 UNTRADON PEEKS AND UNFREQUENTED VALLEYS CHAPTER V. CORTINA TO PIERRE DE CADORE PART I. The morning of the sagro dawn to a prodigious ringing of church bells and firing of musketry. There were masses going on in both churches from 5 a.m. till midday. The long street and the piazza by the post office presented one uninterrupted line of booths. There were hundreds of strangers all over the town, hundreds in the churches. Every house seemed to have suddenly become an alberjo. Every window, every balcony, every doorway was crowded. The acrobats paraded Cortina again this brilliant Sunday morning about 9 o'clock, and the discord of their drums and trumpets went on all day long to the accompaniment of the church bells and the intermittent firing of the sharpshooters down at the tear by the riverside. What a motley crowd! What a busy, cheerful scene! What a confusion of voices, languages, music, bells, and gunpowder! There are Austrian Tyrolis from Tallbach, Initschinn, and the Sexton Thal, who speak only German. Italian Tyrolis from the Longarone side, who speak only Italian. Others from the border villages, who speak both, or a Pachua's compounded of both, which is quite unintelligible. The costumes of these mountain folk are still more various than their tongues. The women of San Vito, where breastplates of crimson or green satin banded with broad gold braid, and ornamented with spangles. The women of the Puster Thal walk about in huge, turban-like headdresses, as becoming and quite as heavy as the bare skins of the grenadiers. The men of Flisht are lost in their enormous black boots, modeled apparently on those of the French position of the last century. Here too are old women in homemade otter-skin hats, high in the crown and ornamented like of footmen's with a broad gold band, and bold-yeagers with wide leather belts, green braces, steeple-crowned hats, and guns slung across their shoulders, looking exactly like Caspar in der Freischütz. The wonderful damsels of Levena Lungo, whom we met yesterday on the pass, are also present in great force, but the prevailing costume is, of course, that of the ampezzo. It consists of a black felt hat with a bunch of feathers at the side, a black cloth skirt and bodice trimmed with black velvet or black satin, loose white sleeves, a large blue apron that almost meets behind, and a little colored handkerchief around the neck. Simple, sober, and becoming, this dress suits young and old alike, and the round hat sets off a pretty face very agreeably. Seeing that the musical mass was to begin at eleven a.m., we took care as we thought to be at the church doors in good time, but at a quarter before the hour found the steps crowded outside and barely standing room within. The whole body of the church was one mass of life, color, bare heads, and upturned faces. Men and women alike held their hats in their hands. Three priests at three different altars performed mass simultaneously. The organist played his best, assisted, however, by the Cortina Brass band with an effect that was almost maddening. One trombone player, in particular, an apopleptic red-faced man in gray flannel shirt sleeves, blew as if bent on blowing his brains out. Now and then, however, when the organist had an unaccompanied interlude, or the choir master a few phrases of solo, there came a lucid interval when one breathed again. But these respits were few and brief, and except during the sermon the brass band that morning had quite the best of it. The old curé preached, attired in magnificent vestments of white and gold brocade. His sermon turned upon faith, and he illustrated his text oddly enough by references to all kinds of matters, in which faith is not generally supposed to bear a leading part. The soldier, the artist, the lawyer, the man of science, what could they do, he asked without faith. Like the soldier, for instance, what is it that inspires him with courage to face the cannon's mouth? Faith. Take the painter. Judge what must have inspired the frescoes and paintings in this very church. Faith. Think of the patience and labor required in cutting of the Suez Canal. What supported those workmen through their trying task? Faith. Look again at the Monsensis tunnel. Think of how those engineers began at opposite sides of that great mountain, and, at length, after years of labor, met in the midst of it. To what power must we attribute such perseverance crowned with such success? To the supreme and vivifying power of faith. Of such quality was the good man's discourse. He preached in Italian, and paused after every peroration to mop his bald head with a blue cotton-pocket handkerchief. It was a hot day, and his eloquence quite exhausted him. Coming out of the church, we take a turn round the fair. Here are booths for the sale of everything under the sun. Of hats, umbrellas, pipes, spectacles, pots, pans, and kettles, tanned leather, untanned leather, baskets, wooden ladles, boots and shoes, blankets, home-spun freeze, and linen, harness, siths, tinwares, woodenwares, nails, screws, and carpenter's tools, knives, forks and spoons, crockery, toys, crucifixes and prayer books, braces, garters, pocket books, steel chains, sleeve buttons and stationery, live poultry, fruit, vegetables, cheap jewelry, ribbons, stuffs, seeds, bird cages, and cotton umbrellas of many colors. Here too is a stall for the exclusive sale of watches, from the massive silver turnip to the little flat Geneva timekeeper of the size, and probably also of the value of an English florin. Near the church door stands a somewhat superior booth, stocked with medieval brasswork, altar candlesticks, patines, chalices, and the like, while next in rotation a grave-looking old peasant presides over a big barrel full of straw and water, round the top of which, in symmetrical array, repose wet stones of all sizes. It is remarkable that there are here no dancing or refreshment booths. The sober Tyrolese do not often dance, unless at weddings, and for meals those who have not brought food with them crowd at midday into the inns and private houses, and there eat with small appearance of festivity. Even the acrobats do not seem greatly to attract them. A large crowd gathers outside the show and almost fills the piazza in the afternoon, but not many seem to be going in. They are content for the most part to listen to the comic dialogues sustained on the outer platform by the clown and Mary Andrew, and prefer to keep their soul warm in their pockets. Now the writer, knowing from previous experience the unpopularity of the sketcher, steals into corners and behind booths in order to secure a few notes of costume and character, but being speedily found out and surrounded is feigned either to use her pencil openly or not at all. The good people of Ampezzo, however, prove to be less sensitive in this manner than the peasants of Italy or Switzerland. They are delighted to be sketched, and come round by dozens, begging to have their portraits taken and anxious that no detail of costume should be omitted. One very handsome woman of Levinolungo, tempted by the promise of a florin, came home with me in order that I might make a careful, colored study of her costume. She was tall and so finely formed that not even that hideous sack and shapeless bodice could disguise the perfection of her figure. As I placed her, so she stood, silent, motionless, absorbed, for more than half an hour. A more majestic face I never saw, nor one so full of a sweet, impenetrable melancholy. Being questioned, she said she was twenty-three years of age and a farm-servant at Levinolungo. "'And you are not married?' I asked. "'No, senora. Nor betrothed? No, senora. But that must be your own fault,' I said. She shook her head. "'I know,' she replied, with a slightly heightened color. More young men do not marry without money. Who would think of me? I am too poor.' I should have liked to know more of her history, but her natural dignity and reserve were such that I felt I must not question her farther. The sketch finished, she just glanced at it, put back the proffered payment, and turned it once to go. The senora was very welcome, she said, she did not wish to be paid. Being pressed, however, to take the money, she yielded more, as it seemed, through good breeding than from inclination, and so went away, taking the downward path from the back of the house, and going home over the mountain alone. That afternoon Santo Siorpas came again, bringing with him a tall, brown, fair-haired young man of about twenty-eight or thirty, whom he introduced as senora Giuseppe Gherina. This Giuseppe, he said, was a farmer, lately married, well-to-do, and a nephew of our landlord at the Aquila Nera. Not being a professional guide, he would nevertheless be happy to travel with the senoras, and to be useful to the utmost of his power. He did not profess to know all the country laid down in our scheme, but he would take Santo's written instructions as to routes, inns, mules, guides, and so forth, and he, Santo, did not doubt that we should find Giuseppe in all respects as well-fitted for the work as himself. Now Giuseppe's manner and appearance were particularly prepossessing. We liked his simple gravity, the intelligence with which he asked and answered questions, and the interest with which he examined our maps and guide-books. Preliminaries, therefore, were soon settled. He was to inform himself thoroughly upon all matters connected with the route, and to hold himself in readiness to join us in a day or two. Meanwhile it was agreed that we should pay him at the same rate that we should have paid Santo's Giurpus, namely two-and-a-half florins a day for his wages, and one florin-and-a-half for his food, in all about eight francs, or six-and-eight pence English per diem. If at any time we were to travel by any public conveyance, we were, of course, to pay his fare, but all lodging and other expenses en route were to be defrayed by himself. It may be here observed, once and for always, that a more fortunate choice could not have been made. Faithful, honest, courteous, untiring, intelligent, Giuseppe Gherina, unused as he was to his new office, entered upon his duties as one to the manner born, and left nothing to be desired. Always at hand, but never obtrusive, as economical of our money as he was of his own, he was always thinking for us and never for himself. And so anxious was he that the senoras should see all that was to be seen that, when traveling through a district new to himself, he used to take pains each evening to enter in his pocketbook all such details as he could pick up, in advance respecting every object of interest which might chance to lie in our way in the course of the next day's journey. He remained with us, as will be seen, throughout this Dolomite tour, and we parted with mutual regret when it ended. Numbers of those who had thronged the fair and the churches all this day went home the same afternoon or evening. As long as daylight remained they could be seen dotting every mountain path, and for hours after all Cortina was in bed, their long, wild, alpine cry rang from hillside to hillside and broke the silence of the night. CHAPTER V. CORTINA TO PIEV DE CADORE PART II Next morning, however, there seemed to be as many as ever in the fair, which was kept up throughout the second day with undiminished spirit. This second morning began with a wedding. The order of the bridal procession was as follows. First came the indefatagable brass band, numbering some twenty performers, then the bride and the best man, then the bride's father and mother, then the bridegroom walking alone, and lastly some fourteen or fifteen friends and relations of both sexes. In this order they twice paraded the whole length of the town. The bride wore a black alpaca dress, the usual black cloth bodice and white sleeves, and a gorgeous apron of red and green silk fastened behind with a pair of quaint brass clasps. Neither she nor any of the other women on this occasion wore hats, but only an abundance of silver pins in their neatly plaited hair. Having entered the church they all took seats in the aisle about halfway down, and the band went into the organ loft. Presently the bridegroom went up by himself to the altar and kneeled down. When he had knelt there a few minutes the mother of the bride led her daughter up, placed her at his left hand, and there left her. After they had both knelt there some five minutes longer, the priest came in, followed by the old bell-ringer who acted as clerk. The bell-ringer then lighted a pair of long wax tapers and handed them to the priest, who blessed them and gave one to the bride and the other to the bridegroom. This was the beginning of the ceremony. Then the priest read the marriage service in a low voice and very quickly, only pausing presently to ask for the rings, which were handed to him on a little glass dish by the bell-ringer. The priest, having blessed the rings, first gave one to the bridegroom to place upon the finger of the bride, and then gave the other to the bride to place upon the finger of the bridegroom. During all this time they never parted from their tapers, but shifted them from one hand to the other as occasion required. At this stage of the ceremony the bridegroom produced some money and gave it to the bride. They were then profusely sprinkled with holy water and this concluded the marriage service. High Mass was next performed as yesterday with the full band and organ. The newly married couple remaining the whole time upon their knees before the altar, with their lighted tapers in their hands. At length, when all was over and the congregation was about to disperse, the bridegroom got up coolly and walked out of the church, leaving his bride still kneeling. Then her mother came up again and led her away. The bridegroom, without so much as looking back to see what had become of her, went and played at bowls in the piazza. The bride went home with her parents, took off her finery, and shortly reappeared in her shabby, everyday clothes. It is, perhaps, to rolly and etiquette for newly married persons to avoid each other as much as possible. At all events the bridegroom loathed about with the men, and the bride walked with her own people, and they were not once seen together all the rest of the day. One of the pleasantest excursions that we made at this time was to the Landro in the Holstenteen Thal, about twelve miles from Cortina by the Austrian Post Road. On this occasion our landlord provided a comfortable little shays on Good Springs, with a seat in front for the driver, and the chestnut appeared in smart harness with red tassels on his head and a necklace of little jingling bells. With Giovanni again to drive, we started early one lovely July morning, following the course of the upper Ampezzo Valley, skirting all the lengths of the Tofana, and seeing again its three summits in succession. Going so long in the ridge, the great height and size of this mountain can only be appreciated by those who see it from at least two sides of its vast triangle, from the Tresace Pass on the southwest, and from the high road on the east. Good walkers with time to spare may complete the tour of the mountain by ascending the Val Travernanza, which divides the Tofana ridge from that of the Monta Lagasui. Their pyramidal peak on the side of the Tresace has been repeatedly ascended by hunters from Cortina. The central peak was achieved by Dr. Groman in 1863, and the north peak was reached in 1869 by Mr. Bonnie, who describes the view looking over in the direction of Bruneck and the Grosse Venedigger as one of the finest among the eastern Alps. The highest peak, according to the latest measurements, reaches as nearly as possible to 10,724 feet. In Cortina the road runs for some distance at a level of about 60 feet above the bed of the Boata, and passes presently under the shadow of a kind of barber's pole painted with red and white stripes, which here jets across the road at an angle of 45 degrees. As we prepare to drive under it the door of a little hut adjoining, which we had taken till now for a good-sized kennel, flies suddenly open and a small, withered, excited old man flings himself into the middle of the road, and demands 48 cruzzers for a toll. Becoming learned in the ways of the place, we soon know that a white and red pole always stands for a toll-bar, while a black and yellow one indicates the boundary line between Austria and Italy. From here the road now begins to ascend and the mountains to close in. New peaks, snow streaked above and wooded below, come into view, and the great crag of Putelstein once crowned by a famous medieval stronghold shuts in the end of the valley. The old castle was level to the ground in 1867, and there is some talk of a modern fortress to be erected on its site. At this point the road swings round abruptly to the right, winds up through the pine woods behind the platform on which the castle used to stand, leaves the noisy torrent far below, and, trending eastward at right angles to the Ampezzo Valley, peaks in local parlance the name of the Thal Tedesco, which, however, is not to be found in either mayors or arterias maps. Here also, a board by the wayside informs us that we have entered the distretta of Velsberg. And now the road leads through a succession of delicious grassy glades among pine woods loaded with crimson and violet cones, and festooned with the weird gray beard moss of the upper Alps. All Campanulas and purple Genshins, deep golden Arnica blossoms, pink Daphne, and a whole world of other wildflowers, some quite new to us, here bloom in such abundance that the space of green sward on either side of the carriageway looks as if bordered by a strip of Persian carpet. Meanwhile through openings in the wood we catch occasional glimpses of great dolomite peaks to right and left, and emerging by and by upon an open space of metal land on the borders of which stands a tiny farmhouse, we see the fine pinnacles of the Cristolino, 9,238 feet, rising in giant battlements beyond the sloping ground upon our right. And now the road crosses a rough torrent bed, stony and steep, and blinding wide in the sunshine. Here we alight and make our way across from boulder to boulder, while Giovanni leads the chestnut in and out among the shallows. And now as we emerge from the pine woods a new dolomite, a huge, dark, mournful-looking mountain, ominously splashed with deep red stains, rises suddenly into towering prominence upon our left, and seems almost to overhang the road. What mountain is this? For once Giovanni is at fault. He thinks it must be the Crota Rosa, but he is not sure. Finding a mountain, however, here set down in Mayor's map as the Crepa Rosa, and in Artaria as the Rothwand, we are fain to conclude that it is, in each case, the same, with only a difference in the name. Unlike all other dolomites that we have yet seen, the Crota Rosa, instead of being gray and pallid, is of a gloomy, brownish and purplish hue, like the mountain known as Black Stairs, near Enescorthy in Ireland. Going on in the direction of Slutervok, and looking back upon the Crota Rosa, it constantly assumes a more and more threatening aspect. Rising cliff above cliff towards one vast, domed summit, just under which is gathered a cluster of small peaks quite steeped in blood color. From these great streaks and splashes of the same hue stream down the barren precipices below, as if some great slaughter had been done there in the old days of the world. Passing Slutervok, a clean-looking roadside inn, we come presently in sight of the Durand Sea, a lovely little emerald green lake streaked with violet shadows and measuring about three-quarters of a mile in length. Great mountains close it in on all sides, and the rich woods of the lower hills slope down to the water's edge. The clustered peaks, the eternal snows, and glaciers of Montecristalo, the towering summit of the Piz Popina, and the extraordinary towers of the Drezenen come one after the other into view. As for the Drezenen, they surpass in boldness and weirdness all the dolomites of the Ampezzo. Seen through an opening between two wooded hills, they rise abruptly from behind the intervening plateau of Montepiano, as if thrust up from the center of the earth like a pair of tusks. No mere description can convey to even the most apprehensive reader any correct impression of their outline, their look of intense energy, of upwardness, of bristling, irresistible force. Two barren, isolated obelisks of pale, sulfurish, orange-streaked limestone, all shivered into keen scimitar blades and shark-like teeth towards the summit. They almost defy the pencil and quite defy the pen. For the annexed illustration, however, so far as mere truthfulness of actual form goes, the rider can vouch, having sketched it very carefully from the best point along the borders of the lake. At Landro, a clean and comfortable inn standing alone at the head of the lake, we stayed to feed the horse and take luncheon. Here we were served with excellent cold salmon from the Miserina Lake and hot cutlets. Everything about the place looked promising. The landlord and landlady and their son, a bright lad of about seventeen, spoke only an unintelligible kind of German, but were cheerfully disposed and most obliging. Saying that it might be a pleasant place to put up at for a few days, we inquired about rooms, but every inch of the house was occupied for the whole summer by a large party, chiefly English including a member of the Italian club Alpino. This gentleman, followed by a gigantic St. Bernard dog, came in while we were at luncheon, marvelously attired in a brilliant scarlet flannel blouse and high black riding boots, in which costume, followed always by his dog, he had that morning been up, a difficult ice slope of Monte Cristallo. Luncheon over we strolled and sketched a while beside the ferry waters of the Durand Sea, a lake into which three torrents flow and from which no stream issues. Why it never overflows its banks and where the surplus water vanishes to are mysteries for which no one has yet accounted. There has been talk of hidden clefs and natural emissaries in the bed of the lake, but it is obviously unlikely, to say the least of it, that the supply and the drainage should be adjusted with such nicety. Why therefore the Durand Sea is always full and never too full remains to be explained by men of science. Of the three great mountains seen from Landro it may be as well to mention that the Drazenin, 9,833 feet, has been lately ascended by members of the Austrian or German alpine clubs, that the Piz Popina, 10,389 feet, was first achieved by Mr. E. R. Whitwell, and that the highest peak of Monte Cristallo, 10,644 feet, was gained by Dr. Groman in September 1865 from the Cristal Pass beginning on the side of the Trecrochet. Starting from the Durand Sea, the road again turns northward and so runs nearly straight all the way to Tolblok, a distance of about ten more English miles. Looking up the vista of this narrow glen from Landro, one sees the snow-capped mountains of the Puster Thal closing in the view. Returning to Cortina in the pleasant afternoon, we left the carriage at a point not far from the Tolbar, and strolled homewards by a lower path leading through fields and meadows, and passed the ruins of a curious old Tourette Chateau, one tower of which now serves for the spire of a little church, built with the stones of the former stronghold. End of Section 11. UNTRADEN PEAKS AND UNFREQUETED VALLEYS. SECTION 12. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. UNTRADEN PEAKS AND UNFREQUETED VALLEYS. AMIDST SUMMER RAMBLE THROUGH THE DOLOMITES. BY EMILIA B. EDWARDS. CHAPTER V. Cortina to Piavda Cadoré, Part III. Meanwhile there yet remained much to be seen and done before we could leave Cortina. We must see the marmarole hitherto completely hidden behind the crota Malcora, and the Missarina Lake, famous for its otters and its salmon-trout. We must go over the Trecroce Pass and up the Val de Aronzo, and above all we must visit Titian's birthplace at Piavda Cadoré. Now it seems so far as one could judge from maps to be quite possible to bring all these points into a single excursion, taking each in its order and passing a night or two on the road. In order to do this we must follow the Ampetso Valley to Piavda Cadoré, then take the Valley of the Piav as far as its junction with the Anzié at Treponti, and then branch off into the Val de Aronzo, and from Aronzo find our way back to Cortina by the Valbuona and the Pass of the Trecroce. This route, if practicable, would take us the complete circuit of the crota Malcora, and to Laos and Marmarole, and could be done, apparently, nearly all the way by Carriage Road. A consultation with Old Godina proved that this plan was feasible as far as a place called Casa Sim San Marco in the Valbuona, now accessible by means of one of the new roads in process of construction by the Italian government. As to whether this road was or was not actually completed as far as the Casa de San Marco, he was not quite sure, but he did not doubt that the carriage could be got along somehow. Beyond that point, however, the new way had certainly not yet been opened, and we as certainly could only follow it as far as it went. He would therefore send saddle horses round by the Trecroce Pass to meet us at the Casa de San Marco, the carriage coming back by way of a cart track leading around by Landro. With these saddle horses we could then ride up to the Miss Arena Alp, and return by the Trecroce to Cortina. As regarded time, we could make our Jiro in either three days or two, sleeping in the one case at both Piavda Cadori and Aronzo, or in the other, starting early enough to spend the day at Piav and reach Aronzo in the evening. Having heard unfavorable reports of the inn at Piav, we decided on the latter course. The day we started upon this, our first long expedition, was also the day that began Giuseppe's engagement as our traveling attendant. We rose early, having ordered the carriage for seven a.m., a roomy, well-appointed landow, drawn by a pair of capital horses, and driven by a solemn, shock-headed coachman of imperturbable gravity and civility. The whole turnout, indeed, was surprisingly good and comfortable, and would have done credit to any of the first-class hotels we had lately left behind. The Guedinas assembled in a body to see us off. Elles made, mournful enough at being left behind in a strange land, watched us from the balcony. The postmaster, the chemist, the grocer and the curie, stood together in a little knot at the corner of the piazza to see us go by. At last, bags, rugs, and umbrellas being all in, Giuseppe jumped up to his seat on the box, the driver cracked his whip, and away we went in the midst of a chorus of buan viagios from the lookers on. The first twelve or fourteen miles of road, as far as Tia Cadore, lay over the same ground that we had already traversed the day of our arrival at Cortina. At Té, however, we turned aside, leaving the Montezucco zig-zag far below, and so went up the long white road leading to the hamlet on the hill. About halfway between the two valleys we drew up at a little wayside church to see a certain miracle-working crucifix said to have been found in the year 1540 in a field close by, where it was turned up accidentally by the plow. Without being, as some local antiquaries would have had it believed, so ancient as either the time of the invasion of the Visigoths in AD 410, or that of the Huns in AD 432, the crucifix is undoubtedly curious, and may well have been buried for security at the time of the German invasion under Maximilian in 1508. Since that time it is supposed to have wrought a great number of miracles, to have sweated blood, and so stayed the pestilence of 1630, and in various ways to have extended an extraordinary degree of favor and protection towards the people of Cadore. The little church, originally dedicated to St. Antonio, is now called the search of the Santismo crucifixo, and enjoys a high reputation throughout this part of Tyrol. The crucifix is carved in old brown wood, and the sacred image is somewhat ludicrously disfigured by a wig of real hair. We reached Piev de Cadore at about half past eleven a.m., delays included, and found the albergot quite as indifferent as its reputation. It was very small, very dirty, and crowded with peasants eating, drinking, and smoking. Going upstairs in search of some corner where we might leave our wraps, and by and by take lunch and a part, we found the bedroom so objectionable that we decided to occupy the landing. It was a comfortless place, crowded with lumber, and only a shade more airy than the rest of the house. A space was cleared, however, a couple of seats were borrowed from a neighboring room, and the top of a great carved cassone, or linen chest, was made to serve for a table. Having ordered some food to be ready by one o'clock, it being now nearly eleven, we then hastened out to see the sights of the place. The landlady's youngest daughter, an officious little girl of about twelve, volunteered as guide, and being rejected followed us pertinaciously from a distance. The quaint old piazza with its gloomy arcades, its antique houses with Venetian windows, its cafes, its fountain, and its loungers is just like the piazzas of Saraval, Longaron, and other provincial towns of the same epic. With its picturesque prefetura and bellfrey tower, one is already familiar in the pages of Gilbert's Cadore. Number two is the fine old double flight of steps leading up to the principal entrance on the first floor, as in the town hall at Helbrin, a feature by no means Italian. And there, about midway up the shaft of the campanile, is the great gaudy, well-remembered fresco, better meant than painted, where in Titian, some twelve feet in height. This picture, a gift to the commune of Cadore from the artist who painted it, is now the only mural fresco in the town. Some years ago one of the old houses in the piazza, now ruthlessly whitewashed, is said to have borne distinct traces of external decorations, by Ceciere Veccellio, the cousin and pupil of Titian. Turning aside from the glowing piazza and following the downward slope of a hill to the left of the prefetura, we come at the distance of only a few yards upon another open space, grassy and solitary, surrounded on three sides by rambling, dilapidated looking houses, and opening on the fourth to a vista of woods and mountains. In the midst of this little piazza stands a massive stone fountain, time-worn and water-worn, surmounted by a statue of St. Tiziano in the robes and square cap of an ecclesiastic. The water, trickling through two metal pipes in the pedestal beneath St. Tiziano's feet, makes a pleasant murmuring in the old-stone basin. While half hidden behind this fountain and leaning up as if for shelter against a larger house adjoining, stands a small whitewashed cottage upon the side wall of which an incised tablet bears the following record. Nell 1477, fracueste, umile mura, Tiziano Veccellio, veni a celebre vita, donde, yuscova, giapresso, assentiani, in Venizia. 17 Augusto 1576 A poor, mean-looking, low-roof dwelling disfigured by external chimney-shafts and a built-out oven, lit with tiny, blinking, medieval windows, altogether unlovely, altogether unnoticeable, but the birthplace of Titian. It looked different, no doubt, when he was a boy and played outside here on the grass. It had probably a high, steep roof, like the homesteads in his own landscape drawings, but the present old brown tiles have been over it long enough to get modelled with yellow lichens. One would like to know if the fountain and the statue were there in his time, and if the water trickled over to the same low-tune, and if the woman came there to wash their linen and fill their brazen water jars as they do now. This lovely green hill at all events sheltered the home from the east winds, and Monte Dorano lifted its strange crest yonder against the southern horizon, and the woods dipped down to the valley, then as now, where the bridal path slopes away to join the road to Venice. We went up to the house and knocked. The door was opened by a sickly, hunchbacked lad who begged us to walk in, and who seemed to be quite alone there. The house was very dark, and looked much older inside than from without. Long, low, gloomy upstairs chamber with a huge penthouse fireplace jetting into the room was evidently as old as the days of Titian's grandfather, to whom the house originally belonged, while a very small and very dark adjoining closet, with a porthole of windows sunk in a slope of massive wall, was pointed out as the room in which the great painter was born. "'But how do you know that he was born here?' I asked. The hunchback lifted his waisted hand with a deprecating gesture. "'They have always said so, senora,' he replied. "'They have said so for more than four hundred years.' "'They,' I repeated doubtfully. "'The Vicelli, senora.' I had understood that the Vicello family was extinct.' "'Scusate, senora,' said the hunchback. The last direct descendant of El Tiziano died not long ago, a few years before I was born, and the collateral Vicelli are citizens of Cadore to this day. If the senora will be pleased to look for it she will see the name of Vicello over a shop on the right-hand side as she returns to the piazza.' "'I did look for it, and there, sure enough, over a small shop window I found it. It gave one an odd sort of shock as if time were for the moment annihilated, and I remembered how, with something of the same feeling, I once saw the name of Rubens over a shop front in the marketplace at Colonia. I left the house less incredulous than I entered it. Of the identity of the building there has never been any kind of doubt, and I am inclined to accept with the house the identity of the room. Titian it should be remembered, lived long enough to become, long before he died, the glory of his family. He became rich, he became noble, his fame filled Italy. Since the room in which he was born may well have acquired half a century before his death, perhaps even during the lifetime of his mother, that sort of sacredness that is generally of post-mortem growth. The legend, handed down from Vicello to Vicello in uninterrupted succession, lays claim, therefore, to a more reliable pedigree than most traditions of a similar character. The large old house adjoining, known in Cadore as the Casa Zampieri, was the next place to be visited. It originally formed part of the Vicello property and contains an early fresco, once external but now brought inside by the enlargement of the house, and supposed to have been painted by Titian in his youth. The hunchback offered to conduct us to this house, and, having ushered us out into the little piazza, carefully locked his own door behind him. Here lying in wait for us we found the officious small girl with some three or four companions of her own age, who immediately formed themselves into an uninvited bodyguard and would not be shaken off. CHAPTER V. Cortina to Piazza Cadore, Part IV The hunchback rang the Zampieri bell, but no one answered. He knocked, but the echo of his knocking died away and nothing came of it. At length he tried the door. It was only latched, and it opened instantly. "'Let us go upstairs,' he said, and walked straight in. We followed somewhat reluctantly. The bodyguard trooped in after us. "'This way,' said the hunchback, already half-way up the staircase. "'But the mistress of the house,' we urged, hesitatingly. Where is she?' "'Ah, Chilosa. Perhaps she is out. Perhaps we shall find her upstairs.' Again we followed. It was a large house, and had once upon a time been handsomely decorated. The landing was surrounded by doors and furnished with old, high-back chairs, sculptured presses, and antique oak chests big enough for two or three genevres to have been hidden in. Our guide opened one of the doors, led us into a bare-looking kind of drawing-room, and did the honors of the place as if it all belonged to him. "'Echo il tiziano,' he said, pointing to a rough fresco-witch, though executed on the wall of the room, was set round with a common black and gold framing. The subject, which is very simple, consists only of three figures, a long-haired boy kneeling on one knee, and a seated Madonna with the Christ child standing in her lap. These are relieved against a somewhat indefinite background of pillars and drapery. The drawing of this group is not particularly good. The coloring is thin and poor, but there is much dignity and sweetness both in the attitude and expression of the Madonna. The drapery and background have, however, suffered injury at some time or other, and were still restoration. A small picture which the lad originally appeared to be presenting as a votive offering has been altogether painted out, but its former position is clearly indicated by the attitude of the hands of the two principal figures. According to the same respectable chain of local tradition, Tishon painted this fresco at the age of eleven years. Mr. Gilbert, who knows more and has written more about Kedore than any of Tishon's biographers, suggests that the kneeling boy is a portrait of the young painter by himself, and that he commended himself in this manner to the divine care before leaving home in fourteen eighty-six to become a pupil of Zucate at Venice. Meanwhile, the hunchback entertained us with the history of the fresco. The bodyguard stood gaping by, and the odious small girl amused herself by peeping into the photographic albums on the table. In the midst of it all, a door was opened at the farther end of the room, and a lady came in. To our immense relief she seemed to take the invasion as a matter of course, and received us as amiably as if we had presented ourselves under proper circumstances. It may be that she is in the constant habit of finding stray foreign tourists in forcible possession of her drawing-room, but she certainly betrayed no surprise at sight either of ourselves or our suite. She showed us some old maps and engravings of Kedore, lithographed head of Titian, and some other worthless treasures, and when we rose to take our leave she asked for our cards. I value them, she said, as souvenirs of the strangers who honor me by a visit. The hunchback now went back to his own home, and we bent our steps toward the Duomo, always persecuted by the irrepressible little girl who, now that the hunchback had withdrawn, constituted herself our guide whether we would or know, and had it all her own way. She chattered, she disjiculated, she laid forcible hands upon the sketching-case, she made plunges at our parasols, she skirmished round us and before us and behind us, and kept up a breathless rush of insufferable babble. The Sinyoras were going to the Duomo, echo, they had but to follow her, she knew the way, she had known it all her life, she was born here, see, that was the Prefectura. Would the Sinyoras like to go over the Prefectura? Many strangers did go over the Prefectura. Yonder was a schoolhouse, she went to school there, she was fond of going to school, last week she had a tooth out, it hurt dreadfully, oh dreadfully, it was pulled out by the Medico, he lived in the piazza Yonder, nearly opposite the post office. This little house here was the house of Peroco, she had an uncle who was a Peroco, not here, however, at Dimeji up the valley, and she had an aunt at Cortina, and brothers and sisters, lots of brothers and sisters, all older than herself. Her sister had a baby last week, oh, such a little baby, no longer than that. Would the Sinyoras like to see the baby? Ah, well, here is the church. The Sinyoras must come in by the side door, the great door is always locked except on Saints' days and Sundays. The side door is always open, this way, this way, and please to mind the step. It is a large church, quite as large as the Duomo of Saraville, unfinished externally, bare looking, but well proportioned within. The chancel and transept are full of pictures, some two or three of which are reputed genuine Titians. None of these, however, though all in the style and of the school of the great master, are so strikingly fine as to declare their parentage at first sight, like the great Titian of Saraval. It happened, fortunately for us, that the Peroco was in the vestry. Hearing strange voices speaking a strange tongue he came out, a handsome, gentlemanly little man of about forty-seven or fifty, with keen, well-cut features, very bright eyes, a fresh color, and silver-gray hair. He entered at once into conversation and was evidently well pleased to show the treasures of his church. His name and style are Don Antonio Davia, Don being probably a corruption of Domine, a Paris priest, and he has for fifteen years been Peroco of this, his native town. In point of taste and education he is superior to the general run of Tyrolean pastors. He takes an eager interest in all that relates to Titian and the Vicheli, and believes Kadori to be the axis on which the world goes round. The Titians in the church are two in number, one a large, life-size painting containing four full-length figures, the other an oblong, also a figure subject, half life-size and half-length. The first represents the Madonna and Child, seated, with S. Rocco standing on one side of the group and S. Sebastiano on the other. S. Rocco points as usual to the wound in his thigh. S. Sebastiano stands in the traditional Peruginesque style, with an upturned face, hands bound behind his back, and his body pierced with arrows. The coloring has sadly faded, the saints are not very well drawn, the whole design is poor, the treatment conventional, the quality of the work early, and yet no student of Titian could look at it for five minutes and doubt its authenticity. It is the figure of the seated Madonna that stamps the work with Titian's sign-manual. Here is the somewhat broad, calm face, the fresh complexion, the reddish-golden hair that he delighted to paint his whole life long. It was his favorite type of female loveliness, that type which he developed to its ultimate perfection in the gorgeous, sacred, and profane love of the Borghese Gallery. Even the draperies of the Kedore Madonna, although the crimson has lost its fire and the blue has gone cold and dim, yet recall those other glowing voluminous folds, so impossible, so magnificent, which marked the highest ideal flight ever attained in Mir Piedge. The present picture was doubtless executed while Titian was yet a mere lad, but at the same time it bears internal evidence of having been painted after he had seen Venice and studied the works of the Venetian colorists. Between this painting and the smaller one there reaches a great gulf of time, a gap of perhaps fifty years. The first was the work of his boyhood, the second was the work of his age. He painted it, most likely, and presented it to the church during one of his summer visits to his native hills. It hangs in the Vacelli Chapel, a chapel dedicated to his own patron saint, St. Titiano, and in that chapel under the altar it was his desire to have been finally laid to rest. He died, however, as we all know, in time of plague at Venice, and where he died was of necessity buried. This little picture by which the Kedoreni set unbounded store represents St. Titiano and St. Andrew adoring the infant Christ, who lies in the lap of the Virgin. St. Andrew, a portrait of Titian's brother Francesco, crouches reverently on the right. Titian himself, bearing St. Titiano's crosier, appears in attendance upon the saint, in the corner to the left, while the Virgin Mother, according to popular belief, represents the wife of the painter. The Madonna here is indifferently executed, but the child is brought out into fine relief, and the flesh is well-modeled, warm, and solid. The great feature of the picture, however, is St. Titiano, whose handsome, brown, uplifted face, Italian features, rich, and well-natured, and well-natured, and well-natured, and well-natured, and well-natured, and well-natured, and well-natured, and well-natured, rich, southern complexion, and rapt devotional expression are in the master's purist style. The white and gold brocade of the saint's episcopal vestments and the subdued gold of his meter reminds one for their richness and solidity of texture of the handling of palo veronese. The head of Titian by himself in the left corner may be said to date the picture, and represents a man of perhaps sixty years of age. The execution of the whole is very unequal, so unequal as to suggest the idea of its having been partly executed by a scholar. In this case, however, the figures of St. Titiano and the infant Christ must be unhesitatingly ascribed to the hand of the master. Besides these two pictures, the treasures of Cadoré, the church contains several paintings by the brothers and nephews of Titian. Most others, a Last Supper by Césaré Vichelio, a martyrdom of St. Catherine by Horacio Vichelio, and foremost in merit, as well as in size, four large works in tempura originally painted upon the doors of the organ, by Marco Vichelio, the nephew who sat for the St. Titiano in the altar piece already described. These four paintings, said the priest, had been lying for years neglected and forgotten in a loft to which they had been removed when taken down from the front of the organ. It had long been his desire to get them framed and hung in the church, and now, after years of waiting, he had only just been able to carry out his design. A Tyrolean pastor has not many lira to spend on the fine arts, he said, smiling, but it is done at last, and the senioras are the first strangers who have seen them. They have not been up longer than three or four days. These four pictures measured some sixteen feet in height by about eight in breadth, and were mounted in plain wooden frames painted black and varnished. The outside cost of these frames, one would fancy, could scarcely have exceeded twenty lira each, or a little over three pounds, English for the four. But Don Antonio had cherished his project for years before he was rich enough to realize it. The temperas may be described as four great panels, each panel decorated with a single colossal figure. Of these, St. Matthew and St. Mark make one pair, the angel of the enunciation and the virgin the other. With the exception of the virgin, which is immeasurably inferior to the others, these figures are, far and away, the finest things in Kedore. For largeness of treatment and freedom of drawing, the writer knows nothing with which to compare them, unless it be the cartoons at South Kensington. The angel of the enunciation, bold, beautiful, buoyant as if just dropped down from heaven, advances on half-bended knee with an exquisite air of mingled authority and reverence. His head and flying curls are wholly Raphaelesque. So is the grand head and upturned face of St. Mark on one of the other panels, though sadly injured and obliterated. The angel and virgin face each other on either side of the transept, looking west, while St. Matthew and St. Mark occupy the same positions just opposite. The angel, said Don Antonio, was too far separated from the virgin, but that could not be helped, there being no other place in the church where they could be seen to so much advantage. Having done the honors of the Sangrestia, which contains several very indifferent old pictures, including a doubtful palmoveccio, Don Antonio led the way up a narrow stone staircase to the Vestiario, and there, as in a special favor, permitted us to see some antique embroidered vestments and procession banners that had been in use on great occasion from immemorial time. Much more interesting than these, however, and much more curious, was a very ancient, carved and gilded predella or shrine in the Florid Gothic style surmounted by a dry, Byzantine-looking Christ and constructed with folding doors below like a triptych. The panels of these doors were decorated outside with four small full-length paintings of the evangelists in a clear, brilliant, highly finished manner, the heads in general treatment recalling the style of Sandro Botticelli, while inside the shrine contained four richly canopied niches each occupied by a small carved and painted saint, very naive and medieval, like little Simibus done in wood. This predella belongs to a period long anterior to the Titian epic, and adorned the high altar up to the beginning of the present century. It was already long past the hour at which we had ordered luncheon when, having thanked Don Antonio for his courtesy, we again came out into the blinding sunshine. The insufferable little girl had now happily vanished, but she turned up again as soon as we reappeared at the albergio, buzzed about us all the time we were dispatching our uncomfortable midday meal, and was only driven off by help of Giuseppe when we went out again presently to sketch and stroll about the town and the castle hill for another couple of hours before pursuing our journey to Oranzo. CHAPTER VI. ORANZO AND VALBUANA. The view of Cadori upon which one looks back from the bend of the road half a mile out of the town on the way to Colasso, and again from the Ponte della Molina about another mile farther on, is one of the finest of all its kind in all this part of Tirol. At the same time it has in it very little of the Tirolian element. Pictorily speaking it is a purely Italian subject, majestic, harmonious, classical, with just sufficient sternness in the mountain forms to give it sublimity, but with no outlines abrupt or fantastic enough to disturb the scenic repose of the composition. In the foreground we have the ravine of the Molina spanned by a picturesque old bridge, at the farther end of which a tiny chapel clings to an overhanging ledge of cliff. In the middle distance seen across an intervening chasm of Misty Valley, the little faraway town of Cadori glistens on its strange saddleback ridge, watched over as of old by its castle on the higher slope above. Farthest of all rising magnificently against the clear afternoon sky, the fine, pyramidal mass of Montepera closes in the view. For light and shadow, for composition, for all that goes to make up a landscape in the grand style the picture is perfect. Nothing is wanting, not even the foreground group to give its life, for here come a couple of bullock trucks across the bridge, as primitive and picturesque as if they had driven straight out of the fifteenth century. It is just such a subject as Poussin might have drawn and clode have colored. At Domeji, about three and a half miles from Cadori, we come upon a village almost wholly destroyed a few months back by fire. It is now one mass of black and shapeless ruin, but it will not long remain so, for the whole population, men, women, and little children swarm like bees about a burnt hive, casting away rubbish, carrying loads of stones, mixing mortar, and helping to rebuild their lost homes. New foundations and new walls are already springing up, and by this present time a second Domeji has doubtless risen on the ashes of the first. Lozo, the next village, about two miles farther up the valley, was burnt down in just the same way a year or two ago, and is now most unpicturesquely new, solid, and comfortable. Perhaps to be burnt out is, on the whole, the best fate that can befall the inhabitants of any of these ancient timber-built hamlets, for their dwellings are then replaced by substantial stone-built houses. As it is, what with danger from fire and danger from burg falls, the smaller Tyrolean Pacee are by no means safe or pleasant places to live in, and may stand comparison in point of insecurity with Portici, Torredel Greco, or any others of the Vesuvian villages. Now the road, which has been very bad all the way from Kedore, slopes gradually down towards the bed of the torrent, passing within sight of the Lorenzago to the right, and under the impending precipices of Monte Cornon to the left. Mountain and village has each its legend. Lorenzago, picturesquely perched on one of the lower slopes on Monte Credola, claims to be the scene of the martyrdom of St. Florian, a popular Tyrolean saint whose intercession is supposed to be of a special efficacy in cases of fire, while Monte Cornon is said to derive its name from an incident in the history of Kedore, thus related by Mr. Gilbert. Along the slopes above this gorge, in the war of 1509, a division of Maximilian's troops was cautiously advancing, and the notes of a horn, corno, broke suddenly from the misty mountainside. It was but a casual herdsman sounding, as is still the custom there at certain seasons, to warn off bears, but supposing themselves to be attacked by the Kedore people, panic seized the invaders, and they then fled the way they came over the Santa Croce pass to Sexton. Kedore, page 92. The same rustic horn, sounded for the same purpose, may be heard here on quiet autumn evenings to this day, what time the bears come prowling down to rob orchards in the valley, and it is remarkable that there are more bears in the district about Monte Cornon, Comelico, and the Gale Thal than in any other part of the Alps. A little way beyond the village of Lozo, we cross the Piave and continue along the left bank as far as the point of junction with the Anzizi at Trepante, a famous triple bridge consisting of three bold arches, each ninety feet in span and all resting on a single central pier. To the left, winding away between richly wooded heights, lies the valley of Oronzo, while to the right, the upper Piave, its gray water shrunken to half their previous volume, come hurrying down a bear and stony channel from its source in the Carnic Alps. And now, having tracked it for many a mile of its long course, since first we saw it widening across the plain near Canegliano, we are to bid at last farewell to the Piave. It was not then very far from its grave in the Adriatic. It is now about as distant from its cradle in the fastness of Monte Paralba. A curious old historical writer, one Dottore Giorgio Piloni of Beluno, who evolved a dull book in a dull style just one hundred sixty years ago, speaks of the Piave not only as the largest and most important, but also as the most ancient river of the province, and seeks to identify it with the river Anessum, mentioned by Piloni in his chapter on the Venetian Territory. He urges, in proof of its antiquity, the depth of its bed and the height of its banks, whereby, he says, it may plainly be proved that this Piave cannot be a new river, as in other instances one sees may happen by intervention of earthquakes and other accidents. The good doctor, when he wrote this, had evidently never visited the scene of the Great Bergfall in the Gorge of Saraval, or seen the basin of the Piave at Capodipanti. Taking the right bank of the Anzié, we now enter the Val d'Oranzo. The bad road, which began at Cadori, ends at Trapanti, and once more the horses have a fine, new, broad post-road beneath their feet. The sun by this time is dropping westward, the trees fling long shadows aslant the sloping sward, the gnats come out in clouds, and the air is full of evening scents and sounds. It has been a long day, and nearly twelve hours have gone by since we started from Cortina in the morning. How much longer have we yet to be upon the road before we reach Oranzo? Being asked this question, the driver, whose politeness is such that it never permits him to give a direct answer to anything, touches his hat with his whip-handle, and replies that it is, as the senora pleases, comma la piace, senora. But how many kilometers have we yet before us? He coughs apologetically. Kilometers? Con rispeta, it is by no means a question of kilometers. With horses like these, kilometers go for nothing. Ebeni, as a question of time, then, how soon shall we be at Oranzo? In an hour? In an hour and a half? Before dusk? The driver shrugs his shoulders, looks round in a helpless way, as if seeking some means of escape, touches his hat again, and stammers, cum la piace, senora. Cum la piace is the formula by which all his ideas are bounded. He has no opinions of his own. He would die rather than express himself with decision about anything. Ask him what you will, the name of a village, the hour of the day, the state of the weather, his own name, age, and birthplace, and he will inevitably reply, cum la piace. It is his invariable answer, and the effort to extract any other from him is sheer waste of breath. The distance, however, proves to be only four miles. In about half an hour from the Tripundi we come to a bend in the road, and lo, there lies a large, rambling village, straggling along near the bank of the Asie, a big, mosque-like church with a glittering white dome, an older-looking companyel peering above the brown roofs at the farther extremity of the place, and beyond all these a vista of valley threaded by a deep, dark torrent fringed with sullen pine-woods. It is not the village of Aranzo, however, it is not the valley, nor the torrent, nor the pine-woods that make the beauty and wonder of the view. It is the encircling array of mountain summits standing up, rank above rank, peak beyond peak, against the clear, pale evening sky. Farthest and strangest, at the remote end of the valley, rise the dre-Zinnin, now showing distinctly as three separate obelisks. A soft haze through which the sun is setting hangs over the distance, and the dre-Zinnin, belted by luminous bands of filmy horizontal cloud, look like icebergs afloat in a sea of golden mist. It is one of those rare and radiant effects that one may travel for a whole summer without seeing, and which, when they do occur, last but a few moments. Before we had reached the first cottages the golden light was gone, and the vapours had turned gray and ghostly. Aranzo is divided into an upper and a lower village, known respectively as the Villa Grande and the Villa Picola. Villa Picola, which one reaches first on entering from the Trepontiside, is a modern suburb to Villa Grande. The houses of this modern suburb are large and substantial, reminding one of the houses at Oberammergau, and some are decorated in the same way with rough religious frescoes. To Villa Picola belong both the large new church and the dome, and the Albertio, a clean-looking house lying a little way back from the road on the left hand, close against the parsonage. Driving up to this inn we find some four or five shazes and carotene drawn up in front of the house, a knot of men and women gathered round the door, faces of other men and women looking out from the upper windows, and an unwanted air of bustle and festivity about the place. The landlady, a hard-featured dame in rusty black standing at the door with her arms akimbo, shakes her head as we draw up, and does not give Giuseppe time to speak. She cannot take us in, not she, couldn't take the king of Italy if he came this evening. Impossible! She has a wedding party from Comalico, and her house is quite full. Echo, there is another Albertio higher up in Villa Grande. We shall probably find room there. If not, well, she can't say. She supposes we must go back the way we came. Giuseppe and the driver look blank. They mutter something in low voices about l'altro Albertio, and my ear detects an ominous emphasis on the l'altro. The landlady purses up her mouth, the travelers in possession, in all their gayest holiday clothes, survey us with an insolent air of triumph. The coachman gathers up his reins, and we drive on, quite discomfited. With the scattered homesteads of Villa Piccola the good road ends abruptly and becomes a mere stony cart-track full of ruts and rubble. Then, all at once, we find ourselves in the midst of a foul, closely packed labyrinth of old timber-houses, ruinous, smoke-blackened, dilapidated, compared with which the meanest villages we have as yet passed through are clean and promising. Here squalid children shout and sprawl and beg. Slatterly women lean from upper windows, and sullen, fierce-looking men lounging in filthy doorways stare in a grim, unfriendly way as the carriage lurches past. This is Villa Grande. Another moment, and turning a sharp corner, we draw up before a bare, desolate-looking house standing a little apart from the rest, with a walled-off bowling-ground on one side in which some six or eight men are playing at ball and a score or two of others looking on. This is our alberjo. We look at Giuseppe at the house, at each other. Is there no other place to which we can go for the night? We ask aghast. Giuseppe shakes his head. This and the inn at Villa Piccola are the only two in the place. If we do not stay here, we have no resource but to go back to Teacadore, a distance of at least fourteen, if not fifteen, English miles. At this crisis out comes a tall, smiling, ungainly woman, with an honest face and a mouth full of large shining teeth, an anxious, willing, cheerful body, eager to bid us welcome, eager to carry any number of bags and rugs, brimming over with goodwill and civility. She leads the way up an extremely dirty flight of stairs, across a still dirtier loft full of flower sacks, cheeses and farming implements, and thence up a kind of step ladder that leads to a landing furnished with the usual table and chairs, linen press and glass cupboard. Opening off this landing are some two or three very bare but quite irreproachable bedrooms with low, whitewashed walls and ceilings about seven feet from the ground. The floors, the bedding, the rushed bottom chairs are all ascrupulously clean as the lower part of the establishment is unscrupulously the reverse. Carpets and curtains, of course, there are none. What is wanting in personal comforts is made up for, however, in the way of spiritual adornments. The walls are covered with prints of saints and martyrs in little black frames. While over the head of each bed there hangs a colored lithograph of the Madonna, displaying a plump pink heart stuck full of daggers and looking wonderfully like a Valentine. Here, then, we may take up our quarters and be at peace. And here, upon the landing, we are presently served with hot cutlets, coffee, eggs, and salad, all of very tolerable quality. While this meal is in preparation, we watch the players in the bowling ground. Our driver, having attended to his horses, strips off his coat and joins in the game. Giuseppe smokes his cigar and looks gravely on. By and by, the dust closes round, the players disperse, and we, who have to be upon the road again by 8.30 AM, are glad to go to rest, watched over by our respective Madonna's. Whether seen by evening gray or morning sunshine, the upper village of Aranzo is as unprepossessing, and disreputable looking a place as one would care to become acquainted with, either at home or abroad. Rambling about next morning before breakfast, I saw nothing but dirt and poverty under their least picturesque aspect. The people looked sullen, scowling, and disillute, and the houses overcrowded, the surrounding country not half-cultivated. I afterwards learned that the commune was poor in debt and overpopulated, and that the inhabitants bore an indifferent reputation. It was pleasant enough at all events to drive off again in the cool, bright morning, our horses' heads turned once again toward the hills. And now, Aranzo being left behind, the scenery becomes grander with each mile of the way. Every opening gorge to right and left discloses fresh peaks and glimpses of new horizons. The pine slopes, last evening so gloomy, are outlined in sunshine this morning, and the torrent ripples along its bed of glittering white pebbles like a blue ribbon with a silver border. The valley from this point looks like a cul-de-sac. The road runs up to the foot of a great barrier of stony debris at the base of Monte Geralba on the one side, and there to all appearances ends abruptly. Monte Rossiana, locally known as Monte Ruggiana, puts forth a gigantic buttress on the other, while the cull and yellow, a wild pile of peaks, not far short of 10,000 feet in height, rises an impassable barricade between the two. It is not till one has driven quite up to this point that the valley, instead of being hopelessly blocked, is found to turn off sharply to the left, narrowing to a mere gorge and winding round the western flank of Monte Rossiana. End of section 14. Untrodden Peaks and Unfrequented Valleys, section 15. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Untrodden Peaks and Unfrequented Valleys, a mid-summer ramble through the Dolomites, by Amelia B. Edwards. Chapter 6, Aronzo and Valbuona, part two. Now, some little distance farther on, we pass the desolate hamlet of Trevesia, a cluster of half-ruined cottages at the mouth of a wild glen, leading to a perilous and rarely trodden pass behind the coal and yellow. And now the road plunges all at once into a dense, fragrant tract of pine forest, musical with the singing of birds, pierced here and there by shafts of quivering sunlight, and all alive with little brown squirrels darting to and fro among the pendant fur cones. By and by a great cloven peak comes up above the treetops to the left, shutting out half the sunshine, and then a broad glade opens suddenly in the wood, revealing what looks at first like a range of new and colossal mountains, the lower spurs of which are only separated from us by the bed of the Anzier. At this point the driver pulls up and half turning round upon his box, says with all the exaggerated politeness of a master of the ceremonies in a provincial assembly room, con respeta, senora, il mar mar ol. Being thus formally introduced to our new Dolomite, we would feign achieve a better view of it than is possible from this point. All we see of it indeed is a vast mass towering up indefinitely beyond the pine forest, and facing us a huge slope of reddish-brown earth piled up to a height of some five or 700 feet against the mountain. This slope of rubble dotted over here and there with wooden sheds marks the site of an extensive lead in silver mine, now abandoned, and a tiny hole in the face of the cliff above, no bigger apparently than a keyhole, is pointed out as the entrance to the principal shaft. So we go on, always in the green shade of the forest, till we come to a little group of cottages known collectively as the Casa di San Marco, a name recalling the old days of Venetian sovereignty and still marking the frontier between Italy and Austria. Here there being no officials anywhere about, we passed unquestioned under the black and yellow pole, and so arrived in a few moments at the opening point of the new government road, which old Godina had given us directions to follow as far as it went. This new government road carried boldly up and through a steep hillside of pine forest is considered, and no doubt with justice, to be an excellent piece of work, but old Holborn Hill with all the paving stones up would have been as easy driving compared with it. As yet indeed it is not a bad road, but a rough clearing some 20 feet in width, full of stones and rubble and slags of knotted root, with the lately felled pine trunks lying prostrate at each side, like the ranks of slain upon a battlefield. No vehicle it seems has yet been brought this way, and though we all alight instantly, it seems doubtful whether the carriage can ever be got up. The horses half maddened by clouds of gadflies, struggle up the rugged slope, stopping every now and then to plunge and kick furiously. The land now rocks and rolls like a ship at sea. Every moment the road becomes worse and the blaze of noonday heat more intolerable. Presently we come upon a gang of road makers, some 200 in number, women and children as well as men, swarming over the banks like ants, clearing, leveling and stone breaking. They pause in their work and stare at us as if we were creatures from another world. You are the first travelers who have come up this way, says the overseer as we pass by. You must be in glazy. At length we reach a point where the road ceases altogether, its future course being marked off with stakes across a broad plateau of smooth turf. This plateau, a kind of natural arena in the midst of an upper world of pine forest, is hemmed in closely by trees on three sides, but sinks away on the left to a wooded dell down, which a clear stream leaps and sparkles. We look around seeing no outlet saved by the way we have come and wondering what next can be done with the carriage. To our amazement the driver coolly takes the leader by the head and makes straight for the steep pitch, dipping down to the torrent. You will not attempt to take the carriage down into that hole, exclaims the rider. Con rispeta, senora, there is no other way, replies the driver, deferentially, but the horses will break their legs and the carriage will be dashed to pieces. Come la piace, senora, says the driver, dimly recognizing the truth of this statement. We are standing now on the brink of the hollow, the broken bank shelving down to a depth of about 30 feet, the torrent tumbling and splashing at the bottom, and the opposite bank rising almost as abruptly beyond. Are we bound to get it across here? I ask. Con rispeta, yes, senora, that is to say, it can be sent back to the Cortina all the way around by Oronzo and the Piede de Cadore. It is as the senora pleases. Now it pleases neither of the senoras to send the carriage back by round of something like 45 miles. So after a hurried consultation we decide to have the horses taken out and the carriage hauled across by men. Giuseppe is thereupon dispatched for a reinforcement of navies, and thus by the help of some three or four stalwart fellows the land out is lifted bodily over, the horses are let across and re-harnessed, and after a little more pushing and pulling a rough cart-track on the other side of this Rubicon is gained in safety. Yet a few yards farther, and we emerge upon another space of grassy out, a green, smooth, sloping amphitheater of perhaps some 80 acres in extent, to the east all woods, to the west all mountains, with one lonely little white house nestling against the verge of the forest a quarter of a mile away. This amphitheater is the Valbuona, that little white house is the cottage of Bastion, the wood ranger. Yonder pale gigantic pinnacles towering in solitary splendor above the treetops to the rear of the cottage are the crests of the Cristallo. But above all else it is the view to the westward that we have come here to see. The famous Serk of the Crota, Malcora. And in truth, although we have already beheld much that is wild and wonderful in the world of Dolomite, we have as yet seen nothing that may compare with this. The green sword slopes away from before our feet and vanishes in a chasm of wooded valley of unknown depth and distance. While beyond and above this valley, reaching far away out of sight to right and left, piled up precipice above precipice, peak above peak, seamed with horizontal bars of snow drift, upholding here a fold of glittering glacier, dropping there a thread of misty waterfall, cutting the skyline with all unimaginable forms of jagged ridge embattlement, and reaching as it seems midway from earth to heaven runs a vast, unbroken chain of giant mountains. But what mountains, familiar as we have become by this time with the Ampeso Dolomites, there is not here one outline that either can recognize. Where then are we? And what should we see if we could climb yonder mighty barrier? It takes some minutes' consideration and the help of the map to solve these questions. Then suddenly all becomes clear. We are behind the Crota Malcora, directly behind Soripis and looking straight across in the direction of the Palmo, which, however, is hidden by intervening mountains. The Antelaos should be visible to the left, but is blocked out by the long and lofty range of the Marmoral. Somewhere away to the right in the gap that separates this great panorama from the nearer masses of the Cristallo lies the Tre Croce Pass leading to Cortina. The main feature of the view, however, is the Crota Malcora, and we are looking at it from the back. Seen on this side, it shows a sheer wall of impending precipice, too steep and straight to afford any resting places for the snow, safe here and there upon a narrow ledge or shelf, scarce wide enough for a chamois. On the Impezzo side, however, it flings out huge piers of rock so that the westward and eastward faces of it are as unlike as though they belong to two separate mountains. This form, as I by and by discover, is a frequent occurrence in dolomite structure, the civita affording perhaps the most remarkable case in point. Having looked a while at this wonderful view, we are glad once more to escape out of the blinding sunshine into the shade of the pine woods. Here by the help of rugs and cloaks, we make a tent in which to rest for a couple of hours during the great heat of the day. And so, taking luncheon, studying our books and maps, listening to the bees among the wildflowers and to the thrushes in the rustling boughs overhead, we fancy ourselves in Arcadia or the forest of Arden. Meanwhile, the wood-mans is busy among the fir trees on the hillside, and now and then we hear the crash of a falling tree. The forester who lives in the white cottage yonder comes by and by to pay his respects to the signore. His name is Bastion, and he turns out to be a brother of Santo Soripus. He also has been a soldier and is glad now and then when opportunity offers to act as a guide. He lives in this lost corner of the world the whole year round. It is multotristo, he says, especially in winter. When autumn wanes, he provisions his little house as if for a long siege, laying in a store of flour, cheese, sausage, coffee, and the like. Then the snow comes and for months snow-living soul ventures up from the valleys. All is white and silent like death. The snow is as high as himself, sometimes higher, and he has to dig a trench about the house that the light may not be blocked out of the lower windows. There was one winter, he says, not many years ago when the falls were so sudden and so heavy that he never went to bed at night without wondering whether he should be buried alive in his cottage before morning. While he is yet speaking, a band of road-makers comes trooping by, whistling, laughing, and humming scraps of songs. They are going back to work, having just eaten their midday mess of polenta, and their hearts are glad with wine, the rough red wine that Bastion sells at the cottage for about three critzers the litro, and which we at luncheon found quite undrinkable. The place is full of life now at all events, says El consolingly. He looks after them and shakes his head. Yes, senora, he replies, but their work here will soon be done and then it will seem more solitary than ever. The man is very like Santo, but has nothing of Santo's animation. The lonely life seems to have taken all that brightness out of him. His manner is sad and subdued, and when he is not speaking, he has just that sort of lost look that one sees in the faces of prisoners who have been a long time in confinement. At two o'clock, we break up our camp and prepare to start again. The polite driver, mindful of a possible bueno mano, comes to take leave and is succeeded by the lad Giovanni, who has journeyed up from Cortina to meet with us the promised saddle horses. And now our old friend, the tall chestnut, appears upon the scene with the Pezzi side saddle on his back, followed by an equally big black horse with the Godina saddle. Whereupon, having Giuseppe and Giovanni in attendance, we mount and ride away, not without certain shrewd suspicions that our gallant steeds are carrying ladies for the first time. Big as they are, they climb, however, like cats, clamoring in a wonderful way at the steep and stony slope of Fur Forest that rises behind Bastion's Cottage and leads to the Miss Arena out beyond. Three quarters of an hour of this rough work brings us to a higher level than we have yet reached and lands us on an immense plateau of rich turf hemmed in on both sides by an avenue of rocky summits. Those to the right are the Sime Cadino or Cadine Svetsen. Those on the left are the lower crags of the Cristallo mass, above which, though unseen from here, towers the gigantic Piz Popina. And this vast prairie valley so high, so solitary, all greenest grass below, all bluest sky above, undulating away into measureless distance is the Miss Arena out. As much perhaps as a thousand head of cattle are here feeding in the rich pastures. Presently we pass the Stablemento, or Vacherie as it would be called in France, a cluster of substantial wooden buildings where the herdsmen live in summer, making and storing the cheeses, which form so important an item in the wealth of the district. At length, when we have journeyed on and on for what seems like an interminable distance, we come upon a circular hollow in the midst of which nestles the Miss Arena Lake, a green, transparent, tranquil town fed as we are told by 30 springs and rich in salmon trout and otters. The place is inconceivably still, beautiful and solitary. Dark rushes fringe the borders of the lake and are doubled by reflection. Three cows stand drowsing in the water, motionless. Not a ripple disturbs its glossy service. Not a sound stirs the air. Yonder, where the vista opens northwards, appear the cloudy summits of the Dresdenen. Here, where the glassy lawn slopes down to the water's edge, the very sunshine seems asleep. The whole scene has a breathless unreality about it as if it were a mirage or a picture. Having rested here awhile, we retrace our steps the whole length of the plateau and then dismounting strike across on foot over a long slope of bog and rock till we gain the mule track leading by the Trey Crochet Pass to Cortina. An easy ascent winding up and around the edge of a pine forest now carries us over the shoulder of the Cristallo, which here assumes quite a new aspect, and instead of appearing as one united mass, divides into three enormous blocks, each block in itself a mountain. For a long way, the eastward view still commands the range of the Marmoral and the Circa Malcora. Then by degrees, as we work round towards the west, the Marmoral is gradually lost to sight and the Malcora crags begin to show themselves in profile. At last, the summit of the pass is gained with its three crosses and all the familiar peaks of the Ampeso side rise once more in magnificent array against the sunset. To the left, the Pelmo and Roschetta. To the right, a corner of Montelagasui and the three summits of the Tofana. Straight ahead, the Bec de Mazzotti, Montenuvalau, and beyond the gap of the Trey Saci Pass, the far-off snow slope of the Marmalata. The road from there to Cortina, though not steep, is long and rough, so rough that we are glad to dismount presently and finish the homeward journey on foot. As we go down a number of wayside crosses, some crudely fashioned in wood, some of rusty iron, attract our attention by their frequency on either side of the path. They are monuments to the memory of travelers lost in the sudden snowstorms that make these passes so perilous in wintertime and spring. End of section 15. Untrodden peaks and unfrequented valleys, section 16. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Untrodden peaks and unfrequented valleys, a mid-summer ramble through the Dolomites, by Amelia B. Edwards. Chapter 7. Capriol, Part 1. The time at length came when we must bid goodbye to Cortina. It was a place in which many more days might have been spent with pleasure and profit. The walks were endless. The sketching was endless. The climate perfect. Still, we had already overstayed the time originally set apart in our program for the Ampeso district. We had made all the most accessible excursions about the neighborhood, and with the whole of that great Italian Dolomite center that lies beyond the Tresace Ridge, yet unexplored, it was plain that we could ill afford to linger longer on the Austrian border. At the same time, Cortina, just because it lies upon the border, is in danger of being too hastily dismissed by travelers coming in from the Canegliano side. Marvelous, as its surrounding mountains are, a stranger is apt to conclude that they but open the way to still greater marvels, and to regard the Ampesothal as only the threshold of wonderland. Even Mr. Gilbert, visiting Cortina for the first time in 1861, as he himself tells, stayed only one night there, and never ceased to regret the omission till another Tirolian tour enabled him to repair it. For myself, looking back in memory across that intervening sea of peaks and passes, which lies between Bootsen and Cortina, I am inclined to place the Ampeso Dolomites in the very first rank, both as regards position and structure. The mountains of Premiero are more extravagantly wild in outline. The Marmolata carries more ice and snow. The Savita is more beautiful. The solitary giants of the Saeser Alp are more imposing. 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 12 miles from the doors of the Aquilinera, includes the Pelmo, Antelao, Marmoral, Crota Malcora, Cristallo, and Tofana. It was time, however, as I have said, for us to be moving onward. A practice mountaineer would doubtless find more than enough employment for a whole season within this one area. But we, who were not mountaineers in any sense of the word, had now done our duty very fairly by the place. And so, not without reluctance, were bound to seek fresh woods and pastures new. Nothing, in short, could have been pleasanter than staying, except going. Our next point being Capriol, it was arranged that we should ride over the Trasasi Pass and send the luggage by Carreta. Giuseppe, always economical, proposed a second Carreta for the Senoras, adding that the Char Road was a little rough on the side of Capriol. We, however, had already found it more than a little rough on the side of Cortona, and being impressed with a lively recollection of the horrors of that drive, declined to pursue the experiment any farther. Also it was necessary to make sure of getting a sidesaddle. By taking horses and riding over the pass we should at least get it as far as Capriol. Possession, so far, would be something gained. I am bound to confess that beyond that point our intentions, though vague, were decidedly felonious. The morning was exquisite when we started. The Carreta went first, driven by our polite friend of the other day, and we followed about half an hour later. The procession consisted of two riding horses, Fuchs the Chestnut and Moro the Black, a mule for the maid, the two elder Guedinas, Giuseppe and Giovanni. The Guedinas were there to lead the horses when necessary, and to bring them home tomorrow, while Giovanni, in as much as the mule's present rider had never before mounted anything more spirited than a Sorrento donkey, had strict orders to stay by that animal's head, and never to leave his post for an instant. And indeed a less inexperienced rider might well have been excused a shade of nervousness, for the road was often steep, and often skirted the brink of very unpleasant-looking precipices. While the promised busta destitute alike of rail and pommel proved to be neither more nor less than a bundle of cushions and sheepskins strapped upon a man's saddle with no real support save a stirrup. In this order, then, we finally started taking our former route in the direction of Falz Guerrego and casting many a backward glance at the mountains we were leaving behind us. Arrived once more at the little hospice, the Signore Cuaca was welcomed with acclamations, again leaving the public room for the use of the padrona's bright little kitchen, again the eggs and butter, the glittering brass pan, the long brass ladle, and the big apron were produced, and again the author covered herself with glory. It may have been the peculiar quality of the air on this particular pass, or it may have been the result of an exaggerated degree of self-approbation. But those Falz Guerrego eggs did certainly seem, on both occasions, to transcend in delicacy and richness of flavor all other eggs, with which the present writer had ever had the pleasure of becoming acquainted. It was our destiny to be overtaken by rain and mist on the Trasasi. Before we left the hospice, a few uncertain drops were already beginning to fall, and by the time we reached the summit, the Marmalata was gleaming in the same ghostly way as before through fast gathering vapors. From this point all is new. Skirting first the base of Monte Leguzzi, then of the abrupt crag, no locally known as the Sasso Distria, we passed close above some large, unmelted snowdrifts, and sewed down into a steep, romantic glen, traversed by a clear torrent, musical with many a fall, and crossed every here and there by a narrow bridge of roughly hewn pine trunks. Sometimes where there is no bridge, the water sparkles all across the path, and those on foot have to spring from stone to stone as best they may. Dark furs and larches, growing thicker and closer as the dell dips deeper, make a green gloom overhead. Furns, mosses, and wildflowers grow in lush luxurients all over the steep banks, and carpet every hollow. Gaunt peaks are seen now and then through openings in the boughs, as if suspended high up in the misty air. And ever the descending path winds in and out among huge boulders covered with bushes and many colored lichens. And now as we go on, the sky darkens more and more. Then a light, steady mist begins to fall. The mist turns to rain, the rain becomes a storm, and the mountains echo back a long, low peel of distant thunder. Meanwhile, the road has become very steep and slippery, and the horses keep their feet with difficulty. Then the glen turns and widens, and Castildan dras, a shattered, blank-eyed ruin perched high upon a pedestal of crag, comes suddenly into sight. Steak precipices skirt the ruin on one side, and upland pastures on the other. A green valley opens away beyond, and the grassy slope beside the bridal path is full of large, wild-orange lilies and crimson dog-roses that flame-like jewels an array of sunshine which breaks at this moment through the clouds. Not even the sheets of rain still pelting pitilessly down can blot out the wonderful beauty of the view or reconcile me to the impossibility of stopping then and there to sketch it. We ride on, however, for fully three-quarters of an hour more, stumbling over wet stones and sliding down steps hewn in the solid rock to let length the little hamlet of Andres, half hidden among trees and precipices, and framed in overhead by a magnificent fragment of rainbow, appears in welcome proximity close beneath our feet. Another turn of the road, and we are there. The men are wet through, the horses are streaming, the rain runs in rivers off our waterproof cloaks, our umbrellas are portable gargoyles. In this state we alight at the door of Finnazer's tiny hostelry and birria, a very small, clean, humble place where, having taken off our wettest outer garments and dried ourselves thoroughly at a blazing kitchen fire, we order hot coffee and prepare to make the best of our position till the sky clears again. Never was there such a toy parlor as that into which we are ushered on coming out of the kitchen. It is all pine wood, new, bright, fragrant, cinnamon colored pine wood, shining like gold. Walls, floors, ceilings are all alike, and it is perfectly square too in every way like a beautiful new box of sorento or ton bridge wear. You might have turned it up end-wise or side-wise or topsy-turvy, and but for the altered position of the door I would defy the most sagacious architect to find out the difference. Then the chairs, the tables, the corner cupboards, the clock case, all are of the same material. Everything in that room in short is pine wood, except the grate. There are certain toy stalls in the Soho Bazaar where, at the cost of a few shillings, one may at any time buy just such wooden furniture in miniature. Buy and buy the rain ceases, the clouds part, the sun breaks out, the horses are brought round, and for the third time that day we again push on for Capriol. And now, not far below this point, the Valley of the Corda Valle, the fairest and most silvan we have yet seen, a valley less Italian in character than the Val d'Aranzo, more Swiss than the Ampezo Thal, rich in corn, maize, hemp, flax, and pasture, and bounded in the far distance by great shadowy mountains, patched and streaked with snow, about whose flanks rent storm clouds drift and gather, like the waves of an angry sea. That one of these is the Boé, which we come to know hereafter as a bastion of the cello plateau, and that another is the Monte Padone, our facts to be taken for the present upon trust. The Marmalata is also dimly traceable now and then, and presently a blurred gigantic mass, so enveloped in mist as to show no definite outline of any kind, is pointed out as the Civita. Meanwhile the bridal path, carried at an immense height along the shoulder of Monte Frisolet, follows every curve of the mountain, now commanding the valley of Livinolungo to the northwest, now coming in sight of a corner of the blue lake beyond Capril to the south, now winding along the face of an almost vertical precipice, now skirting the borders of a pine forest, now striking across a slope of greenest pasture, and at every turn disclosing some new vista more beautiful than the last. Tiny villages, some a thousand feet below, some a thousand feet above the level of our path, are scattered far and wide, each with its little white church and picturesque campanile. Sometimes one, sometimes another of these stands out for a few moments in brilliant sunshine. Then as the clouds drive by, sinks away again into shadow. These vivid, alternating passages of light and shade, followed by the intense gloom of another gathering storm, now coming rapidly up from the valleys behind the Marmalata, altogether defied description. And now, anxious if possible to escape another drenching, we hurry on, stared at by all who meet us as if no such cavalcade had ever before found its way along this mountain track. Passing presently through the little village of Calaz, we attract the whole population to their doors and windows, and two very old priests standing by the church door, pull off their hats and bow to the ground as we ride by. End of section 16. Untrodden Peaks and Unfrequented Valleys. Section 17. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Untrodden Peaks and Unfrequented Valleys. Amid Summer Ramble through the Dolomites. By Amelia B. Edwards. Chapter 7. Caprio, Part 2. Then as before, a light mist begins to fall and turns presently to a heavy rainstorm that becomes heavier the longer it lasts. Then too the path gets steep and stony and the horses, which have for some time been showing signs of fatigue, slip and stumble at every step. As for the black, being frightened by a flash of very vivid lightning, he becomes suddenly restive and all but carries the rider at a single bound into the gulf below. Hereupon we dismount and letting the horses go down by the road, make our way in rain, wind, thunder and lightning down a narrow zigzag path at the bottom of which, some 300 feet below, appear the roofs and the church fire of Caprio. The pezzies had given us up hours ago, but seeing our wretched little party coming along the village street, drenched, draggled and miserable, rushed down in a body to meet and welcome us on the threshold. Old Senor Apezi, gentle and cordial, young Senor Apezi, still with a rose in her hair, the two sons whom we already know and all the helps and hangers on of the establishment. The men and horses arrive close upon our heels, but the caretta left behind long since upon the road, never appears till some two hours later, having turned quite over on the edge of a precipice and deposited all our bags and rugs at the bottom of a steep and muddy gully from which they were with difficulty recovered. Meanwhile a good fire is quickly lighted, wet clothing is taken to the kitchen to be dried, a hot supper is put in preparation and all the discomforts of the journey are forgotten. Now the pezzies is a large, old, rambling stone house and consists in fact of three houses thrown into one. The floors are some of the stone and some of wood. The rooms are at all sorts of levels. The windows are very small and full of flowers. An old metal sign, as old apparently as the days of the fellery, swings at the corner outside and a balcony of antique Italian wrought iron juts out over the doorway. The public room on the first floor is paneled with oak and contains a fine carved ceiling while the landings, as usual, are engaged as places to dine in. A set of rooms, however, including the unwanted luxury of a comfortable private sitting room were assigned to us on the second floor and these we retained during all the time that we made capriol our headquarters. In the sitting room we had a sofa, a round table, a chiffonet and even a bookcase containing Gussiardini's History of Italy and Teatro Francaise in 30 volumes. Here also were Ball's guidebooks and Gilbert's Dolomite Mountains presented to Signora Pese by the authors. On the walls, amid a variety of little-framed prints and photographs, we found portraits of FFT and his sisters. In the visitor's book, the handwriting of JAS, of the N's, of the W's and of other friends who had passed by in foregoing years. The place, in short, was warm with pleasant memories. No wonder that it seemed like home from the first and was home while it lasted. At Capriol the traveller finds himself again in Italy. Coming down on foot in the pelting storm we had crossed the frontier, it seemed, a little way above the zigzag. The villages but just over the border and yet the houses and the people are as thoroughly Italian as if buried alive in the heart of the Japanese. It lies in a deep hollow at the foot of four mountains and at the junction of four valleys. The four mountains are the Monte Frisolet, the Monte Mignon, the Monte Pesa and the Monte Fernanza, known locally as the Monte Tos. The four valleys are the Val di Levina Lungo, the Val Fiorentino, the Val Petorina and the Val d'Alechi or Cote Val. Each of the first three of these valleys to say nothing of a fourth and apparently nameless tributary coming down a rocky glen behind the village brings its torrent to swell the flood of the Cote Vole which, a couple of miles lower down, flows southward through the Lake of the Alechi on its way to join the Piave in the Val di Mal. The village, murky and unprepossessing at first sight, consists of one straggling street partly built upon arches. The church, which is in no wise remarkable unless for the decorations of the organ loft on which is profanely painted a medallion head of the Apollo Belvedere, surrounded by bouquets of flutes, fiddles and tambourines, is situated on a rising ground near the foot of the zigzag. At the farther end of the village on the side of Alechi stands the column of St. Mark, commemorative of the time when Capriol, like Cadore, owned the sovereignty of the Doge and the Council of Ten. The Venetian lion on the top, a battered medieval bronze, was robbed some years ago of his wings and the Commune has talked of replacing them ever since. A carved shield on the front of the column is charged with the arms of Capriol and beneath it a square stone tablet bears the following inscription. Scipioni, Benzono, Pats, Fens, Ceri, Sanati, Veni, Comus, Super, Finibus, Beneficentis, Capriolensis, Ere, PVB, POS, Anno, 1559. The little piazza in which this roadside monument stands is called the Contrada di San Marco. The torrent runs close behind it on one side, the international dogana overlooks it on the other. In this open space the young men of the village play at Palo all day long. To an onlooker this game, which in summer forms the absorbing occupation of half the middle class youth of Italy, would seem to be governed by no laws whatever, but to consist simply in tossing the ball from player to player. They use no bats, they mark off no boundaries, they make no running. They're interest in it, however, and their excitement are unbounded. They begin immediately after breakfast and go on till dusk, and when they are not playing, they are smoking cigarettes and looking on. The Italians and Austrians profess nowadays to be the best friends in the world, especially at these little frontier posts where they are brought into perpetual contact. But I observed that the young men of Capriol, although their favorite playing ground lay just under the windows of the dogana, never invited the Austrian soldiers to take part in the game. These latter, standing about with their hands in their pockets, or sitting on the steps of the column, watched the players in a melancholy way and looked as if they found life dull at Capriol. The first sight that one goes out of doors to see is, of course, the Civita. The first walk or drive one takes is to the lake of Alleghi. As they both lie in the same direction, and as the best view of the mountain is gained from the road leading to the lake, if not from the actual borders of the lake, most of the few travelers who come this way content themselves with dispatching both in a single morning, and then believe that they have done Capriol. The grand facade of the Civita, a sheer, magnificent wall of upright precipice, seamed from crown to foot with thousands of vertical fishers, and rising in a mighty arch towards the center faces the northwest, looking directly up the Corda Vole towards Capriol and filling in the end of the valley as a great organ front fills in the end of a cathedral aisle. Towards evening it takes all the glow of the sunset. In the morning, while the sun is yet low in the east, it shows through a veil of soft blue shade, vague and unreal as a dream. It was thus I first saw it. I had gone rambling out through the village before breakfast, and suddenly the Civita rose up before me like a beautiful ghost, draped in haze against a background of light. I thought it then for simple breadth and height, for symmetry of outline, for unity of effect, the most ideal and majestic looking mountain I had ever seen, and I think so still. The Lake of Alleghi lies about two miles south southeast of Capriol in a green amphitheater at the foot of the Civita, the Monte Pesa, and the Monteo Fernanza. The way to it lies along the left bank of the Cordevaux, which here flows in a broad strong current and is bordered on the side of the char road by a barren, pebbly tract sparsely overgrown with weeds and bushes. The river is dark and deep and brown. The lake, which is but an expansion of the river, is of a wonderful greenish blue, sapphire streaked with emerald. The river is always rushing on at a headlong, irresistible pace. The lake, except where the windsweep straight up the valley, is as placid as a sheet of looking glass. The river, an aggregate of many tributaries, is as old probably as the mountains once its many sorts flow. The lake is new, a thing of yesterday. For a hundred years are as yesterday in the world's history, and where the Lake of Alleghi now mirrors the clouds and mountains, there were orchards and cornfields, farms and villages only 102 years ago. A great burgfall from the Monte Pezza, or rather, two successive burgfalls, caused all this ruin and created all this beauty. These terrible catastrophes, as all travelers know, are common to mountain countries. But among these Dolomite valleys, the burgfalls seem to have occurred and seem to still occur with greater frequency and on a more tremendous scale than elsewhere. You cannot walk or drive for ten miles in any direction without coming upon some such scene of ruin. It may have happened last year, or ten or fifty or a hundred years ago, or it may have happened in prehistoric ages. Your guide in general knows nothing about it. You ask him when it happened. He shrugs his shoulders and says, "'Chilosa.'" But there, at all events, lie the piled rocks with their buried secrets, and often there is no outward difference to show which fell within the memory of man and which before the date of man's creation. The history of the Lake of Alleghi has, however, been handed down with unusual accuracy. The date of the calamity and the extent of the damage done are registered in certain parish books and municipal records, and these, again, are supplemented by deeds and papers preserved by private families in the villages roundabout. Most of these families, and among them the pezzies of Capril, can tell of ancestors whose houses and lands were buried in the Great Fall of 1771. This is how it happened. The Montepezza, of which I shall have more to say hereafter, lies to the west of the lake, being the largest of the four mountains already mentioned as surrounding the hollow in which Capril is built. In northwards it breaks away in abrupt precipices, culminating in a fine rocky summit some 8,000 feet above the level of the sea. But on the side nearest the lake, it slopes down in a succession of rich woods, pastures, and picturesque ravines. Skirting the opposite shore, one sees a vast, treacherous, smooth-looking slope of slady rock, like a huge bald patch extending all along the crest of the ridge on this side. It was from thence the fall came. It was this crest that slid away slowly at first, and then with terrible swiftness down into the valley. The first disaster happened in the month of January 1771. A charcoal burner, it is said, who had been at work up in the woods, came down towards close of day, white and breathless, calling on those in the plain to save themselves, for the mountain was moving. A swift runner with the fear of death behind him, he fled from village to village, raising the cries he went. But no one believed him. There were four villages then, where now there is the lake. In credulous of danger, the people of those four villages went to bed that evening as usual, and in the dead of night, the whole side of the mountain came down with a mighty rush and overwhelmed the sleepers, not one of whom escaped. Two of the villages were buried, two were drowned, for the water of the court of all, driven suddenly back, spread out as in the case of the Piave, and formed the lake as we now see it. The two buried hemlis lay close under the foot of the mountain at the southern end of the basin, where the great masses of debris, now lie piled in huge confusion. A legy, the chief place of the district, was situated somewhere about the middle of the lake, and is wholly lost to sight. The fourth village stood on a slope at the north end, close against that point where the court of all now flows into the lake. Four more months went by, and then on the 21st of May, there came a second downfall. This time the waters of the lake were driven up the valley with great violence, and destroyed even more property than before. In the little village which is now called a legy, and has been so-called ever since the first legy was effaced, the whole east end and choir of the present church were swept away, and the organ was carried to a considerable distance at the glen. At the same moment, for the whole lake seems to have surged up suddenly as one wave, a tree was hurled in through the window of the room in which the cura was sitting at dinner, and the servant awaiting upon him was killed on the spot. The choir has been rebuilt since then, and the organ repaired and replaced to does duty to this day. No monument or tablet so far as I could learn has ever been erected to the memory of those who perished in these two great disasters. But a cataphal is dressed and candles are lighted, and a solemn commemorative mass for the souls of the lost and dead is performed in the church at a legy on the 21st of May in every year. End of section 17.