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TYROL 

AND 

THE SKIRT OF THE 




TYEOL 



AND 







THE SKUir OF THE ALPS 




By GEORGE E. WIRING, Jr. 

AUTHOR OF "A FARMER'S VACATION" ETC. 



Sllustratcb 







NEW YORK 

HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS 

FRANKLIN SQUARE 

1880 






Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1879, by 

HARPER & BROTHERS 
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



TO 



THIS RECORD OF OUR WANDERINGS 

Is ^IffecttonaUlj 

IN ATONEMENT. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. PAGE 

UNDER THE WATZMANN 13 

CHAPTER II. 
PASS LTJEG AND THE PINZGAU 24 

CHAPTER III. 
ZELLER-SEE AND ZILLER THAL 30 

CHAPTER IV. 
THOSE WHOM WE MET, AND THEIR WAYS 39 

CHAPTER V. 
THE CITY OF THE INN 44 

CHAPTER VI. 
THE PEOPLE AND THEIR LIFE 54 

CHAPTER VII. 
ACROSS THE BRENNER 59 

CHAPTER VIII. 
THE CITY OF THE BELLS 65 

CHAPTER IX. 

INTO THE GRODNER THAL . 73 



10 CONTEXTS. 

CHAPTER X. 
A DAY ox THE SEISSER ALP 86 

CHAPTER XL 

AT THE FOOT OF THE GREAT RANGE 96 

CHAPTER XH. 
THE PORTALS OF THE DOLOMITES 102 

CHAPTER XIII. 
CORTINA D'AMPEZZO 106 

CHAPTER XIV. 
THE ASCENT OF MONTE TOFANA 116 

CHAPTER XV. 
To THE MESURINA ALP 127 

CHAPTER XVI. 
FROM THE GREAT PEAKS TO THE LAGUNES 131 

CHAPTER XVII. 
A MORNING IN THE STREETS OF VENICE 136 

CHAPTER XVIII. 
CIRCUMLOCUTION 142 

CHAPTER XIX. 
THE LAKES 147 

CHAPTER XX. 
THE VAUDOIS VALLEYS. THE WALDENSES 160 

CHAPTER XXI. 
INTO THE HIGHER VALLEYS . . 166 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 



Berg und Thai Frontispiece 

The Watzmann, overlooking Berchtes- 

gadeii 15 

Peasant Girl 16 

Peasant 17 

Entrance to the Konigs-See .... 18 

Kouigs-See 19 

Lake in Salt-miue, Berchtesgaden . . 21 
Costume of the Salt-mine .... 22 

Pass Lueg 25 

Schloss Fischhorn 28 

The Wilde Kaiser 31 

Hopfgarten 32 

Farm-house 35 

Costumes of the Ziller Thai .... 37 

Edelweiss 44 

Maria Theresa Strasse, Innsbruck . . 45 

Goldenes Dach 46 

King Arthur 47 

Andreas Hofer 48 

Philippine Welser, Countess of Tyrol . 49 
Terra-cotta Stove at Amras .... 51 

Telfs 52 

"Wrestling." [From a Painting by 

Defregger] 56 



" Finger-hacking." [From a Paint- 
ing by Defregger] 57 

Profile of the Brenner Railway . . 59 

Parish Church, Botzen 62 

Meran, from the Kuchelberg ... 63 

Schloss Tirol 69 

Vineyard Watch 72 

Alpen Rosen 74 

A Village Street 75 

St. Ulrich and the Lang Kofel . . 76 
Costume of Bride in the Grodner 

Thai 79 

The Wood-carver 81 

Tyrolese Costume, Val Sugana . . 82 

A Mountain Porter 84 

The Lang Kofel, from the Saisser 

Alp 87 

Tyrolese Costume, Sam Thai ... 88 
Costume of the Dux Thai .... 91 
The Glacier of Marmolata .... 94 

William Howitt 98 

Lienz, Pnster Thai 100 

The Inn at Landro 103 

Schluderbach and the Croda Rossa . 104 
Cortina and Monte Tofana .... 107 



12 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 



Fresco on the outside of the Aquila 

Nera 109 

Monte Antelao 112 

Civita aiid Lake Alleghe .... 114 
Cinque Torre and Nuvalau . . . 117 
Mesurina Lake and the Drei Zin- 

iien 128 

" The Women with their busy Dis- 
taffs" 133 

Fireplace in Italian Inn at Fadalto. 135 
Balcony Marketing 138 



At the Public Well. A Morning 

Scene in Venice 140 

Riva, from the Pouale Road . . . 148 
Tremosiue, by Lake Garda .... 149 
Lemon Garden, Lake Garda . . . 150 

Limone, Lake Garda 152 

San Giovanni, Bellaggio, on Lake 

Como 154 

Lecco "... 155 

A Street in Bellaggio 157 

From the Villa Serbelloni . . 158 



TTR O L, 



AND 



THE SKIRT OF THE ALPS. 



CHAPTER I. 

UNDER THE WATZMANN. 

OUR first look into the promised land was from tlie far crest of the 
Kapuzinerberg, where the balcony of the odd old bastion restaurant 
overlooks the broad and beautiful valley through which the Salzach 
pours its milky glacier torrent. Guarding its entrance stands the mag- 
nificent high -perched fortress of Salzburg. On either hand, coming 
close to the foreground, are the great gray peaks of the Gaisberg and 
Untersberg. Behind these, stretching away into the distance, rises crest 
after crest of the Salzburg Alps. The fear seemed reasonable that we 
had made a grave mistake in choosing this entrance to Tyrol, for we 
could not hope again to see such a combination of beauty and gran- 
deur as this far-stretching, fertile plain and yonder snow-clad peaks. 
The fear abated before a day had passed, and it never recurred. Climb- 
ing down again to the low-lying town, we soon engaged an "Einspan- 
ner" to take us to Berchtesgaden. 

One's first Einspanner is a memorable vehicle queer-shaped, with 
a comfortable back seat, having its top thrown back in fair weather, 
and only a rudimentary front seat, from which the driver's feet fall di- 
rectly upon the whiffletree. As the name indicates, it is drawn by one 
horse harnessed, not between shafts as with us, but at the left side of 
a pole, with a cat-a-corner sort of traction by no means economical of 



14: TYROL, AND THE SKIRT OF THE ALPS, 

power. Behind is a " magazin," in which smaller articles of baggage 
are locked, larger trunks being strapped upon its top. This is the uni- 
versal one-horse vehicle of South-eastern Germany and Austria. 

We trundled ont of the town and over the country road at a pace 
which was to consume three hours in making the fourteen miles' dis- 
tance. Half an hour out, at a foddering and beer-drinking station, we 
fell in with a "Zweispanner" a comfortable two-horse landau re- 
turning to the hotel for which we were destined. Our driver made a 
shrewd contract, by which we were to be carried the remaining long 
pull for one-half of our three-dollar fare. The change was in every 
way advantageous. Our road soon left the Salzach plain, and led up 
the wild and beautiful valley of the Aim ; up hill and down dale, past 
chalets with stone-laden roofs, past the little fields of peasant farms, 
through groves of fir and white birch, and along the brink of the rapid 
white- watered river. Frequent hay for beast and frequent beer for 
man are constant incidents of Tyrol travel. Every few miles the team 
must be drawn up for baiting, and the blue-eyed Kellnerin brings beer 
as a matter of course ; but the beer is good and the fare is cheap, and 
the hours thus dawdled away are by no means lost to one who comes 
fresh to all this unaccustomed beauty and interest. Time thus spent 
at way-side inns among costumed peasants here in the foot-hills of the 
great Alpine chain is time gained for the memories of all future years. 
We may have been three hours, or we may have been four hours, in 
going from Salzburg to Berchtesgaden ; but should we live for fifty 
years, no time can dim the charming recollections of that drive. 

Scattered along the road at very frequent intervals are the shrines 
and stations and crucifixes with which this whole land is disfigured. 
To the South German mind the tears of the Virgin and the cruel bodi- 
ly suffering on the Cross seem to be the only effective emblems of 
Christianity. Generally absurd, often painful, and always coarse, these 
tokens are too frequent to excite reverence, and can have little other 
effect than to maintain the routine of the formal observances of the 
Church. The Madonna often wears hoops of enormous dimensions; 
she frequently weeps behind a painted handkerchief : in one instance, 
where she was of wood and of life size, she held the fresh-ironed linen 
with printed border of our own time. So little does the real character 



VXD Eli THE JTATZMAXX. 



15 



of the Crucifixion impress itself upon the popular mind, that it is by 
no means uncommon for the bleeding wound of the wooden Christ to 
be decked with flowers or ribbons on festival days. In one case a 
bunch of cat-tails was stuck between the knees. It is perhaps well for 
the tourist that these shrines occur so frequently, for their shock is 
weakened by familiarity, and one soon comes to pay little heed to them. 
The valley of the Aim is too narrow, and offers too little chance for 
cultivation, for its agriculture to be more than the pettiest farming of 
a very poor and hard-worked people ; but as it bends at last around the 




THE WATZMANN, OVERLOOKING BEECHTESGADEN. 



grand southern sweep of the Untersberg it widens out into broad and 
rich farms, overlooking which, occupying a high plateau, and itself 
overlooked by the gigantic \\ 7 'atzmann, lies the ideal Tyrolean village 
of Berchtesgaden.* 

No doubt there are other places as charming, but none ever touched 
us quite so nearly as this. Its situation, its air, its evidence of having 
pleasure for its chief industry, and, above all, its picturesque people. 



* This district is politically in Bavaria, but in all its characteristics it belongs to Austrian 
Tyrol, which it joins. 



16 



TYROL, AND THE SKIRT OF THE ALPS. 



combine to make it quite a village by itself. It has to the stranger 
almost a suggestion of theatrical effect, greatly due to the marked 
costumes of the peasantry, who form so conspicuous an element of 

i its population. Both men and 

women adhere to their national 
dress as firmly as though no Ein- 
spauner had ever brought a trav- 
eller from Salzburg to see them. 
On week-days it is sobered by 
the rust of long use, but it is still 
the same in its essential parts; on 
Sunday it is gay galore, and it is 
worth while to rise early and look 
out from a front window of the 
Hotel Watzmann as the people 
are gathering for early mass at 
the old church opposite. 

The accompanying illustra- 
tions give the dress of the whole 
peasant community, not touched 
up for artistic effect, but precise- 
ly as worn. The maidens de- 
pend much on color and on their 
broad silver necklaces with gau- 
dy clasps, but the men's dress re- 
sembles that with which we are 
familiar only in coat and shirt. 
The breeches are of black leath- 
er, witli green cord down the 
seams and green embroidery at the hip and knee; they reach only 
to the top of the knee, and are so loose that in the sitting posture 
half the thigh is exposed. No stockings are worn under the heavy 
hob-nailed shoes, but a very thick woollen stocking leg, often orna- 
mented with green figures, covers the calf, the top being rolled down 
over the garter. For a length of about six inches at the knee the 
leg is quite bare, tanned, ruddy, and hirsute with life-long exposure 




PEASANT '.11:1. 



THE WATZUAXX. 



17 



in a climate of great winter severity. The hat varies but little from 
the form shown, and is decorated with feathers at the back usually 
the half of a black cock's tail. This is the daily gear of these hardy 
mountaineers, and is the type of the national costume of the whole 
of Xorth Tyrol. Nothing conld be more artistic; but it must be a 
deeply planted artistic feeling which sustains the wearers in fierce 
winter weather. Grohmann (Tyrol and the Tyrolese) says that at a 
wedding rifle match, when the thermometer was at 4: Fahrenheit, he 
saw men come in their shirt sleeves and with bare knees from the hot 
dancing-room, and stand shooting for an hour, heedless of the cold. 

Pleasant as Berchtesgaden is in itself, it owes its great attractive- 
ness to the beautiful Konigs-See, three miles away, at the end of a 
charming brook-side walk through a deep and thickly wooded valley. 
This lake is the pearl of Tyrolean waters. Statistically speaking, it 
is six miles long and a mile and 
a half wide. It is about two thou- 
sand feet above the level of the 
sea. Its inclosing mountains rise 
almost vertically from its shore, 
the snow -clad Watzmann to a 
height of nine thousand feet, and 
the others far above the line of 
vegetation. The deep water of 
the lake is emerald -green, cold, 
and clear. 

It was on the stillest and 
sweetest of summer Sunday 
mornings that we first saw it. 
We shared a boat with a Vien- 
nese doctor and his pretty wife, 
and a kindly engineer of the salt- 
mines. For rowers we had a ^ 

1 . Ill l-E.VS.VNT. 

comely wiry-armed damsel and 

two tough-sinewed, bare-kneed, cock-feathered young men one stand- 
ing at his oar after the manner of a gondolier. They were a silent 
and steady-pulling crew, ready with information, but entirely unob- 

2 




JS. 



TYROL, AXD THE SKIIiT OF THE ALPS. 



trusive. The boat-landing opens upon a beautiful fore-bay, shut in by 
high hills which form a bold foil for the gray and white mountains 
beyond them. This bay is soon crossed, and a turn to the right, 
around the steep rocks, brings the grand main stretch of the lake 
into view. On either hand rise the sheer mountain-sides, and straight 




ENTRANCE TO T11E KONIGS-SKE. 



to the front the snow-clad Stuhlgebirge stands like a vast wall. Be- 
hind this chain is the head of the Schonfeldspitz, but little lower than 
the Watzmann, which dips its feet in the lake, and holds its snow-filled 
notch nearly a mile and a half overhead. It had rained heavily the 
day before, and the little rills which usually trickle down the moun- 
tain-sides were swollen to grand cascades, leaping from point to point 
of their quick descent. 

We climbed into the deep ravine of the Kesselbach, where a moun- 
tain torrent has torn its rugged way and filled its path with huge blocks 
wrenched from the mountain. Again we landed to walk over to the 
pretty little Obersee, which lies in a lap of the hills at the far end of 
the lake; and again to eat the renowned Saibling, or lake trout, at St. 
Bartholomae a toothsome speciality of the Konigs-See and to drink 



UXDER THE WATZMANN. 



19 



the perennial beer of the Yaterland. St. Bartholomae is a royal hunt- 
ing chateau, which brings pence to the royal purse through the hunger 
and thirst of the visiting public. It is a grim old chateau, with a pions 
annex in the form of a gloomy little chapel, which invites many pil- 
grims on St. Bartholomew's Dav. Its main hall is hung with rude 

o / o 

portraits of giant Saibling taken in the lake during the past century, 
the honored name of its captor being given with each. These land- 
ings were not without interest a large element of human interest, 
too, for the travellers to the Konigs-See are various but we always 
floated gladly back into the calin green deep lake, whence the en- 
chanted setting of this enchanted mountain mirror seemed like a fairy- 
land of the giants, reaching high overhead, and reflected far down in 
the still waters below. 




KONIGS-SKI:. 



Each boat carries an old blunderbuss of a horse-pistol with which 
to awaken the echoes at the narrower part of the lake. These are 
quite remarkable. The pistol, being loaded with loose powder, gives 
only a thud of a report, which is instantly returned from the nearest 
shore by a loud cracking detonation, which is repeated with a muffled 



20 TYROL, AXD THE SKIRT OF THE ALPS. 

roar again and again, like the roll of receding thunder. I am quite 
at a loss to explain the single sharp first echo which was invariably 
heard. 

It had been our privilege to go in a boat with three rowers for 
only five persons, and our four hours' trip ever to remain unequalled 
cost what the Schiffmeister regarded as an extra price forty-four 
cents for each person. 

For variety, and by way of indulgence to inexperienced feet, we 
took an Einspanner for our return home. The variety made it quite 
worth while, for the valley between Konigs-See and Berchtesgaden is 
beautiful from every point of view, and the carriage-road takes quite 
a different course from that of the foot-path. We were driven by a 
young lout from a distant province, whose stock of information was 
exhausted when he had told us that a pretty modern villa near the 
road-side was owned by a Jew. We complimented the Jew upon his 
good taste and good fortune, and were quite content to accept the 
remaining miles of our road for their constant and changing beauty, 
without further detail. It mattered little who owned this or that ; 
it sufficed that at every turn there opened a new picture. 

The Watzmann was our constant attendant, and it seemed strange 
that while he looked so near, our whole journey kept him ever at the 
same angle. In the clear sky of that Sunday it was impossible to 
realize his distance, and only the eternal snow lodged between his two 

/ o 

great bare peaks indicated his height. The guide-books give detailed 
instruction for reaching the summit of this mountain, and there are 
in Berchtesgaden stout-limbed and intelligent guides to carry one's kit 
and food and lead the way to the summit. But the mountain-climb- 
ing passion is an uncultivated one in my breast, and I am quite con- 
tent to leave nature's great peaks all unbereft of the mystery and 
grandeur which they shed over those who wander wondering through 
the valleys at their feet. I do not intimate that familiarity with their 
crests would breed contempt, and I admire the enterprise and vigor 
which scorn the fatigue and suffering their ascent must entail ; I only 
beg to be permitted for myself to confine my wanderings over this 
great and splendid world to fields which reward one with something 
different from the view of mountain-tops from mountain-top. This 



UNDER THE WATZ.MAXX. 



21 




LAKE IS SALT-MINK, liERCIITKSG ADKN. 



may be a mid- 
dle-aged weak- 
ness, and it may 
well be born of 
but I gladly accept 
such familiarity with the moun- 
tains as one gains from the rich- 
ly cultivated slopes and vales of 
Tyrol as quite sufficient. 
On one of the days of our stay we explored, so far as the public 
is permitted to explore them, the great salt-works of Berchtesgaden, 
which are the property of the King of Bavaria. This is the show salt- 
mine of the world, and the act of visiting it was invested by old King 
Ludwig with the artistic and dramatic air of which he was so fond. 
There is little reason why the ten thousand who enter its galleries 
every year should not go in the e very-day dress of the outer air; but 
party after party is daily clad in the garb of the miners, the ladies in 
a corresponding costume, as though the tour were attended with the 
dirt and discomfort of a coal-mine. The galleries are quite dry so 
dry that where timber is used for supporting the roof it needs to be 
renewed only once in a century. The deposit is in the heart of a 
high hill. There are five gangways, one above the other. Visitors 
are taken in at the entrance of the lowest one, and only to the work- 
ed-out ofalleries of the second, but this suffices to give a good idea of 

O ' O C_> 

the methods. The hill is entered for a distance of more than a mile, 



TYliOL, AND THE SKIRT OF THE ALPS. 



part of the way up a stairway of more than one hundred steps, and then 
on and on into the very bowels of the mountain. Salt exists in a very 
pure state to an unknown height above, and a shaft sunk one hundred 
and fifty metres below the lowest excavation fails to find its bottom. 
The workings are of two sorts, the quarrying of rock-salt for cattle 

(four thousand tons per annum), 
and the extraction and trans- 
portation of pure salt, in solu- 
tion in water, which is let in 
fresh from the hills above, left 
from four to six weeks to be- 
come impregnated, then drawn 
to a lower reservoir, whence it 
is pumped to Feisterleite, sev- 
en hundred feet higher on the 
mountain-side. Thence it flows 
through pipes to Ilsang, about 
four miles distant, where it is 
again lifted, this time twelve 
hundred feet, to the top of the 
mountain. From this point it 
flows through pipes, always on 
a descending grade, to Reichen- 
hall, twenty miles distant. Here 
it is evaporated, the crystallized 
salt being ground for table use 
(from twenty-five to thirty thou- 
sand tons per annum). The av- 
erage daily flow is over two thou- 
sand hectoliters. The pump by 
which this is raised is worked 
by a water-engine of brass (six-inch cylinder), constructed precisely like 
a steam-engine, and propelled by a column of water three hundred and 
seventy-four feet high. One hundred pounds of fresh water dissolves 
about twenty-seven pounds of salt, so that, in view of the abundant 
water-power, this system of transportation is most economical. 




COHTUME OK TllK 8AI.T-MINB. 



UNDER THE WATZMANN. 23 

The large pools in the mine in which the salt is dissolved are most 
interesting. One which is no longer used is encircled with several 
hundred miner's lamps, which only make its darkness visible. Visitors 
are ferried over this pool in boats, and landed opposite an illuminated 
transparent block of salt inscribed with the miner's greeting, " Gliick 
anf." The descent from here is by a steep slide over polished wooden 
rails, pitching at a sharp angle into the great pit where rock-salt was 
formerly quarried. A guide goes first in the line, and regulates the 
speed by a rope slipping under his arm. The visitors, sitting on the 
rails, make a close-packed train behind him. The exploration of the 
work completed, we are mounted, men and women together, astride 
the elevated cushion of a little car which runs at great speed down 
the descending track through the mile-long gallery, and out into the 
broad daylight and the heated open air. For those who care to per- 
petuate their absurdity, a photographer has set up his atelier hard by. 

However short one's stay, Berchtesgaden must be quitted with re- 
gret, and in our case at least there came the feeling, repeated at so 
many places, that we should some day return here for a longer stay 
and a closer familiarity with its varied interests. We were as yet 
only at the threshold of Tyrol, and with at best time for only a sketchy 
run among its mountains and valleys. 



L'4: TYROL, AXD THE SKIRT OF THE ALPS. 



CHAPTER II. 

PASS LUEG AND THE PINZGAU. 

departed, again in an Einspanner, with a driver who became 
friendty and instructive after his sharp bargain had once been driven. 
Our drive to Ilallein did not differ greatly from that from Salzburg, 
save that at one of our halting-places we saw, perhaps for once and 
all, and only through a telescope at that, the agile chamois feeding 
quietly on the very face, as it seemed to us, of the perpendicular Un- 
tersberg. Ilallein is a dull and dingy old town on the Gisela rail- 

o o/ 

way, by which we made the half hour's run to Golling. 

From Golling the glory has all departed. In the good old post- 
coach days it had much renown as a chief starting-point of the wild 
and beautiful ways into Eastern Tyrol. It is a long, straight Alpine 
village on the mountain-side. Our windows commanded nearly the 
whole street, with its curious people and its unfamiliar customs. 
Where mountain brooks and springs are plenty the rain -fall is not 
caught and stored as with us. It rained hard the whole night 
through, and the long eave - troughs, reaching far beyond the wide 
overhanging roofs, poured their torrents into the roadway from a 
height of three or four stories, until it seemed as though the town 
itself must be washed into the valley. 

I am fond of the Landsleute of German villages, and the country 
people who congregate of ati evening in the beer-room of every Gast- 
haus have far more interest for me than their betters who travel, and 
who fill the guests' eating-room with bad tobacco-smoke. I sat at table 
with half a dozen of the wiseacres of the village, who were in warm dis- 
cussion with a wandering Ilandwerker as to the propriety of the invest- 
ment by the Golliug community of three thousand gulden in making 
a better pathway into the renowned Ocfeu, a marvellous chasm in the 




I'ASS LtJEtt. 



PASS LUEG AND THE PIXZGAU. 27 

mountain, through which the whole Salzach pours its flood. No city 
ever discussed the improvement of its harbor witli more heated ani- 
mation than was brought out by the two-sided question of spending 
$1500 on a local betterment, which, it was argued, would restore to 
Golling the cloud of visitors that the railway had diverted. 

My next neighbor was a tall, raw-boned, grimy -faced, cheerful 
shoemaker of the village, who soon made known the fact that he was 

O t 

Johann Kain, a licensed mountain guide (Bergfiihrer) of the province. 
He produced from a w r allet at his belt the book containing his author- 
ity, the established tariff of charges, the obligations of the Bergfiihrer, 
the penalties for his misconduct, and the signatures and commendatory 
remarks of his many patrons for long years past. As Baedeker tells 
us, one clearly needs no guide for the plain path over the Oefen and 
along the high-road through Pass Lueg to Snlzau ; but a few hours 
witli an original character like Kain would be well worth his fee of 
less than a dollar, and I was glad to engage him for the next day. 
The trip was the more interesting for his company, and it must be a 
marvellous two hours' walk under any circumstances. 

The Oefen by far outmatches all other mountain gorges of which 
I have knowledge. The Salzach is really a great mountain river, fed 
by far-away glaciers and countless hill- side brooks. It drains the 
whole northern slope of the Alpine range from beyond the Grosser 
Venediger on the west to far east of Bad Gastein. During the pre- 
ceding week unwonted rains had swollen every rill to a torrent, and 
the river itself was a boiling, rushing flood of turbid waters. It has 
torn its way through the high granite barrier, and mighty rocks from 
its higher cliffs have fallen across its chasm, forming natural bridges 
over the torrent, which are covered with grass and trees. Here and 
there, through great clefts, the river is to be seen surging far below 
with a deafening roar. 

The descent from the heights of the Oefen strikes the highway 
at the entrance of Pass Lueg opposite the curious Croaten Loch a 
strongly fortified and almost inaccessible cleft in the vertical moun- 
tain-side, large enough for a garrison of five hundred men, and an im- 
pregnable position until artillery was brought to bear upon the splin- 
tering rock which forms its roof. It was held by the Croatians in 



23 



TYROL, AXD THE SKIHT OF THE ALPS. 




8O1ILO88 F1SCI111OKN. 



1742, and hi the pa- 
triotic war of 1809 it 
played an important 
part. For modern war- 
fare it has no value, 
and is only a relic of the past; but Pass Lueg itself, six miles long, and 
often only wide enough for the river and the road, is an easily defen- 
sible pass, and the only practicable opening through the mountain east 
of the valley of the Inn. The Gisela railway passes its narrowest part 
by a tunnel. At the east the pass is dominated by the Tannengebirge, 
nearly eight thousand feet high. During the whole walk to Snlzau 
my old guide talked of the hills and valleys and passes within walking 
distance of Golling, which to him constitute the whole world, and be- 
yond which he has never set his sturdy foot. 

Having taken places in the observation car at the rear end of the 
train a car with an open gallery looking to the rear and sides we 
made a most memorable journey up the steep Salznch Valley and into 



PASS LVEG AXD THE PINZGAU. 29 

the Pinzgau. At Werfen the road, leaving the narrow gorge, passes 
under the shadow of the high-perched fortress of Hohe Werfen, which 
is not unlike the one which at Salzburg guards its northern entrance. 
A writer cannot, without laying himself open to the charge of ex- 
travagance, repeat so often as the description of such a journey de- 
mands the superlative expressions which alone are adequate. The 
reader's highest imagination will surely not overpass the grand and 
beautiful reality. 

A little further on we stop at Lend, the station for the renowned 
Tyroleans think overrenowned Wildbad Gastein ; and as evening 
closes in, always looking back over the same succession of mountains, 
and always beside the tumbling stream, we round Schloss Fischhorn 
Prince Liechtenstein's beautifully restored castle commanding the 
Upper and Lower Pinzgau, the valley of the Zeller-See, and the Fusch 
Thai. 



30 TYROL, AXD THE SKIRT OF THE ALPS. 



CHAPTER III. 

ZELLER-SEE AND ZILLER THAL. 

THE Zeller-Sce differs from the Konigs-See as much as one moun- 
tain lake can differ from another. At the first view it is disappoint- 
ing, but a short stay at its bordering village of Zell restores all of its 
well-reputed glory. Its shores are everywhere low, and its surround- 
ing mountains are distant; but as seen from the middle of the lake, 
their grand forms, and their bare crests, or snow-clad peaks under the 
ever-changing light and shadow of a cloud-filled sky, inclosing a vast 
and fertile basin, make a perfect combination of Tyrolean beauty. At 
the north, beyond the plain of Saalfelden, rises the rugged wall behind 
which lies the south-eastern projection of Bavarian Tyrol. Far away 
to the south, peering above the high green hill-tops, and hiding from 
sight the glacier crest of the Gross Glockner, is the snow-covered 
Kitzsteinhorn. 

In a certain sense Zell has been spoiled by the railway. It is full 
of tourists, and its lake is always busy with pleasure-boats; but we 
have nowhere found more simplicity and quaintness than in the peas- 
ant's house where we were billeted, the hotels being overfull. The 
roaming visitors have made very little impression upon the native 
population. Outside the modern hotels a kreutzer counts for as much 
as ever, and the cheerful " Guten Tag" of all whom we meet in the 
streets is as frank as in the remotest valley. Our handmaiden, Teresa, 
was as amazed at our desiring more than a pint of water for our ablu- 
tions as though she had never seen a traveller before. She brought, 
quite cheerfully, a huge bread-bowl in place of the pudding-dishes we 
had found inconveniently small, and a third carafe of water. She did 
this with so much the air of having performed her whole duty that we 
were fain to restrict our needs to the insufficient supply. So far was 



ZELLER-SEE AXD ZILLER THAL. 



31 



she from expecting a gratuity for her prompt attendance that she 
blushingly added to our bill a charge of six cents for shoe-cleaning. 
Our large room, inclosed in thick stone walls, with iron -barred win- 
dows and heavy oaken door, was as safe as a fortress. One corner 
was occupied with a huge green glazed earthen-ware stove, set on a 
high stone foundation. The beds were good, the linen was clean, and 
the furniture included two cabinets one filled with Christmas-tree 
decorations, and the other with Schiitzenfest prizes won by our host 
in the sharp -shooting days of his youth. Gaudy religious prints 




TUB WII.DE KAISER. 



adorned the walls, and comfortable and well-kept furniture made up 
the outfit of this " best chamber," for the use of which, with attend- 
ance, we were charged forty cents per day. 

The boats of the Zeller-See are different from any that we have 
elsewhere seen. They are long, flat-bottomed craft, rising high at stem 
and stern, with comfortable high-backed seats amidships. They are 
propelled, like a gondola, with a single oar near the stern, where the 
oarsman stands at his work, facing forward. The oar has a most cu- 
rious spoon-shaped blade, about two feet long and eight inches wide. 
It is considerably curved in the direction of its length, and slightly 



TYROL, AXD THE SKIRT OF THE A LI'S. 




IIOPFOARTEX. 



hollowed laterally. Its convex surface is its propelling surface. The 
rowlock is a foot high above the gunwale, and has an ingeniously con- 
trived universal joint of iron. The end of the oar, about opposite the 
rower's breast, has a cross-handle. This is held in the left hand, and 
is used for giving the lateral movement needed to preserve the straight 
course in rowing at one side of the boat. The right hand is held low- 
er down the stem. At first sight this struck me as the most out- 
landish and absurd paddle I had ever seen. "Watching it at work, 
it seemed one of the best. During the greater part of the stroke its 
bearing against the water is at a right angle with the boat's course, 



ZELLER-SEE AND ZILLER THAL. 33 

and as it leaves the water the downward-turning blade seems to follow 
the exact curve needed to bring it ont without splash and without re- 
sistance. So far as I could analyze its positions, it was doing effective 
work from the time the blade touched the water until it had entirely 
left it, and this can be said of no other oar that I have seen. These 
boats have a very holiday look, their sides and the broad oar blades 
being painted with corresponding figures and colors, usually diamonds 
of blue or red on white. The effect is complete when the boat is 
freighted with girls in light dresses, and carrying the blue or red para- 
sols which here prevail, and is rowed by a costumed peasant. 

We were fortunate in hearing the Tyrolean zither played by an 
accomplished master at a concert given during our stay at Zell. The 
capabilities of this instrument are far greater than would be supposed. 
In principle it is like a combination of the guitar and the harp. 

The route from Zell to Worgl on the Inn is best made by rail, the 
open observation car giving a view usually better than that from the 
lower-lying and frequently shaded highway. It is rich from end to 
end with grand mountain scenery, culminating in the great rugged 
masses of the Wilde Kaiser, and then toning down to the more round- 
ed forms, the fertile slopes, and the placid valley where lies the Arca- 
dian village of Ilopfgarten. 

As a convenient point from which to visit the Ziller Thai, we put 
up at the beautifully placed Gasthaus on the hill above Jenbach a 
modern Swiss house, with a chalet gallery in front of our windows 
commanding a long stretch of the Inn Valley, its enclosing mountains, 
and the high snow peaks beyond Innsbruck. 

The Ziller Thai is the most renowned, and I am ready to believe 
one of the most beautiful, of the pastoral valleys of Tyrol. It is pure- 
ly pastoral, its two considerable towns having no industry not con- 
nected with agriculture, and its steep hill -sides being bright with 
farms and pasture alps to their summits. Rich woodlands occupy the 
rougher and steeper slopes and its deep -cut side valleys, which are 
noisy with tumbling water. Even more than other Tyrolese, the peo- 
ple of the Ziller Thai have always been given to seeking their fortunes 
through itinerant trade and minstrelsy. The money thus gained and 

3 



34: TYROL, AND THE SKIRT OF THE ALPS. 

the extreme fertility of the land have given them great prosperity. 
Farmers own their own farms, and there is an air of comfort and 
cheerfulness about their homes notably a great profusion of flowers 
in the rich dark wood galleries of the chalets which we do not see 
equalled among many more obviously wealthy people. Frugality and 
industry seem to go hand -in -hand with cheerfulness and activity. 
Among the older of both sexes there is much goitre, and the evidence 
of a hard-worked life ; but the young girls especially are remarkably 
well-looking. On the whole, the Ziller Thai presents as favorable an 
example of a happy agricultural community as can be met with. 

Zell, the capital of the upper valley, had been visited a week be- 
fore our arrival with a devastating flood, the equal of which had not 
been known for centuries, and had suffered enormous damage. The 

7 O 

water had risen in a single night higher than the tops of the door- ways ; 
the church-yard in the centre of the town had been submerged ; whirl- 
pools had eaten great holes in the roadways ; every bridge on the river 
had been swept away ; and thousands of acres of the valley lands had 
been covered with slime, from which the water had even yet not en- 
tirely receded. Such a calamity befalling a less prosperous people 
would be well-nigh fatal ; but here the loss can be borne without suf- 
fering, and the ultimate effect upon the valley lands will be beneficial, 
the detritus from the granite mountain-Bides being of great fertilizing 
value. It must be some years before the beauty of the landscape is 
restored. 

We found at Fiigen a capital example of the Tyrolean "Wirth" 
in Samuel Margreiter, who keeps the Gasthaus zum Stern. Both he 
and his wife were members of Ludwig Earner's company of Tyrolese 
musicians, and in their travels they have acquired a good knowledge 
of English. lie is a handsome, hearty, cordial fellow, and a man of 
substance, to whom the traveller may be cordially commended. His 
musical specialty is the Holzener-Gelachner (laughing-wood), known 
to us as the Zillerphone. It is made of sticks of fir-wood of different 
lengths, properly tuned by hollowing out their lower sides, loosely 
strung together, and resting on thin withes of straw. They are rung 
with little hard-wood mallets. Margreiter boasts that he taught the 
use of the instrument to the Princess of Wales and Princess Louise. 



ZELLER-SEE AND ZILLEE TEAL. 



35 




FAISM-HOI'SB. 



He tells vis that the costume of the valley in its full development is 
only to be seen on fetes, as at rifle matches and weddings. To our 
foreign eyes marked traces of it were to be seen on every hand. The 
women almost universally, young and old, wear broad-brimmed, small- 
crowned, black felt hats, with thick gold or silver tassels lying on the 
front part of the brim; and the singular custom, not much noticed 
elsewhere, of carrying a carnation or other bright flower over the ear, 
prevails quite generally. 

In the towns Zell and Fiigen, and occasionally along the main 
road, the houses are large stuccoed stone structures, with projecting 



36 TYROL, AND THE SKIRT OF THE ALPS. 

roofs and galleries, the stucco whitened and the wood-work sometimes 
painted. The detached farm-houses differ from those generally seen 
in other parts of the country in being almost invariably unpainted, 
their rich mellow- toned wooden upper stories and gables and their 
gray stone -laden roofs harmonizing perfectly with the landscape. 
Their mason-work, if colored at all, is either gray or buff, llude fres- 
coes of the Madonna or the Crucifixion are very common on the outer 
walls. The combination of house and stable under the same roof is 
in strong contrast to our customs ; but the living-rooms of these houses 
are tidy and comfortable, and often more home-like and inviting than 
average agricultural interiors of our native land. There is a complete 
separation, by stone partition walls, between the house and its belong- 
ings. The main entrance and the rooms leading off from it are a sort 
of crypt with vaulted arches supporting the stone floor of the main 
story, where are the chief living-rooms. Under the roof are garrets, 
store-rooms, and bedrooms. Each floor opens on to its narrow gallery, 
and these are far overshadowed by the wide projecting roof, the ridge- 
pole of which is longer than the lower edges, so that the top of the 
gable reaches forward considerably beyond the lower line of the eaves. 
Added to this forward pitch of the gable end, there is often a decided 
"batter" or buttress-like spread of the stone-built part of the house. 
Even those lines which are intended to be vertical or horizontal have 
had only the inadequate guide of the country carpenter's eye, so that 
parallel lines and right angles do not exist. The whole structure is a 
sort of free-hand drawing, which agrees charmingly with the combina- 
tion of rounded and rugged forms that makes the whole landscape. 

Tucked away in grassy nooks far up among the clouds, accessi- 
ble only by the hardest climbing, are the little chalets of the Senners, 
or cow-herds, who pass the summer months in butter and cheese mak- 
ing, and who, especially when of the female sex, furnish the material 
for much of the romance and poetry of Tyrolean literature. This is 
the native home of the Jodel, the clear, penetrating language by 
which alone these widely separated and hard-worked hermits are able 
to greet each other across the valleys and noisy gorges, and by which 
at the end of the week the lusty youth of the valleys proclaim their 
coming to their mountain maidens. 



ZELLER-SEE AND ZLLLER THAL. 37 

Probably no purely rural expedition would give more curious in- 
struction, and surely none would be attended with more picturesque 
and romantic accompaniment, than a thorough exploration of the fer- 
tile slopes and the rugged high alps of the Ziller Thai. 




O08TUMES OF TUB ZILLER T11AL. 



We had another chief motive for halting at Jenbach in an inten- 
tion to visit the Aachen-See, which lies eleven hundred feet up in the 
mountains, over seven miles of rough road. The descriptions, the 
photographs, and the reports of returning visitors indicated that while 
it is well worthy of a visit, and while its introduction would be neces- 



38 TYROL, AND THE SKIRT OF THE ALPS. 

sary into any complete picture of Tyrolean travel, it did not so much 
differ from what we had already seen that we need face a steady and 
persistent rain for the sake of it. 

Then, too, we had been long enough in the country for the impres- 
sion of the great cities of the world to have faded, and we had little 
by little accepted the local estimate of the great metropolis of Tyrol, 
the chief centre of its civilization and the great source of its artificial 
supplies. We cherished, also, a charming recollection of a single au- 
tumn evening passed in its mountain-guarded streets, and of the twi- 
light vesper service in the Hofkirche among the bronze shades of 
Maximilian and his chosen attendants. Better a day of what Inns- 
bruck has to offer than the Aachen-See under low clouds and driz- 
zling rain. 

Our route lay up the valley of the Inn a fast -flowing stream 
which drains the north slope of the Alps from the head waters of the 
Salzach to the borders of Switzerland a stream which has torn its 
broad way through the mountains, and has filled its valley with rich 
deposit. As seen from the hill-tops, it is a thread of a river winding 
through a wide and fruitful valley which rises gently to the feet of 
its enclosing walls. Here, as everywhere, agriculture is the life and 
soul of the industry, and a constant succession of broad fields of In- 
dian-corn filled it with the air of luxuriance which this alone of north- 
ern crops can give. The valley is rich in shade and fruit trees, its 
higher slopes are beautifully wooded, and its smiling modern houses 
and dull old castles indicate the age and persistence of its prosperity. 



THOSE WHOM WE MET, AXD THEIR WAYS. 39 



CHAPTER IV. 

THOSE WHOM WE MET, AND THEIR WAYS. 

"\VE were the more struck with the cheapness and rusticity of our 
entertainment, because many who have written in these later years 
complain that Tyrol, filled with travellers from all countries, has been 
bereft, even in its remotest hamlets, of all its original simplicity: that 
bumptious Americans and Englishmen have driven the modest Kell- 
nerin from the dining-room, and substituted the garcon of the Swiss 
hotels. So far as I can judge, this is not at all the case. Even in 
much-frequented Gasthausern the waiting is almost universally done 
by the Oberkellnerin and her maidens, the old customs of kitchen 
and table are still adhered to, and the prices charged preclude the 
idea of an advance having been made. 

The Hotel Krone, on the bank of the lake at Zell, is entirely mod- 
ern, sufficiently good and sufficiently costly; its men -waiters wear 
dress-coats, and it has nothing in common with the native Gasthaus. 
But one need not lodge at the Krone we did not, because we could 
not and it has had no more influence over the customs of the village, 
nor even over those of the old Gasthaus Krone, of which it is an out- 
growth, than if it were twenty miles away. On the whole, I think 
it has been too much the custom to decry " tourists." 

Of course it is pleasanter to have a whole compartment to yourself 
on the railway, and to find hotel servants devoted to you only. If 
you are of a certain constitution, it is gratifying to feel that you alone 
of all the enlightened world have been permitted to gaze upon this 
water-fall, to drink beer at this remote Gasthaus, or to tread this 
mountain path. But neither railway carriages, nor hotels, nor water- 
falls, nor beer, nor mountain paths, were created only for us. No 
word so lacks a definition as that one over whose illustration Thack- 



40 TYROL, AND THE SKIRT OF THE ALPS. 

eray expended a volume without yet clearly fixing its meaning. I 
have sometimes wondered whether the real snob may not be the ulti- 
mate development of that incipient feeling which the best of us must 
recognize among the emotions with which we greet a stranger coming 
to the vacant scat beside us. For my own justification, I am glad to 
believe that all mankind has this same instinctive distaste for encroach- 
ment. The remarkable feature of the case is that so many intelligent 
persons capable of enjoying travel to the fullest extent, and capable 
of communicating their enjoyment to others, should fail to see that 
the only field wherein to exercise their passion for original advent- 
ure is in those undeveloped wilds which are always open for their 
exploration. 

The inhabited world certainly the whole of Tyrol is public 
ground. It has been a favorite field for travelling since travelling 
began. No one can say how much of its very essence it owes to its 
long communication with the outer world. Even the remotest val- 
leys furnish their quota to that great army of Tyrolese peddlers and 
wandering minstrels which has for centuries overrun all Christendom, 
generally returning to end their days on their native hill-sides. 

If external intercourse has "spoiled" this people, we surely have 
not to blame the occasional foreign sojourners among them. My own 
idea is that they are and will remain less affected by the encroachments 
of travel than most other peoples. The returning wanderer, bringing 
back no foreign ways, resumes at once his Tyrolean life and character. 
Quite naturally, about the large towns and much -frequented health 
resorts, costumes and local customs recede somewhat to the back- 
ground ; but in Tyrol it is still a very near background. In the busi- 
est street of Innsbruck, and about the Kursaal at Meran, broad neck- 
laces, bright colors, bare knees, and hat feathers are by no means ex- 
ceptional. In the side streets of either town there is no more sugges- 
tion of any foreign influence than there was before railroads had been 
invented. 

While pleading in behalf of the inevitable, I must say a word, too, 
in defence of the much-abused railway; even more, I confess my pro- 
found obligation to it. But for its kind intervention I should pass 
this calm and peaceful Sunday morning not here, writing this record 



THOSE WHOM WE MET, AXD THEIE WAYS. 41 

under the vine-clad hills and beside a swift-running Tyrol river; I 
should probably be writing long-neglected letters at Newport if, in- 
deed, without the railroad's help I had ever emigrated even so far as 
that from my native Connecticut village. The railways of Tyrol pass 
through most charming scenery, and the device has yet to be invented 
which is to equal in its value to the pleasure-seeker the " Breakwagen " 
and observation car of the Gisela road. 

Having once taught ourselves not to detest our fellow-travellers, 
we have come to regard them with great interest. They are almost 
exclusively Germans, and most largely from the very large middle 
class probably persons in small business and small professions who 
have economized throughout the year for the sake of a frugal excursion 
in summer. It is not clear that they interest us more than we interest 
them, but they have certain characteristics which to the American ob- 
server are very marked. 

I have long been familiar, in literature and in fact, with the pran- 
dial methods of Continental Europeans, but each new experience de- 
velops new possibilities of the art. As a study of the adaptation of 
the means to the end, no field of investigation is richer. Photography 
has still one achievement to make in securing an unsuspected instan- 
taneous view of the table -d'hote of a German hotel. The processes 
beggar description. 

I make no question that there is a class of European society which 
partakes of its food in a manner according with our conventions, but 
it sends very rare representatives over any road which we have trav- 
elled. Among the coarser and uncultured of every society we expect 
little deference to the requirements of delicacy. But to see a pretty, 
dainty, tastefully dressed, sweet -looking young woman bearing both 
elbows hard on the table, stabbing her meat by a backhanded blow 
with a fork, twisting her wrist and lowering her mouth to a con- 
venient pitching distance, with the alternate by-play of a knife -blade 
charged with softer viands, produces a shock which no familiarity can 
soften. Only yesterday I saw a mild-eyed bride thus engaged, with 
the occasional interpolation of a pickled onion by her fond and admir- 
ing husband's deft harpoon. The effect was heightened by her vigor- 
ous quaffing of a full liter of beer during the meal. Taking this ex- 



42 TYROL, AND THE SKIRT OF THE ALPS. 

ample by no means an isolated one from the more refined sex and 
class as a standard, I may safely leave to the reader's imagination the 
athletic exercises in a like direction of stalwart, hungry, and ambidex- 
trous men. Vale ! 

This, however, by the way. I speak of it only as a noticeable cus- 
tom of the people. It is a custom only ; it is not rooted in any de- 
fect of character. Accepted in a kindly spirit, our German fellow- 
travellers seem amiable, happy, kindly, affectionate and too often 
noisy. They evince far more pleasure in their travel than do the 
rarer English and the very exceptional Americans who cross our path. 
The appreciation of line scenery which draws the English to this land 
is not a demonstrative appreciation. As a rule they go sedately, si- 
lently, and most respectably on, without touching with even the hem 
of their garments the real essence of the people among whom they 
wander. The Americans are more varied and individual, but by no 
means always more admirable. As an example : we encountered on 
the Brenner railway two of our compatriots, clearly an Eastern mer- 
chant and his new wife, pretty and well dressed. Their language and 
enunciation indicated fair education, and their silence suggested prop- 
er breeding. Their occasional speech \vas marvellous to hear. The 
man's sole observation concerning Innsbruck was that he had "never 
had a better meal at a way-station." Through the most majestic parts 
of the valleys of the Sill and the Adige he slept soundly, isever a 
Schloss or Schlucht did they notice. She, justified in her opinion that 
she had a very pretty hand and rings, spent much time in drawing on 
and off her gloves. After doubling the great ox-bow at Gossensass, 
by which a descent of over five hundred feet is accomplished in a di- 
rect distance of a few hundred yards, she expressed her disapproba- 
tion of such a waste of travel. She did not see " why the engineer 
couldn't let us go straight on." Arrived at Brixen, she roused her 
drowsy lord with, " Oh, here's one of those queer things Maggie told 
us about!" 

Without rising to look, he asked, "What is it?" 

"Why! don't you remember? A priest" pointing to a huge 
brown-frocked Franciscan friar, and giggling merrily. 

All else that they said and did was equally appreciative, and one 



THOSE WHOM WE MET, AXD THEIR WATS. 43 

could readily imagine the satisfaction with which they would return 
to the more congenial surroundings and companionship of their native 
life, and assert their clear conviction that Continental travel offers lit- 
tle that need tempt an American to a second trial. 

I have made this digression touching the people whom we meet, 
partly to show that the encountering of them is by no means an nn- 
mixed evil. No human soil is so barren as not to yield fruit of way- 
side entertainment. No nation and no class fails to produce its food 
for reflection. 




EDELWEISS. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE CITY OF THE INN. 

ALL travellers have their fancies and their predilec- 
tions. I am by no means alone in giving the brisk little 

/ . o o 

Innsbruck a high place among my own. Heine rung 
its praises fifty years ago : " Innsbruck ist eine unwohn- 
liche, blode Stadt." Another has called it a " pearl in 
Austria's beautiful crown of cities." It was the Em- 
peror Maximilian's favorite town, and the beautiful Philippine Welser 
loved it hardly less than she graced it. 

A single autumn twilight and starlight glimpse, years ago, im- 
pressed upon our own minds a picture of quaint and curious interest, 
of bright and cheerful beauty, and of grand and noble surroundings, 
which had lasted undimmed through the intervening time, and which 
is now only brightened and freshened and more deeply imprinted by 
familiarity with scenes which then were only suggested. In detail, 
there is not very much to describe, but the little that there is is most 
noteworthy. The tout ensemble is lively, bustling, cleanly, and hand- 
some. Our windows look out upon the broad main thoroughfare of 



THE CITY OF THE INN. 



45 



the town a street of great width and finely built. In front of us 
stands a tall marble shaft bearing the statue of St. Anna, its high 
base surmounted by life-sized figures. Far away to the left, over the 
tops of the houses and over the triumphal arch of the time of Maria 
Theresa, are the blue peaks bordering the Brenner Pass. To the 
right, rising like a vertical wall, as if from the very heart of the town, 
is the sturdy snow-streaked mountain, whence the wolves, as is told, 
used to look down into the streets and startle the citizens with their 
hungry howling. From the cab-stand below us the drivers of the odd 
little three-cornered Einspanners beckon us to drive. Yonder, above 
the dim arcades of the older town, beside the broad roof of the palace, 
rises the tower of that little court church which is more fall of historic 
and artistic interest than many a great cathedral a church whose 
broad nave is nearly filled with the superb sarcophagus of the great 
Emperor Maximilian I. 




MA1U.V THERESA 8TKA8SE, INN8URUOK. 



The chief of Innsbruck's street sights is the " Goldenes Dach :" a 
heavily gilded copper balcony roof, which Count Frederick of Tyrol 
snrnamed " of the empty pocket " built against the front of his pal- 



TYROL, AND THE SKIRT OF THE ALPS. 



ace in 1500, at a cost of $70,000, as a substantial refutation of the 
popular taunt. The palace is long out of date, and the old quarter 

in which it stands is given over 
to the commoner walks of trade ; 
but this beautiful balcony, with 
its gilded roof, still remains the 
richest monument of the city's 
streets. The large park and the 
shaded walk beside the swift- 
rolling Inn might well grace a 
larger and richer town ; but 
these and all else that Innsbruck 
has to offer must give way be- 
fore the attractions of Maximil- 
ian's tomb. 

Subsequent visits have served 
to define but not to materialize 
the unearthly impression remain- 
ing from the first one, made in 
the dusk of a warm Novem- 
ber evening, when the gloom 
of the church was deepened by 
the solitary altar light and the 
faint glimmer of candles in 
a hidden chapel where vespers 

were being chanted. High up in the middle of the church the kneel- 
ing form of the robed monarch faces the altar. At the corners of the 
slab on which he rests are beautiful figures, and the sides and ends of 
the sarcophagus are panelled with twenty-four reliefs in marble, repre- 
senting prominent events of his life. Most of these are by Alexander 
Colin (sixteenth century), and were said by Thorvvaldsen to be the most 
perfect existing work of their class. The sarcophagus is enclosed by a 
light grille of the most graceful and delicate iron-work, richly gilded. 
Seen from the entrance of the church, this fine tracery is in harmony 
with the exquisite wood -carving of the first line of pews. At each 
side of the nave, between the large pillars, and at the ends of the altar 




UOLDENKS 1IA01I. 



THE CITY OF THE INN. 



steps, stand colossal bronze statues of the emperor's family, his chosen 
friends, and his most admired heroes twenty-eight in number. Both 
the tomb and these surrounding figures were made in accordance with 

o o 

his own instructions, and in compliance with his last will. Aside from 
his relatives and family connections, the company includes Clovis, King 
of France, Rudolph of Hapsburg, Theodoric, King of the Ostrogoths, 
King Arthur of England, Godfrey de Bouillon, and Ferdinand of Ara- 
gon. Of these, the Theodoric and 
Arthur, by Peter Yischer, of Nurem- 
berg, are of great artistic merit, the 
Arthur especially so. The others, 
by different artists, are often gro- 
tesque and curious; but as a compa- 
ny of guardian spirits about a great 
man's tomb they lend a dignity which 
no other device could compass. They 
certainly give an interest to this small 
church which distinguishes it in a 
very marked way from all others. 

Without this tomb and its acces- 
saries the church would still be 
memorable as being the burial-place 
of the great Tyrolean patriot, An- 
dreas Ilofer, who, rising from the 
position of a village innkeeper (al- 
ways a position of distinction among 
Tyrolean peasants), became the leader 
in the uprising against the Bavarians, 
lie was to Tyrol what Garibaldi has 
been to Italy. His house in the Pas- 
seier Thai is a chief historic centre of 
the country, and the rooms in which 
he slept during his campaigns possess 

a similar interest for the people to that of those in which Washington 
slept in his campaign through New England. His portrait in the 
museum at Innsbruck represents a sturdy Teutonic countryman, gor- 




KlNtt AUTIII'K. 



43 TYROL, AXD THE SKIliT OF THE ALPS. 

geous with the embroidery and green and red of the costume of his 
valley. The engraving here given is after the miniature which is con- 
sidered the most faithful likeness. Here, too, are tablets commemo- 
rating the death of Hofer's comrades, Haspinger and Speekbacher, and 
a fine modern monument to those who fell under their lead. 




AMiKKAS 1KMKK. 



In a chapel adjoining the church, founded by Ferdinand II., Count 
of Tyrol, are his grave and that of his wife, Philippine Welser. 

The central figure about which the interest of this region most 

o o 

gathers is that of this beautiful daughter of an Augsburg merchant, 
who made here her cherished home, whose virtues and gentle char- 



THE CITY OF THE IXX. 49 

acter no less than her beauty so fixed her memory in the hearts of 
the people, that she is as real a personage to them now as when she 
lived among them three hundred years ago, and who has rescued her 
worthy husband from the oblivion which, in much less than three cen- 
turies, so few escape. 




WJBLSEB, OF AUUSBU1HJ, OOUNTEHS OK TVBOL. 



Their castle, Amras, stands on a superb hill an hour's drive from 
the town. The view from it reaches from the highlands of Bavaria to 

o 

the lofty peaks of the Upper Inn. and stretches across the fertile maize- 
grown plain to the great snow-covered mountain back of Innsbruck. 
It is now the property of the Emperor of Austria, and the principal 
parts of its artistic collection, formed by Ferdinand, as well as the 



50 TYROL, AND THE SKIRT OF THE ALPS. 

best portrait of its beautiful mistress, the original of the preceding cut, 
have been removed to the Imperial Mnsenm at Yienna. It is still, 
however, rich in objects of great interest, having a line collection of 
armor and arms, and the best of the furniture of Philippine^ apart- 
ments. Among these are rare cabinets, organs, spinets, and writing- 
tables of the choicest workmanship, and of extravagant cost. In many 
of the rooms the fine old carved four-posters are still standing, and the 
countess's bedroom is still furnished as when she used it, including the 
cradle in which her babies were rocked. The collection of portraits 
is of great interest, among them one of Philippine Welser at fifty-two, 
still beautiful, and a late portrait of Maria Theresa in her widow's 
dress. Most of the rooms were heated with highly ornamented terra- 
cotta stoves. Even in these minor details the profuse expenditure, 
which is everywhere noticeable, is conspicuous. The whole castle is 
beautifully maintained, and one needs to be told, so rich is it still, 
for the time when it was occupied, that its chief treasures have been 
taken away. 

It is not the least good thing about Innsbruck that its surroundings 
afford most charming walks and drives. We drove one afternoon up 
the zigzag course of the great Brenner highway, climbing always, but 
always gently, up the valley of the Sill, made more interesting now 
by the remarkable construction of the Brenner railway, whose cut- 
tings and tunnels and arches and embankments, seen from the oppo- 
site heights, look like toy marvels of Lilliputian engineering. Such 
a combination of rich hill side, wooded slope, deep gorge, rushing 
glacial river, rocky mountain top, and peaceful sunlit beauty is rarely 
seen. Closing the view before us, and rising like a barrier against 
the apparent trend of the valley, stands the great pointed peak of 
the Serlos 

Leaving the road and climbing a short, steep cart path, we come 
suddenly upon the deep and steep-sided Stubaier Thai, at whose head, 
lapping over the edge of a great mountain-top, hangs the eternal Stu- 
baier Glacier. This is the very heart of the mountains a valley 
scored deep among their highest peaks. The group by which it is sur- 
rounded carries no fewer than eighty glaciers, four of them of the first 



THE CITY OF THE IXX. 



51 



rank. No less than forty peaks to which its side valleys lead are close 
to the ten thousand-foot line of elevation. Other members of the 
Oetz Thai group, and other gorges draining their glacial floods away, 
help to make up this wildest centre of the Tyrolean Alps. 

Our view into this valley of grandeur was from a sweet-smelling 
hay -field, where cheerful women and girls were raking the windrows, 




TEKRA-OOTTA STOVE AT AMKAb. 



where fragrant-breathed cows were drawing hay-wagons, and where 
sturdy men were busy loading the fresh-cured crop. 

Far down in the valley, high up on its little alps, and clinging to 
its steeper acclivities, farm-houses and Sennerin's huts and peaceful 



52 



TYROL, ASD THE SKIRT OF THE ALPS. 




villages shelter a population 
to whom this mountain val- 
ley is the centre of the uni- 
verse, who here toil and weep 
and love and die, all uncon- 
scious of the great world which lies beyond their almost impassable 
cliffs. The field where we sat belongs to the great mountain Gasthaus, 
where Andreas ITofer held his last head-quarters. It is a very large 
house, and its cheerful Kellnerin showed us all its mysteries : its 
clean bedrooms; its " Speise-Saal ;" its quaint old wood-finished 
"Sitz," where the peasants gather for their evening beer; its milk- 
room, with brimming pans and well-scoured utensils; its stables for 
horses and cattle all under the same huge roof; its ornamental gar- 
den, with a little fountain, and the saints and Madonnas frescoed on 
its outer walls. 

It would be ungrateful to dismiss the subject of Innsbruck without 



THE CITY OF THE INN. 53 

referring to Mr. Franz Unterberger and his shop, which is a sort of 
travellers' head -quarters, stored with wood -carvings, Tyrolean knick- 
knacks, and the beantiful collection of photographs which his enter- 
prising camera has brought from all quarters of the land. " Bild-hau- 
ing" (picture-hewing), or ornamental wood-carving, is nowhere more 
artistic than in this part of Tyrol, and TJnterberger's exhibits at Phila- 
delphia and at Paris gave evidence of the great excellence here at- 
tained. The relief carvings of Tyrolean character scenes are incom- 
parably fine. To a stranger the best thing about the shop is Mr. Un- 
terberger himself. He speaks English perfectly, and is a man of the 
quickest intelligence, and learned in Tyrolean matters. We found him 
always ready, without the least reference to his interest in us as cus- 
tomers, to give us the fullest information and advice. 

The valley of the Inn above Innsbruck the Oberinn Thai lies 
out of the route of ordinary travel, the Brenner road striking off to the 
left and winding up the wild Sill Thai. The upper valley presents 
the same general character as that below the city, save that its moun- 
tains are drawn closer together, and its bed, rising higher and higher, 
comes nearer to their summits. It is essentially a part of this " Val 
Deliciosa," fertile, populous, busy, and cheerful. Telfs, one of its con- 
siderable villages, is a charming example of the larger valley centres. 
In its remoteness it promises to remain forever unconscious of the 
march of more modern improvement. 

The summer heats of the Inn Thai are far greater and more per- 
sistent than would be supposed from its position on the northern slope 
of the Alps and its considerable elevation (Innsbruck is nearly two 
thousand feet above the sea). Its intervale for miles is almost exclu- 
sively occupied with broad fields of Indian-corn, giving it a home-like 
air to the American eye. 



54 TYROL, ASD IRE SKIRT OF IRE ALPS. 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE PEOPLE AND THEIR LIFE. 

A GOOD idea of the characteristics of the country and the people 
of North Tyrol is given by Grohmann in his "Tyrol and the Ty- 
rolese," from which one may gather information concerning the win- 
ter climate and occupations unknown to those who only make a holi- 
day run through the country in the summer months. Mr. Grohmann 
is half Tyrolese himself, and seems to be as familiar with the hardy 
sports of the country as with those of England, where his other half 
belongs. 

He describes vividly the terrible straits to which the frugal Tyr- 
olese peasants are reduced by the deep and persistent snow, which en- 
tirely cuts off many of the valleys from communication with the outer 
world for months together. Mountain huts are sometimes entirely 
buried. He recounts the rescue of an aged couple who had been 
imprisoned for nine days, with only a goat and a few loaves of bread 
for their support. Chamois-hunting and the shooting of the black- 
cock, both confined to the higher and more remote mountain-tops, are 
sports involving the greatest fortitude and power of endurance, and 
are always attended with danger. 

For a picture of Tyrolean life in the remoter valleys I know of 
nothing so striking and effective as a little story called Geier- Wally 
nothing the reading of which so exactly anticipates the impressions 
which one's first trip produces. 

The persistence with which humanity attaches itself to fertile land 
without regard to danger is illustrated elsewhere than here. The peas- 
ants on the slopes of Vesuvius push their cultivation and plant their 
homes in the very track of a possible lava stream, and, all the world 
over, facility for obtaining a livelihood blinds the cultivator to all 
risks. Grohmann says : " In the Wild-Schonau, North Tyrol, not a few 



TUB PEOPLE AND THEIR LIFE. 55 

of the houses are built on such steep slopes that a heavy chain has to 
be laid round the houses and fastened to some firm object a large 
tree or bowlder of rock higher up. ... In one village off the Paster 
Thai, and in two others off the Oberinn Thai, many of the villagers 
come to church with crampons on their feet, the terrible steep slopes 
on which their huts are built, somewhat like a swallow's nest on a 
wall, requiring this precautionary measure. ... In Moos a village 
not very far from the Brenner, having a population of eight hundred 
inhabitants more than three hundred men and women have been killed 
since 1T5S by falls from the incredibly steep slopes upon which the 
pasturages of this village are situated. So steep are they, in fact, that 
only goats, and even they not everywhere, can be trusted to graze on 
them, and the hay for the larger cattle has to be cut and gathered by 
the hand of man." 

I have myself seen, in walking among the hills, little stores of hay 
piled against the upper side of protecting trees, where it had been 
brought in armfuls when cut and cured by the spike-shod hay-makers, 
who gather their little crops here and there on the steep grass-patches, 
almost at the limit of vegetation, pack it in nets or in sheets, and bring 
it on their shoulders down the steep and dangerous paths. 

My earlier idea of an "alp" was that of a level plateau at the top 
of the lower mountains. Alps which are even nearly level are very 
rare, especially among the higher elevations. Generally they are so 
steep, so broken, and so inaccessible that one wonders how cattle are 
got to them, and how the} 7 can be trusted to graze over them. These 
alps are bounded by no fences, and it must be an anxious task for 
those who have the herds in charge to get them safely together at 
milking- time. Each animal wears its bell, not the hollow-sounding 
dull cow -bell with which we are familiar, but musical in tone, and 
heard for a much greater distance. The Alpine hut, and the Sennerin, 
or dairy-maid, who spends the whole summer in nearly solitary atten- 
tion to her hard duties, are not altogether what one's imagination might 
depict. She is not the dairy- maid of poetry, nor is her temporary 
home filled only with the more ethereal pastoral associations. Yet 
these people, too, have a romantic and imaginative side to their lives, 
and are happy and wholesome and content. 



56 TYROL, AXD THE SKIRT OF THE ALPS. 

The agriculture of North Tyrol, outside of the valley of the Inn, 
is mostly confined to very small operations. A feAv cattle, a few 
sheep, a little poultry, a few small fields, and a mountain pasture 
constitute the stock in trade on which the industrious and frugal pair 
bring up their family in comfort and decency, accumulate portions for 




their daughters, and lay aside a provision for their own old age. La- 
bor-saving hardly exists. Everything is accomplished by unmitigated 
and unremitted toil. In youth and in early life the people are stal- 
wart, active, and hearty; but old age comes very early, and at forty 
the vigor of manhood and womanhood is passed the activity and 
vigor, but by no means the endurance : up to really old age even 
slight little Avomen carry enormous loads in the baskets at their backs 
up and down steep rough hill -sides and mountain paths, where an 
untrained tourist must puff and toil to move his own unencumbered 
person. 

It is not easy to see how in a country so broken as this, and where 
so many farms and even whole villages have no access to market ex- 
cept over mountain foot-paths, any system could be introduced which 



THE PEOPLE AND THEIR LIFE. 



57 



would lighten the labor of the people. On not one farm in fifty in 
the mountain valleys could the mowing-machine be used, and from at 
least one-half of the hay and grain fields the whole crop has to be car- 
ried away on the heads and shoulders of the people. Something might 
be gained by the introduction of a better race of cattle, but it is a 
question whether these too would not deteriorate under the constant 
exercise needed to pick up a living on these broken pastures. 

The conditions of living are very much modified by the wandering 
propensity which is so common among the Tyrolese. As musicians, 
as peddlers, as cattle-dealers, and as mechanics, they travel over the 
wide world, bringing home a comfortable profit and a quickened in- 
telligence. 




" FINOEB-11ACKING." [t'HOM A PAINTING BV IIEFBEGGEB.] 

The mental and moral characteristics of any people can of course 
be only very imperfectly measured by a casual traveller. The Tyro- 
lese are represented as being extremely superstitious and priest-ridden, 
but no evidence of this was obvious to me. They are unquestionably 



58 TYROL, AXD THE SKIRT OF THE ALPS. 

honest and faithful, and universally temperate. Probably every man, 
woman, and child in Tyrol drinks beer and wine as constantly and as 
freely as we drink water; but during all of my journeyings in all parts 
of the country I have not seen a single person either drunk or under 
any considerable influence of drink. There are, too, very slight evi- 
dences of poverty, and beggars are rare. Among themselves, especially 
at the Gasthausern in the evening, the younger men are noisy and up- 
roarious, and much given to bad music and harsh play. Some of their 
games are rough to brutality, and it is not long since the use of the 
knife was a constant accompaniment of their quarrels. 

Wrestling and "finger -hacking" (hooking the middle fingers and 
twisting for the mastery, even at the risk of the joint) are still com- 
mon, and are watched by comrades with the same interest which at- 
taches to a cock-fight or a dog-fight in England. Among a people 
the conditions of whose life make physical endurance a cardinal virtue, 
these trials of strength and of the ability to endure pain are regarded 
as tests of manliness, and even the women who witness them applaud 
their most brutal manifestations. 



ACROSS THE BRENNER. 



59 



CHAPTER VII. 

ACROSS THE BRENNER. 

THERE are few railways more interesting to a traveller familiar 
with the construction of public works than that which crosses the 
Brenner Pass from Innsbruck to Botzen. It is nearly eighty miles 
long, and was built in four years. The natural difficulties were even 
greater than those of the Scunnering, or of the Apennine road from 
Pistoja to Bologna. 

Within a distance of little more than twenty miles it makes an as- 
cent of 2500 feet, with a nearly uniform gradient of one in forty. Its 
escarpments and embankments are prodigious, and their protection 



1 
2: 


J^~ g s f~ ; 20M % ! 


i JU 




1 3-4 1^1000 


'i 




=9 

1 


5 ,&ateiw!j , , 








SJIiles 1031. 1631. 20 M. 


25 JI. 30 M. 35 M. 40 V. 

Scale for LengUi 


45 M 


o 20.0-jo 4o.ooo eo.tm t 
Scale for Height 


0.0'JU ] 
JO 400 




uu.M. 66 M. 



PROFILE OK T1IE BRENNER RAILWAY. 



against the wash of the mountain-side is admirably provided for. At 
one point, where the banks of the Sill offered only an insecure foun- 
dation for the abutments of a bridge, the river itself was turned by a 
tunnel through the rock, the old bed being crossed on an embankment. 
The road passes through twenty-two tunnels, the longest of them 2750 
feet. Several of these tunnels are built on considerable curves, and of 



60 TYROL, AXD THE SKIRT OF THE ALPS. 

one near Gossensass both of the mouths are in sight from the car win- 
dows at the same time. The scenery traversed throughout the whole 
distance is of the wildest and most romantic character; and as the road 
follows the course of the old highway between Germany and Italy, it 
is full of historic interest, from the repeated and stoutly contested 
struggles for its possession from the time of the Romans down to that 
of Andreas llofer. Old castles and monasteries, some in ruins, some 
still occupied by private families, some turned to Stadthauses and 
some to breweries, give that marked difference which always exists be- 
tween European scenery and our own. After crossing the Brenner 
Pass the course of the road strikes the valley of a little brook which 
gathers re-enforcements as it goes, and becomes a roaring river the 
Eisach Ionic before it falls into the Adi<?e at Botzen. 

O o 

Botzen lies 3500 feet below the summit of the pass, deep down be- 
tween the red porphyry cliffs by which its plain is bordered, and in 
the luxuriant climate of North Italy. The hill-sides and the valley 
are covered with abundant vines, grown on thickly covered sloping 
trellises; and, by slow-turning wheels of Egyptian device, the Eisach 
lifts up its water to irrigate the grass that grows beneath them. 

As Innsbruck is the metropolis of North Tyrol, so is Botzen that 
of South Tyrol. But what a suffocating, close, stuffy, fonl- smelling 
metropolis it is ! It has the credit of having been founded by the 
Romans, and its business streets are bordered by the heavy and gloomy 
arcades common to hot climates. Many have spoken of it as a charm- 
ing town ; but in our repeated experiences we have found ourselves 
assailed by such indescribable odors and oppressed by such an ab- 
sence of light and cheerfulness that we have come to regard it rather 
as a necessary stopping-place on the road to other points. Whence its 
smells come, its street smells, I mean, the source of its house smells 
is too obvious to be doubted, I have never been able to discover; for 
Botzen is essentially a city of clean streets. It is well supplied with 
fountains of clear water, and the turbid tide of the Adige sends a 
copious and rapid flow through all its streets. This latter runs through 
covered gutters with openings at frequent intervals, where women kneel 
over their wash-boards as at a brook-side. 

It was a stifling hot night when we arrived, and we supped in the 



ACROSS THE BKEyyi-:ii. Cl 

open air in front of a restaurant. The broad sidewalk was already 
filled with guests, and our table was set out in the open roadway, 
where friendly dogs assisted at our meal, and made themselves and us 
much at home. The fare was unusually good, and I had the curiosity 
to make a memorandum of our menu and of our bill, which is as fol- 
lows (for two persons) : 

English fillet of beef, with egg 0.430 

Potatoes, saute'es 0.043 

Macaroni a 1'Italienne 0.043 

Salad, with cheese 0.15G 

Omelette aux confitures 0.112 

Tyrol red wine (one bottle) 0.120 

One cup of coffee with milk 0.016 

One cup of black coffee 0.008 

One cigar 0.030 

Fee to waiter 0.125 

Making a total of one dollar, five cents, and three mills. 

Botzen has a church of somewhat celebrated beauty, and the piazza 
commands a glorious view of the high-perched Rosengarten, one of 
the most characteristic groups of the whole dolomite formation, more 
completely a collection of grand "pinnacles" than any other that we 
have seen. The view of this followed us well out on the road toward 
Me ran, through the broad and fertile Adige Valley, luxuriant with fig- 
trees and vines, with olives, tall cypresses, and all the characteristic 
vegetation of the South, walled in and sheltered on both sides by grand 
porphyry mountains, high up on whose slopes the hardy cultivators of 
its rich soil have planted their farm-houses and their hamlets. We 
were still in Tyrol, near the castle, indeed, which gave its name to the 
country, but in the richest valleys of Lombardy and Venetia we could 
not have been surrounded by a landscape of more thoroughly Southern 
aspect. 

The nobles and the monks of the olden time knew well how 
to select the most beautiful and commanding sites for their hab- 
itations, and the high hill -sides of the Adige Valley are as rich as 
the banks of the Rhine with the ruins of their castles and their 
monasteries. 



62 



TYROL, AND THE SKIRT OF THE ALPS. 




I'AUIMI CllUBGU, BOTZKN. 



At Terlan, an hour's drive from Botzen, the village church lias a 
conspicuous leaning tower, said to have been built by the architect of 
the tower of Pisa, who is claimed by the Tyrol ese as a countryman. If 
the tower of Pisa is no more successful in its architectural effect than 
the tower of Terlan, it is a shabby builder's trick, without beauty and 
without special interest. The Terlan tower is a very large one, and is 
inclined at an awkward and uncomfortable angle; but its centre of 
gravity falls well within its base, and no especial skill was needed in 
its construction. The tradition of the neighborhood says that it was 
built erect, and has taken its inclination from a settlement of the 



ACEOSS THE BKEXXES. 



63 



foundation, which rests in the alluvial deposit of the valley, and is 
often deeply submerged by the floods of the Adige. 

The Einspanner horse seems to be unacquainted with oats, but he 
takes his hay at very short stages of his journey. "Lisa," onr com- 
fortable bay mare, was hauled up at the tumble-down little inn of a 
tumble-down little village, among the vines and olives, for her habit- 
ual refreshment. We found the interior comfortable and clean, and 
the Terlaner wine delicate and good. The gradations of rank among 




the working- 
people always - 
struck ns as 

curious. The peasant drivers ot 
our humble drags seemed never 
to perform the office of groom. 
The stable-boy of the Gasthaus 

always takes charge of the feeding and watering, the driver mean- 
while taking his quarter liter of red wine, and tipping the hostler 



MEB.VN, FEOM TUB KUOUEI.UEUG. 



64 TYROL, AXD THE SKIKT OT THE ALPS. 

with a petty fee, like a gentleman. As the afternoon wore on, onr 
wrinkled and antiquated Jehu grew communicative. lie was prond 
of his age (seventy -two), and he needed little encouragement to wan- 
der back to the old days before the time of railroads, when he rode 
postilion with the diligences over the great post -routes. Of all the 
hard -riding company to which he had belonged, he alone is left. 
He seemed to regard himself as the sole remaining monument of a 
period that has gone never to return. The present, with its swift 
travel and frequent changes, had no interest for him. lie was a 
dreamy old Rip Van Winkle, with whom the interest of life lay only 
in the past until, we being discharged and a return freight from 
Meran being in order, the present, with its daily bread, came bravely 
to the front. 



THE CITY OF THE BELLS. 65 





CHAPTER VIII. 

THE CITY OF THE BELLS. 

FEW places along the southern slope of the Alpine range have such 
a reputation, and few deserve it so well, as the beautiful health-resort 
of Meran. It lies at the north side of the broad valley of the Adige, 
close under the shelter of the mountains, and where a bend of the val- 
ley carries the protection well around toward the west and east. Its 
drawback to those in robust health lies in the prominence everywhere 
given to its restorative characteristics. It is emphatically and con- 
spicuously a "Kurort" a resort for invalids. On the other hand, 
many of the appliances for the comfort and entertainment of the sick 
are of a sort to increase the attractions for the well. Through the 
town runs the very swift and copious torrent of the Passeier, the 
banks of which are pleasantly laid out the sunny side as a winter 
promenade with sheltered basking places, and the shady side (the 
summer promenade) with cool retreats and rustic seats under the 
cover of dense trees and immediately over the rapids. By municipal 
regulation every guest, whether a Kur subject or not, must contribute 
his weekly fee for the support of the Kursaal, the reading-room, the 
brass-band, etc. He enjoys them all the more, perhaps, for his sound 
condition. 

No community of Yankees could have turned the whims and fan- 
tasies of invalids to better account than have the physicians and the 
lodging-house keepers of Meran. They seem to have left no curative 
stone unturned. The grape cure, the whey cure, the cow-milk cure, 
the sheep -milk cure, water cure, pneumatic cure, and everything 
which may tickle the fancy of a malade imaginaire is worked up to 
its last pitch ; and if faith in means is equal to the abundant and va- 
rious healing provision, Meran must be a sick man's very paradise. It 
may, indeed, well be that without any of these artificial accompani- 

5 



66 TYROL, AND THE SKIRT OF THE ALPS. 

nicnts; for its pure mountain air, its great freedom from wind and 
dnst, and its most equable climate (save in the heat of summer), must 
combine with its abundant vegetation and its most charming landscape 
to stimulate nature to her own best restorative processes. Whatever 
may be its effect upon the sick, I can vouch most heartily for its value 
to the well, for in few places have I found myself so incited to the 
best mental and bodily effort as here not the stimulus and excitement 
of the higher, crisper mountain air, where one may perhaps be led to 
tax life's powers inordinately, but a wholesome feeling of energy 
which fits a man for his best and steadiest work. And not work only, 
for nowhere else does solid and uninterrupted idleness, the dolce far 
niente of able-bodied and vigorous manhood, come so naturally and 

O v 

leave so little regret. It seems as though time spent in the purest 
loafing here were really time gained in one's life and memory. 

There is no rose without its thorn. Meran, the charming, the 
sunny, the serene, the health-giving, the life -cheering Meran, has a 
skeleton in its closet a skeleton whose dry bones rattle and send a 
shudder through the nerves, through the very marrow, even of its most 
robust visitors. How much more must it affect those who are already 
unstrung by real "illness, or, still worse, by fancied invalidism ! The 
deep sleep which its pure fresh air so fosters is broken as with the 
very falling of the heavens. The tranquil reverie to which its soft 
acacia shade invites the happy soul is crushed as with the angry voice 
of devils. The idle saunter beside its noisy, tumbling Passeier Bach, 
the complete absence of thought to which the most active mind is 
wooed by its ceaseless swirl, is changed to torture as with the sudden 
crashing of the very ear-drums. In the still sweet hour of the night 
and in the broad light of serene day it comes, all unawares and unex- 
pected, and grinds the soul with its harsh turmoil. The enterprising 
doctors and landlords, and the municipality itself, may do their bravest 
and best to make their town a haven of health and rest: the priests, 
whose hand seems turned against all mankind, hold the instrument of 
torture with a firm grasp, and turn it remorselessly in every suffering 
breast. By day and by night, in season and out of season, and with- 
out rhyme or reason, the " harsh iron, clangor of the bells, bells, bells," 
leaves no rest for body or soul, and makes life here, where all else is 



THE CITY OF THE BELLS. 67 

calm and quiet and peaceful, a constant alternation of delight and 
misery. Indolence, reverie, sleep, and all tranquillity are hour by hour 
jarred and broken by a senseless jangle of brazen noise, as church tow- 
er after church tower takes up the oft-repeated alarm, and sends its 
fiendish vibrations through every unwonted brain. 

In all parts of Tyrol the common people adhere to their native 
characteristics, little influenced by any tide of foreign travel that may 
flow past them. Nowhere else is this more true than at Me ran. The 
streets are filled with bare -kneed peasants wearing pointed brigand 
hats, leather breeches, embroidered belts, and broad green suspenders 
covering them like vests ; the shabbiest hats are decked with feathers 
and flowers, and in the smallest detail of their life and conversation 
the people are purely and only Tyrolean. They trudge through the 
streets with heavily laden baskets at their backs, or drive their oddly 
yoked cows before the clumsy basket-bodied wagons, as their ancestors 
may have done, and probably did do, a hundred years ago. Surely 
few other peoples could live thus for years side by side and face to 
face with money-spending and modern-dressed strangers from all cor- 
ners of Christendom and remain so entirely unaffected by the contact. 

A gentleman to whom I took letters introduced me to one of the 
largest fanners of the district, who kindly explained to me many de- 
tails of the methods of cultivation in vogue; The land is extremely 
fertile. Not only in the valley, but everywhere on the hills and moun- 
tain-sides, wherever a little land is free from rock and stone, all the 
usual Northern farm crops thrive remarkably; and not only these, but 
the vine, the fig, and the Spanish chestnut as well, save in too high 
or too exposed situations. The statement, often made, that the lemon 
grows out-of-doors here and ripens its fruit well is practically a mis- 
statement. It does grow out-of-doors (in the summer-time), and it 
does ripen its fruit (5u warm sunny corners), but the tubs in which it 
grows have to be moved into glass houses for winter. The land is al- 
most exclusively owned by those who till it. As is always the case 
with an industrious people farming its own rich land, the whole agri- 
cultural community is in a very prosperous condition, and individuals 
of more than comfortable wealth are by no means rare. 



68 TYROL, AXD THE SKIRT OF THE ALPS. 

The grape is the most conspicuous crop, and very fair red wine is 
abundant and cheap. Here, as in much of Northern Italy, the vines 
are grown on trellises, forming, with their thick foliage, what may best 
be described as a series of "lean-to" roofs, facing toward the sun, and 
supported by substantial timber at a height which makes it possible to 
cultivate Indian-corn under them. Excepting a strip a few feet wide 
along the rows of vines which is kept clean and well hoed, the inter- 
vening ground is occupied by grass or corn, or occasionally by other 
crops. These vineyards are far more picturesque and attractive than 
the Lima-bean-like plantations along the Ehine and the Mosel, but it 
is possible that the dense shading of the whole ground, and the culti- 
vation of grain and grass on the intervening spaces, have much to do 
with the quality of the wine made, which, though wholesome and pala- 
table, is by no means comparable to wine of a corresponding grade 
grown in the Rhineland, or in France, where, also, the bean-pole sys- 
tem prevails. 

Not only in the valley, but almost equally on the hills, even to a 
great height, irrigation seems to be the sheet-anchor of the farmer. 
Water is abundant, and, as the streams are fed from the mountain-tops 
(often from glaciers), it is constant throughout the season of growth : 
during the summer months there is never a lack. It is applied to the 
vines at certain seasons, and to wheat and other grain crops; but the 
great use of this aid is upon the grass fields, which are copiously flood- 
ed about once a week. I have read so much about the processes of 
irrigation for years, without getting anything like a clear idea of its 
methods of practical operation, that I shall not attempt any complete 
description of them here. All of its details are extremely simple. On 
other than quite flat land the inclination given to the gutters, and the 
consequent rapidity of the flow, is much greater than I had supposed. 
Even in the minor channels in a grass field the current runs nimbly 
on, and the main feeder for a ten-acre field is a babblino- brook. The 

* ~ 

quantity of water used is more than I had thought, but not so great 
that (by the use of simple methods of storing and occasional discharge) 
the process might not be adopted very widely in our Eastern States. 

I had equally failed to realize the effect to be obtained by thorough 
irrigation ; it is one of those things which " must be seen to be appro- 



THE CITY OF THE BELLS. 



69 




elated." I think 
that there was 
hardly a day, 
from the time 
when we left 
Salzburg until 

o 

we reached Tu- 
rin, when we 
did not see irrigation going 
on, and quite np to the end 
of September there was hard- 
ly a day when we did not see 
hay -making. In many cases 
the fourth and sometimes the 
fifth crop was being cut, and 
always crops of very respect- 
able yield. If I had learn- 
ed no other lesson from my 
journey, I should be amply re- 
paid by the realization it has given me of 
the great importance of irrigation, on the very 
small scale as well as on the large ; of the almost 
universal ability to make use of it in one way or 
another ; and of the extreme simplicity and cheapness of its methods. 



SOULOSS TIROL. 



70 TYROL, AXD THE SKIIiT OF THE ALPS. 

Our short stay only sufficed for the merest taste of the excursions 
which are one of the chief attractions of the region. We were told 
that we might renew every day for a month the delightful experiences 
in walks and rides and drives which made our sojourn in this land of 
the vine and the fig' and the snow-capped peak seem quite unique 
among our adventures. The great object of interest that which is 
first pointed out by the arriving coachman, which holds the most 
prominent place among the vanities of the community, and which real- 
ly deserves all its praise is the venerable Schloss Tirol. Curious and 
interesting, but not in itself especially remarkable, it trembles on the 
border line between ruin and restoration, between neglect and care. 
Standing on a low hill with an indifferent outlook, it would be no 

O * 

more than any ordinary castle in Tyrol ; but planted on the crest of 
a grand spur uf the mountain, 1200 feet above the town, with an out- 
look up and down the valley of the Adige, it commands a view of un- 
rivalled beauty and variety. To the left, the broad deep trough where 
the Adige flows to join the Eisach at Botzen is a very paradise of fer- 
tility and luxuriance, bordered by the deep green vegetation and the 
grand red rocks of the porphyry mountains through which it has been 
cut. Standing sentinel over this valley is the high sharp profile of the 
Mendel Spitz. To the right, far below, is the tumbling white torrent 
of the river tearing its way over sharp rocks and among great bowl- 
ders, and making a rapid descent of nearly a thousand feet. Farther 
on stretches the colder and higher but still rich agricultural vale of 
the Vintchgau. Over and beyond this are seen the Ortler Spitz, the 
Laaser Glacier, and other white-shrouded members of the Oetz Thai 
gfoup. The whole transition from the warm and fertile plains of the 
South to the dead reign of eternal snow is covered by a mere turn- 
ing of the eyes from left to right. 

This old stronghold has the unusual distinction of having given its 
name to the land to which its possessions were added by the marriage 
of one of its daughters, Margheretta Maultasch (" Pocket- mouth Meg,") 
to the reigning count. 

Seen from the town, it seems neither very far away nor very high, 
but I found it a hard hour's scramble for my little mountain horse 
from the hotel to its dependent village, Dorf Tirol. At first the road- 



THE CITY OF THE BELLS. 71 

way paved with long stones laid across it was almost like a stair- 
case, and its steep course continued so long that when we came out 
upon the crest we met the curious illusion of water running up hill. 
The irrigation ditch at the roadside was flowing rapidly toward us, 
but the sudden change in the grade of the road, and the steep moun- 
tain side in front of us, made it hard to realize that we were not de- 
scending. 

The old lords of Schloss Tirol added to the inaccessible steep on 
which they founded their fortress the further security of a long tun- 
nel through the hill as an easily defensible entrance, with the inscrip- 
tion, "Imperator Gloriosus Viae istius Antor." The hill is of a sort 
of hardened clay or softened stone, which is slowly washed away by 
rain. Here, as in other similar formations, there occurs the curious 
"phenomenon" of earth pyramids. The whole hill-side is flanked 
by tall pinnacles of earth, each surmounted by a large bowlder. These 
stones have served as umbrellas to protect the earth under them from 
the reach of the rain, which has gradually washed away the interven- 
ing mass, and left them standing like light-houses with black rocks in 
the place of lanterns. They are a weird -looking company to come 
upon at twilight, and one almost hesitates to leave them behind un- 
questioned as he dives into the dark Knappenlocli, and rides on 
among the shades of the Middle -Age bandits and marauders who 
used to make its vault echo with their riotous jeers, as they rode home, 
booty-laden, in the old barbarous days of the robber knights. 

Another castle, " Schloss Trautmansdorf," to which we were taken 
quite unawares by a driver who gave us a twilight airing, is, in its very 
different way, hardly less interesting. It is a real castle of very old 
date, but it has been preserved from decay, and kept fresh and most 
habitable. Like all of its contemporaries, it stands on a cliff which is 
difficult of access. 

It was on our way to this castle that we first saw the traditional 
vineyard guardian of the Tyrol an example of "costume" in its 
maddest development wearing the Tyrolese dress, resplendent with 
unusual colors, and a huge head-dress of feathers and fox tails and all 
manner of outlandish decoration. The ancient purpose of this "get- 
up" was to strike terror into the hearts of grape-loving boys and girls. 



72 



TYROL, AND THE SKIRT OF THE ALPS. 



More recently its object is said to be the amusement of tourists, the 
more serious business of protecting property depending on the fact 
that the guardian carries fire-arms, and has authority to use them. 

O */ 

Notwithstanding all the inviting journey that lay before ns, and 
despite its miserable and incessant bells, the temptation Avas strong 
to lay aside all energy and ambition, and to idle away the rest of 
our holiday in lovely Mcran ; but it would be as hard to tear ourselves 
away a month later, and we drove back one fine morning toward 
Botzen. But what a freight we took with us! what a fund of new- 
found impressions ! what memories of the sweet vale of Meran, and of 
the mountains and hills, and of the great Vintchgau portal to the high 
Alpine country where the Oetz Thai group guards the western frontier 
of Tyrol ! 




VINEYARD WATG1I. 



INTO THE GEODNEB TEAL. 73 



CHAPTER IX. 

INTO THE GRODNER THAL. 

IT is curious to observe how. a great railway throws into obscurity 
the country through which it passes. It plants widely separated cen- 
tres of civilization here and there along its route, but practically it 
cuts off the wayside villages from intercourse with the world. In the 
old diligence days every village between Innsbruck and Botzen was 
familiar with frequent travel; its post-house was enlivened with 
throngs of passengers, and its special industry or interest had a public 
upon which to thrive. The Brenner railway has changed all this. The 
great flood of travel between the north and the south is swept unheed- 
ing through the valley, only here and there a tourist, tempted by beauty 
or romance, halting to awaken once more the echoes which have so 
long been stilled in the guest rooms of the abandoned Gasthaiiser. 

Railway travel down the valley of the Eisach is eminently satisfy- 
ing; the rate of speed is slow enough for one to take in intelligently 
the most attractive features of the landscape ; its halts are frequent 
enough and long enough for one to study the character and the cos- 
tumes of the peasants gathered about the stations, and one arrives at 
Botzen with the satisfactory feeling of having " done " the Brenner. 
Such was our own impression after repeated trial an impression which 
might have lasted through life had we not had occasion to learn its 
inadequacy. How often, I wonder, has our blissful ignorance blinded 
us to the best our journeyings have had to offer? In this instance 
our enlightenment came with the drive from Botzen to Waidbruck on 
such an afternoon as seems generally to be reserved for the occasion 
of our expeditions. I say it with bated breath, lest the fates should 
overhear me and break the charm, and I even whisper the German's 
cautionary " nicht beruferi." But it is a secret which I cannot withhold 



TYROL, AND THE SKIRT OF THE ALPS. 

from my readers 
that though those 
who precede us 
and those who fol- 
low us may be sad- 
dened with rain 
and gloom, when 
we travel the clouds 
part before our 
pathway, and give 
us sunshine and 
bright flowers and 
sweet breezes. 

The interest of 
the road begins im- 
mediately on leav- 
ing the town. The 
transition from its sombre streets 
and its arid piazza to the roses 
and the vine trellises is instant. 
Soon the narrow plain is passed, 
and the great walls of the valley 
draw closer together, leaving at 
times barely room for road and 
river and railway. The moun- 
tains grow higher and steeper as 
the valley narrows, and we pene- 
trate a deep and majestic gorge, 
winding abruptly to right and 
to left; now veiled in the shades 
of twilight, now bursting again 

into sunshine, tilled always with the rivers roar, and always rich 
with a grandeur and beauty which one can no more appreciate from 
the windows, or even from the observation car of a railway train, than 
one can appreciate Niagara from the Suspension -Bridge. The form 
and the substance we may get; but the spirit, the sweetness, the sing- 




ALPEN ROSEN. 



IX TO THE GRODNER TEAL. 



75 



ing of the birds, the fluttering of the leaves, the climbing of the shad- 
ows, the life and the still-life these need the calm and deliberation 
of slow locomotion. The pleasant greeting of travelling peasants; 
the clambering of scared goats up the sheer cliffs ; the suggestions 
of the fire -blackened rock where gypsies have camped; the hawk's 
nest at the top of a dead tree; the strongholds where Hofer and his 




-xx ,,.,, tyiiyy'" ' ^-', ~~- *" ." ' *~~ " -.s"' "..*H^ 



A VILLAGE bTHKET. 



hardy men contested the passage of the gorge, as the Romans and 
the Goths had done before them ; the degree to which nature, unheed- 
ing all the heroic record of history, has drunk np the wasted blood 
with the simplest vegetation, and holds all these rocks and ravines as 



76 



TYROL, AND THE SEIET OF THE ALPS. 




ST. 1'I.IiIOlI AND THE LANG KOFEL. 



pure and fresh 
as though they 
had known only 
the grazing of 
goats and the 

soaring of hawks these come to 
the apprehension by processes too 
slow for the railway ; not coming, 
they leave ns ignorant of the real 
essence of remote travel. 

The great Gasthaus at which 
we stopped for hay and coffee is 
a great ghost-house now, peopled 
with the memories of the post- 



INTO THE GEUDXER THAL. 77 

ing days. It still maintains a brave front, gay with flowers, fresh 
with scrubbing, and always ready for the hurrying throng, which now, 
alas ! sends it but rare and transient representatives. How long this 
old post-house of Atzwang will continue under its old impetus no one 
can say. It gets a little foot- weary travel by the high-road, and it is 
the starting-point for the Kastelruth entrance to the Dolomites; but 
all this is little for so great a house, and sooner or later " Ichabod " 
must be written over its door-way. 

How many of my readers have ever heard of Waidbruck ? If they 
are told that it is an odd little Tyrol village under the shadow of the 
mighty Schloss Trostburg, the Roman Acropolis of Sublavione, and 
the birthplace of Oswald von Wolkenstein, the Minnesinger, and that 
at the end of its single street a white picket gate opens to let us into 
the Grodner Thai, they will still have much to learn ; for Waidbruck is 
its only entrance, and though one of the smallest, the Grodner is one 
of the most curious and most interesting of the valleys of all Tyrol. 

Physically, it is a deep score in the steep side of the mountain, 
eighteen miles long, and 3600 feet higher at its upper than at its lower 
end. Its population numbers about 3500, which number has not ma- 
terially varied for ages. Until 1856, this people always known and 
always noted kept up their frequent intercourse with the world, and 
carried to it their abundant wares over the roughest of mountain foot- 
paths. Kow a good carriage -road a marvel of difficult and costly 
communal engineering leads down the steep valley to Waidbruck: 
for us it led up from Waidbruck. Day had deepened to dusk, and 
dusk to dark, long before we reached its capital village of St. Ulrich 
locally and gutturally " Sanght Hulhrich." The Grodner Bach is a 
roaring torrent, swirling its way between and around angular rocks, 
and falling in frequent cascades. The close-lying hill-sides are steep 
and craggy. Here and there, where a little clearing has been possi- 
ble, a thrifty farm-house and overflowing barn cling to the acclivity. 
Everywhere else thick forest clothes the rocky slopes, and through this 
humming valley we climb higher and higher, past the little village 
of St. Peter, past occasional level fields, and through still higher and 
higher forests of pine and black fir, and more frequent clearings and 
lighted windows. The tall straight pines are trimmed of their side 



78 TYROL, AXD THE SKIRT OF THE ALPS. 

brandies to make bedding for cattle, but often branches are left near 
the top to simulate the cross. These stood in frequent silhouette 
against the clear sky. 

At a bend of the road there rises suddenly before us, high beyond 
the great fir-clad mountain-side, towering above the very world, and 
illumined with the golden glow of sunset, the majestic column of the 
Lang Ivofel, the giant king of the Western Dolomites. Separated 
from its own surroundings, standing out like red gold above the dark 
forest and against the deep blue, solitary and unmeasured, a shining 
blaze of glory, it beckons us on, like the pillar of lire by night, to the 
wonders of the Promised Land. At last the hills part, the starry sky 
opens, and the sparkling house-lamps of St. Ulrich stretch high up the 
sides of the broad basin in which the village lies. 

At the "White Pony" we found an amiable lisping landlord, and 
an intelligent and friendly Kellnerin, ready to serve our comfort and 
to minister to our wants. All the appliances of maps, horses, guides, 
and luncheons, and wise advice, were at our disposal for the days of 
our stay, and all the marvels to which the Grodner Thai leads were 
before us for a choice. 

The Grodner Thai itself engaged our earliest interest. Its hidden 
and so long inaccessible fastnesses caught 2000 years ago the reflux of 
the tide of Northern barbarians which swept down into Italy only to 
be driven back by Roman valor, and save where such a sheltered 
nook as this caught fragments of the fleeing band to be wiped from 
the face of the earth. The eddy of Rhostian fugitives, resting among 
these hills, stayed to transmit to our own time the blood, and the hardy 
personal qualities, and the roots of a language which only here and 
there besides have escaped total destruction. 

The Northmen held to the mountain valleys the Grodner, the 
Gader, and the Fassa and spread out over the intervening hills. The 
Romans held the fertile lands along the rivers, and guarded the en- 

o 7 O 

trance to the valleys. In time, tempted by the accumulated crops and 
herds, and by the fertile fields of the Rhoetian bands, they encroached 
upon their domain, usurped their homes, and absorbed their national- 
ity. Hence the mixed race and the mixed speech, which hold their own 
here better than in the Pyrenees, the Engadine, and elsewhere where 



INTO THE GRODNEE TEAL. 79 

the tongue of the troubadours has told of the mingling of Southern 
and Northern blood, as the two races beat themselves together in 
mountain warfare. Here, to-day, well within the Austrian domain, 
and in close intercourse with the world by their active traffic, the de- 
scendants of the old Rhoati-Roman heathen hold to their old Romance 




COSTUME OF JUUL>E 



language with the pride of birthright possessors. And not only here, 
but all the world over, wherever a Grodner has settled, though he may 
never see his native hills again, he cherishes his native speech, and 
makes it the mother-tongue of his children. 

o 

It is a musical tongue, and a mixed. There must have been sol- 



80 TYROL, AND THE SKIRT OF THE ALPS. 

diers of fortune in those days as in ours, for Spanish and French roots 
are plenty in the speech, and these could have come to this distant 
quarter only by the chance fortune of war. Naturally German words 
have crept into it by contact, and the Italian of the valleys to the south 
has also made its mark. But these influences have not sufficed to 
change its fundamental character, any more than neighborhood, relig- 
ion, and community have modified the fundamental character of the 
people themselves; the Grodner is still distinct among Tyrolese, and 
his valley is still unique. 

"A Resident" evidently a priest with a soul above his beads 
has recently published a considerable treatise (Groden, der Grodner, 
und seine Sprache\ which might serve to make the " Ladin," as the 
people call it, a written language. The composite character is appar- 
ent at the very outset. 

The numerals are: Unjn,doi,tre'i, catter, cinch, sies^sott, bit, nutf, 
dios ; vint (20), cent (100). Other examples are: Prim (1st), second 
(2d), seni.pl (single), dopl (double). 

Jo sonj I am. Tajes thou art. El eilaje he is. JVous sonj 
we are. Vo seis you are. Ei eilesje they are. Jo foe I was. Jo 
soy stdt I have been. Jo foe stat I had been. Jo save I shall be. 
El wo mel da he does not give it to me. 'IVme'l dis I am told (one 
tells me). 

Here is the beginning of the parable of the Prodigal Son : 



L FIGLIUOL PRODIGO. 



"Unj pere ova doi fionjs. 'L plu soun va unj di da si pere, y dis : 
Pere ! daseme la pert, che me tocca, die he la intenzionj de men si da 
tlo demoz. 'L pere partes la roba, y da al ti chell, che je tuccova. 'L 
fi pocche 1' ha abu si arpesonj, sen jel sit da tgesa demoz ten] pais 
dalonc. 116 ha el scumenca a rnene na slotta vita, y in puech temp s' 
hS, '1 doffatt dutt chell, che 1'ova giata da si pere." 

It is evident at, a glance that there is some special source of pros- 
perity in this valley which marks it very distinctly from other parts 
of Tyrol. It has its own thrifty agriculture and its frugal habits, its 
untiring industry and its simple mode of life, which go so far to make 



INTO THE GRODNER TEAL. 



81 



any people comfortable; but here is more than the comfort of even 
the best agricultural valleys. A spruce New England air is seen on 
every hand in fresh paint, new houses, trim-looking door-yards, and 
the many minor evidences of good fortune. 

The secret of it all is that in the last century the art of Holz- 
schnitzerei was introduced among the people, and the manufacture of 
wooden toys soon became general among them. For a long time this 
industry has thriven, and has occupied the attention of nearly the 




THE WOOD-OAUVER. 



whole population. Even the children, on coming home from school, 
sit at the bench and cut busily away at the special object to which 
the talent of their family has been devoted for generations. It may 
be horses, or cows, or donkeys, or sheep, or cats, or jointed dolls, or 
soldiers. It is never a variety. The most skilful cat-maker would stand 

6 



82 



TYROL, AND THE SKIRT OF THE ALPS. 



defeated before the smallest wooden soldier. If the mother and the 
grandmother made donkeys, tradition and family honor compel the 
child to make donkeys, atid donkeys only, and to transmit the species 




TYBOLEBE COSTUME, VAI. SUGANA. 



unchanged to succeeding generations. In this way a certain skill, or 
rather a quick deftness, has been acquired, which has led to most 
abundant production. Ordinarily the quality of the work is extremely 
rude; it rarely leads to anything like artistic performance; but it 
has sufficed to fill the whole civilized world with the painted wooden 
toys of the Grodner Thai. 

For a century or so these wares found their way to market in the 
packs of the peddlers, who regularly visited all the principal fairs of 
Europe. Later, dealers in toys established themselves at St. Ulrich, 



INTO THE GRODNER TEAL. 83 

and bought the whole product for ready inoney. The peddlers turned 
their attention to other merchandise, and to-day furnish a very large 
quota of the pack-carriers who peddle the lighter appliances of do- 
mestic life. 

With the attachment to their homes which is characteristic of all 
Tyrolese and, indeed, of all mountaineers the profit of their traffic, 
saved with rare economy, generally serves to increase the comfort of 
their native homes, and to improve the condition of their families. In 
this way, as well as directly, the toy industry has been a chief ele- 
ment in the prosperity of the people. Since the road has been opened 
the shipment of toys in large packages has been carried on directly 
from the valley, which is visited by buyers from most distant lands. 
We saw huge cases marked for Spain, Sydney, and Brazil. Along 
the valley road and on all the mountain paths we constantly met 
women and children and old men with back-baskets filled with freshly 
painted toys, all bound for Ilerr Purge r's great Noah's ark of a ware- 
house. 

It indicates what frugal life in Tyrol implies when we find that 
the evidence of marked prosperity in the Grodner Thai, as contrasted 
with small valleys where agriculture is the only resource, is chiefly 
due to a petty industry which brings a return of less than one dollar 
per week for each member of the population. This is supplemented 
by the savings of the wandering peddlers, and there is a certain 
amount of domestic weaving which ekes out the income of many a 
family ; but when all is reckoned, we shall find that the art of money- 
saving has been a larger factor in the accumulation of Grodner wealth 
and comfort than the art of money-making. 

The wood-carving is not entirely confined to the rude toy-making 
in which nearly the whole peasantry is employed. There are many 
carvers of Madonnas and saints some of them skilful who find their 
market wherever the Catholic Church exists. The chief dealer in St. 
Ulrich has some examples of artistic work, inferior, however, to that 
of Innsbruck. We visited a carver's shop where an old man and his 
wife were busy with church effigies, large and small. They were ex- 
tremely deft and clever in the handling of their many tools, and in 
the precision with which they cut to the exact line where the desired 



8-i 



TYROL, AND THE SKIRT OF THE ALPS. 



expression la}" hidden. We selected an unfinished group "The Edu- 
cation of the Virgin" and sat by while the grave and responsible 
maternal look was developed in St. Anna's face, and a real learner's 
interest and curiosity were awakened in the Virgin. It is a rude lit- 
tle block, and we declined to have it "finished;" but it is full of ex- 




MOL'NTAIN 1'OKTKK. 



pression. Made without model or drawing, it is real, honest sculptor's 
work. The trained eye of these people sees the statue in the unhewn 
wood, and they know how to cut away the chips which conceal it. 

During our wanderings we made quite a complete collection of 
photographs of Tyrolese costumes, some of them belonging to this val- 



INTO THE GRODNER THAL, 85 

le} r . The habit with regard to dress varies with the locality. Here 
and in the Ziller Thai the every-day gear is not especially marked, the 
fnll costume being reserved for Sundays and festivals. In other val- 
leys, at Me ran and at Berchtesgaden, the "world's" dress is hardly 
worn at all by the peasants. Everywhere the climate seems peculiarly 
adapted to the growth of flowers and feathers in the hat-bands of men 
of all classes and of all nations. It is especially pleasing to see a staid, 
smooth-shaven Englishman, who at home would reprehend the wear- 
ing of anything less than a stiff hat, unbend his ri<nd lines, deck him- 

C.J *J O t O ^ 

self with light and rolling felt, and sport a cock feather or a bunch of 
Edelweiss at his crown. It is good, too, to see his sidelong glances at 
the mirrors, and the little wreath of pleasure that winds about his lips 
at the thought of such rare indulgence. 

The costumes are everywhere interesting. Many of them depend 
mainly on color, and cannot be well reproduced in engraving; but 
others, as those of Val Sugana and the Sam Thai, are of curious form. 
Most of them are very old, and they are all worn with traditional 
pride. 

Although the Grodner Thai is the seat of a special industry, its 
agriculture has all the minuteness and care of that of the rest of 
Tyrol. The wood-carving does not supplant, it only supplements, the 
usual work of the fanner. The land is good, irrigation is universal, 
and the little hill-side fields are very productive. There is onty the 
one wagon-road, which leads to the head of the valley, with a few side 
routes to the lateral gorges, where rude mountain carts -with wheels in 
front and runners behind are occasionally used. Nearly the whole 
transportation of hay and grain from the fields to the commodious 
barns is over foot-paths, immense loads being laboriously carried on 
the shoulders of the people, sometimes in large coarse sheets, some- 
times in baskets, and sometimes on a sort of rack resting on the head 

j o 

and the back. 



86 TTUOL, AXD THE SKIKT OF THE ALPS. 



CHAPTER X. 

A DAY OX THE SEISSER ALP. 

ST. ULRICH is the best point from which to visit the Seisser Alp, 
and the Seisser Alp is deemed the best worth visiting of all the high 
pastures of Tyrol. Its fir-grown brink forms the southern horizon of 
the Grodner Valley for many a mile, and its great eastern barrier, the 
Lang Kofel, is nowhere more imposing than here, flanked as it is by 
the grand Dolomite bank of the Meisules which incloses the head of 
the valley. 

I have been able thus far to withhold my personality and my per- 
sonal belongings from the attention of my readers. I can do so no 
longer. The day's adventure which I am about to describe owes some 
of its important features to my relations with the gentler sex. I am a 
married man, and my wife, who is large, and whose name is Jane, is 
the constant companion, the guide and the check of my travels. 
Jane is a person of rare virtues, of quick intelligence, of great force of 
character, and a conscientious disciplinarian. In my case, if ever, the 
sound motto is true, that " Ce que femme vent, Dien le vent." I cher- 
ish no hope for long, I indulge no ambition openly, which has not had 
the stamp of her approval. The well-regulated, middle-aged current 
of my life owes to her sage judgment its even course. The deviations 
into which, unguarded, I am sometimes led, are bent quickly and gent- 
ly back to the straight path by her soft firm touch. It needs not to be 
stated that my walk and conversation are unimpeachable. 

Jane is in all things intellectual and spiritual my superior. In the 
art of equitation she is my inferior. Here is my one triumph over 
her, and henceforth, when I see evidence of undue assumption, I hope 
that reference to the Seisser Alp will bring her meekly back to her 
just level. 



A DAY OX THE SEISSEE ALP. 



87 




TilK L.VNS KOFEL, FKOM THE SE1SSEB ALP. 

As we first entered the hall of the White Pony we noticed a side- 
saddle whose generous measurements seemed to set at rest certain 

O 

doubts with which we had contemplated the ascent to the flowery 
meadows. 

The morning after onr arrival a stalwart black horse Moro built 
after the model of the knights' horses in the days of iron armor, stood 
at the door, his broad loins caparisoned with that noble hog-skin. I 
never hesitate to put up a nimble girl who floats to the saddle with a 



88 



TYROL, AXD THE SKIRT OF THE ALPS. 







touch, but I allowed Moro to be brought along-side a carpenter's bench, 
whence my sturdy Jane sat down upon him with ease and dignity. 
The stout back settled to an unaccustomed sway, but nothing broke, 
and we marched bravely out on our venturesome way. Being mount- 
ed, inconvenient doubts began to arise as to dismounting. One who 

rides for the first time in twenty 
years cannot ride all day without 
intermission. Having dismount- 
ed, how to mount again ? We 
were bound for a region where 
carpenters' benches do not pre- 
vail. The question annoyed us 
I say "us" from sympathy 
until \ve had gone quite up to 
the neighboring village of Santa 
Kristina, and had left the hie;h- 

' C? 

road to cross the brook and take 
the bridle-path which leads ob- 
liquely up the mountain -side. 
Was it a steep path? Ask Jane 
if it was steep. I see her now 
clutching that horn with her 
bruised knee, that mane with her 
weary fingers, that apparent sum- 
mit of the climb with her anxious 
eyes. I am guiltless of all wish 
for revenge ; our small by-gones 
may be by-gones ; old scores soon 
heal in my wonted heart ; but 
if there had been reckonings to 
settle, how that long and weary hill would have fed my heart with 
satisfaction ! 

At last the zigzag course each zig harder than the last zag 
brought us out upon a plain, an inclined plain, beyond whose distant 
rim projecting tree-tops told of level ground. Our guide voluble in 
Ladin, but halting in German was a mute spectator of our woe. The 




TVKOI.ESK COSrUME, 8AKN TUAL. 



A DAT ON THE SEISSER ALP. 89 

only comfort he could suggest was a cooling spring in the edge of the 
Alp where we might rest and be consoled. In time we had finished 
our first two hours' travel, and were fairly on the first pastures of the 
Seisser Alp, 2000 feet above St. Ulrich, and only 4000 below the sum- 
mit of the Lang Kofel, which rose like a huge fortress tower almost 
across our path. 

The spring reached, my own thirsty lips lay easily over its brim- 
ming flow ; but the memories of even twice twenty years gave Jane 
no precedent for this method of imbibition, and she sat like Tantalus 
at the brink of the flood without the power to drink. My life has 
been marked by many acts of conjugal devotion, but the humility with 
which I carefully ate out a hard-boiled egg from its shell with the 
point of my penknife, and filled the tiny cup again and again, until 
the cravings of my bride had been sated, must stand recorded against 
the day when I shall need special indulgence. We drank and we 
ate, and we held council. We stood at the entrance of a land 
whose praises had long been sung in our ears a land of many 
cattle, of flowers uncounted, and flowing with a very tide of the rich- 
est milk. 

The air was filled with the melody of tinkling bells, the sun rode 
warm in the September sky, and the smoke of Sennerin's huts floated 
over the trees. To go on or to turn back that was the question 
which racked us. The other descent was not harder than the way by 
which we had come, but it lay miles on beyond the hills and valleys 
we had come to see. Too wise for that, I ventured no advice, but I 
rejoiced in her stout heart when my tried wife decided to mount her 
steed and follow her venturesome day to its end. Even a woman's 
decision is not always achievement, and to place that form again in its 
seat needed more than mental exertion. The fences, the bar-ways, the 
stumps, and the stones which we tried and found inadequate, it would 
be tedious to recount. At last we succeeded, the guide and I, by dint 
of our combined pushing, in forcing Moro close along-side a sufficient 
rock, and in holding him there until his charge was seated. 

On level ground all went well, and down -hill work was easy 
enough, but the frequent steep climbs, as we came out of gullies and 
up the banks of deeply furrowed brooks, tested the endurance of that 



90 TYROL, AXD THE SKIRT OF THE ALPS. 

fond frame, and lined the kind face with anxious thought as to the 
coming hours. 

Yet even personal inconvenience and dread could not dull us to the 
glories by which we were surrounded. For miles away to the south 
and west, accentuated by dark tree-tilled valleys, rolled the green bil-' 
lows of this glorious summer pasture, dotted with cattle, radiant with 
wild flowers, and traversed by the slow- moving shadows of clouds. 
Hundreds of huts and barracks shelter its people and its hay, and 
thousands of cattle feed over its unfenced expanse. 

The Lang Kofel, the Plat Kogel, and the jagged little peaks of the 
Horse Teeth guard its eastern side, and the Rosengarten. and the pon- 
derous horned reef of the Schlern wall out the world at the south. 
One is more in the heart of the Dolomites at Cortina, but nowhere 
more impressed with their characteristic and solitary grandeur than 
here. 

We had counted largely upon milk for our food in this excursion, 
and we made our next halt at the hut of a Sennerin who combines the 
entertainment of chance travellers with her dairying industry. We 
took seats on a porch at the shady side of the house, and at a table 
where two cow-herds sat facing each other, eating "Sehmarn"* and 
milk from the same earthen basin. A similar basin of milk was set 
between us, and two iron spoons were furnished us. Preceding writ- 
ers on Tyrolean travel had emphasized the badness of the food, and 
a thoughtful friend in Xew England had kindly urged on our accept- 
ance a dyspeptic preparation of parched and sweetened wheat meal 
with which to supplement our insufficient provender. This had lain 
unused and unneeded in our satchel all the way from home. Its time 
had now come, and we soaked it, according to prescription, in our milk, 
eating to the memory of friends who fancy there are mountains in 
Massachusetts. 

The cow-herds, finishing their meal, rose from the table, crossed 
themselves, stood facing the east, and devoutly repeated a long prayer, 
with due genuflection and bowing of the head, and then trudged away 
to their work. The woman of the house showed us her simple smn- 

* A compound of grease and Indian-meal. 



A DAT ON THE SEISSER ALP. 



91 



iner dairy and her loom, inspected our novel outfit, and sent us on our 
way rejoicing. She could spare no hay for our horses, and we marched 
on to the hut of a bald and barefooted little old man, who made us 
welcome, and stood in blue-eyed wonder as we told him we had come 
from beyond the great sea. His loft not only fed our beasts, it fur- 




OOSTUME OF TilE I>L'X T1IAL. 



nished Jane a fragrant couch, where for two hours she slept away the 
weariness of her saddle, and awoke refreshed for her further ride. 

This was my first Alpine dairy, and a very good example it was 
of the summer home of the mountain cow-tender, with an open hearth 
in the smoky front-room, and a comfortable-looking bed in the milk- 



92 TYROL, AND THE SKIRT OF THE ALPS. 

room. The old man makes both butter and cheese from a herd of a 
dozen cows, and his employer sends regularly from Kastelruth to fetch 
the product to market. 

For five months the cows are kept here in the mountains, and dur- 
ing the hay-making season the' whole vast Alp is gay with throngs of 
young men and women, with work and music and dancing. When 
we saw it the harvest was over, and only the cattle-tenders were left. 
In another month it would be quite deserted, its great elevation 
from 5000 to 7000 feet subjecting it to early killing frosts. It is a 
compact rolling plateau of the richest grass land, varied by occasional 
woods, thirty-six miles in circuit, and belongs mainly to the neighbor- 
ing communes of Seiss and Kastelruth. 

We took up our homeward march about the middle of the after- 
noon, and struck across over the hills toward the rough cart track 
which leads down through the wild Saltaria Gorge into the Groden 
Valley some distance below St. Ulrich. Jane's comfort did not increase 
indeed, her sufferings did not cease but she is a woman, and when 
she had given to her sensations the varied articulate expression with 
which she is so richly gifted, she relapsed into her most eloquent con- 
dition of silent and enduring fortitude, which, more than any spoken 
words, tears my heart with the consciousness that I have, all by my 
own blundering, masculine obtuseness, led her a sad and sorry dance, 
whose last echoes I am far from having heard. 

However, the magnificent view we gained of the far-away snow- 
fields of the Oertler Mountains, bordered at one side by the great gray 
precipice of the Schlern, and at the other by the green slope and pine- 
clad crest of the Puflatsch, could be trusted to remain and delight her 
memory long after the bruising and straining of the ride had been for- 
gotten ; so I was sure of my final recompense. Then, too, with all her 
greater qualities, she has feminine traits which are always available, 
under skilful manipulation, to divert her attention from her own dis- 
comfort. Babies, dogs, cats, and donkeys hold the key to her most 
hidden heart, and even horses are extremely useful in emergency. I 
have never found that horses are especially fond of clover heads. Of- 
fered a handful of grass containing them, it is not these which they 
first select. Yet so firm is her conviction that a tuft of red clover 



A DAY OX THE SEISSEK ALP. 93 

blossoms is the last desire of the horse's palate, that I can calm her 
wildest moods by indulging her in this pet fiction. How she would 
ever have made the long and really trying descent to the valley, had 
I not kept her Moro supplied with these talismanic tidbits, I do not 
know. Thus diverted, she came blandly down, and I laid her bruised 
form, sore with seven hours' riding, on the best feather-bed at the 
Pony, happy in the thought that I had mitigated to a marked degree 
her unexpressed eludings for my ill-judged exploit. 

The next expedition I made by myself with a guide. Two hours 
of slow driving took ns np the steep road through Santa Kristina and 
Santa Maria to Plan, at the very head of the valley, where at a height 
of over five thousand feet a curly-headed Rip Van Winkle keeps a 
pleasant-looking inn and a small farm. While rny horse was being 
fed we sat on the balcony together, and chatted about his possessions 
and his easy-going life. It was with real glee that he lay back in his 
chair and pointed to a little army of women and girls, gay with all the 
colors of Grodner clothing, reaping merrily in his small grain -field. 
He was evidently in the early stages of inherited prosperity, and life 
was all " happy-go-lncky " for him. Hidden away in this obscure cor- 
ner of the world, he is likely to be his own most frequent customer, 
and his sturdy Gretchen already shrugs her shoulders over his un- 
thrifty ways. 

My destination, the Coll di Rondella, was an hour and a half away 
np in the sky. It is a " compromise " ascent, an ascent to be made 
in the saddle, where a guide is taken only as a matter of courtesy, an 
easily reached eminence which suffices to save the reputation of one 
who visits a mountain region without tempting the Fates by crag 
scrambling. It suited my own ambition precisely, and I rode up the 
steep, rough bridle-path with the feeling that I was performing an 
easy and pleasant duty. Much of the route lies over the broken Alps, 
between the Lang Ivofel and the Meisnles here close neighbors and 
infinitely grand and touches nearly the summit of the Sella Pass. 
Close beside the pass rises a steep mamelon of a hill, grass-grown to its 
summit, and so much lower than the greajb peaks about it that it seems 
only recently to have attracted the notice of travellers. Its last ac- 



9-i 



TYROL, AXD THi: SKIRT OF THE ALPS. 



clivity is too steep for riding, and it is trying to unhardened legs. I 
was beginning to toil and blow when the guide taught me quite a new 
use of that noble animal the horse. Hitherto I had regarded his tail 
as a merely ornamental, or at best as a fly-whipping, member. I now, 
for the first time, learned its value as a tow-line. Grasping it with 
both hands, I found it an efficient mitigator of my labor, and I came 
fresh and happy to the top. 

The sky was clear, and I stood literally amidst the glories of the 




THE GLACIER OF MARMOI.ATA. 



upper world. The tiny houses of Campidello nestled in the sunshine 
far down in the Fassa Thai. A little stretch of dull Alpine grass and 
moss lay all about; and beyond this, to the far-away horizon on every 
side, was spread out a turmoil and wilderness of mountain more mag- 
nificent and impressive than any sight that had ever greeted my eyes 
before. The vast grim glacier of the Marmolata was close before us, 
the conical peak of Tofana shut out the Ampezzo Valley, and the 



A DAY ON THE SEISSEB ALP. 95 

giants of Tyrol, from Vorarlberg to the Carinthian border, from the 
Ober Pinzgati range to the Venetian Alps, stood in thick array on 
every side. With a later and more difficult experience in my mind, 
I commend the Coll di Rondella to those who would see this company 
of mountains all unshorn of their grandeur, their majesty measured 
by the stern scale of the overtopping Lang Kofel and the Titanic 
peaks of the Sella, which stand out a full half mile above their fringe 
of stunted pines. Its easy climb was the best-rewarded excursion that 
I made in Tyrol. 

The constant down-hill drive to Waidbrnck in broad daylight re- 
vealed the superb details of this most charming of mountain roads, 
which our evenrng ascent had hardly more than suggested. It is as 
picturesque as the Wissahickori and as grand as the White Mountain 
Flume, and everywhere noisy with the rush of the mad Grodner Bach, 
which pours its foaming flood through a channel piled with huge rocks. 
Its scenery is unique among mountain valleys, as are its people among 
the secluded communities of the far-away corners of the world. t 



TYROL, AXD Till: tiK lit! OF THE ALPS. 



CHAPTER XL 

AT THE FOOT OF THE GREAT RA\GE. 

WE had regarded the Pnster Thai too lightly. One is disposed to 
consider a valley where a railway has been built as necessarily tame 
and tmromantic. Even our knowledge of the wild route of the Bren- 

o 

ner road had not chastened us of this heresy. 

The Puster Thai is in its way unsurpassed. Beginning at Fran- 
zensfeste, 2500 feet above the sea, it climbs on to a height of over 4000 
feet at the Toblach plain, and thence descends to 2250 feet at Lienz. 
It is the main stem of the chief system of valleys in South-eastern 
Tyrol ; the entrance to the Pfunder Thai, Gader Thai, Tan fere Thai, 
Antholzer Thai, Pragser Thai, Ilollensteiner Thai, Sexen Thai, Villgrat- 
ten Thal,Isel Thai, Moll Thai, Kaiser Thal,Virgen Thai, and Tauren 
Thai. 

"And these vales have smaller vales, 
And these have vales to feed 'em." 

They are the main arteries of a vast net-work of mountain valleys 
reaching up to the region of the scantiest summer grass, peopled with 
eager farmers, who cling to the last patch of ground, no matter how 
high or how steep, which promises even the most meagre means of 
subsistence. 

Whence these peoples came it would be hard to trace, even through 
their dialects, and the dialect sometimes changes in the same valley. 
Like the Grodner Thalers, they are probably the descendants of the 
mixed crowds of refugees who were stranded here when the Northern 
armies were driven back by the Romans. Whatever they are in ori- 
gin, they have become genuine Tyrolese, with all the acquired charac- 
teristics of a hardy mountain race. They have yielded to the condi- 



AT THE FOOT OF THE GEE AT RANGE. 97 

tions which have everywhere moulded the natures of their fellow-coun- 
trymen. Yet the inherent germ has not been changed, blood and tra- 
dition still assert their force, and the distinctions which are indicated 
by speech and by costume have their root in fundamental distinctions 
of character. 

It adds very much to the interest of all Tyrolean travel, which 
looks beneath the mere surface show of scenery and dress, to inquire 
into the composite influences by which mankind has been made what 
it is in these valleys, what original traits still assert their vitality, and 
what force "environment" has exerted to mould different races toward 
a common type. 

Physically, the Puster Thai yields nothing in grandeur or in inter- 
est to its most noted rivals. It is quite different different from them 
all and it would be senseless to attempt a detailed comparison be- 
tween it and them. It is idyllic, grand, pastoral, gorge-like, broad, sim- 
ple, and romantic by turns, but even in its simplest phases it is never 
without the charm of the finest mountain surroundings. Its northern 
side valleys run quite up into the heart of the Grosser Venediger and 
Gross Glockner range, and tap its glaciers for their brooks. At the 
south it skirts along the outlying spurs of the Dolomites, which lift 
their mysterious fronts far over its bordering hills, and shed into its 
bosom the uncanny light with which they reflect each setting sun. 

Beautiful though the Puster Thai is in itself, it borrows even great- 
er beauty from the branches which it sends back into the mountains. 
Every point is full of interest. It has no considerable industry save 
its agriculture, and a few quiet small towns scattered here and there 
suffice for its commerce. Yet Amthor's Tyrol Guide devotes nearly 
a hundred closely printed pages to little else than an abbreviated cata- 
loguing of what it has to offer to the tourist. A whole busy summer 
would not nearly suffice for the exploration of most enticing attrac- 
tions, to which it is the principal entrance. 

It served in our case as the road to the Ampezzo Valley, and it at- 
tracted us by another object of pilgrimage, interesting in every corner 
of the world where the English language is read. 

William and Mary Ilowitt the most married names of our litera- 
ture have long set up their summer tent at Dietenheim, at the mouth 



ys 



TVIML, A XI) THE SKIRT OF THE ALPS. 



of the Tanfcrs Thai. Thither we went to claim one ray of their genial 
sunshine before their declining day shall have set forever. In a fine 
old chateau, from which the high-well-born owners have fled, and 
which now serves the modest uses of a farm-house, they have taken 
the handsomer apartments for their cool and qniet retreat. 




WILLIAM IIOWITT. 



Their salon might be, for its size, the Rittersaal of a castle, but it is 
filled now with flowers and fresh air and smiling light, and with the 
simple furniture of the temporary home, where these genial, active, 
and happy octogenarians'spced away the mellow days of summer with 
their books and their friends. One gets from an hour passed with 
them an insight into the happy possibilities of ripe old age, and looks 



AT THE FOOT OF THE GREAT EASGE. 99 

forward with a fresh interest to the time when one's own long down- 
hill of life shall bring good and sweet reward for the work of the bus- 
ier years. We certainly turned away from their door forever happier 
for the light they had shed across our path. 

The Taufers Thai a broad flat plain reaching back into the foot 
of the snow mountains had just now been the scene of a geologic 
event which spread wide disaster through its community. The same 
deluge of rain which did such havoc in the Ziller Thai, on the opposite 
slope of the mountain, so saturated the hanging bank of one of the 
narrower gorges of this valley that its added weight tore the earth 

O O / O 

away from the rock, and it fell, in an enormous land-slide, forming 
a high dam across the chasm. The waters rose behind the barrier 
and accumulated in a vast lake, burying deeply the farms and houses 
of the people. Rising to the brink of the dam, it poured over the soft 
and unstable deposit. It was like "the beginning of anger." The 
soft earth melted away, and the whole accumulated flood came pour- 
ing down into the plain, dealing destruction on every hand, washing 
away field and forest, sweeping long-established houses from the face 
of the earth, covering miles of cultivated laud with the barren wash 
of the hills, and filling the valley with desolation. Unlike the people 
of the Ziller Thai, these peasants had little accumulated wealth, and 
their misfortune is absolute. It will take generations of toil and fru- 
gality to repair the damage of this swift calamity. 

European communities have one great advantage of which we are 
deprived, in the fact that they had been long established before the 
advent of the railway, and had provided themselves with good and 
permanent carriage roads. There runs through the Puster Thai, all 
the way from Franzensfeste to Lienz, a smooth, hard, macadamized 
road, over which the post- service used to be performed, and which, 
now that through travel and transportation have taken to the rail, re- 
mains as a last connecting link between the thrifty villages with which 
it is lined. It is a most charming tourist's drive-way, and its many old 
posting inns are still ready with their comfortable cheer. Miihlbach, 
Bruneck, Toblach, Innichen, and Lienz, and the many minor villages, 
offer each its own attractions, and each is surrounded by its peculiar 
points of interest. 



100 



TYltoL, AX I) THE SKIRT OF THE ALPS. 



With two good horses and a travelling-carriage for the main jour- 
ne} r , and saddles for side excursions, a congenial couple might find in 
this vale of beauty the means for passing the pleasant months of the 
year in most serene and satisfying enjoyment. The notable wonders 




LJENZ, PC8TEE THAI.. 



of the country are available to the more rapid tourist ; but time, the 
chiefest element of a real appreciation of such characteristic scenery 
and of such a characteristic population, can be secured only by the 
compulsory slowness of driving or walking. Travellers by rail are 
never absorbed by the country through which they pass. Speed car- 



AT THE FOOT OF THE GREAT RANGE. 101 

ries one unheeding over the surface of all local life, and scenes change 
too swiftly for us to get the local flavor. The best of all is to walk, 
to halt and chat at the doors of peasants' houses, to dawdle away the 
hours at way-side Gasthauser, and to burrow slowly into the tranquil 
spirit of the people. But Jane is averse to walking, and I am glad 
to compromise with the Einspiinner. I get the compensation that we 
need not halt for every baby of this prolific land, nor pull clover heads 
for every sage donkey that we meet. 

It is not every valley that ends so charmingly as does the Pnster 
Thai, which spreads out into a broad and fertile plain at Lienz a 
mountain-embowered Arcadia, quite at the far end of the active world 
through which a railway passes, it is true, but where even the cur- 
rent of tourists is unknown. 

Few valleys, too, end at the gates of such magnificence; for at 
Lienz is the entrance to the wild pass of Ileiligenblnt, where a veri- 
table phial of the blood of the Crucifixion works its miracles at the 
high altar, and whence starts the rugged climb to the Franz Joseph 
Hohe, and that greatest of all Tyrol peaks, the Gross Golckner, which 
dominates the whole land. 

Where else than at Tolbach can one step out from the door of a 
good modern hotel and stroll into such a deep slit in the mountain- 
side as that which opens the way to the very heart of the Ampezzo 
Dolomites ? 



102 TYROL, ASD THE SKI11T OF THE ALPS. 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE PORTALS OF THE DOLOMITES. 

AT the edge of South-eastern Tyrol, within an area of forty miles 
by thirty, stand all of the great peaks of the dolomite formation: it is 
jmr excellence the region of the dolomite Alps. It has been known to 
ideologists since Dolomien, at the close of the last century, described 

\j ' 

the mineral which was to bear his name, and identified it with this 
mountain formation. So far as secular travel is concerned, the dis- 
trict remained practically unknown until the publication of the work 
of Gilbert and Churchill describing their explorations of 1861-63. 
Other more popular writers followed them, applying to the remarkable 
features of the region more or less appropriate expressions of descrip- 
tion and admiration. 

The glimpse of the Rosengarten from Botzen, the bald head of the 
Lang Kofel as seen from St. Ulrich, and the majestic broadside of this 
rock and the Platt Kofel, the jagged spikes of the Ross Zahne, and the 
flat ridge and sharp horn of the Schlern, which bound the Seisser Alp 
on the east and south, had given us an entirely characteristic and com- 
prehensive idea of the varied formation. These were majestic senti- 
nels guarding the outposts of the stronghold. Far up in the Puster 
Thai, spectre crests, under the rosy light of fading day, beckoned us 
on to the citadel. We entered the portals at Toblach, through the 
grand defile which gives entrance to the Ampezzo Valley. Before us. 
a sharp high peak, almost over our heads, shut out the morning sun, 
which gave a fringe of silver to every twig of the firs and bushes at 
its top, and poured down into the valley in opaline streams of light. 
After passing the Toblacher-See the walls of the valley grew steeper, 
the bare mountain-tops rose higher, and we penetrated into the very 
heart of the grand peaks streaked with red and yellow, seamed with 



THE PORTALS OF THE DOLOMITES. 



103 



angry scars and fissures, and set in pines almost black in their som- 
bre hue. 

Xear the first habitation, a comfortable inn at Landro, the Hollen- 
stein, with Monte Piano and the Drei Zinnen, stood high before us. 
Beyond the Durren-See rose the tilted masses of Monte Cristallo, 
which the lake mirrors like a 
glass. At Schluderbach another 
way-side inn is busy with coming 
and going travellers. Before it 
rises the Croda Rossa, one of the 
highest of the dolomites, its prec- 
ipices stained with broad bright 
red patches. Gilbert says that 
it is "streaked as with the red 
drip of a mighty sacrifice." 

The road has risen constant- 
ly from Toblach, and almost un- 
interruptedly from Botzcn. At 
its highest point it is very near- 
ly 5000 feet above the level of 
the sea, having insensibly con- 
sumed nearly one -half of the 
nominal height of the highest 
mountains of the region, carried 
us nearly to the limit of grad- 
ual slope and of vegetation, and 
brought us close to the barren 
rock and precipitous walls, and 
filling our lungs with the clear 
and invigorating air of a high 
Alpine valley. 

We had come far enough to compare our preconceived ideas of 
the dolomites with the majestic reality with which we were surround- 
ed. We were in no respect disappointed far from it; but we were 
made to realize the inadequacy of language and of human imagery to 
convey a true impression of these scenes. "Cathedrals;' "flying-but- 




T11E INN AT LAMDBO. 



104 



TYROL, JXD THE SKIRT OF THE ALPS. 



tresses," " watch- 
towers," "lions 
couchant," " bas- 
tions," "needles," 
" bayonets," and the 
multiform expres- 
sions leading to a 
comparison with the 
insignificant works 
of man, seemed only 
a feeble attempt to 
define and measure 
in language created 
for worldly things 
a grandeur which is 
really inexpressible, and which 
even requires a certain familiar- 
ity to be appreciated by the eye 
which gazes upon it. 

Through a clear air and un- 
der a cloudless sky the mountain- 
tops all seem unduly near. It needs the half-con- 
cealment and the shadow of floating clouds to 
throw them back to their real distance and to lift 
them to their real height. Here, even more than 
among mountains of ordinary form, partial con- 
cealment and the vast contrast between nearness and distance best de- 
velop the grandeur of the greater peaks. The Lang Kofel nowhere 
seems so far, so large, and so high as when its pale, clear-cut, yellowish 
shaft reaches up far above and far behind the dark and sharply de- 
fined fir- clad mountains which shut in the Grodner Thai. Monte 
Pel i no, as it lifts its great head into the distant sky far beyond the ser- 
rated top of the high Becco di Mezzodi, is vastly more impressive in 
magnitude and in elevation than when its whole side has come into 
view. Something of the effect may be due to the mystery of sugges- 
tion, but more to the fact that we need the majestic scale of an inter- 




BOULUDKKUAOII AND THE 

;:!> \ BO88A. 



THE PORTALS OF THE DOLOMITES. 105 

terveiiing mountain to measure rightly such enormous heights and 
masses. 

I shall refrain from all attempt to express in words the remarkable 
and various forms and effects of the dolomite peaks, further than to 
say that in their general characteristics and there are many excep- 
tions even to this they are full of sharp angles, fantastic serrations, 
and knife-like edges. So little does the eye appreciate relative dis- 
tance that two mountains rising one behind the other, and having a 
wide valley between them, look like a single slope, until a cloud, iilling 
the valley, brings the nearer summit into clear relief. In certain lights, 
and especially in the gray following the sunset, they frequently look 
like vertical sheets of gray pasteboard, with a jagged edge standing in 
sharp profile against the lighter sky ; again, they seem a mass of cold 
gray stone rising high out of the fields and forests, pitiless, cheerless, 
baleful, and cruel ; again, under strong sunlight, they are modelled 
with infinite sharp shadow, and mellowed with the warmest creamy 
and ruddy glow, even the broad blackened patches of the older expos- 
ures assuming a warm blue tone. The first impression received may 
well belie all that we have read, for aspect, medium, light and shadow, 
and all the infinite variations of atmospheric effect, change the tone, 
the feeling, and almost the very form itself. What we see to-day we 
shall not see to-morrow; a description true now may never be true 
a<rain. It seems to me that this constant and endless change of effect 

?5 O 

is more characteristic of the scenery than any other of its peculiarities. 
The same forms are scattered through the calcareous mountains 
as far as the plain of Venetia and Lombardy. They look down upon 
Riva from the precipitous west wall of Garda, they haunt the traveller 
by the Lecco arm of Lake Como, they appear again at Lugano, they 
are conspicuous in the Pyrenees, and they are a very frequent accom- 
paniment of limestone ranges the world over, but only here in Tyrol 
have they their full characteristic effect. 



106 TYROL, AND THE SKIRT OF THE ALPS. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

CORTINA D'AMPEZZO. 

NEAR the head of the Ampezzo Valley, in the ganglion centre 
from which reach out the various systems of mountain and valley 
toward the north, south, east, and west, high up among the barren 
rocks, and close to their frowning and beetling and broken edges, there 
exists a combination of direction, of exposure, of distorted form, of 
light and shade, and of atmospheric condition, which turns the weird 
kaleidoscope from hour to hour, and produces the unusual and chang- 
ing effects with which literature has grappled so much in vain. 

It is, no doubt, safe to say that the rapid growth of the Dolomites 
in popular favor is founded on real merit, and that it will continue 
and increase. An envious admirer of the superb landscapes of North 
Tyrol said to us, half contemptuously : " Yes, the Dolomites are in 
fashion now." While yielding nothing to him in appreciation of his 
beloved native hills, which must ever hold their own as being unri- 
valled in their own Avay, I must freely confess that the doubts with 
which I first entered the Ampezzo Valley have all been dispelled, and 
that I accept the wonders and glories it has to offer with unreserved 
and unstinted admiration. They are glories and they are wonders 
which enchant and which irlow the more as familiarity brings us ac- 

o */ o 

quainted with their secret spirit. With this feeling, it is almost amus- 
ing to hear the fear expressed that the region will soon become "hack- 
neyed" and overrun with tourists, like Switzerland. I trust it to with- 
stand, all untarnished, the gaze of clouds and generations of tourists 
and pleasure-seekers. The ants which burrow its hill-sides and build 
pitfalls for unwary feet affect as much these grand old rocks above 
them as will all the men and women who may come to clamber about 
their lower slopes, and marvel over their inaccessible steeps. Per 



CORTINA D'AMPEZZO. 



107 




OOBTINA AN1> MONTE TOFANA. 



contra, increased 
travel will lead 

to the opening of roads and foot- 
paths, to the diffusion of comfort, 
to the decrease of discomfort, and 
to ease of access ; still more, the 
travellers will be made happy and healthier; and, if man continues an 
imitative animal, here and there one may carry hack to his remote 
home a knowledge of certain manners at table which do not now ob- 
tain there. The adherents of exclusiveness in the enjoyment of moun- 
tains may rest happy in the hope that no railroad will ever climb the 
high Ampezzo Pass, for neither commercial nor military needs indi- 
cate such danger. 

It seems altogether likely that Cortina will remain the central 
point of interest of the district. It is a snug little Italic-German town 
in the midst of the straight stretch of the vallev at its broadest and 

o / 

richest part, four thousand feet above the sea, and most delicious in 
climate without the chill of the Engadine or the heat of more en- 



108 TYROL, AND THE SKIRT OF THE ALPS. 

closed valleys. It is a climate where exercise is a delight, where sleep 
is a revelation, and where appetite finds wholesome stimulus, and gives 
good sauce to abundant food. 

Happily this is not a guide-book, and I am not called upon to dis- 
cuss the relative merits of the Golden Star and the Black Eagle. The 
tidy and still fine-looking sisters Barbaria, and the lusty and stalwart 
brothers Ghedina, have arid will continue to have their warm adher- 
ents and their plentiful patrons. It is not as advice to my readers 
only as a tribute to merit that I commend the Aquila Nera for its 
open situation, its airy and generally large rooms, and the Teutonic 
profusion of its table. 

It is not often that the Kellnerin of a hotel, good and obliging 
though she may be, can claim more than passing notice; but Filo- 
inena, the earnest-faced, calm-minded, gentle, and unflagging maiden 
who holds the comfort of each guest and the welfare and mainspring 
of the whole establishment in her active hands and willing heart, 
deserves more than thanks from all to whose wants and to whose 
whims she has uncomplainingly ministered. 

Doubtless at the Stella d'Oro or at the Croce Binuca we should 
have fallen in with the varied tide of human nature by which the ex- 
periences of the traveller are always so much enriched, but at the Ghe- 
dinas' not only did we have the advantage of the society of most agree- 
able compatriots, and of some English of the rarer and better sort, and 
of cultivated Germans, but we renewed our experience of what may 
be called the "absorptive" type of English tourist those who create 
every landscape before which they stand, whose presence fills every 
room into which they come, and whose ceaseless self-consciousness is 
an oppression to all about them. Surely, with all their faults, other 
nations do not inflict upon the modest travelling "vyorld the equals of 
these loud - talking, all -pervading, ever- prominent, and egregiously 
wooden persons. They are typical, but happily they are rare. It is 
but fair to say that they are as objectionable to their fellow-country- 
men as to others. Cortina was rich in examples of the type. The 
world can hardly furnish a grander road for driving or for walking 
than the Ampezzo highway from the mouth of the Val Grande to 
Cortina. It was recommended to one of these gentry as the best way 



CORTINA D'AMPEZZO. 



109 



home from an excursion. lie replied, in loud, leaden tones: "It is 
poorish business to walk on a highway, you know." Another had 
crossed the Fedaia Pass. It is one of the grand excursions of the 
Dolomites. He characterized it as " a remarkably jolly pass," and he 
had "made" it in an hour less than Ball's time. This was all that he 
had to say about it, but he was voluminous on the subject of a mistake 




FEESOO ON THE OUTSIDE OK THE AQUILA NEB A. 



concerning his boots, and a "thorough-going raw" on his heel. He 
reappeared at intervals during several days, and we were kept ad- 
vised as to the condition of his " raw." Instances might be multi- 
plied, but these will suffice. 

Two of the brothers Ghedina are artists of considerable merit. 
Across the street from the hotel is a "Dependence" containing a 



110 TYIKH.. .IM> THE SKIRT OF THE ALPS. 

dozen or more rooms. The outside of this building, which is new, is 
being entirely and very artistically frescoed the front with very good 
allegorical pictures after the manner of Kaulbach, and the south side 
with really excellent representations of Tyrolean domestic life. Here 
and there, in out-of-the-way places, appear various smaller pictures, 
one room being decorated with clever imitations of framed photo- 
graphs, line engravings, and cheap chromos a whimsical conceit 
capitally carried out. 

The people of Cortina are simple, industrious, and obviously cheer- 
ful and contented. Like all mountaineers, they are to the last degree 
hard-working. From early dawn until the last ray of daylight every 
one seems to be at work. The commune includes a number of small 
villages or hamlets of a few houses each, scattered about among the 
hills, many of them high up at the end of steep, rough roads hardly 
passable for the smallest vehicles. The farm-houses of which these 
hamlets are made up are large and evidently populous, and the barns 
are often detached. Already, early in September, with many of the 
crops still to be harvested, they seemed full to overflowing. 

The whole country, at least wherever I traversed it, is covered with 
a thick peaty soil, winch holds water like a sponge. In many places 
even grain in sheaves is not cured on the ground, but hung upon the 
forks of poles cut with the branches projecting, and standing in rows 
at the edges of the fields. Large crops are grown of what in England 
is called the horse-bean tall -growing stalks, with pods along their 
sides. Even these cannot be cured on the ground; they are tied in 
bundles, which are hung in pairs over long poles, racks of which, 
twenty or thirty feet high and equally long, are an accompaniment 
of every barn, sometimes standing independently, supported by high 
poles, and sometimes resting on brackets built out from the front of 
the structure. Much of the land is so steep that I found difficulty 
in crossing it. From such fields the crops are removed in coarse linen 
sheets, making huge bundles, which are carried home on the heads of 
the people. 

As many women as men are seen at work in the fields, and they 
do all manner of work equally, save that the ploughing and mowing 
are more often done by men, and the hoeing and reaping by women. 



CORTLSA D'AMPEZZO. Ill 

The frugality of their lives is equal to their industry; and with a 
fertile soil and a ready market, it is easy to understand the substantial 
prosperity which, for people of their class, is everywhere conspicuous. 
Their methods of life and work differ greatly from our own; their 
implements are rude and clumsy; their cattle are poor, cows being 
generally worked in the yoke; and it is easy to see many ways in 
which our example might be followed with great advantage. "With 
a predilection, however, for village life for an agricultural people, I 
believe that, making allowance fur their inferior education, the people 
in the villages about Cortina are more cheerful and contented than 
those of the corresponding class with us. 

I have already referred to the accidents which occasionally befall 
workers upon the very steep mountain -sides of Tyrol. A very sad 
one occurred upon the day of our arrival at Cortina. A mother and 
her daughter and a young man were working in a hay -field which 
sloped steeply down to the edge of a precipice five or six hundred 
feet high. The mother slipped, but was arrested by a slight obstruc- 
tion ; the young man succeeded in reaching her, and might have saved 
her, but the child, becoming excited, hastened to them, fell, and carried 
them both with her over the fatal brink. 

The approaches to the Ampezzo Valley from the north and west 
are over high passes, or through narrow defiles of the wildest and most 
rugged character, so that on arriving at Cortina from either direction 
one does not at first realize the splendor of its surroundings. 

The enclosing mountains are in such harmony in their grandeur, 
the valley itself is so smiling and peaceful, and the town is so distant 
from the immediate hill-tops, that the views are less striking than at 
Campitello or Caprile. Gilbert and Churchill, on the occasion of 
their first visit, passed but a single night here, and only recognized 
after they had left, the fact that they had passed unnoticed the grand- 
est combination of the dolomite peaks. So far as one could judge 
from simple appearance, the base of Monte Tofana was not half a 
mile from our windows. It is really more than two miles away, with 
a sturdy mountain and a deep valley intervening. A man on its sum- 
mit cannot be seen with a strong field-glass. A long walk toward it 



112 



TYROL, ASD THE SKIRT OF THE ALPS. 



soon tells the tale of its distance, and the distance reveals its stupen- 
dous height. Still farther away are the Cinque Torre and the Croda 
del Lago; and Antelao, which seems almost to peer over our shoulders, 
is ten miles distant. Every excursion that one makes and every dif- 
ferent view obtained widens and lifts the horizon, until, after a few 

days' acquaintance, the surround- 
ings of Cortina impress the im- 
agination as does no other part 
of the dolomite region. 

O 

The social travel- 
ler will find his best 



entertainment, 





especially for 
a short stay, at one of 
the hotels in the town ; 
but one " whose hab- 
its are studious and 
lonely" might prefer 
the pretty little bath- 
house (Ghedina's) nestled away among the trees at the mouth of a 
mountain valley two miles from Cortina. Its lower story is a little 
Italian grist-mill, whose rumbling wheels and stones and whose foam- 
ing brook sing a constant soothing lullaby. The upper story, with 
generous bath-rooms, tidy sleeping-rooms, and shaded galleries under 



JKO-NTK ANTELAO. 



CORTINA D'AMPEZZO. 113 

the broad roof, is little frequented by strangers, and the dense woods 
and steep hills are close at hand. The younger Ghedina's ready pen- 
cil has been busy all over the house, inside and out. It is from the 
neighborhood of this house that the best view is obtained of Monte 

o 

Antelao, the highest mountain in sight from the Ampezzo Valley, and 
second only to the Marmolata. In the foreground is a little Alpine 
village, with its board-roofed crucifix. 

"Over the hills and far away" to the south-west, in the valley of 
rich and beautiful Cordevole, lies the Italian village of Caprile, less com- 
fortable and attractive than Cortina, but a capital centre for many ex- 
cursions. Its dominant mountain is the Civita. Near it is the new- 
formed lake of Alleghe, created only in 1771 by the tumbling in of 
a great corner of Monte Pezza, burying two entire villages in the dead 
of night, and drowning two others in the suddenly dammed flood of 
the river. A few months later another slide falling into the lake drove 
great waves far up the shore, and worked even more destruction to 
property, if not to life. Where formerly all was activity and fertility 
and industry and frugal domestic happiness there is now only a sea 
of placid water, breathing no whisper of the vast calamity a beauti- 
ful mountain lake, delighting the eye with the images of the smiling 
fields and dark woods and gray peaks in whose lap it lies. Like the 
Bergfall of the Taufers Thai only a few weeks since, and the great 
land-slide of Santa Croce centuries ago, the formation of Lake Alleghe 
instances the hazard attending the life and industry of these high- 
walled valleys. 

One of the most serious drawbacks of travel lies in the need of 
leaving, perhaps forever, the new-found charms of so many halting- 
places. To pass all September and the early weeks of October among 
the dolomite Alps seemed far more attractive than the further wan- 
dering and the rough voyage to which we were destined ; but the des- 
tiny was fixed, and we must leave Cortina. Happily our smooth road- 
way led ever on among these glorious mountains, and Cadore, with 
its beauty and its associations, lacked nothing of the interest, nor, in 
its way. of the charm, of the higher valleys we had left. 

Mrs. Edwards says: "For myself, looking back in memory across 

8 



Ill 



TYROL, AND THE SKIRT OF THE ALPS. 




JIV1TA ANI> LAKE AI.I.KUI1K. 



interven- 
ing sea of 

peaks and pass- 
es which lies between Bozen and 
Cortina, I am inclined to place 
the Ampezzo Dolomites in the 
very first rank both as regards 
position and structure. The 
mountains of Primiero are more 
extravagantly wild in outline, the 
Marmelata carries more ice and 
snow, the Civita is more beau- 
tiful, the solitary giants of the 
Seisser Alp are more imposing; 



CORTINA D'AMPEZZO. 115 

but taken as a group, I know nothing, whether for size, variety, or 
picturesqueness, to equal that great circle which, within a radius of 
less than twelve miles from the doors of the Aquila Nera, includes 
the Pelmo, Antelao, Marmarole, Croda Malcora, Cristallo, and Tofana." 
My own retrospection of a much more limited experience confirms 
Mrs. Edwards's judgment Comparing Cortina not only with other 
dolomite regions, but with all the crowd of charming and beautiful 
corners of Tyrol, and with the grandest of its other mountains, it seems 
to me facile princeps. Neither have I found elsewhere such a combi- 
nation of qualities which invite to a longer acquaintance. 



116 TIROL, JAD THE SKIRT OF THE ALPS. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

THE ASCENT OF MONTE TOFANA. 

I HAD had serious misgivings since writing as I did about peak- 
climbing. It was obviously presumptuous in one who had only made 
the ascent of Mount Washington in an omnibus to question a prac- 
tice which has so many intelligent devotees. The gentle climb to the 
Coll di Rondella, and its charming uplook to the great dolomite peaks, 
had added to my apprehension that I had overstepped the limits of 
good judgment, if not of good taste; for surely, if this moderate ele- 
vation could so magnify the grandeur of the surrounding mountains, 
it seemed possible that a still higher position might increase the effect 
in like proportion. If so, then mountain-climbing must be its own 
exceeding great reward. 

O C7 

It was no easy matter to convince myself of the prudence of un- 
dertaking a task of such notorious difficulty. With limbs untrained 
to up-hill work, with lungs gauged by long residence to the sea-level 
scale, with more pounds avoirdupois than any " Bergf u'lirer " or Alpine 
Club man that I had seen in Tyrol, and with no consuming ambition 
for the cragsman's exploits, the weight of the argument would have 
been strongly against the attempt, but for that unfortunate paragraph, 
which made it a matter of honor for me to try what I had questioned, 
and to make open confession if the event should prove me wrong. 
The conviction came slowly but surely that, despite all drawbacks, I 
must at least make an earnest attempt to get to the top of a high 
mountain. 

The beautiful pergola where I now write, opens north, east, and 
west upon one of the loveliest of valleys, a valley shut in by Cristallo, 
Antelao, Croda Malcora, Monte Pehno, the Rochetta, the Becco di Mez- 
zodi, Monte Gtisella, Monte Xuvolau, and Monte Tofana, the noblest 



THE ASCENT OF MONTE TOFANA. 



117 




CiMJUK TOBBE AUD NUVALAC. 



group of Tyrolean peaks. The 
triple head of Monte Tofana 
challenges the carrying out of 
my growing resolution. Seven 
of the surrounding mountains 
named above are over 10,000 
feet high (Antelao, 10,890). The I 
middle peak of Tofana is 10,724 
feet above the sea. 

Ball says that its ascent is " for the practised mountaineer one of 
the most attractive expeditions to be made in this district." Baedek- 
ker says, " The ascent of the higher mountains requires experience ; 
that which best repays the fatigue is Monte Tofana." Amthor calls 
it " schwer." On the whole, it seemed that, should I succeed in mak- 
ing this ascent, I should have done my whole duty, and the decision 
was definitely fixed. Late one night, when the bright starlight follow- 
ing a week of beautiful September weather gave good promise for the 
morrow, I sent for Giuseppe Ghedina, who had been recommended by 
a friend as a skilful and judicious guide, and arranged for the expo- 



118 TYROL, ASD THE SKIRT OF THE ALPS. 

dition. Diligent Filomena, of the Aquila Xera, undertook the prepa- 
ration of supplies with an air which savored the least in the world of 
donbt as to the result of my effort. I asked the landlord whether 
there was any difficulty about my making the ascent, and he asked 
whether I had ever made a " Bergpartie " before. My negative an- 
swer was met with an involuntary shrug of the shoulders, and brought 
no other reply. The guide said that I could at least go a part of 
the way. With these doubtful assurances, I went early and not alto- 
gether confidently to bed. 

We were to start at half-past three, and I was called at three. By 
way of economizing my untried forces, I had engaged a mule for the 
first two hours and a half; and here a saddle-mule implies a man to 
lead it. I had provided myself overnight with a sturdy glass of milk, 
with a dash of Cayenne pepper, to begin the day. In the kitchen of 
the hotel I found the cook well advanced with her day's work, coffee 
and hot milk ready, and Kaisersemmeln freshened in the oven so the 
usual Tyrolean breakfast was added to the milk. Then came a delay 
about eggs. Giuseppe could not find them among the abundant prov- 
ender, lie advised waiting until a supply of ten could be boiled. 
These being ready, it was found that Filomena had already furnished 
four a number which lie regarded as entirely insignificant. In his 
search he had mistaken them for a package of salt. All being ready, 
he slung his "Rucksack" containing the food and two bottles of 
wine. On top of this was strapped an ominous coil of half-inch rope 
some fifty feet long, and three pairs of heavy sharp-pointed iron cram- 
pons, the whole weighing about twenty pounds. Over his shoulder he 
carried a short iron-pointed alpenstock, with an ice-pick at its upper 
end. A second alpenstock was carried by the mule-leader. 

We set out at four o'clock. It was still quite dark, no gleam of 
dawn appearing in the sky, which, studded with stars, was only less 
black than the high mountains whose serrated edges were cut in sharp 
silhouette against it. Two black pedestrians and one black man on a 
black mule were hardly distinguishable between the black house fronts 
along the main street of Cortina. The stars shone brightly over the 
gray roadway, and far away to the south, over the crest of the Croda 
Malcora, Jupiter twinkled with weird green light. We were soon 



THE ASCEXT OF MONTE TOP AX A. 119 

climbing a country road, past farm -houses and barns and running 
fountains, through fields studded with rows of wheat-sheaves or redo- 
lent witli the odor of half-cured hay. As we crept up the side of the 
valley the great gleam of the morning-star came suddenly over the 
sharp mountain-top, big and brilliant, like a fire-balloon just launched 
from the crest of Sorapis. 

Little by little the gray dawn, which had already lighted the sum- 
mit of Tofaua, touched one after another the edges of the crags, and 
poured slowly over into the valley, picking out its whitened house 
fronts, and gradually defining the breaks and gorges in its rocks. Star 
after star faded from view, until Venus alone was left shining over 
the hills. Lights sparkled here and there from the scattered houses, 
the varied hum of awakening day came up from the valley, and the 
whole hill-side was filled with the music of tinkling bells as the cattle 
and sheep roused to their morning grass. The steady droning flow of 
gossip between my Italian attendants suggested no ideas to interrupt 
my morning reverie, and my thoughts naturally turned to the expedi- 
tion on which I was bent. The outlook was entirely changed. 

Under the stimulus and excitement of the early start, and the 
charm of unfamiliar daybreak, I came to take a new view of moun- 
taineering. I could well imagine that no occupation of a manly life, 
save fox-hunting alone, could offer so much of what a vigorous and 
sound-bodied man should enjoy. Climbing slowly and steadily up the 
steep bridle-path toward a peak which only the sturdiest and most 
patient effort could reach, I felt for the moment how puerile had been 
my earlier conceptions, and I was ready to enroll myself as a perma- 
nent member of the stalwart band of Alpine climbers. 

Two hours and a half brought us to the foot of the steep mass of 
debris which filled the gorge of the mountain to a height of over three 
thousand feet above us. It was now broad day, but the gorge was 
shaded from the morning sun. The mule and leader were dismissed, 
my poncho \vas strapped to Ghedina's rucksack, I took the alpenstock, 
and we started stoutly up the steep mass of large stones which had 
rolled down over the gravel, and piled themselves up as a buttress 
against it. This passed, we struck the finer drift a loose mass of 
stones, precisely such as are used for macadamizing roads,, angular 



120 TYROL, AXD THE SKIRT OF THE ALPS. 

and sharp, but with a remarkable facility of movement. Indeed, it 
has adjusted itself at the angle where its movement ceases, and it 
needs only the slightest impulse to set it moving again, so that each 
step up was followed by a downward slip, and the miles of advance 
needed to take us over that single mile of our way can be measured 
only by the strained muscles and the deep and quickened breath they 
entailed. 

Here, as throughout the whole ascent, the view was by no means 
what one would imagine. One's eyes were bent alone upon the next 
spot where foothold must be found. At constantly shortening inter- 
vals, as the toil accumulated, and as the air grew lighter, it became 
necessary to halt and sit, pant and take breath. Two hours of hard, 
monotonous, weary, breathless toil took us to a point, still far below 
the top of the slide, where foothold could be gained, on a narrow 
ledge of sharp rocks running up at its side. 

It was curious to notice how, during the course of this task the 
hardest labor (not compulsory) that man can undertake the enthu- 
siasm which had overtaken me while in the saddle had oozed away. 
It gradually gave place to a conviction that he who would thus apply 
the severest physical effort of which his nature is capable must be 
actuated by some higher and stronger motive than I had in my wild- 
est anticipations connected with the achievement I had attempted. 
But for that instinct which leads us not to turn back when once the 
plough is set in its furrow, I fear that I might have abandoned the 
project, and left the top of Tofana food for my imagination alone. 
But the motive which impels us to pursue to the bitter end a self- 
imposed task prevailed. 

We had started up the drift at half-past six, and it was now nearly 
nine. Two hours more would bring us to the top. ' 

I now learned the use of the rope. One of its ends was tied se- 
curely round my waist, the other forming a noose over Ghedina's 
shoulder. The primary object was for security against a fall, most 
of the length being coiled and held in the guide's hand. But as my 
knees grew weak, and as my breath grew short almost to gasping, then 
I would sit on the sharp edge of the fractured cliff, brace myself with 
the alpenstock against some crevice below, clutch with the other hand 



THE ASCENT OF MONTE TOFANA. 121 

a sharp corner of stone above, and wait until Ghedina had paid out 
the whole length of the rope, and fixed himself in some secure po- 
sition above me. Then he would gradually toll me up with a steady 
and friendly pull, cautioning me how to step, how to plant my prod, 
and how to test the crackled rock before I trusted myself to hold by 
it. A wonderful help was that rope a moral and yet a physical help 
too. It showed how nearly I had come to the end of my force that 
so slight an added impulse should make such vast difference in my 
progress and in the husbanding of my wind. The regular intermitting 
of the work, too, and the considerable pauses, were a great help. The 
progress was not less, and the ease was much greater. No, not ease. 
Heaven forbid that I should use that word anywhere in this connec- 
tion ! I mean simply that the actual muscular, synovial, cardiac, and 
pulmonary suffering was abated. 

A hard half-hour of this "ride-and-tie" business brought us to the 

o 

first low crest, or Joch, between two peaks. Here, so far as I was able 
to divert my attention from the various unusual manifestations of my 
own person ears crackling, limbs trembling, mouth parched, every 
vein throbbing, and every pore perspiring I became conscious of the 
most majestic surroundings. Not only the Val Travernenze, which 
opened amidst the wildest turmoil of distorted mountain-sides before 
us, and the enormous glacier which fills the vast hollowed slope of the 
Marmolata, but almost equally the immediate mountain-sides behind 
us, under which we had crept, intent only upon the ground beneath 
our feet, would, observed in a serener mood, justify one's highest imag- 
ination of mountain wildness and grandeur. They impress me more 
in recollection than they did in the actual but disturbed observation. 

No time could be spared for sights by the way-side, however im- 
posing, and we pressed on, now on a narrow ledge at the side of a 
precipice at what would have been a giddy height had the attention 
not been fixed upon foot-hold and hand-hold at every step. Indeed, it 
seems to me that herein lies the safety of the mountain climber's work. 
He must be unconscious of all that is above and of all that is below 
him, holding his attention closely to his immediate surroundings, so 
that the sense of elevation is lost. We came out later upon a crest 
from which there was a vast slope of debris reaching down to the edge 



TYROL, AXD THE SKIRT OF THE ALPS. 

of a precipice far. below, and stretching on before us to the wide and 
steep glacier which fills the northern slope below the twin peaks. 
Here came the most disheartening part of the trip. After all onr toil- 
some and weary struggle upward, it seemed more than discouraging to 
have to go six or eight hundred feet lower down to reach the foot of 
the glacier, from which point only we could make the final ascent. 
Fortunately the debris was tolerably firm, and in spite of the precipice 
to which it led, the passage was not especially dangerous. The emo- 
tions with which I looked back up our steep oblique track, and thought 
of the return, were anything but cheering. 

At the end of this part of the route lay a patch of hard snow some 
twenty feet wide, in which the guide had to chop footholds as we 
progressed. The glacier is in shape like a section of a funnel, thirty 
feet wide at the base, six or eight hundred feet wide at the top, and 
perhaps a thousand feet high. It is quite regularly curved laterally, is 
crossed by several crevasses of little width, and is spotted with stones 
which have rolled on to it from the rocks above. We drank copiously 
of the cold stream which flows out below it, and about which the rocks 
were all covered with a thin film of ice. Crossing the stream, and 
climbing up the far side of the gorge through which it runs, we halted 
to adjust the crampons. These are stout iron frames reaching from 
the middle of the heel to the ball of the foot, with a sharp spike three- 
quarters of an inch long at each corner, and with a stout loop turned 
up at each side of the foot. Through these loops a strap is passed, 
and this is bound over the instep, in my case with the utmost strength 
of Ghed ina's wiry fingers and strong teeth. Those of my readers who 
skated in the old days of rude strapping will understand the energy 
with which I protested against the severity of his work. But he in- 
sisted that absolute tightness was essential to safety, and I accepted 
this further infliction of pain with trained submission. 

We now. began the steep ascent of the glacier, the process being to 
strike the point of the alpenstock into a firm hold, then to advance one 
foot and make sure that its crampon was fast fixed in the ice, then to 
advance the alpenstock again, and then the other foot. This continued 
for twenty minutes, with an occasional halt for breath, and with a con- 
stant wounding of the feet by the tightly bound straps. In spite of 



THE ASCEXT OF MOXTE TOFAXA. 123 

the tightness, one of my irons came loose, and we had to stop in mid- 
ice to readjust it, this time without regard to protests. I had listened 
with curious interest to the jingling of those irons throughout the 
morning. I had inspected their long sharp points, and had looked 
forward with some impatience to the moment when they should be 
added to my experiences. I have not often felt such real pleasure as 
I did when we came .again upon the hard rock, and they were removed. 
I will not say that when Ghedina tucked them away under a stone by 
the path-side. I hoped that he would not be able to find them again ; 
but even their loss would not have been entirely without compensation. 

Such pleasure and elation as I felt from treading again upon terra 
firma soon yielded as the further climbing began. It is not worth 
while to describe it. It only lasted about forty minutes, panting spells 
included, and much of my upward course was steadied, if not assisted, 
by the kindly tension of the stout arm at the other end of the rope. 

At last we came to a point where the strata of the mountain are 
crumbled by the sharp angle at which they were bent. It is as though 
the finger-point of a Titan had been pressed up under the stiff leaves 
of this great volume of geologic history, raising them to a peak and 
cracking them at the bend. 

The air had become very light, and the breathing induced by such 
exertion grew painful. Three thousand feet below, the nostrils had 
become too small, and the open mouth had to help to pump in the 
needed supply. Lips, tongue, palate, and throat were parched and 
tired. We halted only fifty feet below the peak. Had it been a hun- 
dred feet, f faith I fear I should have failed to reach it ; at fifty feet 
I did reach it the absolute top. Ghedina began to discourse upon 
the many distant peaks within sight. I begged him to wait. The air 
was perfectly clear, and not at all cold, the breeze only fresh. Being 
warm and exhausted, I threw the poncho over my shoulders, took the 
coiled rope for an arm rest, and stretched out over a sloping couch of 
precisely the composition one sees in a stone -breaker's half -finished 
heap at the roadside. I have had few so restful half-hours as that 
passed on this unsybaritic bed. Ghedina gave me a tumbler of wine. 
I drank a single swallow, took the glass from my lips, looked in vague 
and half-unconscious wonder over the billowy clouds resting in a shel- 



124 TYROL, AND THE SKIRT OF THE ALPS. 

tered valley below, and was startled from my sleep by spilling the 
wine over my other hand. That was all probably not fifteen seconds 
but it gave the mysterious change which comes only with absolute 
sleep. The blood coursed with a quieter impulse; the eye became 
steadier, and the brain clearer. I was able to give attention to the 
details of all that one sees from a mountain-top. 

The long road of the Ampezzo Valley looked like narrow bobbin 
trailed over the dark green fields and among the specks of houses. 
Cortina, three miles and a half distant by the line of sight, looked, 
through the clear air, like a toy village out of a wooden box. We fan- 
cied that with the strong glass we saw a man in its streets. The bell 
calling the people to mid-day mass rang clear in our ears. 

Except for this little stretch of inhabited valley, all else was an un- 
meaning mass of distorted rock, desolate, cruel, Dantesque, incoherent 
chaos, without expression, without interest, and without charm. The 
great peaks of Eastern Switzerland, the sharp point of the Oertler, the 
Oetzthal group, the Stubaier Ferner, the Grosser Venediger, the Gross 
Glockner, and the peaks of the Carinthian and Illyrian Alps, stretch- 
ing over more than two hundred miles of the horizon from west to 

o 

east, were all in clear view, all near, and all low. Their height barely 
brought them into the plane of vision. They and the great ice-field of 
the Marmolata all seemed lower than Tofana itself. And Tofana had 
lost its majesty. Seen from below, it was sublime. Conquered by the 
toiling tread of two insignificant men, it became mere stone beneath 
our feet. 

We stayed at the summit an hour and a half, I wrapped in extra 
clothing, the hardy Ghedina with his coat off and his breast bare, as 
unconcerned as though he had only mowed his swath through a hay- 
field. Inserted in a crevice of the rock is a wide -mouthed bottle, 
corked with a stone, containing a roll of papers bearing the names of 
those who have made the ascent. It is uninterestino- to those who have 

O 

added their own names to the list, and unknown to the rest of the 
world. 

The descent, at first easy, soon involved the previous trials taken in 
the inverse direction. Going down the glacier, the crampons hurt dif- 
ferently, but they hurt equally. Climbing from the foot of the glacier 



THE ASCEXT OF MONTE TOFANA. 125 

(o the crest of the lower pass called for a renewed exercise of a strength 
that was already worn and overtaxed. 

From near this pass the descent is directly down the slide, a steep 
and endless incline of sharp road metal. At first it is novel and inter- 
esting, this quick descent. The angular gravel lies on a pitch at which 
its movement barely stops. Set in motion again by any cause, it slips 
and rattles and rolls as though it would go to the very bottom of the 
valley. Standing upon it and bearing heavily backward against the 
alpenstock whose point is buried in it, a slight movement of the feet 
sets the mass rolling. Faster and faster it goes, deeper and deeper 
sink the feet, until the very mountain-side moves like a stream of bro- 
ken stone and carries us along with it. When the feet are buried 
more than ankle-deep, when the shoes are filled with sharp pebbles, 
and when the speed becomes too great for safety, we step aside and 
stand until the avalanche is stilled, and then begin a new movement 
on a fresh course. Occasionally we come upon an accumulation of 
larger and firmer stones, over which it is necessary to walk. After en- 
durance had ceased to be a virtue, I would take off my shoes and pour 
out the accumulated geological specimens which had made even rest- 
ing a penance. By the time we had reached the point where the mule 
had been left now about two o'clock I was convinced that the only 
reason why the coming down a mountain is not so bad as the going up 
is that it takes less time. 

Here, sitting under the shade of the first fir-trees, and somewhat 
suffused with the satisfaction that comes of the finishing of a serious 
task, I was able to regard this face of To f ana in a friendly spirit. 
Viewed as mere rock-work, the steep-walled sides of this the entrance 
hall, and the majestic crest beyond it, are probably unsurpassed by any- 
thing that Nature has done in her sternest stone-building mood. There 
is nothing fantastic, but there is a grandeur and solidity and directness 
of purpose which seemed to me to ally this great pile of rectangular 
strata more closely with the work of the pigmy architects than any 
other rocks of this region. If I might offer a word of guidance to 
those who are led to visit this mountain, especially those who have 
seen its opposite side from the Coll di Rondella, it would be to come 
here to this foot of the great avalanche of stone, to this last reach of 



126 TYROL, AND THE SKIRT OF THE ALPS. 

the hardy fir, and fill the soul and the memory full with the stupen- 
dous masses and the marvellous colors of these great bastions ; to con- 
template from below, and from below only, that rising stretch of deso- 
late, helpless, impending debris, and the noble crags which tower above 
it, and then, unwearied and not disenchanted, to go back over the well- 
grown slope and through the sunny fields to cheery Cortina. 

Of my further descent I will only say that all the miles of down- 
hill walking, added to the down-hill climbing, made by far the severest 
strain upon the hold-back part of my harness to which it was ever sub- 
jected. I hailed with pleasure the steep little hill which rises from the 
bridge over the Boita to the main street of the village. 

At five o'clock I sat down to beer and tranquil tobacco and entire 
rest. The questions and the interest of friends kept me from sleep- 
ing, and little by little the more acute sensations subsided in my joints. 
Later, food and a long night's sleep, and, above all, the pure and in- 
vigorating air of this enchanted vallev, restored me to the condition 

o cr ' */ / 

of a sore and stiffened but a rested and cheerful being. 

I would not give up my recollection of this ascent for the price of 
a first-rate hunter, but I would not make it again for the finest horse 

/ O 

that ever followed hounds. 



TO THE MESrRlXA ALP. 



CHAPTER XV. 

TO THE MESURINA ALP. 

THE best-rewarded excursion that I made was eastward over the 
Tre Croce Pass, a high saddle between the Croda Malcora and Monte 
Cristallo, two thousand feet higher than Cortina. Here is a little hos- 
pice for the shelter of storm-overtaken travellers a rude stone hut, 
with a hearth and chimney in one corner. Though the day was warm, 
I could not resist the temptation to gratify a passion inherited from 
boyhood, and build a roaring fire with the dried pine boughs with 
which the floor was strewn. 

Mistaking the directions of the guide-book, I made a needless steep 
ascent and immediate descent of an extra thousand feet, being reward- 
ed, however, with a rich harvest of wild flowers, with which the little 
alp at the summit is studded in great variety. 

In many excursions and along many roadsides we were constantly 
struck with the rich masses of September flowers, and especially with 
the great preponderance of every shade of blue. The greenish-gray 
Edelweiss and the red Alpen llosen are the typical Alpine flowers, 
but we found their blue sisters in far greater abundance, among them 
many varieties of gentian, but none so beautiful as our own fringed 
one. 

Another hour's hard tramp brought me to the Mesurina Alp, a vast 
open pasture surrounded by fir woods, and these by the great mountain- 
peaks, stretching down at its northern end to the pretty little Mesurina 
Lake. Two hundred and fifty cows were jingling their bells and feed- 
ing over its short green grass. They were a very pretty and pictur- 
esque herd, almost universally of a solid gray color, with black muzzles 
and switches. Could they be baptized as Jerseys and sent to England, 
their color would make their fortune. They had little else to recom- 



TYROL, AXD THE SKIRT OF THE ALPS. 

mend them. Like all the cows of this region, and of Tyrol generally, 
they are thin, without the evidence of great milking to justify their 
thinness. A good ndder is rarely seen, or, in fact, a good cow. At 
the upper side of the pasture an enormous octagonal shed, the outer 




S^ 



Ml r-l l:lN V LAKE \M> THE UEE1 /.INNKN. 



wall of which is of stone masonry and very high, furnishes shelter for 
this entire herd, and encloses an open yard where all may lie comfort- 
ably in the sun. 

The chalet of the establishment is a large, low, rambling, dingy stone 



TO THE MESURIXA ALP. 129 

house, given over mainly to buttery and cheese-room. At one corner 
a low-walled room about twelve by eighteen feet, running up into a 
high roof, is the living-room of the cow-herds and dairy-men. Abroad 
low shelf surrounding the room serves as a seat by day and as a couch 
at night. In the middle of the floor, on the rough stone hearth, a wood 
lire boils a large kettle in which the polenta (hasty-pudding) the sole 
food of these men, except skimmed milk is cooked. The open door 
and one very small unglazed window furnish the only entrance for 
light and air and the only exit for smoke, the rafters and shingles of 
the roof being black as coal. They gave me a two-quart kettle of 
milk to drink, and entertained themselves with an interested criticism 
of my dress, but this in low-voiced Italian, lest it should give offence. 
I gave twenty kreutzers (less than nine cents) for my entertainment, 
which boundless liberality opened their hearts, and they took me over 
the whole dingy establishment. By far the larger part of the house 
is occupied by the drying-room, where several tons of Schweitzer and 
Parmesan cheese were spread out upon shelves. The cheese was 
good, but the butter, of which at least half a ton was on hand await- 
ing shipment, was anything but inviting. 

Should any of my readers happen to have a moderate capital, agri- 
cultural tastes, and delicate lungs, I commend to his attention the ex- 
ploitation of this high-lying and beautiful alp, sheltered on all sides by 
great dolomite mountains. 

A mile beyond the chalet, at the edge of the lake, stands a little 
Italian inn, well known to travellers among these hills for its stock of 
capital Asti wine, its hard gray bread, and wholesome cheese and 
nothing else save dirt and smoke and dismal discomfort. However, 
with such a lake as the Mesurina, and such peaks as Monte Piano and 
the Drei Zinuen, and such a great fringe of fir and weird mountain- 
top, and such wine as Asti, the pedestrian may well be content. 

Following the shorter direct road, I came into Cortina at dusk, lit- 
erally unfatigued, after a walk of twenty-seven miles, including a climb 
of three thousand feet, and much steep up-and-down work among the 
foot-hills. This, be it understood, was on the second day after climbing 
Tofana. It indicated better than anything else could the great value 
of the air of these mountains as a help to bodily exercise ; for I am 

9 



130 TYROL, J.VZ) THE SKIRT OF THE ALPS. 

not a practised walker, being rarely afoot an hour out of the twenty- 
four. Delicate persons with whom we conversed say that here, in the 
absence of oppressive heat, and in the exhilarating atmosphere, they 
find themselves tempted to constant exercise, and vastly benefited by 
it. Being of sound body, I cannot myself speak from the invalid point 
of view, hut I found myself constantly stimulated for severe work 
which at home I should slum even in the finest weather. 

Before taking leave of the Dolomites it may be useful to refer to 
the theories concerning their formation, still a moot question among 
geologists. The weight of the argument seems to favor the conclusion 
of Baron Richthofen, that they are the work of coral insects, formed 
upon the lower rocks at the bed of a deep salt sea, and raised by slow 
upheaval to their present elevation. lie bases his hypothesis upon the 
correspondence of their forms and their surroundings with what is 
known concerning the coral reefs of the Pacific, the isolation of /their 
masses from other corresponding formations, the improbability of their 
peculiar shapes being due to meteoric denudation, the undisturbed 
beds beneath them and occasionally above them, and the very unequal 
thickness of the deposit at different points an inequality in which it 
would seem that the other rocks in their neighborhood would have 

o 

shared had it been due to erosive or atmospheric action. 



FROM THE Gil EAT PEAKS TO THE LAG USES. 131 



CHAPTER XVI. 

FROM THE GREAT PEAKS TO THE LAGUNES. 

WE were sleeping at the very Italian Albergo di Cadore, at Tai, 
ten minutes' walk from Pieve di Cadore, higher up in the hills. There, 
in a dingy little stone house, now occupied by uncleanly peasants, its 
floors begrimed with dirt and its ceilings blackened with smoke, the 
great Venetian, Tiziano Vecellio, four hundred years ago entered upon 
his illustrious life. The outer wall bears -the inscription : 

NEL MCCCCLXXVII 
FRA QUESTE VMILI MURA 

TIZIANO VECELLIO 

VENE A CELEBRE VITA 

DONDE VSCOVA GIA PRESSO A CENTO ANNO 

IN VENEZIA 

ADDI XXVII AGOSTO 

MDLXXVI 

A longer life of industrious labor has not been led in modern 
times, and the world is still glorious with his work. 

We were roused before the first gleam of day. Over the black, 
fir-clad hills peered the weird moon-lit peaks of the Antelao, Marina- 
role, Pelmo, and Civita. Against the dark woods the face of the cam- 
panile and the scattered house fronts stood white and clear. The river 
rolled far below us tji rough a dark mysterious cleft, toward which 
wound the white Ampezzo road. 

By the time that the gray light of morning had filled the sky, and 
thrown the morn-light into shadow and bathed the mountain-tops in a 
rosy glow, we were comfortably packed away in our little Einspanner 
and rolling out of the town. In our day's drive we were to descend 
nearly three thousand feet. The mountains were high and steep, and 



132 TYROL, ASD THE SKIRT OF THE ALPS. 

the valleys were deep and dark. The road now clung to the hill-sides, 
no\v crossed high arches of line masonry, now zigzagged back and 
forth down the hill-side, or drove far up into a valley always descend- 
ing, but always gently always winding, and always protected at its 
outer side by mason-work. It often showed as a broad white bawd 
far below us, and often as a terrace borne upon strong arches above us. 
At every step and at every turn it brought into view new beauties and 
new marvels of these wonderful Dolomite walls. 

Through all this majesty, through the many stone-built and smoke- 
blackened villages, among the cheerful, graceful, much -soiled, and 
happy Italian people, the attention is always interested, but never 
more than by this great Austro-Italian highway itself, over which we 
roll as over a floor. It must have been more costly than any railroad, 
and its maintenance in its universally good condition must be a serious 
matter. A railroad gets over many natural difficulties by tunnelling, 
and this gives it a greater command over its grades. On a carriage 
road long tunnels are not admissible, and the grade has to be taken 
on such ground as offers itself. The Brenner road presented many 
engineering obstacles, and is a masterly work ; but the more sudden 
angles and deeper valleys of the Dolomite country offer greater difficul- 
ties, and this work, from Toblach to Conegliano, impressed me as the 
most interesting of its class that I have seen. It has the fault so com- 
mon in public roads of being too wide, generally about twenty-five feet. 
The used portion that which seems to contain all the wheel tracks, 
including turning out is rarely more than fifteen feet, and it need 
never be more. The remaining ten feet have to be kept free from 
weeds by hoeing. In many places fully ten feet of the width on one 
side or the other is occupied with heaps of road metal, proving that 
the remaining space is sufficient. It would, of course, have been 
cheaper in construction and maintenance to make a road fifteen feet 
wide with occasional bays for stone-breaking. 

The Piave, down whose valley our course lay, is a very consid- 
erable stream, winding through a broad bed of desolate gray stone 
brought down by the floods, a dismal setting for its beryl-colored wa- 
ters. It passes many villages built of the stone against whose solid 
masses they cling. Little fertile land is to be seen, and one wonders 



FROM THE GREAT PEAKS TO THE LAGUNES. 



133 



how the population, even with its obvious severe labor, subsists. The 
lumber-driving and the frequent saw-mills employ many men, and the 
constant rectification of the course of the river and the maintenance 
of the frequent shoots through which the logs are driven occupy many 
women with most arduous stone-carrying in baskets at their backs. 
Despite their hard life, they seem cheerful and careless and happy. 
The children gathering manure on the highway, and the women, with 
their busy distaffs, at the doorways, showed little evidence of absolute 




"THE WOMEN W1TU THEIR lil'UV DIUTAFF1S." 



poverty. Of beggars we saw very few. The children who followed 
the carriage, calling for kreutzers, begged from inclination rather than 
from necessity. 

Longarone, a large, dull town, where we breakfasted, had its streets 
filled with stands of beautiful fruit; but the land about it seemed bar- 
ren, and the reason for its beiiiij was not obvious. We were still in the 

o 

midst of dolomite mountains, but no longer among the great peaks. 



134 TYROL, AXD THE SKIRT OF THE ALPS. 

The characteristic forms of the hill-tops could still be traced, but they 
had come down beneath the extreme limit of vegetation, and were 
modified by the growth of trees, and by the more frequent action of 
freezing and thawing. 

Later, near I3.ellu.no, we left the swift-flowing Piave, and followed 
its long -abandoned original course through a valley which a great 
land-slip, possibly in prehistoric times, dammed to a height of six hun- 
dred feet, forcing the river to find exit through another gap in the 
mountains, and turning a part of its old bed into the broad bright blue 
lake of Santa Croce. The old lower valley of the Piave is fed with 
only the mountain rills which were formerly its insignificant branches. 
Here begins the little brook which, filling the basins of a series of 
little lakes, grows to a respectable stream by the time it leaves the 
hills at Serravalle, irrigates the rich meadows of Venetia, and pours 
into the Adriatic far to the east of the new mouth of the Piave. 

At the summit of the broad dam stands Fadalto a few houses 
and the little inn where we dined. It is a memorable inn, tidy in 
its appointments, and though thoroughly Italian, very passable as to its 
table. Its kitchen was the most picturesque and the prettiest that AVC 
had anywhere seen a long^ room with tables for the commoner guests, 
with huge whitewashed beams hung with shining utensils of embossed 

o o o 

copper, with a latticed screen, behind which the handsome and smiling 
and cleanly padrona herself prepared the food. It would have been a 
noticeable room without the great bay containing the huge hearth of 
the country, which was its chief feature. This hearth is a white mar- 
ble pedestal about twenty inches high and seven feet square, with its 
corners cut away. Its centre is of brick. On this burns a wood fire 
open on all sides. Above, a funnel of wood painted black, and as 
large as the hearth, gathers the smoke to the chimney. From its 
border there hangs a woollen curtain eight inches wide. The sides of 
the bay under the windows are furnished with a broad high seat, to 
which the edges cf the hearth serve as a footstool; under this are 
the wood-boxes. Enormous polished iron andirons and numerous cop- 
per vessels stand upon the hearth, a great black soup-kettle hanging 
from its chain completing the picture. A cosier nook for winter even- 
ing gossip could not be desired. 



FEOM THE GEE AT PEAKS TO THE LAGUXES. 



135 




, g m g 



Our journey, which liad begun at six, led us CHI through the lower- 
ing lulls, and finally out on to the fertile plain of Venetia, where the 
twin towns of Serravalle and Cenada, with their well-planted connect- 
ing allte and spacious half-way theatre and casino, brought us sudden- 
ly into an atmosphere all Italian, and where already our Tyrol Ein- 
spauner was regarded with curious interest. 

At half-past eight Jane and I were in a gondola, under the light of 
the full harvest-moon and a cloudless sky and breathless air, floating 
down the Grand Canal. 



136 TIROL, AND THE SKIRT OF THE ALPS. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

A MORNING IN THE STREETS OF VENICE. 

WE first touched the shore of modern civilization at Venice a 
shore washed by the waters of antiquity and of quaint provincialism, 
and strewn with the flotsam and jetsam of all times and of many 
strange peoples. It is an entirely new land to one who comes from 
the haunts of the simple Tyrolese. 

My rustic pen must refrain from a description of this sweet city 
of thesea. Where so many of the world's best artists have laid their 
smoothest verse and their most graceful periods in homage, no word 
of mine need seek a placf?. To the solemn, spell-bound spirit-city of 
the past I offer only the tribute of silent love and admiration. Its 
crumbling balconies and its slime-grown and water-lapped thresholds, 
the mellow glow of its over-ripe fa9ades, and the soft shimmer of its 
color-fed la<mnes, will attract and enchant the beautv-lovino- world 

O J / O 

without my help. 

One of its aspects, however, seems to me to have received inade- 
quate notice. Wreathed within the city of the canals and the gon- 
dolas, co-extensive with it, and growing from the same core of hu- 
manity, lies unobserved the quiet and hidden city of the streets a 
city full of strange people, busy with the indolence and unthrift of 
Italian daily life. 

Hoping to catch the first movement of the day, I went out at half- 
past six. In France it should have been quite two hours earlier, but 
here I struck the very beginning of the morning life. A sleepy and 
uncombed waiter was giving coffee to a few straggling guests on the 
Riva, drowsy fishermen were just hoisting their painted sails, and one 
after another the gondoliers of the Piazzetta were creeping from un- 
der their awnings and stretching their languid arms in regret for the 



A MO UN ING IN THE STREETS OF VENICE. 137 

ended night. About the steps of the Campanile, and in every shel- 
tered corner, beggars were still dreaming on the pavement The 
Piazza was piled here and there with the chairs and tables at which 
last night delegates from all nations had sat under the moonlight, 
sipping coffee and ices, and drinking in the mellow glory of the gold- 
en mosaic portals of San Marco. The pigeons, lineal descendants of 
Dandolo's carriers, were picking the last crumbs from the clean pave- 
ment, and broad day tilled the whole deserted square. 

Turning the corner of the church, and crossing the canal which 
passes under the Bridge of Sighs, I left the Venice of the gondola, 
and penetrated a labyrinth of narrow streets footways only, for no 
hoof ever awakens their echoes which led in and out among the 
houses and garden-walls ; up and down over narrow bridges ; into lit- 
tle squares where fruit-women -\vere setting up their stands, and where 
seedy men were taking morning cocktails of black coffee dnd brandy 
at the tables in front of the caffe ; to the doors of grand churches 
where matutinal women were attending mass; and into many a cul-de- 
sac whence the steps must be retraced. 

I met respectable middle-aged clerks, in well-worn black, who 
bought their morning papers and trudged on to their desks men who 
had come out from their own homes, and were going to their regular 
bread-winning work, whose round of life lies in this strange place, and 
whose familiar daily scenes are these marvels which we come so far 
to see men to whom the name America brings only vague suggestions 
of New York and Brazil. I think this impresses me more than any- 
thing else. To have a foreigner in the streets turn and look at me as 

O O 

though not he but I myself were the interesting object ; this is the 
most unsettling sight of all my seeings. 

Little by little business began to take possession of the streets. 
Bakers' shops and butchers' shops and fish-stalls were opened; the din 
of countless blacksmiths and coppersmiths filled the air at every turn, 
as though the making of locks and kettles and chimney-pots were the 
one usurping industry of the world ; loud-voiced women called all the 
people to come and partake of baked pumpkin, fresh and hot, and the 
melody of mingled street cries swelled to a chorus of supplication. 

Latelv risen maidens lowered baskets from their balconies, and 



138 



TYROL, AND THE SKIRT OF THE ALPS. 



fished up cat- meat, or bread, or onions, or other household supplies, 
lowered the coppers for payment, gathered their scanty raiment about 




II A I.OON Y .M A UK 1. 1 I Mi . 



them, and withdrew. The vend- 
er we knew him at the opera 
pocketed his money, tossed his 
load to his head, and yelled his 
noisy way down the alley. 



In the Piazza be- 
yond the TJialto, where 
early activity most 
centres, I took up a 
commanding position 



A MOnXIXG IX THE STREETS OF VENICE. 139 

at an out -of -door table, and ordered my "white coffee" and bread- 
and-butter. What a wonderful place it was for breakfasting just 
for once ! What pretty but carelessly powdered women, in black lace 
head-dresses, those were who came from each street and went toward 
the church ; what a clatter the wooden pattens made, and what a 
gabble the newsboys; what loads of fresh fruit and vegetables the 
women carried past; how the urchins gambled for soldi; how unlike 
everything \vas to what we see at home ; and how unreal one grew to 
feel himself in watching it all ! 

The cheap dealers of the Ilialto were taking down their shutters 
as I crossed it, and displaying their low-priced wares. Boys sat on 
the broad steps munching bread and revelling in the yellow luxury 
of broad wedges of hot and savory pumpkin. The purveyors of the 
adjacent quarters were climbing the steps with whole head-loads of 
grapes, or fish, or vegetables. Over the hand-rail, tilling the whole 
width of the Grand Canal, lay a fleet of barges unloading prod- 
nee from beyond the lagunes, or stowing away assorted cargoes of 
white and purple grapes, peaches, tigs, lettuce, chiccory, radishes, shin- 
ing white onions, carrots, beets, potatoes the whole fresh-colored as- 
sortment of green -grocery. On shore the market people filled the 
streets and the arcades with fish, and flesh, and fowl, and fruit, and 
flowers, and the whole air with a tumult of noisy traffic. I descended 
among the throng, where customers were being importuned on every 
hand, and where sharp bargains were being driven in sprats and snails 
and in fractions of the smallest fowl. 

Entering a little square shut in by high houses, and, like most 
Venetian squares, dominated by the unfinished fagade of a time-stain- 
ed church, I noticed a singular activity among the people. They were 
scurrying in from every alley, and hastening from every house-door, 
with odd -shaped copper buckets on hook -ended wooden bows, and 
with little coils of rope. Old men and women, boys and girls, all 
gathered closely about a covered well -curb in the middle of the 
square ; and still they hurried on, until they stood a dozen deep 
around it. Presently the church tower slowly struck eight, and a lit- 
tle old man forced his way through the crowd, passed his ponderous 
iron key through the lid, and unlocked the well. The kettles went 



140 



TYROL, ASD THE SKIRT OF THE ALPS. 



jangling into it, and came slopping out again at an amazing rate, and 
the people trudged off home, each with a pair of them swung from the 
shoulder. The wells are deep cisterns, which are tilled during the 
nio-ht, and it is out of amiable con- 

O ' 

sideration for those who love their 
morning nap that they aflfe given as 
good a chance as their neigh- 
bors of getting an nnroiled sup- 



fll 




AT THE PUBLIC WKLL. A MOltNING SCENE IN Vr.MOE. 

ply. This is the first instance that lias come to my notice of a com- 
mendable municipal restraint upon the reprehensible practice of early 
rising. Few, very few, of those who came for water had had time for 



A MOXXING- JzV THE STREETS OF VENICE. 141 

their toilets. Their day evidently begins with this excursion to the 
public reservoir. 

Later in my walk I saw a cistern being replenished. A barge 
filled with fresh-water lay in a canal near by, and a steam-pnmp forced 
the supply through a hose to the square, where a gutter carried it to 
the well. The water is of excellent quality. It is brought through 
conduits from the Euganean Hills, near Padua, but its distribution 
through the city is carried on in the original manner here indicated. 
For a city where the salt sea is the scavenger, where ablutions are not 
de rigueur, where iires cannot rage, and where water is not a bever- 
age, the cost of laying distributing mains has wisely been spared. 

By nine o'clock I had walked some miles, and had seen the popu- 
lace subside from its brief spasm of activity and settle down to the 
sweet do-nothing of its daily life, and I turned my face homeward. I 
sought in vain for a ferrv over the Grand Canal. I was lost in a maze 

o -" 

of confusing streets. Defeated of my purpose, I called a gondola, and 
was rowed ignominiously back to my hotel. 



TYROL, ASD TEE SKIRT OF THE ALPS. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

CIRC UML OCUTION. 
FROM Botzen I had sent a trunk to Venice bv freight- train, and I 

/ O 

went to the station to get it. I was met by a porter who had served 
in the Austrian ami} 7 , and who spoke German. He kindly took my 
case in hand. Armed with my receipt, I was conducted to a freight 
clerk's office. He looked through many pigeon-holes, and shrugged 
his shoulders my trunk had not arrived. I expostulated. lie looked 
again, and again shrugged. Fourteen days should have sufficed, but 
he had as yet received no notice of the arrival. My porter took me to 
the custom-house; there stood the trunk, covered with a week's dust. 
Back to the freight clerk; he looked again. No, the freight letter 
had not arrived. I did not want the letter, T wanted the trunk. lie 
shrugged his shoulders; we must wait until the chef should come. At 
last the ch^f came. lie remembered having seen the letter, and he 
looked through the pigeon-holes. He must be mistaken ; it could not 
have come. No matter about the letter, my receipt was a duplicate, 
and I wanted the trunk. The chef shrugged his shoulders. Then he 
went off to rummage through a desk at another corner of the room, 
and at last he found the unlucky letter. Then we must take the letter 
to the custom-house. Official number one vised it, and sanded it, and 
turned me over to official number two. This one looked at the trunk, 
wrote something on the paper, blotted it with a pinch of dust from the 
floor, and sent us to official number three, who did a long sum on it, 
in triplicate, opened a little drawer, took out some sand with an iron 
spoon, and sprinkled it again. Then number four wrote an illegible 
signature on each of the three sections, sprinkled on some sand from 
a box, poured most of the sand on to his desk, and sent us to number 
five, who verified the computation, wrote his name three times, sanded, 



CIRC UMLOC UTIOX. 14-3 

and despatched us to number one. The circumlocution was complete. 
Number one wrote something more, sanded the newspaper he had 
been reading, and set us free. Now we would get the trunk and be 
off. By no means; we must trudge back to the station, wait for the 
clerk to come back from somewhere, pay him some money, give him 
the letter, and get his permit, duly signed and sanded, and then go to 
the custom-house and carry away the property. It has taken the read- 
er who has not skipped some minutes to read this tale. It took me 
fifteen minutes to write it: it took me six times fifteen minutes to so 

O 

through the evolutions which it describes. 

Feeling sure that I should never climb another mountain, I had 
brought from Cortina as a trophy to hang under my Mosel oar the 
alpenstock with which I struggled up Tofana: value, twenty -two cents. 
For convenience I would send it as freight to Havre. To allow for the 
slowness of the clerks, we assigned an extra three-quarters of an hour 
for the business of getting it off our hands, besides a half-hour for buy- 
ing tickets and registering the baggage. In front of the station stands 
a little guard-house, with the deluding legend, " Expedizioue." 

"Might I send this stick to Havre?" 

" Sicuro !" 

" How much will it cost?" 

We must ask. The expediter goes with us to the freight clerk, who 
answers, " More than it is worth.'' 

" Probably, but how much ?" 

" How much does it weigh ?" 

" I don't know." 

" Weigh it." 

The expeditor hung it to the hook of a steelyard which another 
man held up : " One kilo " (two pounds). Then, after a calculation : 
" Two francs." 

" Very well ; I will stand two francs. No matter about the receipt. 
Here is the money. Mark it ' Paid,' and send it as soon as possible." 

But they manage these things better in Italy. I must go back and 
see what " Expedizione" really means. I must give the details very 
clearly, and the official must make out the papers. I might go and 
get my tickets and fight my baggage through, and then come back. I 



144: TYROL, AM) THE SKIRT OF THE ALPS. 

came back, at the end of a half-hour and of all my patience, and 
found him still writing. There were three "freight letters." eacli as 
long and intricate as a policy of insurance, and two long "declara- 
tions" for the custom-house giving a description, value, etc., etc.* 
Then we went to the freight clerk, and he signed something, and I 
signed something (sanded), and the "Expedizione" man demanded 
three francs and a half. I referred to the contract for two francs. 

"Ah ! mais! the 'Expedizione' costs a franc and a half." 

At }ast I was free. Everything was attended to, and we had still 
seven minutes to get our seats. I separated Jane from a poodle with 
which, and with whose mistress, of course, she had made friends, gath- 
ered up my hags and bundles, and started gayly for the train. 

As we turned into the corridor we saw the great doors swing to, 
and our porter shrugged his shoulders. 

" But what does it mean ?" 

" Troppo tardi !" 

" It is only ten minutes past nine, and the train leaves at quarter 
past." 

" The doors are closed five minutes before the train starts." 

"Then why in !" But no, the man did not understand English, 
and no poor words of mine could do justice to the situation. Jane 
thought otherwise ; but then her words are never poor, and on this oc- 
casion she showed an approach to genius. As a piece of sketchy char- 
acterization, the estimate she expressed of Italian executive ability was 
worthy of permanent record ; but she is overfastidious in such matters, 
and prefers that her achievement should be permitted to remain our 
private possession. 

The train gone, we demanded to see the station-master. We were 
taken to his office, and were most politely received. He is a large man 
and a handsome man, with that suavity and grace of manner for which 
his race is noted. He listened to our plaint our vituperation had ex- 
pended itself behind that closed door and he encouraged us to ex- 
press our frank opinion of the administration of Italian railways. I 



* All concerning twenty-two cents' worth of wood and iron, which has never readied 
Havre. One of those freight letters has got into a wrong pigeon-hole. 



CIliCUMLOCVTlON. 

told him of my trunk, and of the stupid fuss about my stick, of the 
miseries of his baggage-room, and of much incident which one who 
is travelling in Italy finds ready to his tongue. In such a presence I 
could not give my opinion its ruder expression, but he took my mean- 
ing, and he accepted it in a sympathizing spirit. Unfortunately he 
could only execute his orders : he deeply regretted that they were 
such as to cause much annoyance to passengers; he could tell us of 
other things in which their system was still more at fault ; they had 
made the grave mistake of copying the methods of France, which 
were full of imperfections, instead of those of England, which were so 
admirable. 

" We are not English ; we are American." 

" Ah ! You are American ? I am glad to meet you. Kindly take 
seats, and tell me of your systems." 

Thus the shrewd man turned our thoughts into the didactic chan- 
nel, always so soothing, and lie gave us, by his attention as a listener, 
almost a compensation for our annoyance. His interest in us grew 
warm. We had intended to lunch at Verona, and to go on by the 
next train to Lake Garda, and take the boat for Riva. We would have 
made a great mistake ; for the king and queen were at Verona, and 
there would be a " festa," which we surely should not miss. Really 
we knew our own plans best, but so it seemed to him we ought by 
all means to pass the night at Verona. He actually dismissed us in a 
happy frame of mind. 

In a calmer mood I return to my conviction that all we hear of the 
much -vaunted "regeneration of united Italy" is a mere enthusiast's 
delusion. No nation tolerating such a system of railway administra- 
tion as hers holds the germ of regeneration anywhere in its organiza- 
tion. If she is ever to acquire it, she must seek it in the blood of a 
race to which the management of our best railroads is possible. 

Kow listen to the tale of our sorrows. See what it implies to lose 
a train in Venice, and give us your sympathy. 

We rowed back to the Piazza; attended the splendid full mass at 
San Marco; wandered through the unequalled halls of the Ducal Pal- 
ace the gorgeous seat of the government of the great republic; 

o O O ** * 

lunched at Florian's Gaffe; went to Verona in the afternoon; spent 

10 



146 TYROL, ASD THE SKIRT OF THE ALPS. 

the moonlight evening in its vast Roman amphitheatre, and in the 
crowded square, where the whole town turned out for its promenade, 
and where a good band gave an open-air concert; passed the next 
morning among the tombs of the Scaligers, and in the noted Veronese 
churches; and went comfortably to Pesehiera in time for the after- 
noon boat. The king and queen had left Verona, and of course the 
"capo di stazione" knew it; but he had made them serve his appeas- 
ing purpose all the same. 



THE LAKES, 



CHAPTER XIX. 

THE LAKES. 

WE sat for two hours on the deck of the little steamer, moored to 
the wharf, and dined there, watching the while the mameuvre of boats 
with painted lateen-sails, and the work of red-capped sailors; gossiping 
with the cook, and playing with his dog, and dreaming over the shim- 
mering bine water, and the hot, hazy, far-away shore, where Catullus 
lived and wrote, and over the fairy crests of the mountains which lead 
Tyrol down to bathe its feet in the blue waves of Garda. 

Some one at the British Association's meeting at Dublin read a 
paper on the intellect of animals. He cited no case so remarkable 
as that of Cncino's dog, which lives on this boat. This, and the steamer 
which runs to Desenzano fifteen miles away, at the south-west corner 
of the lake start from Iliva, at the north end of Garda. The dog 
was familiar with the crews of both, and with the other craft, but he 
had never made a trip by her. For a long time he watched her course 
down the other side of the lake, and saw her drawing farther and 
farther away, until she was hidden by the projecting point. One day, 
his mind fully settled to its theory, he proceeded to verify it. He 
marched deliberately over to Desenzano, took passage by the other 
steamer, came safely to Riva, and went back to his familiar kitchen 
with an air of entire satisfaction. He could not be induced to make 
another trip by that boat. lie had " done " it, and had no more worlds 
to conquer in that direction. He had reasoned out a plan of action, 
and had found his reasoning correct. 

Garda is the largest of the Italian lakes thirty-six miles long. It 
was our first one, and it must be the bluest lake in the world. It starts 
in the fertile plain of Lombardy, and, piercing the grand range by 
which this is sheltered, it runs quite into the heart of the bare-peaked 



148 TYROL, ASD THE SKIRT OF THE ALPS. 

mountains of Austrian Tyrol. All along its eastern shore Italian vil- 
lages, monasteries, mountains, chapels, vineyards, and chestnut groves 
give interest to every mile of the journey. After nightfall close-nest- 
ling Riva welcomed us to its pleasant lake-side hotel terraces. 

Iliva has a history such as belongs to all towns of good military 
position lying on the border-land between the plains of the south and 




KIVA, FKOM THE POKALK EOAD. 



the mountain fastnesses of the north. But it has a beauty an in- 
describable lake-side and mountain -foot charm which attracted us 
more. Leaving its past to those who are fresher and more eager 



THE LAKES. 



149 



students, we contented ourselves with a simple, inactive absorption of 
the unsurpassed natural beauty which clusters about this northern nook 





TKEMOSLNE. BY LAKE OAKDA. 



of the high-walled blue Lago di Garda. We were rowed to its plash- 
ing fall of Ponale, and at nightfall we wandered out over its cliff-side 
road a road which absolutely clings to the side of the steep and some- 
times overhanging limestone precipices, and is threaded through tun- 
nels like a string through its beads. In more than one place a stone 
dropped from its parapet falls yards out into the water, while the rock 
above overhangs our heads Mr. Rnskin to the contrary not\vithstand- 



150 



TYROL, AND THE SKIRT OF THE ALPS. 



ing. Beginning at the level of the lake, it rises by an easy but con- 
stant inclination to the very top of the grand rock which sweeps round 
into the Val di 
Ledro. As "t re- 
cedes, it seems 
scarcely more 
than a chalk 
mark along the 
face of the cliff. 

Not the least 
memorable inci- 
dent about Riva 
is the pleasure 
in leaving it 
by no means the 
pleasure of leav- 
ing it, for a mo re 
delightful halt- 
ing - place one 
need not seek. 

Our return 
was by the De- 
senzano boat, 
touching along 
the bold west- 
ern bank of the 
lake, which is 
more precipitous 
far grander than 
opposite shore, as 
more prosperous and 

more populous. Some of its villages are at 
the top of a precipice apparently a thousand 
feet above the level of the lake. One of these, 
Tremosine, a village of some importance, has 
no other means of communication with the outer world than by a zig- 




it is 



LEMON GARDEN, LAKK OARDA. 



THE LAKES. 151 

zag foot-path which leads up the almost vertical rock from the steam- 
boat landing. 

The great industry, wherever a little soil has been formed at the 
foot of the mountains, is the cultivation of the lemon, the gardens be- 
longing to the rich nobles of the dncal cities. While the summer 
climate is well suited to the fipening of the fruit, winter shelter is 
imperative. The gardens are studded with tall columns of brick ma- 
sonry, which support the framework of the roof. This is in winter 
covered with boards, and the vertical openings between the columns 
are closed with glass. At some points, as in the neighborhood of the 
town of Limone, these gardens are so extensive as to give a most 
peculiar effect to the appearance of the shore. 

Kothino- could be more thorouo-hlv Italian than the graceful, vine- 

o o / o 

grown, lazy, larger towns at which we touched. At Maderno, where 
much of the shore front was occupied by shaded terraces set round 
with pots of aloes and cacti, and where the terraces were occupied by 
slatternly, dull -looking women, there was a general air of abandon- 
ment and uselessness, after the best Italian manner. Happy this peo- 
ple who while away their dreamy and untidy summers under the soft 
breezes that sweep this widest stretch of Italian water ! 

Desenzano, where we landed, has not responded even to the sum- 
mons of the steam-whistle. Judging from the manner of those who 
would have relieved me of the burden of mv lield-^lass during the 

/ O O 

pleasant stroll to the station, I should say that beggary was its chief re- 
maining industry. Of the station it is not worth while to say more 
than that it belongs to the railway which leads from Venice, and that 
it possessed no time-table by which we could determine our route and 
our connections. Under this same method of administration, instead 
of spending two hours at Brescia, as we might have done, and where 
we might have breakfasted like Christians, we were stranded for a 
longer time in an unfinished station-house in Southern Illinois. They 
called it Rovato, the people spoke Italian, the beggars were polite, and 
three car-loads of Italian soldiers who belonged to our party were 
playing morra uno ! ott! chink! bang! thump! and there go your 
ten soldi. But for all that, I have never seen its match for newness 
and crudity save in our own benighted Egypt. 



152 



TYllOL, AXD THE SKIItT OF THE ALPS. 



All things come to an end ; so did our stifling and hungry halt, 
and we trundled on through the rich foot-hill country, among vine- 
yards and campanili, past Palazzuolo and Bergamo, then .beside the 
premonitory and enticing waters which lead down to Lecco, thence 




1.1MONK, I,\KI. OARUA. 



in an omnibus through unheeded streets, and hurriedly to our jour- 
ney's end the deck of a Como steamer. Here at last the spirit of 
haste was laid. Fast or slow, early or late, it mattered nothing now. 
We were afloat on the Lake of Como. 

The afternoon was only so far gone as to give us lengthened 
shadows; the sky was clear, the air was soft, and we had gone out of 



THE LAKES. 153 

this world into that realm of fancy where prose and poetry, art and 
photography, had builded our visions 

"A clear lake, margined by fruits of gold 
And whispering myrtles, glassing softest skies 
As cloudless, save with rare and roseate shadows, 
As I would have thy fate." 

Evening fell slowly; each headland, each hamlet, and each moun- 
tain-top became more and more unreal in the fading light, and as the 
low stars began to glimmer out of the fleeting western gold, we climbed 
the broad white steps of 

"A palace lifting to eternal heaven 
Its marble walls, from out a glossy bower 
Of coolest foliage, musical with birds. . . . 

The perfumed light 

Stole through the mists of alabaster lamps, 
And every air was heavy with the sighs 
Of orange groves, and music from sweet lutes, 
And murmurs of low fountains that gush forth 
1' the midst of roses." 

For even this too was added to our cup. Our first halt was at 
the regal Villa Frizzoni, rich with every luxury that architecture and 
Italian lake-side gardening could, at the behest of wealth, offer for the 
acceptance of a wife. By that grace of good fortune by which the 
traveller often profits, the Villa Frizzoni, unspoiled of all its luxury, 
has become the "Grand Hotel Bell a<;o;io," and all the season through 

OO t O 

its halls and balconies and terraces, and its orange-shaded walks, are 
gay with the life and dress and music of a pleasure-seeking throng. 
If the imagination, revelling in the charm of Como, needs the further 
stimulus of princes, baronen, contessi, and Ticino nurse -maids, they 
are all here, to be had for the looking. 

f O 

Regarded with the cold eye of the captious traveller, this hotel fills 
every requirement, and from the American stand -point its scale of 
charges is incredibly low. The best that Saratoga can offer is mean 
and commonplace compared with this, yet a bachelor must spend more 
there for his top-story cell and his caravansary feeding than need here 
a reasonable couple, content with a charming second story front room, 



TYROL, JXD THE SKIRT OF THE ALPS. 




^ and with simple 

- - claret at the deli- 
cate and exqnisite- 
cf ly served table-d'hote. 

We were easily tempted to bor- 
row from the few days assigned to 
Paris, and to tarry here until con- 
science drove us forth. I had reserved for my last afternoon's walk 
a visit to the Villa Serbelloni, perched high up on the promontory 
between the Lecco and the Como arms of the lake. It was a question 
of taking ihis walk in a sad rain or not taking it at all, for in the 



BAN GIOVANNI, UEI.LAGGIO, ON LAKE OOMO. 



THE LAKES. 



155 



morning we must surely leave. Leave! As easily leave Eden itself. 
Conscience and duty all forgotten, I incontinently engaged quarters 
for three days more in this rambling, old nobleman's house, now trans- 
formed into a quiet, homely hotel. 

We had rowed over the lake to the meretricious Villa Carlotta, we 
had lounged at Cadenabbia. and we had drunk in all the riparian de- 
lights of this delicious inland sea, but we had conceived no such 
wealth of beauty, of situation, of vegetation, and of scrupulous horti- 
culture as greeted us here at every turn. It is useless to attempt de- 
scription ; I simply commend this charmed spot as the best earthly 
representation of a veritable fairy -land. The garden of Serbelloni 




is formal and artificial to the last degree ; but its formality is enno- 
bled by the majestic rock on whose summit it rests; and its art has 
made cunning use of the vegetation of every zone. Our fellow- 
guests, though few, were no less interesting than those we had left at 
the water-side. 

It carried us back manv a lono- rear, and brought up the memories 

/ ~ / ' 

of a mad enthusiasm, to see again, somewhat saddened by age and 
care, but still the same, that face which we all knew so well when her 
wonderful voice and her magnetic presence stirred the most hidden 
chords of the thousands of hearts which beat in unison, under the 
creat dome of Castle Garden in 1S51. She is a grandmother now, 

O O ' 



15G TYROL, AND THE SKIRT OF THE ALPS. 

but we who had heard that matchless song saw her only as the Jenny 
Lind of our youth. 

It is something in favor of these hotels that they lie at the edge of 
the quaint old town of Bellaggio. These Continental towns seem to 
be exempt from the influence which, with us, assimilates all communi- 
ties to their conspicuous surroundings. Here, whither rich and extrav- 
agant tourists have flocked for years, their wealth arid extravagance 
have had absolutely no effect upon the simple people whom they daily 
elbow in its narrow arcaded streets. Even the arts by which the tour- 
ist's money is enticed into their careful pouches are practised with a 
simplicity and an unspoiled and unassuming politeness which make 
the payment of their modest demands a pleasure. I have in mind 
now a sturdy and hearty oarsman, rich with more or less authentic 
gossip of those whom he has seen and of those whom he has served, 
and as proud of his position of a Bellaggio peasant a leader among 
the bassi genii as he would be of ducal honors if he wore them. He 
has sat face to face, and has chatted familiarly, with thousands of men 
and women of every rank that travels; yet he carries himself with the 
dignity of conscious worth, and with the grace and native elegance of 
an Italian country man. 

We crossed the hills to Lugano in the coupe of a diligence, in a 
light rain, which, as our occasional glimpses of the Simplon and the 
Bernardino showed, was the first autumn snow on the higher moun- 
tains. Still in the rain, we sailed down the beautiful mountain lake to 
the town of Lugano. This journey was made interesting and mem- 
orable by one of those sudden and charming companionships which 
spring up in the fertile soil of a traveller's experiences. We parted at 
the pier, and we may never meet again, but our memory of this lovely 
Italian -Swiss lake will always recall our genial and most congenial 
Briton. 

It would be aside from my purpose to detail our experiences at 
Lugano and on Lago Maggiore. They continued and they varied the 
impressions received on Garda, and made eternal on Como. It is al- 
most futile to write fresh lines at this late day of what has delighted 
the scribes of all times. Even in the first century of our era, the 



THE LAKES. 



157 




A 8TBEKT IN BELLAGOLO. 



younger Pliny wrote to his friend Caninins Ruf us : " Wliat are you 
doing at Cotno ? Do you study, hunt, or fish, or all three together? 
For on our beloved lake one can do all these. Her waters afford fish, 
her wooded heights game, and her deep solitude quiet for study. But 



158 



TYROL, AND THE SKIET OF THE ALPS. 



whatever yon do, I envy yon, and I cannot restrain the confession that 
it makes my heart heavy not to be able to share that with yon for 
which I pine as a sick man for a cooling drink, a bath, or a living 
spring. Shall I tear with violence these closely fitting bonds, if no 




FROM T1IE VILLA BF.BIiEI.LOXI. 



THE LAKES. 159 

other solution is possible ? Ah ! I fear never. For before old occu- 
pations are ended, new ones are thrust upon me, and thus link after 
link is added to the chain of endless toil which holds me here en- 
thralled. Farewell." From Pliny's time to ours the literature of all 
lands has lingered over these beautiful lakes. 

Our route led us to Milan, where we were favored with that rare 
clear atmosphere which reveals to the Lombard plain one of the most 
majestic of the world's sights. The Venetian Alps, the peaks of the 
Carinthian range, the great Dolomites, the Gross Glockner, the Oertler, 
the entire range of Swiss peaks to Mont Blanc, with seven -peaked 
Monte Rosa in the foreground, the Cottian Alps, with their pyramidal 
Monte Viso, the Maritime Alps, the Apennines, and the Euganean 
Hills, near Padua, closed almost the entire horizon with the grandest 
mountain chain of Europe. This view in its entirety is rarely seen. 
Our good fortune was not evanescent, for no cloud, no slightest film of 
vapor, came to screen this glorious panorama from all our long road to 
Turin. Throughout the whole day the grand army of mountain-tops 
marshalled itself for review, the majestic peaks inarching slowly to 
their ever-changing positions as we sped swiftly on our way. The rich 
irrigated sub- Alpine plain was their parade-ground, and against the 
broad blue banner of an Italian sky stood the sharp outlines of their 
icy helmets. As the daylight died away, the red glory of the Alpine 
glow still lifted them out of the coming night. 



1GO TYROL, ASD THE SKIRT OF THE ALPS. 



CHAPTER XX. 

THE VAUDOIS VALLEYS. THE WALDENSES. 

TURIN was for us only a halting-place, and not even the splendor 
of its famed Superga could delay us. We hastened on to those grim 
valleys where, resisting the wicked might of man, the children of God 
through so many sad centuries withstood the fiercest persecutions of 
Rome, and handed down unspoiled, from generation to generation, the 
stern hard faith of the pure Apostolic Church. As the assumptions 
and encroachments of Rome turned the power of the Church to the 
worldly aggrandizement of its rulers, those who held to the primitive 
faith were forced to seek shelter in obscurity. The rugged mountain 
valleys on the borders of Piedmont and Dauphiny became their ulti- 
mate retreat. Here, long before the protest of Luther, they held the 
torch of the ancient religion which he labored to restore. Here was 
the birthplace of Romish persecution, and here were concentrated, from 
1308 to the downfall of the Inquisition, all the horrors of which fiend- 
ish fanaticism has been capable. Once, and once only, was the last 
remnant of this chosen people driven from these valleys to the refuge 
of Calvinistic Switzerland ; but their Glorieuse Rentree under Arnaud 
re-established the old faith in its ancient seat, whence, to this day, it 
sends its evangelists to every corner of Italy. 

It is of the persecutions of this people that Milton wrote his grand- 
est sonnet : 

"Avenge, O Lord ! Thy slaughter'd saints whose bones 
Lie scatter'd on the Alpine mountains cold : 
E'en them, who kept Thy truth so pure of old, 
When all our fathers worshipp'd stocks and stones, . 
Forget not; in Thy book record their groans, 
Who were Thy sheep, and in their ancient fold 
Slain by the bloody Piedmontese, that roll'd 



THE YAUDOIS VALLEYS. THE WALDENSES. 161 

Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans 
The vales redoubled to the hills, and they 
To heaven. Their martyr'd blood nnd ashes sow 
O'er all the Italian fields, where still doth sway 
The triple tyrant, that from these may grow 
An hundred-fold, who, havii>g learned Thy way, 
Early may fly the Babylonian woe." 

The history of the Piedrnoutese Protestants is well told in "The 
Israel of the Alps," by Dr. Mnston. It may be briefly sketched here. 
These people the Waldenses, or the Yaudois occupy what are 
known as the Vaudois Valleys, in the Cottian Alps, about thirty miles 
south-west of Turin, between Mont Cenis and Monte Viso. The cen- 
tral valleys are Pellice, Luzerna, and Angrogna. The Yaudois (the 
Yaldesi dwellers in the valleys) are known by existing sermons of 
their pastors, dated 1120 ; and Peter Waldo, the reformer, of Lyons, 
doubtless took his name from them, not, as has been assumed, giving 
his name to them : he was Peter the Yaudois. The Yaudois are not 
to be confounded with the inhabitants of the Canton de Yaud of 
Switzerland. Their earliest record is of the year 1100, but they be- 
lieve their ancestors through every age, from the apostolic time to the 
present, to have been protesters against the corruptions of the Church, 
and the depositaries of the simple Gospel faith. 

About the middle of the twelfth century there appeared two im- 
portant Yaudois documents: a translation of the New Testament and 
" La Xobla Leyczon." These are in the Romance language, which is 
the patois still spoken in the valleys. The " Noble Lesson." a poem 
of five hundred lines, is a summary of Scripture history and doctrines, 
and teaches toleration and religious freedom. 

In 1517, the year of Luther's denunciation, the Archbishop of Turin 
drew up an enumeration of the immemorial belief and protest of the 
Yaudois Church. These are its points : 

The Yaudois received the Scriptures as their only rule of faith. 
They rejected the doctrines introduced by the popes and priests. They 
declared that tithes and first-fruits are not due to the clergy. They 
disapproved of the consecration of churches. They denied that men 
needed the intercession of saints. They rejected purgatory and masses 
for the dead. They denied that priests have the power to forgive sins. 

11 



162 TYROL, AXD THE SKIRT OF THE ALPS. 

They opposed the confessional. They protested against the worship 
of the Virgin and saints. They rejected the use of holy-water; con- 
demned indulgences; and ascribed the doctrine of purgatory to the 
covetonsness of priests. They abhorred the use of the sign of the 
cross and the worship of images. They denied that wicked men could 
be representatives of Christ. They disowned the authority of the 
Chnrch of Rome, and they believed that prayer in private houses is as 
acceptable as prayer in churches. 

The declaration of these principles brought upon them the anath- 
emas of Home, and papal bulls were issued commanding Catholic 
princes to wage war against them. In 1485 a bull of Innocent VIII., 
enjoining the extermination of the Vaudois, absolved these who should 
take up the cross against them " from all ecclesiastical pains and pen- 
alties, general and particular . . . releasing them from any oath they 
might have taken, legitimatizing their title to any property they might 
have illegally acquired, and promising remission of all their sins to 
such as should kill any heretic." It outlawed the Vaudois, annulled 
their contracts, and empowered all persons to take possession of their 
property. In the persecutions which followed, and which recurred at 
intervals for centuries, human infamy reached its climax. I quote 
parts of a single paragraph from Muston : 

" There is no town in Piedmont under a Vandois pastor where 
some of our brethren have not been put to death. Jordan Terbano 
was burned alive at Susa; Ilippolite Rossiero at Turin; Michael Go- 
neto, an octogenarian, at Sarcena ; Villermin Ambrosio hanged on the 
Col di Meano; Hugo Chiambs, of Fenestrelle, had his entrails torn 
from his living body at Turin ; Peter Geymarali, of Bobbin, in like 
manner had his entrails taken out in Luzerna, and a fierce cat thrust 
in their place to torture him further; Maria Romano was buried .alive 
at Rocca-patia; Magdalena Fauno underwent the same fate at San 
Giovanni; Susanna Michelini was bound hand and foot, and left to 
perish of cold and hunger on the snow at Sarcena; Bartolomeo Fache, 
gashed with sabres, had the wounds filled up with quick-lime, and per- 
ished thus in agony at Fenile; Daniel Michelini had his tongue torn 

O v O 

out at Bobbo for having praised God; James Baridari perished cov- 
ered with sulphureous matches, which had been forced into his flesh 



THE FAUDOIS VALLEYS. THE WALDENSES. 163 

under the nails, between the fingers, in the nostrils, in the lips, and 
over all his body, and then lighted; Daniel Kevelli had his mouth 
tilled with gunpowder, which being lighted blew his head to pieces ; 
. . . Sara Rostignol was slit open from the legs to the bosom, and left 
so to perish on the road between Eyral and Luzerna; Anna Char- 
bonnier was impaled, and carried thus on a pike from San Giovanni 
to La Torre." 

In 1630-'31 the plague invaded the valleys, and swept away more 
than 12,000 persons about one-half of the whole population. In La 
Torre more than fifty families became completely extinct. Of the 
seventeen pastors, only two venerable and infirm old men escaped 
death. It then became necessary to import French-speaking ministers 
from Dauphiny and from Geneva. The government thereupon, as a 
further means of repression, prohibited the performance of the Vau- 
dois service in any language but French, and this tongue was learned 
by the whole people, and is retained by them to this day. 

More than once was the population reduced by war and oppression 
from its normal standard of about 25,000 to 4000 or 5000. Yet they 
always remained steadfast in their faith, and held to their ancient tra- 
ditions, rising stronger after each invasion, and always regaining their 
ruined prosperity. 

Some of the episodes of their wars are marvellous to read. Their 
most noted hero Gianavello, with a band of less than twenty followers, 
sometimes with only half a dozen, defeated whole armies of invaders; 
and the Flying Company at Pra del Tor overthrew the Count de la 
Trinita, who marched against them with three columns, numbering 
more than seven thousand men. The almost uniform success of these 
little bands of rude mountaineers operating against large armies of 
disciplined troops has naturally produced among the Vaudois the be- 
lief that it was not their prowess in action which prevailed, but the 
design of God to preserve the germ of true religion in their keeping. 

They gained frequent respite for the recovery of their prosperity 
and the restoring of their population by the contests in which the 
Dukes of Savoy were so often engaged with other princes. It was at 
the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, to which the Duke of Savoy, 
Victor Amadeo II., was reluctantly forced to accede, that the remnant 



164 TYROL, AXD THE SKIRT OF THE ALPS. 

of the population was compelled to accept exile into Switzerland. Of 
14,000 persons 3000 only survived. They were liberally helped by the 
Protestants of England and Holland. Recovering their health, they 
were afflicted with the homesickness so peculiar to mountaineers, but 
were detained by force, and were widely dispersed through the Protes- 
tant states of Germany. 

William of Orange, the head of the Protestant League against 

O ' O O 

France, was visited at the Hague by Henri Arnaud, the pastor and 
leader of the "Vandois. lie counselled that they should return and 
attempt to regain their valleys by force, supplying them at the same 
time with considerable funds. The refugees assembled, between eight 
and nine hundred in number, leaving their wives and children to the 
care of the Swiss, crossing Lake Leman in the night of August 16th, 
1689. Led by their pastor -captain, they crossed the Alps, and de- 
scended into Italy near Susa. 

After sixteen days' march, having beaten several strong detach- 
ments of the enemy, they established themselves at Bobi, where they 
remained unmolested during the winter, but by May they were re- 
duced to four hundred men. They were again assailed, but they re- 
sisted and struggled against every force invading the valley, until the 
Duke of Savoy, abandoning his alliance with France, and joining the 
Protestant League, restored them to their homes and liberties, recalled 
their wives and children, and ended the last of thirt\*-two wars for lib- 
erty and conscience. One hundred and sixty years later, Carlo Al- 
berto, giving a constitution to his people, insured the continuance of 
religious liberty. 

It was with no ordinary traveller's interest that we went to visit 
the scenes of all those centuries of heroic life and more heroic death, 
and the renowned centre from which Protestantism in Itah* is pushing 
its steady advance. We drove from the railway station at Pinerolo, an 
hour's journey, to Torre Pellice, which is the seat of the Yaudois Col- 
lege and the chief town of the valleys. 

Though in Italy still, we found among the Protestants the univer- 
sal use of the French language, and among the educated classes a fa- 
miliarity with English, due to the Scotch education of the pastors. It 



THE VAUDOIS VALLEYS. THE WALDENSES. 165 

is no mild modern Protestantism which prevails here, softened by the 
spirit of indulgence \ve know so well at home, but a stern Scotch Pu- 
ritanism rigid, intolerant, uncompromising, and grim ground into 
the sturdy souls of the people by long generations of martyrdom and 
oppression. It is a faith so real and so commanding that it rings like 
a clarion in the zeal of the trained evangelists, who, scattered through- 
out the kingdom, echo the eternal reverberations of the blood-stained 
mountain-sides where their fathers died for the cause they advocate. 

It seems to me that the first impression of any considerate person 
coming to the Yaudois valleys with a fresh recollection of what we 
are taught to consider the necessary conditions of civilized life must 
be one of humiliation. We may find similarly hard conditions of liv- 
ing in many of our remote districts, but we find them accompanied by 
a dulness and stolidity which make it seem a matter of indifference 
whether they are ameliorated or not; or we find them resisted or 
struggled against with that determination to seek improvement which 
makes our people so ambitious and so restless. 

Here in these hard, bleak valleys a frugality of which we can hard- 
ly have conception is practised with a calmness and serenity that be- 
token an aim of life far other than physical improvement. In the 
town of Torre this is less conspicuous than elsewhere ; but even here 
cultivated, enthusiastic, happy men and women, eager in the great pur- 
suit of their lives, practise the genial graces of refined society, and ex- 
ert a wide -spread influence, which is powerful even against that of 
Rome, amidst an almost entire absence of the advantages which come 
of wealth, and which are so often regarded as indispensable. 

Catechised as to their belief, these people develop the most rigid 
formulas of orthodoxy, that which we have known among the coldest, 
hardest, most nnsympathizing New Englanders. But the blood of the 
South runs warm in their veins, and their religion, severe though it is, 
can only check it cannot cover nor repress the geniality of their 
Italian natures. It is the rigidity of the North made mellow with 
Latin warmth, and sweetened with the grace and amiability of Italy. 
I know no people of great wealth who seem to get so much out of 
their lives that is worth the getting as do these simple, pious, God-fear- 
ing Yaudois. 



106 TYROL, ASD THE SKlliT OF THE ALPS. 



CHAPTER XXL 

INTO THE HIGHER VALLEYS. 

DESIRING to visit the valley of Angrogna, the great retreat during 
the invasions of the laud, and the scene of the most terrible battles, I 
was commended to the pastor of the village, who has the care of the 
scattered population of the large parish. It was a long, hard walk up 
the valley, and a hot one. A very plain little Protestant " temple " and 
a few poor houses constitute the village of Angrogna, which is domi- 
nated by a larger Catholic church, whose priest does his worst to coun- 
teract the cherished heresy here in its ancient stronghold. 

A child directed me to the pastor's door a great solid wooden 
door in a fortress-like stone wall. Entering, I was greeted pleasantly 
by the cheerful mother of the house, who ushered me into a scantily 
furnished parlor, clean, bright, and pleasant. Presently the pastor ap- 
peared, received me ^wth the greatest cordiality, and lent himself at 
once to my desire for guidance and information. 

I have rarely been more impressed in any interview. lie told me 
with the greatest frankness of the difficulties with which he has to 
contend in eking out a support for his large family in a parish where 
all are poor, and where many can give nothing to the support of the 
Church beyond cordial good wishes and the scantiest contributions of 
food. A little money is given him by the General Synod, but it is 
very little, and this man's incessant pastoral duties make it impossible 
for him to ameliorate his condition by any form of profitable work. 
It is to gratify no curiosity that I repeat what he told me of his cir- 
cumstances, but rather to illustrate, by a striking and extreme exam- 
ple, what I have said of life in these vallevs uenerallv. 

1 t- O t 

I was regaled in the most hospitable manner with the best that the 
house afforded a thin, simple wine, bread, a hard sort of cheese, and 



JXTO THE HIGHER VALLEYS. 167 

boiled chestnuts, of which I was urged to take my fill, as I would find 
no other opportunity to eat during the day's journey. What was given 
me is the best of their diet, and, except for potatoes and salad, it cov- 
ers the limit of its variety for all the secular days of the week. On 
Sundays they usually, but not always, have meat. There was no sug- 
gestion that the diet was not sufficient and satisfactory, and the family 
seemed to be in robust and hearty health. The physical labor of the 
pastor himself must be very severe. His parish reaches for miles back 
on the mountains, and far up into steep and rugged valleys. He has 
three separate churches and schools under his charge, and his sick and 
poor are scattered far and wide on every hand. 

Foot-paths and bridle-paths offer the only means of communication, 
and he is liable, day and night, winter and summer, in good weather 
and in bad, to be summoned forth for a long, hard tramp to the house 
of a sick or dying parishioner. All this he described as merely inci- 
dental to a life of necessary and useful service, in which he is content 
and happy. A friend had recently presented him with a young don- 
key, which is already able to give him a short lift on his journeys; and 
which, as it matures, and as he grows old, will carry him to Pra del 
Tor and back. He was happy over this acquisition, but anxious as to 
his ability to nourish the beast. 

Regarded in a certain light, there is nothing remarkable about this 
tale of a robust man's life and circumstances; but viewed with refer- 
c'nce to the stock to which he belongs, and to the history of the won- 
derful struggle of his race, it seems to me not far removed from hero- 
ism. The world is full of well-paid positions, seeking for the educa- 
tion, intelligence, executive ability, and fortitude which mark the char- 
acter of this cheerful and zealous pastor of Angrogna; but the old 
call of the Spirit rings in his ears, and stirs his blood as it stirred that 
of the martyrs of old, and he stays and finds his happiness and his 
delight in answering its behests. 

I talked with him about the condition of the people, and about 
the ceaseless efforts of the Catholic Church to destroy the Protestant 
supremacy in the valleys. Poverty, or rather the simplicity of living, 
is extreme. The climate is much more severe than at Torre; the soil 
in the main is poor and thin ; the cattle are stunted ; and the facilities 



168 TYROL, AXD THE SKIRT OF THE ALPS. 

for irrigation and the habit of its use seem to constitute the chief agri- 
cultural advantage of the country. The chestnut grows well, and is a 
main reliance as food. Without it there would often be much suf- 
fering. 

The Roman Catholic Church has by no means given np its effort 
at supremacy. The best sites are secured for its churches and con- 
vents; its abundant and skilfully-managed alms-giving is a powerful 
resource in so poor a country; and its control over the industrial 
populations, which quarrying and manufactures have brought to the 
neighborhood, is shrewdly used for the corruption of the young men 
and women of the Protestant communities. At Pra del Tor the 
Holy Land of the Yaudois the priests have established a foundling 
hospital, which threatens the stability of the rising generation of na- 
tive children by the insidious influence of contact and companionship. 
This more hidden and surreptitious persecution is met as resolutely 
and firmly and cunningly as were the physical assaults of old ; and 
thus far its influence has not been great. 

As it was Saturday, the pastor could not go with me, as I had 
hoped ; but he recited the heroic deeds of which Pra del Tor had been 
the theatre, and invested it with a historic sublimity which mere read- 
ing could not give. He lent me the keys of the temples I should see, 
and directed me on my way. 

It was a two hours' walk, mainly upward, over a rough bridle-path, 
with here and there a house, and here and there a little mill driven by 
the abundant waters of the tumbling stream. Toward the end of the 
journey the path passes between steep rocky banks, climbs the edge of 
a precipitous hill-side, and opens into the valley of Pra del Tor that 
valley which more than once held all that was left of the Piedmontese 
Vaudois, who, driven from their farms and their villages, gathered 
here for mutual support and defence. Even here, while awaiting the 
destruction which seemed impending, they established their schools, 
and kept up the education of their evangelists. 

On a high rock, overlooking the cluster of houses, stands a well- 
built modern temple, the gift of a friend in England to commemorate 
the defenders of the valley against Triuitu's overwhelming force. All 
else is meagre, bare, and stern. It is hard to see how even this small 



INTO THE HIGHER VALLEYS. 169 

population can subsist in such a land, and it is almost incredible that a 
people who generation after generation have been subjected to such 
trying conditions of life should resist, as they steadily do, the seduc- 
tions of an organization able and ready to improve their condition, 
or to remove them to a more fertile district. It is these considerations 
\vhich everywhere impress the visitor with the sturdiness of character 
which an old faith, cemented by long ages of martyrdom, has been 
able to produce. 

My climb made it seem quite necessary that I should have food 
before returning. All that I could get was milk. This was served to 
me on the stone stair leading to a house door, and in a rude earthen- 
ware pan. As I drank it, with a coarse iron spoon, a starved kitten 
came with a longing mew, and lapped greedily the little puddle which 
I poured into a hollow of the stone. I never saw such a hungry cat, 
and evidently the family never saw such a hungry man, for they com- 
mented freely on the eagerness of my feeding. Poor though they 
were, and unaccustomed as they seemed to be to such a lavish use of 
milk, they would accept no compensation for their hospitality, and I 
could only make a trifling present to their child. 

Here, and on my return, the people whom I met were most cordial 
and friendly, and they answered every question as to the difficulty of 
making a living on such a soil with an evident unconsciousness that 
it implies the least hardship. Those who were returning from their 
fields generally bore heavy burdens of firewood or grain ; and one 
donkey that I met taking grist to mill carried at least 800 pounds of 
grain, picking his way cautiously over the rocky path. Parts of the 
valley were heavily wooded and of great beauty, but everything about 
the scattered villages and farms seemed dismal and forbidding. 

On Sunday we drove eight miles up the Pellice Valley to attend 
church at Bobi, where, in 1G89, after the Glorieuse Rcntree, Arnaud 
and his followers took the oath of fidelity, and celebrated divine ser- 
vice in their own temple for the first time since their banishment. 

"The enthusiasm of the moment was irrepressible; they chanted 
the 74th Psalm to the clash of arms, and Henri Arnaud, mounting the 
pulpit, with a sword in one hand and a Bible in the other, preached 
from the 129th Psalm, and once more declared in the face of heaven 



170 TYROL, AND THE SEIET OF THE ALPS. 

that lie would never resume his pastoral office in patience and peace 
until he should witness the restoration of his brethren to their ancient 
and rightful settlements." 

The temple was a bare room, with unpainted pulpit and benches, 
where the women sat in one place and the men in another. The 
women wore a costume of which a white cap with wide double fluted 
ruffles was a conspicuous part, the young girls those who had not 
been confirmed wearing black caps instead. The men were men 
whom I had known in my childhood in the orthodox churches of 
Western Connecticut, smooth-shaven for Sunday wrinkled, uncom- 
promising countrymen. The older men generally wore blue jean 
dress-coats with metal buttons and high collars. When the psalms 
were given out, the}' took loud-clasping iron cases from their pockets, 
and put on their steel-bowed spectacles. Puritanism is stronger than 
race, or climate, or time. It was like sitting again among the hard- 
handed farmers who used to throng the old Congregational church in 
New Canaan. 

The illusion was hardly dispelled so strong was the resemblance 
in face and dress and manner when the young precentor mounted to 
the reading-desk and read a chapter of the Xew Testament in French. 
It was strengthened when he gave out the psalm, pitched the key, and 
started the congregation in the droning monotone of its chanted praise. 
The sermon was preached in the purest French by a most Italian-look- 
ing pastor from Messina. It was an earnest appeal to humility, and a 
warning not to permit their pride in their ancestry and in the venera- 
ble antiquity of their faith, to blind them to the obligations to which 
the essence of that faith compelled them. After the service there 
followed the silent and hardly sociable loitering about the door which 
characterizes the congregations of our own country churches, but far 
less curiosity was evinced and more politeness was shown toward the 
differently attired strangers who had come to join in their service. 

During our stay in the valleys we were shown the admirable or- 
phanage at Torre, where Mr. Sankey's hymns were sung in French and 
Italian, and where the most careful training is given in the little arts 
and industries of common life. We saw, too, the Yatidois College, 



THE EIGHEE VALLEYS. 171 

where are trained the pastors who are to have charge of the flocks 
scattered throughout Italy, and the evangelists who are to plant in the 
dark corners of the land the most promising germ of Italian regenera- 
tion. It is a simple school, ill furnished with the modern appliances 
of education, but rich in the zeal and enthusiasm with which its lead- 
ers keep steadily in view the great aim of its foundation. 

The college, and the cause of Protestantism generally, owe most 
efficient aid to the liberality and earnestness of Major Beckwith, an 
English officer, who devoted his fortune and many of the last years of 
his life to their advancement. Much has been done by the liberality 
of other British friends, and there can surely be no channel to-day 
into which those who have the interest of reformed religion at heart 
can so effectively turn their contributions. The Vaudois schools are 
established in all parts of Italv, even in Calabria and Sicily and in 

I/ J V 

Rome itself, and they offer the chief existing hope of the education of 
the people in what is necessary to an improved civilization. 

Victor Emanuel il Re Galant-uomo in spite of his Catholicism, 
was a steadfast and persistent friend of the Yaudois, believing that 
they offered the best promise for the improvement of his people. 
Humbert has given fresh assurances that his father's policy in this 
regard shall be maintained, not in the interest of religion, but in the 
interest of liberty and of enlightenment. 



THE END. 



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lustrations. 8vo, Cloth, f 5 00. 

Orton's Andes and the Amazon, 

The Andes and the Amazon : or, Across the Continent of South America. By JAMI:S 
ORTOX, Ph.D., late Professor of Natural History in Vassar College, Poughkee]ie. 
N. Y. ; Corresponding Member of the Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia, and 
of the Lyceum of Natural History, N. Y. Third Edition, Revised and Enlarged, con- 
taining Notes of a Second Journey Across the Continent from Para to Lima and Lake 
Titicaca. With Two Maps and numerous Illustrations. 8vo, Cloth, $3 00. 



Illustrated Books of Travel. 



Palmers Desert of the Exodus, 

The Desert of the Exodus. Journeys on Foot in the Wilderness of the Forty Years' 
Wanderings ; undertaken in Connection with the Ordnance Survey of Sinai and the 
Palestine Exploration Fund. By E. H. PALMER, M.A., Lord Almoner's Professor of 
Arabic, and Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge. With Maps and numerous Illus- 
trations, from Photographs and Drawings taken on the Spot by the Sinai Survey Expe- 
dition and C. F. Tynvhitt Drake. Crown 8vo, Cloth, f 3 00. 

Hazard's Santo Domingo, 

Santo Domingo, Past and Present ; with a Glance at Hayli. By SAMUEL HAZARD. 
Maps and Illustrations. Crown 8vo, Cloth, $3 50. 

Pike's Sub-Tropical Rambles, 

Sub-Tropical Rambles in the Land of the Aphanapteryx: Personal Experiences, Ad- 
ventures, and Wanderings in and about the Island of Mauritius. By NICHOLAS PIKE. 
Handsomely Illustrated. 8vo, Cloth, $3 50. 

Sqnier's Peru, 

Peru : Incidents of Travel and Exploration in the Land of the Iiicas. By E. G. SQUIER, 
M.A., F.S.A., late U. S. Commissioner to Peru. Illustrated. 8vo, Cloth, $5 00. 

Griffis's The Mikado's Empire, 

The Mikado's Empire. Book I. History of Japan, from 660 B.C. to 1872 A. D. 
Book II. Personal Experiences, Observations, and Studies in Japan, 1870-1874. By 
WILLIAM ELLIOT GRIFFIS, A.M., late of the Imperial University of Tokio, Japan. Co- 
piously Illustrated. 8vo, Cloth, $4 00 ; Half Calf, $6 25. 

Thomson's Malacca, Indo-China, and China, 

The Straits of Malacca, Indo-China, and China ; or, Ten Years' Travels, Adventures, 
and Residence Abroad. By J. THOMSON, F.R.G.S. With over 60 Illustrations from 
the Author's own Photographs and Sketches. 8vo, Cloth, $4 00. 

MacGahan's Campaigning on the Oxus, 

Campaigning on the Oxus and the Fall of Khiva. By J. A. MACGAHAN. With Map 
and Illustrations. 8vo, Cloth, $3 50. 

Tristram's Land of Moab, 

The Land of Moab : Travels and Discoveries on the East Side of the Dead Sea and the 
Jordan. By H. B. TRISTRAM, M.A., LL.D., F.R.S., Honorary Canon of Durham. 
With a Chapter on the Persian Palace of Mashita, by JAMES FERGUSON, F.R.S. With 
Map and Illustrations. Crown 8vo, Cloth, f 2 50. 

Van-Lennep's Bible Lands, 

Bible Lands : their Modern Customs and Manners illustrative of Scripture. By the 
Rev. HENRY J. VAN-!,ENXEP, D.D. Illustrated with upward of 350 Wood Engravings 
and two Colored Maps. 838 pp., 8vo, Cloth, $5 00 ; Sheep, $6 00 ; Half Calf, $8 00. 



Illustrated Books of Travel. 



Nordhoff's Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Isl- 
ands. 

Northern California, Oregon, nnd the Sandwich Islands. By CHARLES NORDHOFF. 
Illustrated. 8vo, Cloth, $2 50. 

Nordhoff's California, 

California : for Health, Pleasure, and Residence. A Book for Travellers and Settlers. 
By CHARLES NORDHOFF. Illustrated. 8vo, Cloth, $2 50. 



Kingsley's West Indies, 



At Last : a Christmas in the West Indies. By CHARLES KINGSLEY. Illustrated. 
12mo, Cloth, $1 50. 

Bishop Haven's Mexico, 

Our Next-Door Neighbor. Recent Sketches of Mexico. By the Rev. GILBERT HAVEN, 
D.D., Bishop in the M. E. Church. With Maps and Illustrations. 8vo, Cloth, $3 50. 

Bush's Reindeer, Dogs, and Snow-shoes, 

Reindeer, Dogs, and Snow-shoes : a Journal of Siberian Travel and Explorations made 
in the Years 1865-'67. By RICHARD J. BUSH, late of tlie Russo-American Telegraph 
Expedition. Illustrated. Crown 8vo, Cloth, $3 00. 

Prime's Around the World, 

Around the World. By EDWARD D. G. PRIME, D.D. With numerous Illustrations. 
Crown 8vo. Cloth, $ 3 00. 

Schweinfurth's Heart of Africa, 

The Heart of Africa; or, Three Years' Travels and Adventures in the Unexplored Re- 
gions of the Centre of Africa. From 1868 to 1871. By Dr. GEORG SCHWEIXFURTH. 
Translated by ELLEN E. FREWER. With an Introduction by WINWOOD READE. Il- 
lustrated by about 130 Woodcuts from Drawings made by the Author, and with Two 
Maps. 2 vols.. 8vo, Cloth, $8 00. 



Vambery's Central Asia, 



Travels in Central Asia : being the Account of a Journey from Teheran across the 
Turkoman Desert, on the Eastern Shore of the Caspian, to Khiva, Bokhara, and Snni- 
arcand, performed in the Year 1863. By ARMINIUS VAMHEUY. Member of the Hunga- 
rian Academy of Pesth, by whom he was sent on this Scientific Mission. With Map 
and Woodcuts. 8vo, Cloth, $4 50 ; Half Calf, $G 75. 



PUBLISHED BY HARPER <fc BROTHERS, NEW YORK. 



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