerned, clean cabins.

Our first enquiry, whether the house contained baths--at many
so-called bath-houses the waters are only taken internally--called up a
triumphant smile on the countenance of the waiter who had welcomed us.
As he ushered us along the passages a strong smell of sulphur raised a
suspicion that we might find ourselves in hot water. In another moment
this fear was converted into a certainty. The beaming waiter ushered
us into a little room, or rather large stove-heated oven, surrounded
by four wells, each some five feet deep, and full to the brim of
sulphureous waters. On the one hand we had gone too far to retreat
with credit, on the other we were incapable of any prolonged endurance
of the purgatorial temperature. So having made but a hasty plunge we
dashed on our clothes and fled back to our rooms, ignoring the stove on
which we ought to have sat and submitted to a process of slow baking.
This ordeal and a good dinner completed, we had leisure to study the
patients, for the most part Milanese, with a sprinkling of local Val
Tellina priests and farmers. The mineral waters of the place are,
no need to say, like all mineral waters, invincible enemies to every
disease to which humanity, male or female, is exposed. Such being the
case, it was a subject for reasonable regret that with few exceptions
the visitors appeared to suffer from no more serious complaint than
a difficulty in composing their minds to any mental exertion beyond a
game at bowls or a shot at a popinjay.

Let us sit down for a few moments on the bench before the door and
observe the pastimes going on around. Three leading spirits, the
doctor, a curé with his skirts tucked up to his knees, and a Milanese
visitor clad in a suit of the large yellow check so often affected by
Italians, are in the middle of a contest with bowls, the progress of
which is watched by a deeply interested circle of cigarette-smokers.
The Milanese is nowhere, but the struggle between the priest and doctor
becomes terribly exciting, and the 'bravas' attract even a group
of Bergamasque shepherds, honest fellows despite their bandit style
of dress, who have been lounging in the background. The rest of the
patients are burning powder at a mark set up in the wood a few paces
off, or hanging over a game of billiards, which seems to us a good deal
more like a sort of Lilliputian ninepins.

We have scarcely withdrawn to our rooms satiated with the sight of so
much innocent happiness when a loud ringing of the bell which welcomes
new arrivals assures us that Victor Emmanuel must be appearing in
person to pursue the chamois of the neighbourhood. Hurrying to the
window we see an excited crowd gazing and gesticulating at the sky in a
manner which suggests that they have been visited either by a heavenly
vision or temporary insanity. In fact a small fire-balloon has been
sent up. After a time another peal of the bell announces its descent,
the Bergamasque shepherd boys set off up the hillside to secure the
fragments, and night closes upon the scene.

To most of us there comes a time when the pleasures of infancy pall.
But these water-drinkers seem to have found the true fountain of youth
and oblivion, where

         ---- they lie reclined
     On the hills like Gods together, careless of mankind,
     For they lie beside their nectar ----

and, far removed from the politics and stock-exchanges of a lower
world, can treat even the leading articles which occasionally creep up
to them at the bottom of a fruit-cart

     Like a tale of little meaning tho' the words are strong.

Happy Milanese! for is not Val Masino better than Margate?

It is difficult, perhaps, to recommend the Baths as a stopping-place
for any length of time to the ordinary traveller. Though so high (3,750
feet) they are too much in a hole for beauty. But the situation, if
it would not satisfy an artist, is not in the least commonplace, and
has even a curious fascination of its own. On every side the eyes
are met at once by almost perpendicular rocks capped here and there
by sharp spires of granite. These cliffs are not bare and harsh like
those of Val di Mello, but green with forest and bright with falling
waters. They seem friendly protectors to the smooth oasis of grass and
pines. The suggestion of savage wildness close at hand added by the few
glimpses of the upper peaks heightens the sense of peace and seclusion
in which the charm of the spot is to be found.

The little plain is quite large enough to suffice for the very moderate
demands of the Italian visitors, but it will hardly satisfy the average
British craving for exercise. You must, however, either stop where
you are or climb a staircase; these upright hills will not easily lend
themselves, like the slopes of the Upper Engadine, to short breaths and
untrained limbs. To enjoy Val Masino you must be either sick or sound;
it is not a place for invalids or idlers.

To the mountaineer the bathing establishment is invaluable. It is
true that as a passing guest he pays a bill large when compared to the
charges made to the 'pensionnaires,' and that his guide will probably
have still greater reason to complain. But he obtains in exchange the
boon of a good bed and an excellent dinner in a situation admirably
chosen for glacier expeditions. Moreover, owing to the general custom
of the patients of keeping up impromptu dances till midnight, a waiter
can generally be persuaded to provide breakfast before he goes to bed;
and not only is the customary difficulty in an early start entirely
absent, but it is sometimes hard to avoid being sped too soon by a host
whose night begins only when yours ends.

At half-past twelve the voice of the inexorable François was heard at
the doors: 'Bonjour, messieurs, il fait encore beau temps.' One of us
who had gone to sleep in the middle of a thunderstorm gave a deep groan
of disappointment at the auspicious news. But in half-an-hour we were
all gathered round the table at a meal which we had ordered, and now
affected to treat in the light of a late supper. I need scarcely say
the pretence was a miserable failure. Though the stars shone brightly
in the narrow strip of sky visible between the steep mountain-crests,
the night was so black that some precaution was considered necessary
to prevent our falling off the edge of the road, and prematurely
ending our Alpine investigations. The obliging waiter dexterously
screwed up in paper a tallow candle after the model of a safety bedroom
candlestick. But soon, as was to be expected, the shield caught fire,
and our impromptu lantern disappeared in a blaze.

François then beguiled the dark hours by an account of the
cross-examination he had undergone the evening before. 'What was our
illness? Should we take the waters? Where had we come from? How long
should we stay? Where were we going?' Such were the enquiries of the
guests; and when they heard that we had come over one glacier and were
departing next day by another with the intention of sleeping at a place
two days' drive off by the only road they knew, they were fairly at
their wits' end.

The road which had seemed so long the day before was soon traversed,
and leaving our old track to scale the hillside, we continued in the
trough of Val di Mello, until just as dawn was breaking behind the
Disgrazia we reached the châlets of La Rasica. The incident which now
followed, interesting to me as the origin of a valued friendship, must
find a place here on account of the influence it had on all my further
wanderings.

People were heard stirring inside one of the barns, and lights seen
moving--a very unusual phenomenon at such an hour. For a moment we
imagined we had caught a party of smugglers starting for the Zocca.
But, conspicuous even in the darkness, a pair of white flannel
trousers, such as no smuggler ever wore, issued from the door.
Before we had time to speak they were followed by another and still
more startling apparition. All we could at first make out was a
large lantern, surrounded on all sides by long yellow spikes like
conventional sunbeams or the edges of a saint's glory. A moment later
the human being who carried the light became distinguishable, the
rays resolved themselves into the bright leather cases of scientific
instruments, and a voice announced that we were in the presence of Mr.
Tuckett and his guides.

Still young and inexperienced as a mountain-climber, and knowing only
by hearsay of the Alpine Club, I was at this time penetrated by a
profound respect for that body. Its rank and file I believed to be as
little hampered by the laws of gravity as the angels of the Talmud,
of whom three could balance themselves upon a single pinnacle of the
Temple. To its greater heroes I looked up as to the equals of those
spirits whom their leader reminded--

     That in our proper motion we ascend
     Up towards our native seat; descent and fall
     To us are adverse.

For me, therefore, it was an awful moment when I found myself thus
unexpectedly in the presence of the leader himself--the being whose
activity, ubiquity, and persistence in assault have made, at least
in the lips of wearied guides, 'der Tuckett' almost equivalent to
'der Teufel.' Conscious, moreover, of intentions on the new pass
of the country--the one possible link by which Val Masino could be
brought within a day's walk of the Upper Engadine--I felt an inward
presentiment that this great mountain-slayer must be there on a similar
errand, and a fear that he might punish our poaching in some very
serious manner.

Perhaps it was partly the guilty expression of our countenances which
caused our suspicions to be returned and our party also to be taken
for a band of smugglers whose acquaintance Mr. Tuckett had made on
the Albigna Glacier the previous day. The mutual misapprehension
having been speedily removed, our further fears were set at rest.
The Disgrazia was the immediate object of Mr. Tuckett's ambition; and
though he did intend to cross next day to the Engadine, his quiver was
already so full of new peaks and passes that he could well afford to
leave some small game for others.

It would have been pleasant to have united our parties, but we had
an appointment to keep at St. Moritz, and could not venture to risk a
detention by bad weather on the wrong side of the chain.

A steep ascent led to a miserable shelter where Mr. Tuckett and his
friend left us, and to which they subsequently returned to spend
an uncomfortable night. We were now on the upper pasturages, a wide
desolate tract merging into the rocky heaps which fringe several small
glaciers descending from the highest summits.

Three ice-streams flowed towards us--one from immediately under the
Pico della Speranza; the second from the angle in the chain under Monte
Sissone; the third lay far more to the left, and was barred at its head
by steep cliffs extending to the Monte Sissone, and broken only near
that peak by a narrow snow-trough. The head of the central ice-stream
was a broad saddle, and for this we determined to steer. I had a
presentiment that it would overlook Val Malenco. But that point gained,
it would be easy to reach the ridge of Monte Sissone, and probably
without losing much time by the circuit.

We ascended for a long way over the boulders on the south of the
central glacier. They offered villainous foothold, but the ice was so
slippery that we gave them the preference, and were rewarded for our
pains by finding some remarkably fine crystals. Leaving solid ground
only a few hundred yards below the crest, we soon found ourselves
on its summit. Beneath us, only at a much lower level, and cut off
by an apparently impracticable cliff, was the glacier-field which
encircles the head of Val Malenco. Beyond it rose the massive forms
of the Bernina group. We lost no time here in looking at the view, but
turned again upwards, following the ridge for some distance; then, at
François' instance, we crossed a treacherous snow-slope to the left,
and, after losing some of the height we had gained, reached the rocks.
We and the porter took a pretty straight course up the peak of the
Sissone, leaving François to make more to the left for the head of the
snow-trough. Towards the summit the rocks became steep, and afforded an
exciting scramble. As we worked up a gully the first man put his arm
round a large and apparently firmly-wedged stone, which tottered with
his weight. Had it fallen, we should have had a sensation something
like that of jumping out of the way of a cannon-ball. When our heads
rose above the level of the ridge, we were glad to see snow-slopes on
the other side, falling away steeply to a great glacier basin. Now we
felt our pass was secured. A pile of broken crags still rose above us;
a short race, and we were seated on the highest boulder, one of the
corner-stones of the Bernina chain.

The Monte Sissone, although insignificant in height compared with the
giants which encircle the Morteratsch, claims an important place in
the orography of the group. It stands at the angle of the range, where
the main ridge is met by the spur which connects the Disgrazia with the
rest of the chain. This mighty outlier was the one object which riveted
our eyes, quite eclipsing the more distant glories of the Bernina. The
noble mass (scarcely three miles from us as the crow flies) rose tier
above tier out of the great glacier which extended to our feet; its
rocky ribs protruded sternly out of their shimmering ice-mail, and the
cloud-banner which was now flung out from the crowning ridge augured
no good to its assailants. Deep below lay Chiareggio and the Muretto
path, so that the mountain was visible from top to bottom. For massive
grandeur united with grace of form, the Disgrazia has few rivals in the
Alps. Between us and the Muretto stood the fine snow-peak of the Cima
di Rosso, and then the eye swept along the red cliffs which lie at the
back of Piz Guz and the Fedoz Glacier to the giants of the Bernina,
crowded too closely round their queen for individual effect. In the
west were the Cima del Largo, and the more distant peaks surrounding
the Bondasca Glacier.

Immediately from our feet on the north broken snow-slopes fall steeply
on to a wide level basin, the head of the Forno Glacier. Yawning
chasms forbad a direct descent, and when we left the peak, the higher
by several feet for our visit, we followed for a little distance
its eastern ridge. There were a legion of enormous pitfalls, but no
continuous moat, so that after some circle-sailing we were able to
slide swiftly down to the snow-plain. A circular hollow formed the
reservoir into which cascades of névé tumbled from the enclosing
ridges. These, like the walls of an amphitheatre, stretched round from
the Cima di Rosso to the Cima del Largo; to the west of Monte Sissone
they became almost perpendicular, and it seems doubtful whether a more
direct pass can profitably be forced in this direction. A large block
of ice had detached itself from the upper séracs and now lay at their
base--a bright mass of cobalt amidst the pervading greys and whites.

I have nowhere seen a more perfect 'cirque,' and we could fancy that
our feet were the first which had ever penetrated it, for the Forno,
though the second glacier of the Bernina group, and within an easy walk
of the Maloya Inn, has never been the fashion with tourists, and no
record of its earlier exploration exists.

Looking downwards a green mound close to Maloya was visible. It can
scarcely be half-an-hour from the road, and must command the whole
length of the glacier. Our course lay straight before us; we had
nothing to do but to follow the great valley of ice. Two fine masses of
secondary glacier poured in from the eastern range, over which the Cima
di Rosso rose pre-eminent, a noble peak sheeted in snow and ice. Since
leaving the Pennines we had seen no such glacier scenery.

The crevasses were frequent, but generally small,--the right size for
jumping over. At one place, however, it was easier to leave the ice
and to pick our way through the hollow between the moraine and the
mountain-side. A few sheep, which must have been driven at least a
mile over the ice, were cropping the scanty herbage. The herdboy seemed
simply stupefied at seeing five people drop suddenly on him from heaven
knows where, and could scarcely answer our questions except with a
prolonged stare.

Clouds had now risen over the sky, and a fine sleet began to fall. The
mists, however, did not descend on the mountains, and looking back we
enjoyed the peculiar effect of the upper peaks seen through a watery
veil and lit by fitful gleams of sunshine. Having returned to the
ice we followed it to the end,--a fine ice-cave, whence the Ordlegna,
the stream of Val Bregaglia, rushes out in an impetuous torrent. In
a few minutes we passed the Piancaning châlets and made our junction
with the dull but well-established path of the Muretto Pass. An hour
more brought us to the Maloya Inn and the high road; and after a
pleasant stroll along the Silser-See our walk came to an end at the one
picturesque village in the Upper Engadine, Sils Maria.


FOOTNOTES:

     [12] This and the following chapter were originally written
     as a paper to be read before the Alpine Club.

     [13] See Vignette.

     [14] Herr Theobald states that the villagers of Bondo
     give the name of Trubinesca to the Cima di Tschingel of
     the Federal map. Herr Ziegler, the author of a new and
     very beautifully executed map of this portion of the Alps,
     confirms this statement, adding that 'Turbinesca' is the
     correct spelling, and he has accordingly changed the names
     of the two peaks. As a rule, local usage should, no doubt,
     be followed. But in the present instance, the mistake is
     of such long standing, that an endeavour to correct it
     would only lead to confusion, and I have adhered to the
     nomenclature of the Federal map. It is much to be regretted
     that Herr Ziegler's map is wholly inaccurate with regard to
     the glaciers of Val Masino, and the position of many of the
     ridges dividing its lateral glens.

     [15] _Naturbilder aus den Rhätischen Alpen_: Chur, 1861.

     [16] The junction of this spur, the Cima Sciascia, with the
     principal ridge, has been placed too far east in all maps
     previous to the Alpine Club Map of Switzerland.

     [17] I am disposed to doubt whether a direct pass from the
     Bondasca Glacier to the western branch of Val Masino was
     ever effected before 1865. It is true there is a tradition
     embodied in the Swiss Federal map of such a pass. It is
     possible, however, that smugglers may have gone up to the
     Passo di Ferro, and then scrambled westward over the rocks
     into the basin of the Porcellizza Alp.




CHAPTER IV.

THE PEAKS AND PASSES OF VAL MASINO (_continued_).

     Hee's a foole who basely dallies
       Where each peasant mates with him;
     Shall I haunt the thronged vallies
       Whilst ther's noble hils to climbe?
                                 GEORGE WITHERS.

CHIAREGGIO--PASSO DI MELLO--PASSO DI BONDO--CIMA DEL LARGO--VAL
MASINO--PUNTA TRUBINESCA--MONTE DELLA DISGRAZIA--THE APPROACH TO
SONDRIO--A REPLY.


The following year found me in company with Mr. Tuckett, at the head
of the western branch of Val Malenco, the valley on the south of the
central mass of the Bernina. Our original companions in a campaign,
one of the most rapid and brilliant ever planned by our indefatigable
leader, had gradually left us to seek the inglorious repose of England
or Italy. Their place, however, had been partially filled by H. Buxton,
a recruit, but not a raw one; and for guides we were amply provided
with François, Peter Michel, and Walther of Pontresina.

The dingy house next the chapel serves as the inn of Chiareggio.
Its sole tenant in 1865 was a universal old man, who was a sort of
epitomised 'service;' cook, waiter, chambermaid, and host all in one.
The resources of his establishment were limited, the cutlery was of the
Bronze, and the bread of the Stone period; but the kitchen produced a
sort of 'soupe maigre' which sufficed, with the aid of our provisions,
to ward off starvation.

  [Illustration: THE DISGRAZIA,
   From the Bernina Group.

   Mte. della Cassandra      Pico della Speranza      Passo di Mello.]

Before us stretched a wide semicircle of rock and ice extending
from the Muretto Pass on the north to the Monte della Disgrazia on
the south. In the centre of the bay stood Monte Sissone. Above the
glaciers which poured down valleywards in two principal streams, rose
a continuous rock-rampart, impassable so far as we could judge to
the right of Monte Sissone, and formidable everywhere. The glacier
difficulties we were not afraid of; the question to be decided was
whether this final wall could be scaled.

At the point where the valley forks we left the Muretto path, and
turned towards the west. A bright ice-stream, having its source under
the highest crest of the Disgrazia, as splendid a mountain as any in
the Swiss Alps, poured down to our feet. On our right the glacier from
Monte Sissone stopped short at the top of a slope of loose rubbish.
We soon reached the foot of the long broken staircase. The chasms and
towers on either hand were on a noble scale, but, as is often the case,
it was possible to turn each in succession by a course of judicious
zigzags. After threading our way through the steepest labyrinth we
came to the upper region of half-formed ice, where deep continuous
trenches cease, and huge icicle-fringed pits--gaping monsters easily
avoided--take their place. Mounting steadily toward the Disgrazia
and along the base of the rock-wall, we drew near the point of attack
already selected. Here a steep snow-bed lay to a certain height against
the rocks. Immediately above they were perpendicular, but across their
face a ledge, slanting upwards, promised to give access to a part of
the cliff on our left where the crags were more broken and practicable.
Our pathway soon grew narrow. There was, however, only one troublesome
corner, but this happened to be exactly where the meltings of an upper
snow-bed poured over on us in an icy stream. The shower-bath did not
cool our impatience during the moments we had to wait for one another.
This corner turned, a short steep slope of snow and rock led to the
crest, a pile of enormous boulders, whence on the further side we
looked down on a gently sloping snow-field falling towards the Val di
Mello. Over our heads towered a monstrous wall of granite, suddenly
breaking off above the pass. Immense wedge-like blocks, supported
only at one end, jutted out into the air like the stones of some
ruined temple, ever it would seem on the point to fall, yet enduring
for centuries.[18] When we set out to descend the snow-field was soon
crossed, to a point where it fell away in a steep bank. We cut a few
steps, and then glissaded down to a moraine. While unbuckling belts a
sudden crash made us look back. A huge boulder was dancing down the
slope in our footsteps, pursued by a bevy of smaller followers. The
very few stones that were lying at the bottom proved this to be an
unusual channel for such missiles. We were just out of range, but a
delay of five minutes would have exposed us to a serious risk in a
place to all appearance absolutely safe.

Our path now lay across the stony tract which encircles the small
glaciers of Val di Mello until we gained the edge of the upper alp,
where the collected streams make a deep plunge into the glen below.
Here we all separated, Buxton and I descending at once with the water,
and Tuckett following the proper path away to the right; Buxton luckily
hit a track, and got down without difficulty, but I, less fortunate,
took a course on the left side of the waterfall. Swinging myself down
the steep hillside by the strong arms of the creeping pines, I was
little more than 200 feet above the floor of the glen, when I was
suddenly brought to a standstill by an abrupt crag. It was fortunately
possible to scramble down to the lowest ledge, and then drop down the
last few feet on to the elastic bed of dwarf pines below. The little
bag which contained all my wardrobe was an impediment to the close
union of my body and the rock which seemed expedient, and I flung it
down before me. When I had more slowly followed, the bag was nowhere
to be seen; half-an-hour's search was fruitless, and I began to fear
lest my companions should become alarmed at my delay. I was now within
250 feet of the valley, and, seeing my way for more than half the short
space, had no thought of a further difficulty. But after a few steps I
found myself on the brink of a cliff, not very lofty, but still high
enough to break one's neck over, and too smooth to allow any hope of
a direct descent. For a moment return, which meant a circuit of two
hours, seemed inevitable. But a careful study of the rocks on my left
showed a sort of slanting groove or gallery running across their face,
of which it might be possible to take advantage.

In order to reach this loophole of escape a crag of awkwardly smooth
surface had to be crossed, and it was clearly desirable to use every
natural means of adhesion. I dropped my ice-axe, and the force with
which it rebounded from its first contact with the ground, gave its
owner a serious warning to follow in some less abrupt manner. Foothold
soon failed, but not before I was within reach of the groove, or flaw
in the cliff-structure, just mentioned. How best to profit by its
advantages was now the question. Wedging myself into it as far as might
be, I pressed with my back and elbows against the lower rock, and with
my hands against the overhanging upper lip. My knees and heels formed
a second point of support, and by retaining one part of my body always
fixed I wormed myself along slowly, but with perfect security. At last
the smooth cliff was turned, and it was easy to descend into the glen.

A copious spring burst out of the rocks just where I first touched
level ground. I quenched at it the intense thirst produced by the
excitement of the solitary climb, picked up my axe, and then hastened
onwards, desirous as soon as possible to rejoin my companions, and
relieve whatever anxiety they might feel on my behalf. A needless
exertion, for on approaching the châlets of La Rasica I saw a cluster
of grey forms prostrate in various attitudes on the turf, while a pile
of emptied bowls beside them showed the nature of the beverage by which
the Circe of the châlet had wrapt them in forgetfulness.

Beyond La Rasica I was treading in my last year's footsteps. Val
di Mello, the name by which the eastern head of Val Masino is
distinguished, is one of the most savage mountain recesses in this part
of the Alps. The highest peaks of the district do not themselves rise
immediately out of it, but their granite buttresses are so bold that
grandeur is the last element the scenery could be accused of wanting.
It does, to me at least, want something, and on contrasting it with
two other valleys of similar formation the missing element is easily
recognisable. Utter wildness fails to satisfy, and savage crags lose
half their beauty when they no longer tower above grassy lawns and
out of rich woods of pine, or better still, of glossy chestnuts. Val
Bondasca, the Val di Genova under the Presanella, and Val Bavona may be
taken as good examples of granite scenery in its highest perfection.

We found but little change in the Bagni and their visitors. The doctor
and the priest were still playing bowls, the bell was still ringing,
and the same waiter was ready to do for us exactly the same things as
he had done ten months before. By his aid we succeeded in repeating a
good dinner, and, much more remarkable, an early start.

Our object this year was to effect if possible the traditional pass
from the Porcellizza Alp to Val Bondasca, which we had missed at the
first attempt.

The stream which flows before the door of the bath-house rushes down
the cliff a few yards higher up in a noble fall. A steep zigzag of
well-made pavé, better to mount than descend, climbs beside the water.
Two hours of steady uphill work lead to a grassy basin, in the centre
of which stand the châlets of the Porcellizza Alp. A ring of granite
peaks hems in the pasturage, and ice fills the gaps between them. The
summits themselves are precipitous, but the ground below them is less
broken, and the slopes are gentler and greener, than at the head of
the other glens in this group. Hence cows take the place of Bergamasque
sheep, and the châlet, known as the Alp Mazza, is one of the largest in
the neighbourhood.

We fancied our pass must lie at the eastern foot of the Punta
Trubinesca. The glacier was smooth and solid, and we had no difficulty
in reaching the gap at its head. But the descent on the other side was
far from eligible. We found ourselves at the top of an ice-slope at
least 1,000 feet high, very steep, and swept by constant discharges
of stones. We naturally resolved to look further along the ridge.
Turning our backs on the still unconquered and formidable cliffs of
the Trubinesca, we at once climbed the snow-slope on our right, and,
crossing a rocky spur, gained the head of the glacier adjacent to
the one by which we had ascended. Again we inspected the northern
slopes, but with like result. The Bondasca Glacier still lay far--very
far--below, at the base of a most repulsive gully, down which
stones rattled constantly at a pace likely soon to put a stop to
all trespassing on their private pathway. Unwilling to face such a
cannonade, we again right-faced. It was fortunately possible, and that
without much difficulty, to follow the crest of the chain by keeping
a little below it on its southern side. In time we reached the spur
dividing the second from yet another ice-stream, the largest and most
easterly of those that descend towards the Porcellizza Alp. We saw with
disgust that we had yet some distance to go, and that over very rough
ground, involving a considerable descent, and the passage of a steep
ridge, to reach the Passo di Ferro, the point where we had crossed the
previous year.

Suddenly Peter Michel, who had unlinked himself, and was exploring
above, shouted to us to follow, and in a few minutes we were all
standing in a natural doorway in the ridge, some twenty feet deep by
five in breadth. The ice of the Bondasca Glacier was here only 250 feet
below us, and the cliff looked broken enough to be practicable, so,
the guides being in favour of an immediate descent rather than a long
and uncertain circuit, we decided we had reached our pass, and behaved
accordingly--that is, made ourselves comfortable in niches and enjoyed
the view and iced Asti, a beverage which can only be appreciated at
over 10,000 feet. While we were reroping, Michel grew oracular, and to
a question on the easiness of our route, replied in a formula we had
learnt by experience to dread as much as Cleopatra the 'but yet' of the
messenger from Antony--'Es geht,--aber.'

The descent of a partially ice-coated cliff is one of the most
ticklish parts of a climber's work. But so long as there is any good
hold on rock, and the party can proceed directly downwards, there is
no danger if the rope is properly used. When it becomes necessary to
move diagonally across the face of the mountain the difficulty is much
increased, and the rope is not so easily kept taut. Yet there are few
places where with sufficient care a slip of any one man may not be
checked before it becomes a fall.

In the present instance it was some time before we met with anything to
justify Michel's reservation. But about half-way down the rib which had
helped us came to an end, and the rocks grew smooth and mixed with ice.
To have descended in a straight line would have brought us to the edge
of a gaping crevasse; we tended, therefore, continually to the right,
where the glacier rose higher against the cliff, and snow bridged the
obstructive chasm. Here a long step down, there a longer straddle round
was required, and our progress became of the slowest, as prudence often
required a majority of the party to be stationary.

After passing one very obnoxious corner, which each pulled himself
round, partly by an imperceptible grasp on an invisible handhold,
but principally trusting to the support of the rope, we got on easier
ground, and, by cutting a few steps, reached at last (in two hours from
the pass) the snow-bridged moat. Once on the ice, François was aided
by old experience, and steered us through the labyrinth of the Bondasca
Glacier without either delay or difficulty.

After leaving the ice we followed the steep path which leads down
amongst the creeping pines and underwood on the right side of the
valley, to the lower level of Val Bondasca.

Another plunge, this time through chestnuts, brought us to the
maize-fields and vine-trellised villages of Val Bregaglia. Neither at
Promontogno nor Castasegna was any carriage to be obtained. In order to
arrive at Chiavenna we were compelled, ice-axes in hand, to storm the
roof of a diligence, where, intrenched among the luggage, we formed a
garrison far too formidable for any guard or postillion to dislodge.

In the summer of 1866 I again found myself with my friend Tucker and
François Devouassoud, in eastern Switzerland. The passes of Val Masino
were accomplished, but its peaks still remained maiden and unassailed.
Having added Fluri to our party, we started one afternoon from
Pontresina for the old hospice on the top of the Maloya, then a humble
inn, now a familiar house of call for the fashionable society of St.
Moritz.

The Cima del Largo, the highest peak in the range between Val Bregaglia
and Val Masino, was our aim for the morrow. I spare the reader the
long and somewhat tedious march over familiar ground to the head of
the Forno Glacier. We had started under a cloudless sky, but before
we reached the foot of the Largo no 'Cima' was to be seen, only
snow-slopes stretching up into the mists. Fortunately we already knew
how to attack our peak. From the N. or E. the Cima del Largo presents
itself as a bold round tower rising sheerly above the wall on which
it stands. As far as its northern base there could, we believed, be
little difficulty. Our expectations were fulfilled: steep snow-banks
and easy rocks lifted us to the rim of the snowy basin of the Forno.
The ridge which divides it from the Albigna Glacier is a narrow comb of
granite; we moved along it in the chink between the rocks and snow. A
wall of ice suddenly loomed before us through the mist. We had reached
the foot of the tower, and the trial of strength was about to begin.
The ice was very hard and the slope very steep, and steps seemed to
take a long time. At last a patch of rock was gained. We now followed
a ridge, sometimes rock, sometimes ice; steps had still to be cut,
and we progressed but slowly. Suddenly our leader said, 'C'est assez,'
reversed his axe, and stepped out freely for a few paces. We were on
the snow-dome which forms the summit of the Cima del Largo.

View there was none; we could see we were on the top, and that was all.
But even in the worst of weather the newness of his plaything offers
some consolation to the childlike simplicity of the true climber.
Comforting ourselves, like Touchstone, with the reflection that the
Largo, if, under the circumstances, but 'a poor virgin, an ill-favoured
thing,' was at least 'our own,' we adjourned to a sheltered niche in
the rocks a few feet below the summit. The atmosphere was tolerably
warm and windless, and in our bivouac under the overhanging eaves of
the great rocks we were sheltered from the soft, thickly-falling veil
of snow which cut us off from the lower world.

If our surroundings might have seemed cheerless, our feelings were by
no means so. I never assisted at a more festive meal than that which
celebrated the birth of our stoneman.

Fluri was determined to do his best to compensate for the want of
view; he was in his highest spirits, pleased with the mountain, the
food, the wine-bag, the 'herrschaft,' and last, but not least, with
himself. Now Fluri, whether in good or bad spirits, used in any case
to be careful to let you know his mental condition. On this occasion
he exploded in a series of small but elaborate jokes. First he got
into a hole and played marmot. Then he scrambled after a solitary
ranunculus (which, strange to say, was blooming at this great height),
and pretended not to be able to get back again, wriggling his body
absurdly over the easiest rock in the neighbourhood. Nearly an hour
must have thus passed, and yet no break in the mist offered to reward
us for revisiting the summit. So about 1 P.M. we set out to return.
The descent of the ice-wall called for considerable care, as it was
necessary to be prepared for a slip, although such an accident might
not be very likely to happen. François, who was leading, had to clear
out the fresh-fallen snow from our old steps, which were quite effaced.
Here Fluri, who in his early period, before he had learnt snowcraft
from English mountaineers and foreign guides, showed a morbid dislike
to the commonest and most necessary precautions, raised himself greatly
in our esteem. Though screaming and howling every variety of jödel
the whole time, I never saw him once without the rope taut and his axe
firmly anchored in the ice. The rest of the descent was easy enough,
and it does not take long to get down snow-slopes. From the foot of
the peak we had a long and heavy walk back to the inn on the Maloya.
The snow on the glacier was soft and ridgy, and the path beyond sloppy
and slippery, and the light snow-flakes changed into heavy rain when we
got down again into the lower world. At Maloya we found the car ordered
from Silvaplana to meet us. Our day's journey was yet far from its end.
There was much still before us that would be wearisome to relate, and
was still more wearisome to endure.

How the postmaster at Silvaplana tried to impose on us, how we relaced
our sodden boots and tramped through the rain to St. Moritz, how there
Badrutt gave us a car which carried us moist and sleepy to Zutz, this
is not the place to tell. Enough that we arrived at Zutz in a state
of depression which even the scene of revelry by night offered by the
'Schweizerbund,' where we found Swiss warriors absorbed in the task of
conducting village maidens through the solemn revolutions of a national
variation of the waltz, failed to cheer. It was the last of our trials
that no inducement would persuade a Swiss maiden to make our beds.

In the same summer we visited for the third time the Bagni del Masino.
We were forced by weather to enter the valley by its proper gate
instead of by one of the irregular but more tempting modes of access
open to mountaineers.

For the first hour the car-road between the Val Tellina and the Baths
runs through a steep and narrow defile. It is not until the village
of Cattaeggio, picturesquely imbedded amongst rocks and foliage, and
the mouth of Val Sasso Bisolo have been passed, that the valley opens,
and the jagged range near the Passo di Ferro comes into sight. Before
reaching San Martino the stupendous boulder, known to the peasants
as the Sasso di Remeno, is encountered. On near approach it quite
maintains its reputation as the largest fallen block in the Alps.
Beside the monster lie several more boulders of extraordinary size. On
the top of one of them is a kitchen garden approached by a ladder. The
snows melt sooner on such an exposed plot, and the goats cannot get at
the vegetables.

The object of our return to so recently visited a region was to
complete in peaks the work we had already carried out in passes. The
problem which on the whole we looked to with most interest was now
immediately before us. Mr. Ball had pronounced the Punta Trubinesca,
the highest peak west of the Cima del Largo, and the prince of the
rocky summits overlooking Val Bondasca, absolutely inaccessible from
this side. But from what we had seen the previous year we were inclined
to believe that the prophet had for once spoken hastily. The rocks on
the southern face of the peak (both south and west faces overlook the
Porcellizza Alp) had then seemed to us difficult certainly, but not
impossible.

We arrived in good time at the Baths, and soon went to bed, determined
to be prepared for the very early start which should give us a
fair chance of success in our venture. My disgust may be imagined,
therefore, when I awoke next morning to see the sun already shining
brightly in at my window, and my watch conspicuously pointing to 6
A.M. What had become of François? Had our guide for the first time in
his life fallen a victim to the potent wines of the Val Tellina, or,
more unlikely still, deliberately arranged to shirk the formidable
Trubinesca?

I hurried at once to seek the defaulter, who was found in a deep
slumber, which he justified by the statement that it had rained at
3 A.M. It is difficult to remedy a bad beginning, and our old friend
the nocturnal waiter was now of course in his first sleep. Breakfast
was not over until past seven, at which unseemly hour we set out with
comparatively slender hopes of success. For three hours we followed
our old tracks of the Passo di Bondo. As we mounted the green hillsides
above the Porcellizza Alp a new plan was suggested--to try the western
instead of the southern face of the Trubinesca. This we had never
examined, because it was the side seen and pronounced against by Mr.
Ball from the Pizzo Porcellizzo.

A smooth cliff some 200 feet high ran round the entire base of the
peak, and there was no breach visible. But there was still one spot
which we could not clearly see, the head of the glacier we were
about to tread. As we mounted the easy banks of ice the secret of the
mountain was suddenly revealed. A snow-gully of very moderate slope
led up to the ridge between our peak and the Cima di Tschingel. In
half-an-hour more the cliff was outflanked, and we were on the crest of
the chain looking down an awful precipice into Val Bondasca.

The final ridge alone remained. It rose beside us in a broad slab of
granite. But a convenient crack destroyed the difficulty suggested by
a first glance. We were now at the foot of the turret so clearly seen
from St. Moritz; we turned it by its southern side, and then with our
hands in our pockets walked quietly up a broad terrace of mingled rock
and snow. The neighbouring peaks had already sunk below us--a smooth
shining surface shone between them. One of us exclaimed 'Voilà Como.'
François replied, 'Voici le sommet.' It was just midday. Four hours and
a half had disposed of the terrible Trubinesca, and added one more to
the very lengthy list of Alpine impostors.

The distant panorama was marred by clouds; in its main features it
must be a repetition of the lovely western view gained from every high
summit of the Bernina group. It is the near prospect, however, which
distinguishes the Punta Trubinesca. It can show two sights not to be
seen, perhaps, from any other snowy peak, a large portion of Lago di
Como, that coyest of Alpine lakes, and what is still more remarkable,
the whole course, I may say literally every inch, of both sides of an
Alpine carriage-road--Italy and Switzerland in the same glance.

At our very feet lay the forests and villages of Val Bregaglia,
Italian chestnuts and white campaniles; amongst them we caught sight
of the thin streak of the high-road, which we followed as it climbed
corkscrew-fashion above the woods and waterfalls and up to the bleak
wind-swept down of the Maloya. Then our eyes accompanied it past the
pine-fringed lakes of Sils and Silvaplana, and up again to the bracing
heights of St. Moritz, every house in which was distinguishable through
the glasses. Lost sight of for a few miles beneath the dip to Samaden,
the road reappeared together with a companion thread, the river Inn,
and both finally vanished from our view somewhere between Zutz and
Zernetz.

The Baths were regained without adventure. And thus this maiden peak,
although capable of deceiving the most experienced judges, yielded
without a struggle to the first assault. Its reputation has survived
its fall, and I saw it lately catalogued in some foreign publication as
'non ancora scalato.'

The very fact, however, which makes my story short and dull, the
surprising easiness of the peak, gives it the greater interest for
the ordinary traveller. If some of the native hunters will be at the
trouble of making themselves familiar with the route, there is no
reason whatever why the ascent should not become a frequent excursion
from the Baths. The walk is even within the powers of many ladies, and
they might ride to within at most three hours of the top. Any one who
can appreciate quality as well as quantity in a panorama will be well
repaid; those who do not should confine themselves to Piz Languard.

Our descent had been delayed by the state of my friend's knee, which
had been suffering from an old sprain, and now refused plainly to do
duty for some days to come. It was vexatious enough, for on the next
night we were to have slept out for the Disgrazia. But necessity knows
nothing of plans, and he resigned himself to return as he had come to
Sondrio, while I resolved to make a push for the same place over the
mountains, and if possible to climb the Disgrazia by the way.

Soon after midnight François and I set out under a cloudy sky, which
gave no sure token as to the day to follow. The now well-known path
up Val di Mello was quickly traversed. As we reached La Rasica thin
rain began to fall, and François, prophesying evil, suggested a return
to San Martino. But the first gleams of day showed the thinness of
the clouds, and our faces were again set against the steep hillside
which leads to the upper pasturages. Before these were reached the
blue face of heaven was everywhere breaking through the mist-veil, and
a fine day was assured. Our spirits, hitherto gloomy, rose rapidly.
The Passo di Mello was soon left below on the left, and we pressed
rapidly up the steep glacier which fills the corner under the Pico
della Speranza.[19] The last bank up to the spur dividing us from Val
Sasso Bisolo was steep enough to need step-cutting; but we succeeded
in avoiding altogether the difficulty described by Mr. Kennedy.[20] We
walked across an ordinary snow-slope on to the crest of the Disgrazia
at a point somewhat to the south of the lowest gap between the loftier
mountain and the Pico della Speranza. My hopes now ran high. The rocks
were singularly easy until we came to a broad ice-trough. Steps were
cut across this; then we climbed up a steeper rock-rib and over a
tooth. Beyond this we came to a second and wider sheet of hard black
ice falling away steeply towards the Sasso Bisolo Glacier. François
at once set to work cutting steps; when thirty-two had been cut,
and three-quarters of an hour had elapsed, we were less than halfway
across the ice. All this time a very strong wind was blowing over the
ridge; still the steps were good, and the position an ordinary one to
mountaineers. It did not even occur to me to feel doubt as to our final
success until François turned round for the first time and remarked
on the violence of the wind. A few steps further a second observation
showed me that my guide entertained doubts in his own mind as to the
prudence of persevering in our attempt.

I replied, however, that I was quite happy, and that the steps were
excellent. A few more were cut, and then came a third suggestion of
retreat. For once in my life I acted on principle, and I have regretted
it ever since. François' doubts were not to be wondered at when the
moral strain of his unusual position is considered, alone with a
'monsieur' on a cathedral roof of ice. My old friend has a great deal
too much imagination to be merely animally brave, and like all the best
guides feels acutely the responsibility of his situation. He knew that
if I made a false step he might not be able to hold me. This was a good
reason for our retreat. He could not feel, as I did, that I had not the
slightest disposition to slip; for indeed his work was so good that
no one accustomed to ice-steps could possibly have fallen out of the
foothold provided.

We decided, therefore, with a sharp pang to give up the peak, which was
about half-an-hour distant, and looked ten minutes.

Despite my defeat, I cannot pretend that the Disgrazia is in any way a
difficult mountain for any properly constituted party of mountaineers.
I have not as yet revenged myself on the peak, but François some years
afterwards took two of my friends to the top, and has given me his
report. The slope, which we found hard black ice, was then snow, and
was very soon disposed of. Twenty minutes more of rough scrambling
brought them to the lower tooth reached by Herr Syber-Gysi. The gap
between this and the highest peak cost another ten minutes of stiff,
but not in the least dangerous, rock climbing. They started from the
lower châlets in Val Sasso Bisolo and took six hours in the ascent. I
was eight hours (halts included) from the Baths to where I stopped.
It is clear, therefore, that active walkers are under no necessity
to sleep out for this mountain, but may do it in the day between two
comfortable beds. The reputation of difficulty which the Disgrazia has
certainly acquired is due partly to its splendid appearance from the
Bernina group, still more to the interested exertions of the Pontresina
guides, who have not been ashamed to charge the peak in their tariff
at 170 francs; 70, as they explain, for the four days' journey, 100
for the dangers of the climb. Now that Italians from Sondrio and
hunters of Val Malenco have found their way up together, it is scarcely
likely that any traveller in his senses will seek the services of the
gentlemen of the Engadine.

The superb view spread out before us might well have diverted our
minds even under a more serious disappointment. It was one of the
days, frequent in the Alps after unsettled weather, when the air has a
brilliancy and transparency so extraordinary that an Englishman rather
fancies himself in another planet than within a day or two's journey
of his own misty island. It is difficult to believe that you, who now
breathe under an enormous arch of sky rising from pillars four hundred
miles apart, are the same being whose vision was bounded but last week
by a smoke-canopy resting on the chimney-pots of the other side of the
square, and who, in home walks, was rather proud of distinguishing a
landmark twenty miles off.

Two vertical miles below lay the broad Val Tellina with its towns and
fields, nearer was the bare trench of Val Sasso Bisolo; between the two
a broad-backed ridge, covered with green pasturage, seemed to offer a
delightful path for anyone descending towards Morbegno.

The higher crest cut off only an insignificant portion of the
Bergamasque hills. Beyond the nearer ranges, beyond the tossing hill
waves of Como and the wide plain, the long level line of the Apennine
melted into the glowing sky. The Disgrazia shares the advantage of all
the outstanding Italian Alps, of being well within the great semicircle
formed by the chain, instead of like the summits of the Bernese
Oberland on its outer ring. From Dauphiné to the Bernina every peak
was in sight, the whole array of the central Alps raised their silver
spears through the inconceivably pure air.

From the foot of the ridge we turned to the left down the broad Sasso
Bisolo Glacier, descending caverned slopes the concealed treachery
of which was, in truth, far more dangerous than the open terrors of
the upper crest. Two climbers may safely attack many peaks, but it is
undoubtedly wrong for so small a party to venture on any snow-covered
glacier. By _wrong_ in matters of mountain-climbing I mean anything
which excludes the element of skill in that noble sport, and tends to
convert it into mere gambling with hidden forms of death such as the
ice-pit or the avalanche. Immediately under the face of the peak we
struck the base of the high rocky spur which runs out from it to the
south-west. A steep scramble (twenty minutes) brought us to a gap,
where we rested awhile to admire the exquisite view of the Zermatt
range.[21] On the further side we slid down a hard snow-bed which had
very nearly succeeded in developing itself into a glacier, and found
ourselves in a desolate hollow, the stream of which forces a way out
into Val Torreggio, one of the lower branches of Val Malenco.

The descent lies at first through a narrow funnel between
richly-coloured cliffs. The granite has now come to an end, and sharp
edges of slate and serpentine crop up against it. A green and level
upland valley soon opens before the eyes, watered by an abundance of
sparkling fountains which spring up beneath every stone. Here a path
gradually asserts itself and leads to a group of châlets. The descent
into the depths of Val Malenco is long, but pleasant. Although the high
peaks of the Bernina are concealed by lower spurs, the way abounds in
charming vignettes of wood and water and warm hillsides.

At Torre we had to wait some time for the carriage sent up to meet us
from Sondrio. As we sat by the wayside the village priest joined us.
When he learnt that we had come straight over the mountains from the
'Bagni' his astonishment knew no bounds, and he seemed to doubt whether
we were not something more or less than natural and wingless human
beings.

Our evening drive was swift and exciting. An impetuous horse whirled us
down a steep vine-clad hill, rounding the zigzags at a pace which made
perils by mountains sink into insignificance compared to the perils
by road. Near a beautiful waterfall tumbling from the opposite hills,
the Malero was leapt by a bold arch, and for some time we ran along a
terrace, high above the strong glacier torrent.

From the last brow overlooking the Val Tellina the eye rests on one
of those wonderful landscapes which tell the southward-bound traveller
that he has reached his goal and is at last in Italy.

The great barrier is crossed, and the North is all behind us. The face
of the earth, nay the very nature of the air, has changed, colours have
a new depth, shadows a new sharpness. From the deep-green carpet of the
smooth valley to the crowns of the sunset-flushed hills, all is wealth
and luxuriance. No more pines stand stiff in regimental ranks to resist
the assaults of winter and rough weather. No mountain rhododendrons
collect all their strength in a few tough short shoots, and push
themselves forward like hardy skirmishers of the vegetable world into
the very abode of snow. Here the 'green things of the earth' are all at
home and at peace, not as in some high Graubunden valley waging unequal
war in an enemy's country. The beeches cluster in friendly companies on
the hills. The chestnut-forest rejoicing in a green old age spreads out
into the kindly air broad, glossy branches, the vines toss their long
arms here and there in sheer exuberance of life. Even on the roadside
wall the lizards run in and out amongst beds of cyclamen and tenderest
ferns and mosses. The hills seem to stand back and leave room for the
sunshine; and the broad, shining town of Sondrio, girt by towers and
villas, wears, after the poor hamlets of the mountains, a stately air,
as if humanity too shared in the general well-being.

It is one of the peculiar privileges of the Alpine traveller to enjoy,
if he pleases, the choicest luxury of travel, a descent into Italy,
half-a-dozen times in the space of one short summer holiday.

We drove down through vineyards and past a large villa and church, and
through a narrow Via Garibaldi into a Piazza Vittorio Emmanuele. The
south side of the square was formed by the hotel, an imposing building
which contains within its walls the post and diligence offices. The
windows command a view up Val Malenco, terminated by the twin peaks of
the Schwestern, which appear from this side as two rocky teeth, hardly
to be recognised as the pure snow-cones which look in at every window
at Pontresina.

I have now, I hope, given an account of the mountains of Val Masino,
which, though far from complete, may suffice to aid mountaineers
who wish to visit them, and to direct attention to some of the most
enjoyable expeditions within their limits. But, as I put aside the
various pamphlets from which I have tried to add to my own information
on this group, I notice that a worthy Herr Professor has remarked
on the first ascent of the Disgrazia, that it was 'wholly devoid of
scientific interest and results.' I fancy my learned friend preparing
to lay down this holiday chronicle with a similar shrug of the
shoulders; and I feel indisposed to allow him his criticism until he
has first submitted it to be examined in detail, and listened to what
may be urged on the other side.

'The Alps,' that shrug seems to say, 'are not a playground for
idle boys, but a store-room full of puzzles; and it is only on the
understanding that you will set to work to dissect one of these that
you can be allowed to enter. You have free leave to look on them,
according to your taste, as an herbarium, or as a geological, or even
an entomological museum, but they must be treated, and treated only,
as a laboratory. The belief that the noblest use of mountains is to
serve as a refectory at once mental and physical for an overworked
generation, that--

     Men in these crags a medicine find
     To stem corruption of the mind,

is a poetical delusion unworthy of the philosopher who penned the
lines. You must not come here to climb for mere health, or to indulge a
sensual love of the beautiful, or, still worse, that brutelike physical
energy which may be more harmlessly exhausted in persecuting foxes or
trampling turnips. Μηδεὶς ἀγεωμέτρητος εἰσίτω. Come with a
measuring rod or not at all.'

So far our critic. In his anxiety to claim on behalf of science
exclusive dominion over the mountains, he forgets that all great
works of nature are not only monuments of past changes but also living
influences. The physical history of our globe is a study the importance
of which no one at the present day is likely to disallow. Because we
refuse to look on mountains simply as so much historical evidence,
we of the Alpine Club do not by any means, as has been frequently
suggested, range ourselves amongst the Philistines. We listen with the
greatest interest to the men of genius whose mission it is to interpret
the hieroglyphics of the temple in which we only worship. But we do not
all of us recognise it as our duty to try to imitate their researches.
Nor would the wiser of them wish for imitation from an incompetent herd
of dabblers, who, however much they might gratify individual vanity,
would advance the general sum of knowledge about as much as an ordinary
amateur sketchbook does art.

Is it always better for a man, when acres of red rhododendron are
in full bloom around him, and the insects are filling the air with a
delicious murmur, to be engrossed body and soul in poking about for
some rare plant or impaling an unfortunate beetle? When two hundred
miles of mountain and plain, lake and river, cornland and forest,
are spread out before the eyes, ought one to be remembering that
'justification' depends on ascertaining whether the back is resting on
granite or feldspathic gneiss?

The preposterous pretension that no one is 'justified' (it is the
favourite word) in drinking in mountain glory in its highest forms
unless he brings as a passport a profession of research, cannot be
too strongly denounced. To require from every Alpine climber some
show of a scientific object would be to preoccupy men's minds at the
moment when they should, and would otherwise, be most open to enlarging
influences; it would in many cases be to throw away moral advantages
and to encourage egotism, vanity, and humbug.

An obvious comparison may perhaps render more clear the relative
positions of the simple lover of the Alps and the scientific dabbler.
Rome is almost as universal a goal of modern travel as Switzerland.
There also is a great history to be studied, on many of the problems of
which investigation of the ground we tread may throw light.

The world listens with eager attention to anyone who has the requisite
training to study such problems with profit, who can tell us what rude
remains may be of the time of the Kings, can distinguish between the
work of the Republic and the Empire. And amongst the galleries we are
glad to meet those who can trace the progress of art and analyse a
great picture so as to show the elements drawn from earlier masters
which have been crowned and immortalised by the genius of Raphael or
Michael Angelo.

But who ever ventured to assert that Rome was the peculiar heritage of
the archæologist or the art critic? that the pathetic strength of its
world-centring ruins or the glorious beauty of its frescoed palaces was
reserved for the few who can explain, or make guesses at, how these
things grew, and forbidden to the many who can only appreciate their
present charm?

The Alps, we hold, like Rome, are for everyone who has a soul capable
of enjoying them. They have been given us by right of birth for the
recreation of our minds and bodies, and we refuse to hand over the key
of our playground or to accept the tickets of admission which are so
condescendingly offered. If anybody--even if a scientific body--calls
after us as we pass along the mountain-path, we shall return no other
answer than the very sufficient one made under similar circumstances by
the hero of Mr. Longfellow's popular ballad. And if, like that unhappy
young man, we are doomed to perish in our attempt, I do not fancy
our last moments will be seriously embittered by the absence of such
consolations as a barometer or a spirit-level might have afforded.


FOOTNOTES:

     [18] The pass was at first named the Disgrazia Joch; but
     Passo di Mello, suggested by Mr. Ball, seems the most
     appropriate title.

     [19] So named by Messrs. Stephen and Kennedy, who apparently
     considered the gloominess of the surrounding names required
     some relief. The Monte della Disgrazia is supported on the
     other side by the Monte della Cassandra.

     [20] Judging from the map appended to Mr. Kennedy's paper in
     the first vol. of the _Alpine Journal_, he crossed the spur
     at a much lower point than we did.

     [21] This gap is probably the Passo della Preda Rossa of an
     Italian party who in 1874 ascended the Disgrazia from the Alp
     Rali in Val Torreggio.




CHAPTER V.

_EAST OF THE BERNINA._

TARASP AND THE LIVIGNO DISTRICT.

             ---- Comest thou
     To see strange forests and new snows
     And tread uplifted land?     EMERSON.

THE PRÄTIGAU--VERSTANKLA THOR--TARASP--PIZ PISOC--PASSO DEL
DIAVEL--LIVIGNO--MONTE ZEMBRASCA--PASSO DI DOSDÈ--VAL GROSINA.


In the last two chapters I have sketched a route from the highway of
traffic and tourists--the Rhine valley--to the Italian Alps, passing
to the west of the crowded roads which lead to the Upper Engadine. My
design now is to point out a similar track lying to the east both of
the Julier and the Albula, which by means of variations may be made
equally available either for the foot or carriage traveller.

Our starting-point is the station of Landquart, some miles beyond
Ragatz and short of Chur, and opposite the opening of the long, deep
Prätigau.

Above the gorge which secludes this side valley from the Rheinthal
a car-track mounts to Seewis, an upland village with 'Pensions,'
frequented in summer by Swiss guests, whence the ascent of the Scesa
Plana, an isolated block commanding a wide panorama, and enclosing in
its recesses a large mountain lake--the Luner See--is often made.

This frontier valley rivals as a specimen of Swiss pastoral scenery
the more famous spots in Canton Bern. Its villages, surrounded by fat,
wide-spreading meadows of the brightest green, and overshadowed by
noble walnuts, wear on the outside an air of long peace and prosperity.
The interiors do not contradict the first impression. In the wayside
inns one finds rich brown panelled walls decorated here and there with
armorial bearings, old mirrors and carved presses. Mountainous stoves
tower in peak form to the ceiling, and are cased in tiles, each of
which represents some Scripture scene in a style often remarkable both
for vigour and humour.

After twenty-four miles of tolerably continuous ascent the road
reaches the upper expanse of the Prätigau and the scattered hamlets
of Klosters. The scenery is of a character more common in Tyrol than
Switzerland. Although it does not awe by sublimity or enchant by
richness and variety, it is yet thoroughly Alpine.

Behind a foreground of level meadows and green but bold hillsides the
glaciers and snow-peaks shine modestly but invitingly in the distance.
They are not, as in the Bernese Oberland, magnificently rampant
intruders on the pasturages, but quiet, stream-nursing benefactors,
whose acquaintance is never forced on you, and must be sought out with
some trouble.

Consequently the charm of such valleys is a self-contained
peacefulness; and a troop of cows rather than a herd of chamois
represents the animal life in harmony with their sentiment.

At the bridge of Klosters, in 1866, my companion deserted me for
England. Francis and I wanted to turn south again to the Engadine, and
we determined to take a glance by the way at the retiring beauties of
the Silvretta Ferner. This considerable glacier group, scarcely known
to Englishmen, runs parallel to the Lower Engadine, separating that
valley from the Tyrolese Montafun and Paznaun Thal, and abutting at
its western end against the head of the Prätigau. The Swiss Alpine
Club made it one year the scene of their summer excursion, and have
conquered most of its peaks and passes. At their instigation a hut has
been built four and a half hours from Klosters, close to the glaciers,
and there we intended to pass the night.

A new inn and pension was just opened on the left bank of the stream,
and I did not long remain without society in the salon. First appeared
an invalid from the Baths of Serneus, who speedily broke down my German
by preferring to talk of war-politics rather than of mountains. Next
came a gentleman from Chur bound for Davos, who puzzled me still more
by launching into what he gave me to understand was English. Last of
all the local guide turned up, armed with testimonials from the Swiss
Alpine Club, and aghast at the notion of any traveller crossing the
glaciers without his aid. Finding the native willing to accompany us
on very moderate terms, and being one too few for a glacier pass, we
readily agreed to take him.

Above Klosters the path is level for some distance, and leads through
thick woods rich in ferns and flowers. After passing the mouth of the
Vereina Thal the forest grew thinner and we reached the châlets of
the Sardasca Alp, standing at the true head of the valley on a level
meadow where several streams poured down to form the Landquart. A steep
hillside was now climbed by sharp zigzags; then, a stream and track
leading to an easy pass into the Fermont Thal having been left, the
path wound along the hillside until it met the water flowing from the
great Silvretta Glacier.

A short distance higher a pole was conspicuously fixed on a
large boulder, and a few yards further back we found the hut in a
sheltered hollow scarcely 300 yards from the end of the glacier. It
was sufficiently large and proof against wind and rain, as we had
afterwards good reason to know; but the furniture was scanty and in bad
repair. Two benches and a hay-bed were all we found, and there was no
stove.

However, this did not matter much for the night. But before we went to
sleep the wind had begun to howl, and next morning when we opened the
door a great, white gust rushed in, and all without was a seething mist
alive with snow-flakes.

Unless we decided to return, there was nothing for it but to make our
provisions hold out by submitting to an orthodox 'Vendredi Maigre,'
and to amuse ourselves as best we could by toasting cheese and
carving wood. Fortunately an inkbottle was discovered which materially
alleviated our position. I have heard under similar circumstances of a
chess-board being constructed by means of a lead pencil, and the game
played with pieces of black bread and cheese appropriately carved; but
two are required for this diversion.

About midday we made a hopeless and rather feeble 'sortie,' which the
snow-storm speedily repulsed. Two peasants who had brought up wood for
the hut paid us a visit in the course of the day, and a stray cow-boy
dropped in later for an afternoon call.

To our great delight Saturday, though still cloudy, promised better
weather, and we left our prison at 5 A.M. and soon reached the broad
ridge of rocks separating the Silvretta and Verstankla Glaciers.
It was not our intention to cross the Silvretta Pass, but to find
a shorter way to the Engadine through the gap at the head of the
Verstankla Glacier, and to descend by the Tiatscha ice-fall[22] into
Val Lavinuoz--a course which we did not believe to have been previously
taken.

Substitute the Cimes Blanches for the Silvretta Pass, the short cut
from Zermatt to Breuil near the Matterhorn for the pass we aimed at,
and the Val d' Aosta for the Lower Engadine, and anyone who knows the
Zermatt district will understand the relation of the two routes. Only
of course the lateral glens of the Lower Engadine are much shorter than
the side valleys of Val d' Aosta.

The Verstankla Glacier lies lower than the Silvretta, and to avoid
a descent we kept on the spur between them to the point where it was
buried by an ice-cascade overflowing from the larger to the smaller
flood. We crossed the fall diagonally, and found ourselves in an upper
basin of snow, and close to a narrow gap between the splendid crags
of the Schwarzhorn and the far lower Gletscherkammhorn. This was our
Pass, the Verstankla Thor, already christened but not crossed by Swiss
climbers. The view was limited, but wonderfully snowy; on every side
stretched broad, white glaciers and dark snow-powdered rocks, and on
the south Piz Linard stood up, a bold, isolated pyramid against the
blue sky.

We soon reached the spot where the glacier first plunges towards Val
Lavinuoz in an ice-fall which in 1865 had turned back Herr Weilenmann,
one of the best climbers in the Swiss Club. It made an attempt,
at least, to frighten us. We had not reached the open crevasses
when François, who was leading, suddenly disappeared like a sprite
in a pantomime. There was no great shock given to the rope, but a
considerable one to the feelings of the Klosters guide. François had
lighted on a ledge, and after popping up his head for a moment to
reassure us, withdrew it again down the trapdoor to look for the pipe
which had been knocked out of his mouth by the fall. The treasure
recovered, our leader was helped out of his hole and we went on. An
incident like this, trivial as it is in fact and in telling, is so only
because the rope is used, and properly used; had we been unattached, or
walking too near one another, the consequences might easily have been
very different. If any Alpine novice wishes to learn how to have and
to describe moments of 'intensivsten Schrecken' he may turn to Herr
Weilenmann's 'Aus der Firnenwelt,' and read how, on almost the same
spot, the Swiss climber, walking with the rope in his hand instead of
round his waist, nearly lost his life.

We found a fairly easy way through some fine snow-castles and
ice-labyrinths to the rocks on the eastern side of the fall. The
cliffs close to the glacier are precipitous, but a commodious ledge
leads round to some beds of avalanche snow, down which it is easy to
glissade. The lower glacier is smooth, and below its end we had a very
pleasant walk down Val Lavinuoz, with views of the noble mass of Piz
Linard immediately overhead. The glen soon opened, at Lavin, on the
high-road of the Lower Engadine, which we reached in 4½ hours' walking
from the hut--so that our short cut is not liable to the charge,
usually brought against Alpine short cuts, of being considerably longer
than the ordinary road.

Lavin, in 1869, suffered the usual fate of Engadine villages, by being
burnt to the ground. It is consequently a new hamlet, with substantial,
stone-built cottages and broad expanses of whitewash. In their passion
for whiteness and cleanness, fresh paint and bright flowers, and, I
may add, in a certain slow persistency of character, the eastern Swiss
seem to me the Dutch of the mountains. The neighbourhood of Piz Linard
makes Lavin a desirable resting-place for climbers. Horses can be taken
for three hours in the ascent, and a path has, I believe, been made up
to the last rocks.[23] This taller rival of Piz Languard deserves more
attention from strangers than it has yet received.

But the ordinary tourist will hasten on until he reaches the great
bathing-place of the Lower Engadine, which, if it has not yet equalled
St. Moritz in popularity, is only behindhand because in the present
generation there are more Hamlets than Falstaffs, more nervous and
excitable than fat natures, and consequently a greater call for iron
than for saline waters.

The Baths of Tarasp are so named from the commune in which they are
situated. Between Tarasp and Schuls, on the verge of Switzerland and
within a few miles of the Austrian frontier at Martinsbruck, a number
of mineral springs issue from the ground on both sides of the Inn.
Their properties are various, but the most in repute with patients are
of a strongly saline character. Of late years a large bath-house--the
largest in Switzerland, as advertisements continually inform us--has
been built near to the principal sources.

The first disease on the long list prepared by the local doctor of
those likely to be benefited by a course of the waters is 'general
fattiness.' Hither, accordingly, from the furthest parts of Germany,
and even from Spain and Denmark, repair a crowd of patients to seek
relief from the bonds of the corpulency to which nature or their own
appetites have condemned them.

In short, if St. Moritz is, as Mr. Stephen thinks, the limbo of
Switzerland set apart for the world--that is, for kings, millionaires
and people who travel with couriers--Tarasp is its purgatory,
providentially created for the class whom the flesh has rendered unfit
for such Alpine paradises as Grindelwald, or even Pontresina.

The bath-house, planted as it is beside the river at the bottom of a
steep-sided trench, in a position very like a deep railway cutting, is
never, I think, likely to become a favourite resort of mountaineers.
It is difficult even to feel mountain enthusiasm in an establishment
tenanted chiefly by invalids or Italians whose walks are limited to
the extent of their own bowl's throw. The social atmosphere of the
place is, as might be expected, utterly unalpine. The use of guides is
unknown, as excursions are habitually undertaken in carriages and have
villages for their object; riding-horses for ladies are a rare luxury,
and their owners attempt to bargain that they shall never be taken off
the car-roads of the valley.

It is only fair, however, to say that travellers need not stay at
the Baths. They have the choice of two neighbouring villages, at
both of which inns have sprung up of late years. Neither of these
situations, however, struck me as attractive. Schuls, on the left bank
of the Inn, lies on a bare hillside at a considerable distance from
the commencement of all the pleasantest walks; while the pensions at
Vulpera, although better placed for excursions, look straight on to
the dreary slopes behind Schuls, a prospect to which eyes accustomed to
other Alpine scenery will scarcely reconcile themselves.

The neighbourhood of Tarasp is not, however, so wholly ugly as
appears probable to the traveller who arrives at the bath-house by
the high-road. The slopes on the northern side of the valley remain,
it is true, from whatever point they are seen, amongst the most naked
and featureless in the Alps, and the knobs which crown the lower spurs
of the Silvretta Ferner can only by an extreme stretch of courtesy be
called peaks. But the natural features of the country on the opposite
bank of the Inn are far bolder and more varied. There the ground rises
above the river in a succession of wooded banks and grassy terraces,
cut by the deep ravines of torrents issuing from wild lateral glens.
Copses of birch and fragrant pine-woods afford shelter to a host of
rare ferns and wild flowers, while the sides of the path are garlanded
with dog-roses blooming with a profusion and brilliancy peculiar to the
spot.

On the lowest and broadest of the meadow-shelves or terraces stands the
hamlet and castle of Tarasp; the latter a whitewashed building perched
on a rocky knoll, and mirrored in a shallow tarn. Seen from a certain
distance, it forms a picturesque element in the foreground. From this
point, where an hotel ought to be built, a charming forest-path follows
the right bank of the Inn to Steinhaus, and numerous sledge-tracks,
commanding fine views of the stern limestone peaks which encircle the
entrance to the Scarl Thal, lead to upper shelves of the mountain.

The Piz Pisoc, Piz St. Jon, and Piz Lischanna, are in their own way
really fine objects, challenging, of course, no comparison with the
snow-clad giants of the Upper Engadine, but rather recalling to mind
some of the wilder and least beautiful portions of the Venetian Alps.

Piz Lischanna is easy of ascent, and nourishes a glacier oddly
described in 'Bradshaw' as 'the finest of the higher glaciers of
Switzerland.' It is in fact a broad ice-lake which rests sluggishly on
its uplifted limestone platform, and, finding sufficient difficulty to
maintain existence where it is, has not energy enough to make a push
for the valley. A slight increase of temperature--say to the climate of
Primiero--would melt its masses and lay bare the rocky bed.

Piz Pisoc, the highest of the group, enjoyed for long a local
reputation for inaccessibility, until, in 1865, Fluri took the trouble
to come down from Pontresina, and, untroubled with any impediment
in the way of 'herrschaft,' but with for companion a young native of
Schuls, who has since left the country, planted a flag on the summit.
This is not the only first ascent that has been made by Pontresina
men on their own account: two of them repeated the unusual proceeding
afterwards on Piz d' Aela near Bergun. One ought to be glad, I suppose,
to see such evidence of a genuine love of sport in a class sometimes
represented as the unwilling victims of foreign gold. But to the
Alpine clubman such conduct looks a little like the gamekeeper turning
poacher, and selecting moreover the moment when his employer's game is
nearly exhausted to go out by himself and shoot off the few remaining
pheasants. And the mountaineer recollects further as an aggravation
of the offence that maiden peaks cannot like pheasants be bred in the
farmyard or sent down by the morning express from town. Fortunately
for the Engadiners they are not subject to the jurisdiction of a bench
of climbing county magistrates. From their own countrymen they have
nothing to fear. Swiss 'Klubists' do not seem to find the point or
interest of a 'first' ascent seriously diminished by the fact that
their guides have made it beforehand; and as the guides of Pontresina
have never got on particularly well with our countrymen they are
quite right, perhaps, even from a professional point of view, in their
practice.

Fluri furnished some details of his ascent for Herr Tschudi's
'Schweizerführer;' and, I presume, it was on the same authority
that in the new Grisons guide-tariff the mountain is described as
'schwierig,' and taxed at 30 francs a guide. No one had followed the
two Engadiners until, in 1870, I climbed the peak in company with
François Devouassoud. Our experiences, both as to the length and
difficulty of the expedition, differed considerably from those of our
predecessors, who probably did not hit off the best way. The following
directions will, I think, be found useful by future climbers:--Turn
off the road leading from Vulpera to Schloss Tarasp by a cart-track,
mounting steeply at first, and then traversing meadows to the entrance
of Val Zuort. At the corner take the higher of two paths, following
a watercourse until it reaches the stream. Cross and ascend by an
ill-marked track, which soon fails, and leaves you to find your own
way through rhododendron bushes and over stony slopes beside the rocky
barrier closing the glen. Climb the bank of snow above the barrier to
the level of the Zuort Glacier. A large snow-filled cleft now opens
among the rocks on the left, offering an unexpectedly easy means of
surmounting the lower cliffs of Piz Pisoc. Ascend this gully for some
distance, until, above a slight bend in its direction a recess is seen
on the left, with a small bed of snow in it divided from the great
snow-slope by a bank of shale.

This spot is the gate of the mountain. A short sharp scramble places
one on the rocks above the small snow-bed, and there is no further
difficulty in climbing straight up them towards the gap at the northern
base of the final peak. A few yards only before reaching it, turn
sharply to the right, and, by keeping below the ridge and choosing
with some care the easiest spots at which to pass a succession of low
cliffs, the summit will soon be gained. The blindness and intricacy of
the route form the only difficulty. If the right course is hit off,
there is no hard climbing on the mountain, but the general steepness
and abominably loose nature of its stony slopes render mountaineering
experience or a good guide essential.

Of the panorama as a whole I saw, and therefore can say, nothing. The
near view has a strong character of its own. The cornfields and white
villages of the Engadine enhance by contrast the savage effect of
the wild limestone crags and gloomy glens which surround the peak on
every side but the north. The drop from our feet on to the path which
threads the defile of the Scarl Thal was absolutely terrific, and the
precipices did not appear less tremendous when I looked up at them
afterwards from their base.

The return to Tarasp may probably be varied without difficulty by
turning to the left at the foot of the great gully, and crossing by
the gap at the head of Val Zuort into a branch of the Scarl Thal.
That valley well repays a visit. There will be found scenery the very
reverse of the pastoral landscapes of the Prätigau. If the former
is a country for cows, this is the very home for bears, and some of
the 'ill-favoured rough things' do in fact still find shelter among
the dense thickets of creeping pine which cover every patch of level
ground. Not that there are many such patches. The first part of the
Scarl Thal is a gorge of the most savage wildness; and if the lower
walls are not so unbrokenly perpendicular as in some other Alpine
defiles, there are probably few valleys where the peaks on either side
stand at so short a distance apart. The face of Piz Pisoc in particular
is built up as a whole at an angle of appalling steepness.[24] The path
through the gorge is called by courtesy a car-road, but it is barely
possible, and not very safe, to drive along it.

       *       *       *       *       *

From Tarasp to Zernetz is but a short morning's drive through the
pleasantest portion of the Swiss Inn valley. The latter village,
situated at the junction of the Ofen road with that leading to the
Upper Engadine, is the best starting-point for the next stage in our
journey.

The country immediately east of the Bernina is an unknown land. Its
mountains are worse mapped and less accurately measured than those of
many much more remote Alpine districts. To a certain extent it deserves
the ordinary fate of mediocrities placed by the side of greatness.
Val Livigno and the surrounding glens cannot rival the Bernina or
the Orteler. Yet the foot-traveller taking this country on his way
southwards discovers much to reward him. He meets with green bowls of
pasture cut off from the outer world by miles of pathless defile, wild
rock recesses crowded with chamois and famous for bears, dolomitic
crags and snowy peaks streaming with glaciers, which, planted in the
Pyrenees, would have had long ago an European reputation, further east
in Tyrol at least a monograph apiece.

Yet I must repeat that in comparison with most of the ranges here
spoken of these mountains are mediocre. Val Masino is pre-eminent
for rugged grandeur. Val Maggia blends perfectly strength and grace.
Pinzolo contrasts them. The Brenta group, with its horns and pinnacles
shooting up above secluded dells, reminds us of fantastic romance, of
goblin castles, and woodland fays.

Livigno has at most a quiet charm; the wilder recesses of its mountains
are singular and savage rather than noble and majestic. The country
suffers scenically from the defect of all the source-valleys of the
Inn; its mountains have never been dug out to their foundations, their
lower limbs, like those of some half-wrought statue, are still buried
out of view.

The ranges between the Bernina and Buffalora roads on the east and
west, the Engadine and Val Tellina on the north and south, are, roughly
speaking, disposed in three parallel chains, separated by the troughs
of Val Viola and Val Livigno. The northernmost of the three ridges is
steep-sided and rugged, and the gorge broken through it by the Spöl
inaccessible except by circuitous and uneven paths, which render it
equal in length and fatigue to the neighbouring passes. The central
chain, although the Alpine watershed, sending down on one side waters
which ultimately join those of Elbruz in the Black Sea, on the other
streams which feed the Adda and the Adriatic, is easy of passage.
Hence Livigno has from early times been united to Bormio instead of
to the Engadine, and since the surrender of Savoy to France remains
the only piece of ground north of the Alps owned by Italy, with one
insignificant though interesting exception.[25] The southernmost of
the three ridges, that which divides Val Viola from the lower lateral
valleys of the Val Tellina, is the loftiest.

It bears on its northern slopes a considerable quantity of snow and
ice, and in the Cima di Piazza (11,713 feet) rises into a snow-dome,
which but for the immediate neighbourhood of the Orteler group would
have before this attracted the attention of English climbers.

Such local traffic as there is through this secluded region follows
well-marked lines. It passes along the Livigno valley and over the
easy gaps at its head to the Bernina Haüser, or La Rosa; by the trench
of the two Val Violas from La Rosa to Bormio; or from Zutz to Bormio,
crossing the northern and central ridges by the Casana and the Passo di
Foscagno. Those routes have been described in guide-books or by earlier
writers.[26] But, as is often the case amongst second-rate peaks and
in districts where the main valleys are more or less commonplace, the
byways open to a climber are far more interesting than the ordinary
traveller is led to expect.

In 1866 I struck out a new way from Zernetz to the Val Tellina, which
in three days' very easy walking showed us a great variety of scenery.
In the absence outside the Swiss frontier of any trustworthy map, we
were very much in the dark as to the best course. Our route therefore
is capable of improvement, and I do not fear that anyone in want of a
day or two's training will complain of having been persuaded to take
this country on his way to the Lombard Alps.

A considerable mass of dolomite crops out in the range which separates
the parallel troughs of the Upper Engadine and Val Livigno. The head
of Val Cluoza, which opens close to Zernetz, is entirely surrounded
by dolomite ridges. This valley, besides being recommended in
German guide-books to 'passionate mountain-tourists and friends of
characteristically wild Alp scenery,' has the attraction of being one
of the few recesses of the Alps where bears are 'at home,' even if
they will not always show themselves to visitors, and where chamois
can still be seen in herds. When therefore in the summer of 1866 I
carried out, in company with my friend Mr. Douglas Walker, an old plan
of striking straight across the Livigno district, we naturally decided
to pass through Val Cluoza, and make a way across the mountains at its
head in the course of our first day's march. At Zernetz we put up, by
Jenni's advice, at an inn kept by a certain Filli, well known in the
Lower Engadine as a great bear-hunter. The rooms were decorated with
highly-coloured sporting pictures, presented to our host by various
German and Austrian archdukes whom he had initiated into the mystery of
his craft. But the most striking ornament of the house was a specimen
of the natives of the wild country we were bent on exploring, in the
shape of a huge stuffed bear, six feet high, who, standing up on his
hind legs in one corner of the salle-à-manger, threatened us with an
hitherto undreamt-of Alpine danger on the morrow.

Our host the bear-slayer was of course consulted on our plans,
into which he entered warmly, entertaining no doubt of their being
practicable, although he assured us that no Zernetz hunter had ever
taken the route we had planned. Being himself unwell, he procured us

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