 UNTRODDEN PEAKS AND UNFREQUENTED VALLEYS. An autumn in North Italy, a winter in Rome, a spring tide in Sorrento, brought summer round again, the rich Italian summer, with its wealth of fruits and flowers, its intolerable heat and its blinding brightness. The barbarian tide had long ago set northwards and overflowed into Switzerland. Even those who had lingered longest were faint at last to turn their faces towards the hills, and so it happened that the rider and a friend who had joined her of late in Naples found themselves about the middle of June, 1872, breathing the cooler airs of Montegeneroso. Here was a pleasant hotel filled to overflowing and numbering among its guests many Roman friends of the past season. Here too were green slopes and shady woods and meadows splendid with such wild flowers as none of us had ever seen elsewhere. The steaming lakes, from which we had just escaped, Como, Lugano, and Maggiore lay in still shining sheets three thousand feet below. The vast, lombard flats on the one side shimmered all day in burning mist to the far horizon. The great snow ranges bounding Switzerland and Tyrol on the other glowed with the rose of every dawn and turned purple when the sun went down behind them in glory every evening. Seeing this wondrous panorama constantly before our eyes, with its changing lights and shadows and its magical effects of cloud wreath and shower, catching now a sudden glimpse of the Finster air horn and the Bernese range, now an apparitional vision of Montegrosa or the Matterhorn or even, on a clear morning from the summit behind the hotel, of the far distant Ortler-Spitza on the Tyrolese border, we began, somehow, to think and talk less of our proposed tour in the Engadine, to look more and more longingly toward the northeast horizon, and to dream in a vague way of those mystic mountains beyond Verona, which we knew of, somewhat indefinitely, as the Dolomites. The Dolomites! It was full fifteen years since I had first seen sketches of them by a great artist not long since passed away, and their strange outlines and still stranger coloring had haunted me ever since. I thought of them as every summer came around. I regretted them every autumn. I cherished dim hopes about them every spring. Sketching about Venice in a gondola a year before the time of which I write, I used to be ever looking towards the faint blue peaks beyond Verona. In short it was an old longing, and now high up in the mountain-side, with Zermatt and the Engadine close within reach and the multitudinous alps extending across half the horizon, it came back upon me in such force as to make all that these great mountains and passes had to show seem tame and undesirable. Fortunately my friend, whom I will call El for briefness, had also read and dreamed of the Dolomites, and was as eager to know more of them as myself. So we soon reached that stage in the history of every expedition when vague possibilities merged into planned certainties, and the study of maps and routes becomes the absorbing occupation of every day. There were, of course, some difficulties to be overcome, not only those difficulties of accommodation and transit which make the Dolomite district less accessible than many more distant places, but special difficulties arising out of our immediate surroundings. There was S, for instance, El's maid, who, being delicate, was less able for mountain work than ourselves. And there was the supreme difficulty of the courier, a gentleman of refined and expensive tastes who adored what is generally understood by roughing it, despised primitive simplicity and exacted that his employers should strictly limit their love of picturesque, to districts abundantly intersected by railways and well furnished with first-class hotels. That this illustrious man should look with favor on our new project was obviously hopeless. So we discussed it secretly with bated breath, and the proceedings at once assumed the delightful character of a conspiracy. The Reverend John R., who had been acting for some weeks as English chaplain at Stressa, was in the plot from the beginning. He had himself walked through part of our Dolomite route a few years before, and so gave us just that sort of practical advice which is, of all help in traveling, the most valuable. For this, for his gallant indifference to the ultimate wrath of the courier, and for the energetic way in which, with a noble disregard of appearances, for which we can never be sufficiently grateful, he made appointments with us in secluded summer houses, and attended stealthy indoor conferences at hours when the servants were supposed to be at meals. I here beg to offer him our sincere and hearty thanks. All being at last fully planned, it became necessary to announce our change of route. The great man was accordingly summoned, the rider, never famous for moral courage, ignomiously retreated, and El the Dauntless undertook the service of danger. Of that tremendous interview no details ever transpired. Enough that El came out from it, composed but victorious, and that the great man, greater than ever under defeat, comported himself thenceforth with such a nicely adjusted air of martyrdom and dignity as defy's description. Now there are three ways by which to enter the Dolomite District, namely by Botson, by Bruneck, or by Venice, and it fell in better with our after-plans to begin from Venice. So on the morning of Thursday the twenty-seventh of June we bade farewell to our friends on Montegeneroso, and went down in all the freshness and beauty of the early morning. It was a day that promised well for the beginnings of such a journey. There had been a heavy thunderstorm the night before, and the last cumuli were yet rolling off in a long, billowy rack upon the very verge of land and sky. The plains of Lombardy glittered wide and far, Milan gleamed a marvel speck in the mid-distance, and farthest scene of all, a faint, pure obelisk of snow, traced as it were upon the transparent air, Rosmonte Vizzo, a hundred and twenty miles away. But soon the rapidly descending road and thickening woods shut out the view, and in less than two hours we were down again in Mendricio, a clean little town containing an excellent hotel, where travelers bound for the mountain and travelers coming down to the plains are wont to rest. Here we parted from our heavy luggage, keeping only a few small bags for use during the tour. Here also we engaged a carriage to take us on to Como, where we arrived about midday after a dull and dusty drive of some two hours more. It was our intention to push on that afternoon as far as Bellagio, and in the morning to take the early steamer to Leco, where we hoped to catch the nine-twenty-five train reaching Venice at four-thirty. Tired as we now were it was pleasant to learn that the steamer would not leave till three, and that we might put up for a couple of hours at the Hotel Volta. Not only the best in Como, but one of the best in Italy. Here we rested and took luncheon, and despite the noontide blaze out of doors, contrived to get as far as that exquisite little miniature in marble, the cathedral. Lingering there till the last moment, examining the cameo-like barreliefs of the façade, the strange beasts of unknown date that support the holy water basins near the entrance, and the delicate Italian gothic of the nave and aisles, we only ran back just in time to see our effects being wheeled down the pier, and to find the steamer not only crowded with passengers, but the deck piled funnel high with bails of raw silk, empty baskets, and market produce of every description. End of Section 1. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Untrodden peaks and unfrequented valleys, a mid-summer ramble in the Dolomites, by Amelia B. Edwards. CHAPTER I. MONTA GENEROSSO DE VENICE. SECTION 2. We were the only English on board, as we had been the only English in the streets, in the hotel, and apparently in all the town of Como. Our fellow passengers were of the bourgeois class, stout matrons with fat brown hands cased in net admittance and loaded with rings, elderly pear de familla in straw-hats black-eyed young women in gay shawls and fawn-colored kid-boots, and a sprinkling of priests. It had probably been market day in Como, for the foredeck was crowded with chattering country folk, chiefly bronzed women in wooden clogs, some few of whom wore in their plaited hair that fan-shaped headdress of silver pins, which, though chiefly characteristics of the Canton Tessen, just over the neighboring Swiss border, yet is worn all about the neighborhood of the lakes. Two boats steamed out of the little port and along the glassy lake, landing many passengers at every stage, and the fat matrons drank ice-chievin and a beer, and the priests talked together in a little knot, and made merry among themselves. There were three of them, one Rubikund, Jovial, and some what Threadbear, another very bent and toothless and humble, and desperately shabby, while the third in shining broadcloth and a black satin waistcoat carried himself like a gentleman and a man of the world, was liberal with the contents of his silver snuff-box, and had only to open his lips to evoke obsequious laughter. We landed the two first at small waterside hamlets by the way, and the last one to shore at Cadinabia in a smart boat with two rowers. Wooded hills, vineyards, villages, terraced gardens, gleaming villas, bowered in orange groves, glided past, meanwhile, a swift and beautiful panorama. The little voyage was soon over, and the sun was still high when we reached Bellagio, a haven of delicious rest if only for a few hours. Next morning, however, by a quarter past seven, we were again on board and making too slowly for Lecho, where we arrived just in time to hear the parting whistle of the nine-twenty-five train. Now, as there were only two departures a day from this place and the next train would not start for seven hours, arriving in Venice close upon eleven at night, our case looked serious. We drove, however, to a hotel, apparently the best, and hear the landlady, a bright, energetic body, propose that we should take a carriage across the country to Bergamo, and there catch up the eleven-thirteen express from Milan. Here was the carriage standing ready in the courtyard. Here were the horses ready in the stables. Here was her nephew ready to drive us. The lightest carriage, the best horses, the steadiest whip in Lecho. Never was there so brisk a landlady. She allowed us no time for deliberation. She helped to put the horses in with her own hands, and she packed us off as eagerly as if the prosperity of her hotel depended on getting rid of her customers as quickly as possible. So away we went, counting the kilometers against the time all the way, and triumphantly rattling up to Bergamo station just twenty minutes before the express was due. Then came that well-known route, so full of beauty, so rich in old romance, that the mere names of the stations along the line make Bradshaw read like a page of poetry. Brescia, Verona, Vincenza, Padua, Venice. For the traveller who has gone over all this ground at his leisure, and is familiar with each place of interest as it flits by, I know no greater enjoyment than to pass them thus in rapid review, taking the journey straight through from Milan to Venice on a brilliant summer's day. What a series of impressions! What a chain of memories! What a long, bright vision of ancient cities with forked battlements, white convents perched on cypress-planted hills, rock-built citadels, and crumbling medieval towns, bright rivers and olive woods and vineyards without end, and beyond all these a background of blue mountains ever varying in outline, ever changing in hue as the clouds sail over them and the train flies on. By five o'clock we were in Venice. I had not thought, when I turned southwards last autumn, that I should find myself threading its familiar waterways so soon again. I could hardly believe that here was the Grand Canal, and yonder the Rialto, and that those white domes now coming into sight were the domes of Santa Maria da Salute. It all seemed like a dream. And yet somehow it was less like a dream than a changed reality. It was Venice, but not quite the old Venice. It was a gayer, fuller, noisier Venice, a Venice empty of English and American tourists, full to overflowing of Italians in every variety of summer finery, crowded with artists of all nations sketching in boats, or surrounded by gaping crowds in shady corners and porticoes. A Venice whose flashing waters were now cloven by thousands of light skiffs with smart striped awnings of many colors, but once the hearse-like, tufted gondola, so full of mystery and poetry had altogether vanished. A Venice whose every side canal swarmed with little boys learning to dive, and with swimmers of all ages, where dozens of cheap steamers, compared with which the hunger-fried penny-boats with seem-like floating palaces, were hurrying to and fro every quarter of an hour between the riva del chivone and the bathing-places on the lido. A Venice in which every other house in every piazza had suddenly become a café in which brass bands were playing and caramels were being hawked, and ice-drinks were continually being consumed from seven in the morning till any number of hours after midnight. A Venice in short, which was sunning itself in the brief gaiety and prosperity of the bathing season, when all Italy north of the Tiber, and a large percentage of strangers from Vienna, St. Petersburg, and the shores of the Baltic, throng hither to breathe the soft sea breezes off the Adriatic. We stayed three days at Danielles, including Sunday, and mindful that we were, this time, bound for a district where roads were few, villages far between and in scantily provided with the commonest necessities. We took care to lay in a good store of portable provision for the journey. Our Saturday and Monday were, therefore, spent chiefly in the mazes of the Merceria. Here we bought two convenient wicker baskets, and wherewithal to stock them, tea, sugar, redding biscuits and tins, chocolate and tablets, Laidvig's remory extract, two bottles of cognac, more of marsala, pepper, salt, arrowroot, a large metal flask of spirits of wine, and an etna. Thus armed we could at all events rely in case of need upon our own resources, and of milk, eggs, and bread we thought we might make certain everywhere. Time proved, however, that in the indulgence of even this modest hope we overestimated the fatness of the land, for it repeatedly happened that, the cows being gone to upper pastures, we could get no milk, and on one memorable occasion, in a hamlet containing at least three or four hundred souls, that we could get no bread. There was yet another point upon which we were severely exercised. And that was the question of sidesaddles. Mr. R., on Montegeneroso, had advised us to purchase them and take them with us, doubting whether we should find any between Cortina and Botzen. Another friend, however, had positively assured us of the existence of one at Capriol, and where there was one we hoped there might be two more. Anyhow we were unwilling to add the bulk and burden of three sidesaddles to our luggage, so we decided to go on and take our chance. I suspect, however, that we had no alternative, and that one might as well look for skates in Calcutta as for saddle-ree in Venice. As the event proved we did ultimately succeed in capturing two sidesaddles, the only two in the whole district, and enforceably keeping them throughout the journey, but this was a triumph of audacity never to be repeated. Another time we should undoubtedly provide ourselves with sidesaddles either at Pagua or Vincenza on the one side, or at Botzen on the other. By Monday evening, the first of July, our preparations were completed, our provisioned baskets packed, our sections of sketching and writing materials duly laid in, and all was at length in readiness for an early start next morning. Untrodden Peaks and Unfrequented Valleys section three. 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 Midsummer Ramble Through the Dolomites by Amelia B. Edwards. Chapter 2 Venice to Longarone, Part 1 Having risen at Grey Dawn, breakfasted at a little after 5 a.m., and pulled down to the station before half the world of Venice was awake, it was certainly trying to find that we had missed our train by about five minutes, and must wait four hours for the next. Nor was it much consolation, though perhaps some little relief, to up-braid the courier who had slept too late, and so caused our misfortune. Sulky and silent he piled our bags in a corner and kept gloomily aloof, while we, cold, dreary, and discontented, sat shivering in a drafty passage close against the ticket-office, counting the weary hours and excluded even from the waiting-rooms, which were locked up pour ordinaire supérieure, till half an hour before the time at which we could now proceed upon our journey. The time, however, dragged by somehow, and when, at ten o'clock, we at last found ourselves moving slowly out of the station, it seemed already like the middle of the day. And now again we traversed the Great Bridge and the long, still, glassy space of calm lagoon, and left the lessening domes of Venice far behind. And now, Mestra's station being passed and the firm earth reached again, we entered on a vast, flat, all green with blossoming Indian corn, and intersected by a network of broad dykes populous with frogs. Heavens, how they croaked! Driving out from Ravenna to Dante's famous pine forest the other day, we had been almost deafened by them. But the shrill chorus of those Ravenna frogs was as soft music compared with the unbridled revelry of the Renecian brethren. Those drowned the very noise of the train and reduced us to a dumb show till we were out of their neighborhood. So we sped on the grey-blue mountains that we had been looking at so longingly from Venice these last three days, growing gradually, nearer, and more definite. Soon we began to distinguish a foreground of lower hilltops, some dark with woods, others cultivated from base to brow and dotted over with white villages. Then by and by comes a point, midway as it were, between Venetia and Tyrell, whence, looking back towards Canegliano, we see the last tapering Venetian campanile, outlined against the horizon on the one hand, and the first bulbous Tyrellian steeple, shaped like the morian of a medieval man at arms, peeping above the roof of a little hillside hamlet on the other. The dykes and frogs are now left far behind. The line is bordered on both sides by feathery Acacia hedges, and above the lower ranges of frontier mountains, certain strange, jagged peaks, which, however, are not Dolomite, begin to disengage themselves from the cloudy background of the northern sky. No, they cannot be Dolomite, though they look so like it, for we have been told that we shall see no true Dolomite before tomorrow. It is possible, however, as we know, to see the Anteleo from Venice on such a clear day as befalls about a dozen times in the course of a summer, but here, even if the cloud were skyless, we are too close under the lower spurs of the outlying hills to command a view of greater heights beyond. Treviso comes next, apparently a considerable place. Here, according to Murray, is a fine annunciation of Titian to be seen in the Duomo, but we alas have no time to stay for it. Here also, as our fellow traveler, the priest in the corner, says unctuously, opening his lips for the first and last time during the journey, they make good wine. Chi sifano bambuino. At Treviso we drop a few third class travelers, and being now just eighteen miles from Venice, and exactly half way to Canegliano, go on again through a flat, flat country, past endless fields of maize and flats, past trailing vines reared as in the tiro, on low slanting trellises close against the ground, past rich midsummer meadows where sun-burnt peasants wade knee-deep in wild flowers, and their flocks of turkeys are guest at rather than seen, past villages and small stations and rambling farmhouses, and on towards the hills that are our goal. By and by some four or five miles before Canegliano the fertile plain is scarred by a broad tract of stones and sand, in the midst of which the piev, gray, shallow and turbid, hurries towards the sea. Of this river we are destined to see and know more hereafter among its native dolomites. And now we are at Canegliano, the last point to which the railway can take us, and which, in consequence of our four hours delay this morning, we now have no time to see. And this is disappointing, for Canegliano must undoubtedly be worth a visit. We know of old palazzos decorated with fast-fading frescoes by Portanone, of a theatre built by Segucinini, of an altar-piece in the Duomo by Sema of Canegliano, an exquisite early painter of this place whose works are best represented in the Brera of Milan, and whose clear, dry, polished style holds somewhat of an intermediate place between that of Giovanni Bellini and Luca Signorelli. But if we would reach Longaronne, our first stopping place tonight, we must go on, so all we carry away is the passing remembrance of a neat little station, a bright, modern-looking town about half a mile distant, a sprinkling of white villas dotted over the neighboring hillsides, and a fine old castle glowering down from a warlike height beyond. And now the guards' whistle shrills in our ears for the last time for many weeks, and the train, bound for Trieste, puffs out of the station, disappears round a curve, and leaves us on the platform with our pile of bags at our feet and all our adventures before us. We look in each other's faces. We feel for the moment as Martin Chuzzlewit may have felt when the steamer landed him at Eden and there left him. Nothing in truth can be more indefinite than our prospects, more vague than our plans. We have Mayer's Maps, Ball's Guide to the Eastern Alps, Gilbert and Churchill's Book, and all sorts of means and appliances, but we have not the slightest idea of where we are going or of what we shall do when we get there. There is, however, no time now for misgivings, and in a few minutes we are again under way. Some three or four dirty post-omnibuses and billious-looking yellow-diligences are waiting outside, bound for Beluno and Longaronne. Also one tolerable carriage with a pair of stout gray horses, which, after some bargaining, is engaged at the cost of a hundred lira. For this sum the driver is to take us today to Longaronne and tomorrow to Cortina in the Ampizo Valley, a distance altogether of something like seventy English miles. So the bags are stowed away, some inside, some outside, and presently without entering the town at all we drive through a dusty suburb and out again onto the open plain. A straighter road across a flatter country it would be difficult to conceive. Bordered on each side by a row of thin poplars and by interminable fields of Indian corn, it goes on for miles and miles, diminishing to a point in the far distance, like the well-known diagram of an avenue in perspective. And it is with peculiar attribute of this point to recede steadily in advance of us, so that we are always going on, as in a dreadful dream, and never getting any nearer. As, for incidents by the way, there are none. We pass one of the lumbering yellow diligence that were standing ere-while at Canegliano Station. We see a few brown women hoeing in the Indian corn, and then for miles we neither pass a house nor meet a human being. It appears to me that ours must have gone by thus when I suddenly wake up, baked by the sun and choked by the dust, to find the whole party asleep, driver included, and the long distant hills now rising before us. Seeing a little town not a quarter of a mile ahead, a little town bright in sunshine against a background of dark woods, with a ruined castle on a height nearby, I knew at once that this must be Senita. The Senita that Titian loved, and that yonder woods and hills and ruined castle are the same he took for the landscape background to his St. Peter martyr. Here he is said to have owned property and land, and at Manza, four miles off, he built himself a summer villa. Now moved by some mysterious instinct, the driver wakes up just in time to crack his whip, put his horses into a gallop and clatter, as foreign veterani love to clatter, through the one street which is the town. But in vain, for Kenita, silent, solitary, basking in the sun, with every shutter closed and only a lean dog or two loitering aimlessly about the open space in front of the church, is apparently as sound asleep as an enchanted town and a fairytale. Not a curtain is put aside, not a face peers out upon us as we rattle past. The very magpie in his wicker cage outside the barber's shop is dosing on his perch, and scarcely opens an eye, though we make noise enough to rouse the seven sleepers. Once past the houses we fall back, of course, into the old pace, the gracious hills drawing nearer and unfolding fresh details at every set. And now at last green slopes and purple crags close round our path. The road begins to rise, a steep and narrow gorge, apparently a mere cleft in the mountains like the Gorge of Pheffers, opens suddenly before us, and from the midst of a nest of vines mulberry trees and chestnuts, the brown roofs and campanels of Saraval lift themselves into sight. Saraval, though it figures on the map in smaller type than Canida, which is or was an Episcopal residence, is yet a much more considerable place, covering several acres and straggling up into the mouth of the Gorge, through which the Meshio comes hurrying to the plain. Strictly speaking, perhaps, there is now no Canida and no Saraval. The two townships having been united of late by the Italian government under the name of Vittoria. But they lie a full mile apart, and no one seems as yet to take kindly to the new order of things. Again our driver cracks his whip and urges his horses to a canter, and so with due magnificence we clatter into the town, a quaint, picturesque, crumbling, world forgotten place, with old stone houses abutting on the torrent, and a duomo that looks as if it had been left unfinished three hundred years ago, and gloomy arcades vaulting the footways on each side of the principal street, as in Stratzburg and Bern. Dashing across the bridge and into the piazza, we pull up before one of the two ends which there compete for possession of the infrequent traveler. For Saraval embossed not only a piazza and a duomo, but two albergi, two shabby little cafes, a regia posta, and even a lottery office with Quisi Guiocono Porvenizia painted in red letters across the window. Here too the inhabitants are awake and stirring. They play at dominoes and their shirt sleeves outside the cafes. They play at mora in the shade of doorways and arcades. They fill water jars, wash lettuces, and gossip at the fountain. They even patronize the drama, as may be seen by the erection of a temporary puppet theater, patronized by his Majesty the King of Italy and all the sovereigns of Europe, on a slope of waste-ground close against the church, nor is wanting the usual score or two of idle men and boys who immediately start up from nowhere in particular and swarm open-mouthed about the carriage, staring at its occupants as if they were members of a traveling menagerie. But Saraval has something better than puppets and an idle population to show. The duomo contains a large painting of the Madonna and child in glory, by Titian, executed to order sometime between the years 1542 and 1547, a grand picture belonging to what may perhaps be called the second order of the Master's greatest period, and of which it has been lately said by an eminent traveler and critic that it would alone repay a visit to Saraval, even from Venice. With respect to the treatment of this fine work, Mr. Gilbert, whose admirable book on Titian and Cadore leaves nothing for any subsequent writer to add on these subjects, says, It is one of the grandest specimens of the Master, and in very fair preservation. It represents the virgin and child in glory surrounded by angels, who fade into the golden haze above. Heavy-volumed clouds support and separate from earth this celestial vision, and below standing on each side are the colossal and majestic figures of St. Andrew and St. Peter, the former supporting a massive cross, the latter holding aloft as of challenging denial of his faithfulness the awful keys. Between these two noble figures under a low horizon line is a dark lake amidst darker hills, where a distant sail recalls the fisherman and his craft. Drawing, color, are all dignified and worthy of the Master. Cadore, page 43. End of Section 3, Chapter 2, Part 1. Section 4 of Untrodden Peaks and Unfrequented Valleys. 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. Amidst Summer Ramble in the Dolomites. By Amelia B. Edwards. Section 4, Chapter 2, Venice to Longaron, Part 2. And now, time-pressing, the day advancing, and three-fourths of the drive yet lying before us, we must put on, or Longaron will not be reached ere nightfall. So having been sufficiently stared at, not only by the population generally, but by the landlord and landlady and everybody connected with the inn, as well as by the domino players who leave their games to take part in the entertainment, we clatter off again and make straight for the rocky mouth of the gorge, now closing in upon, and apparently swallowing up, the long line of old stone houses creeping into the defile. Some of these, shattered and decaying as they are, show traces of Venetian Gothic and pointed agave windows and delicate twisted column. They belong no doubt to wealthy owners in the days when Titian used to ride over from Manza to visit his married daughter who lived at Sarabille. Where the houses end, the precipices so close in that there is but just space for the road and the torrent. Then the gorge gradually widens through wooded slopes and hanging chestnut groves. Farmhouses and chalets perched high on grassy plateaus begin to look more swiss than Italian. Forests and forests all round shut in the view, and about two miles from Sarabille the machio expands into a tiny, green, transparent lake, tranquil as cloudless evening sky and fringed by a broad border of young flax. A single skift reflected upside down as in a mirror floats idly in the middle of the lake. The fisherman in it seems to be asleep. Not a ripple, not a breath disturbs the placid picture in the water. Every hill and tree is there, reversed, and every reed is doubled. This delicious pool, generally omitted in the maps, is the Lago di Sarabille. Wood sloped down to the brink on one side, and the roads skirting the debris of an old landslip winds round the other. Two tiny whitehouses with green gelusses and open Italian balconies at the head of the lake, a toy church on a grassy knoll, and a square medieval watchtower clinging to a ridge of rock above make up the details of a picture so serene and perfect that even Turner at his sunniest period could scarcely have idealized it. The gorge now goes on widening and becomes a valley, once the scene of a bergfall so gigantic that it is supposed to have turned the course of the piave, flowing out till then by Sarabille, and to have sent it thence forward and forever through the val de mel. This catastrophe happened ages ago, most probably in prehistoric times, yet the great barrier six hundred feet in height from this side looks as if it might be less than a century old. View shrubs have taken root in these vast hillocks of slady debris, among and over which the road continually rises. Few mosses have gathered in the crannies of these monster blocks which lie piled like fallen towers by the wayside. All is bare, ghastly, desolate. As we mount higher the outlying trees of a great beach forest on the verge of a lofty plateau to the right are pointed out by the driver as the famous Bosco de Consiglio, a name that dates back to old Venetian rule, when these woods furnished timber to the state. Hence came the wood of which the Bucentar was built, and, who knows, perhaps the merchant ships of Antonio and the war galley in which blind old Dandolo put forth against the Turk. Presently being now about four miles from Sarraville and the top of the Great Bergfall not yet reached, we come upon another little green clear lake about the size of the last, the Lego Morto. It lies down in a hollow below the road, close under a huge sheer precipice blinding white in the sunshine, whence half the mountain side looks as if it had been sliced away at a blow. If it were not that the debris could hardly be piled up where and how it is, leaving that hollow in which the lake lies sleeping, one would suppose this to be the spot once the rock slip came, what time it barred out the piave from the gorge of Sarraville. According to the local legend, no boat can live upon those tranquil waters, and no bather who plunges into them may ever swim back to shore. Both are, in some terrible way, drawn down and engulfed deeper than ever did plummet sound. It is said, however, that the last Austrian governor of Lombardo Venetia, being anxious to put an end to the superstition, brought up a boat from the Santa Croce side, and in the presence of a breathless crowd from all the neighboring villages, himself rode the pretty wife of the Fadalto Postmaster across the lake, and landed her triumphantly upon the opposite shore. Your Tyrolean peasant, however, is not easily disabused of ancient errors, and the lego morto, I am told, notwithstanding that public rehabilitation, enjoys its evil reputation to this day. At length, having the Bosco de Conceiglio always to the right, and the colvin sentino with its scattered snowdrifts towering to the left, we gain the summit of the ridge and see the lake of Santa Croce, looking wonderfully like the lake of Albano, lying close beneath our feet. Eight mountains, all gray and purple crags above, all green corn fields and wooded slopes below, enclose it in a nest of verdura. The village and church of Santa Croce perched on a little grassy bluff almost overhang the water. Other villages and campaniles sparkle far off on shore and hillside, while yonder, through a gap in the mountains at the farther end of the lake, we are startled by a strange apparition of pale, fantastic peaks lifted high against the northern horizon. Echo, says the driver, pointing towards them with his whip, and half turning round to watch the effect of his words. Echo inostri dolomiti. The announcement is so unexpected that for the first moment it almost takes one's breath away. Having been positively told that no dolomites would come into sight before the second day's journey, we have neither been looking for them nor expecting them, and yet there they are, so unfamiliar and yet so unmistakable. One feels immediately that they are unlike all other mountains, and yet that they are exactly what one expected them to be. Cedolomitisano, come e si ciamiano. What dolomites are they? What are their names? Are the eager questions that follow? But the bare geological fact is all our driver has to tell. They are dolomites, dolomites on the Italian side of the frontier. He knows no more so we can only turn to our maps and guess by comparison of distances and positions, that these flustered egg wheels belong most probably to the range of Montes fornioi. At Santa Croce we halt for half an hour before the door of an extremely dirty little aberto, across the front of which is painted in conspicuous letters, chisi ven buon vino a cibuali. Leaving the driver and courier to test the truth of this legend, we order coffee and drink it in the open air. The horses are taken out and fed. The rider, grievously tormented by a plague of flies, makes a sketch under circumstances of untold difficulty, being presently surrounded by the whole population of the place, among whom are some three or four handsome young women with gay red and yellow handkerchiefs bound round their heads like turbans. These damsels are by no means shy. They crowd, they push, they chatter, they giggle. One invites me to take her portrait. Another wishes to know if I am married. A third discovers that I am like a certain Maria Rosa whom they all seem to know, whereupon every feature of my face is discussed separately and for the most part to my disparagement. At this trying juncture, Elle, in a moment of happy inspiration, offers to show them the chromolithographs in Gilbert and Churchill's book, and so creates a diversion in my favor. Meanwhile, the flies settle upon me in clouds, walk over my sky, drown themselves in the water bottles, and leave their legs in the brown matter. Despite all which impediments, however, I achieve my sketch, and by the time the horses are put to, I am ready to go on again. The road now skirts the Lake of Santa Croce, at the head of which extends an emerald-green flat wooded with light, feathery, yellowish poplars, evidently at one time part of the bed of the lake, from which the waters have long since retreated. From this point, we follow the line of the valley, passing the smart new village of Cadola, and at Capodi point, once the valley of Saraville and the Valdemille diverge at right angles, come again upon the Piave, now winding in and out among stony hillocks, like the Rhone at Luc, and milk-white from its glacier source in the upper Dolomites. The old bridge at Capodi point, the old bridge which dated from Venetian times, is now gone, and with it the buttresses adorn with the line of St. Mark mentioned by Baal and alluded to in Mr. Gilbert's Cadore. Fragments of the ancient piers may yet be traced, but a new and very slight-looking iron bridge now spans the stream some fifty yards higher up. At Capodi point, the most unscientific observer cannot fail to see that the Piave must once upon a time, most probably when the great burgfall drove its waters back from Saraville, have here formed another lake, the great natural basin of which yet remains, with the river flowing through it in a low secondary channel. And now the road enters another straight and narrow valley, the valley of the Piave, closed in far ahead by a rugged Dolomite, all teeth and needle-points. By this time the long day is drawing to a close. Cows after milking are being driven back to pasture. Laborers are plotting homewards, and a party of country girls with red handkerchiefs upon their heads, wading knee-deep through the wildflowers of a wayside meadow, look like a procession of animated puppies. When the sun goes down, the sky and the mountains turn cold and gray, and just before dusk sets we arrive at Longarone. A large rambling village with a showy Renaissance church and a few shabby shops, a big desolate inn with stone staircases and stone floors, a sullen landlord, a frightened barefooted chambermaid who looks as if she had just been caught wild in the mountains, bedrooms like barns, floors without carpets, windows without curtains, such are our first comfortless impressions of Longarone. Nor are these impressions in any wise modified by more intimate acquaintance. We dine in a desert of sitting-room at an oasis of table, lighted by a single tallow candle. The food is indifferent and indifferently cooked. The wine is the worst we have had in Italy. Meanwhile, a stern and ominous look of satisfaction settles on the countenance of the great man whom we have so ruthlessly torn from the sphere he habitually adorns. I told you so is written in every line of his face and in the very bristle of his moustache. At last being dismissed for the night and told at one hour to have the carriage round in the morning he can keep silence no longer. We shall not meet with many in so good as this where we are going, he says, grimly triumphant. Good night, ladies, and with this parting shot retires. My bedroom that night measures thirty-five feet in length by twenty-five in breadth, and is enlivened by five windows and four doors. The windows look out variously upon street, courtyard, and stables. The doors lead endlessly to suites of empty shut-up rooms and all sorts of intricate passages, tizzas ghostly echoing suicidal a place to sleep in as I ever saw in my life. End of Section 4, Chapter 2, Part 2. Section 5, Chapter 3, Longaron to Cortina, Part 1 Longaron, seen at six o'clock on a gray dull morning, looked no more attractive than at dusk the evening before. There had been thunder and heavy rain in the night, and now the road and footways were full of muddy pools. The rider, however, was up at times, wandering alone through the wet streets, peeping into the tawdry churches, spelling over the framed and glazed announcements of births, deaths, and marriages at the prefectura, sketching the piccalina, a solitary, conspicuous peak over against the mouth of the valvayante, on the opposite bank of the piave, and seeking such scattered crumbs of information as might fall in her way. To sketch, even so early as six a.m., without becoming the nucleus of a crowd, is, of course, impossible, and the crowd this time consisted of schoolchildren of all ages, quite as untameable and almost as numerous as the flies of Santa Croce. Presently, however, came by a mild, plump priest in a rusty sultane who chased the truance off to the parish schoolhouse and himself lingered for a little secular chat by the way. He had not much to tell, yet he told the little that he knew pleasantly and readily. The parish, he said, numbered about three thousand souls, a pious industrious folk mainly supported by the timber trade, which is the staple of these parts. This timber, being cut, sold, and branded in the empeso thou, is floated down the boata to its point of convergence with the piave at Perolo, and thence, carried by the double current, comes along the valley of the piave and the val de mel to be claimed by its several purchasers along the banks, and caught as it passes by. Thus it is that every village, by the way, is skirted by sawmills and timber yards, and that almost every man is a carpenter. He then went on to tell me that my peak was called the piccalina, or hen's beak, that there existed a practicable shortcut for pedestrians by way of the val vaillante to Udine and the trieste railway, that the grand tiziana was born on the banks of the piave higher up at Piave de Cadore, that the dolomites were the highest mountains in the world, which I am afraid I pretended to believe, that the large church in the piazza was the church of the consensione, that the little church at the back dedicated to San Liberale was the smallest church in Italy, which no doubt was true, seeing that you might put it inside St. Lawrence undercliff and yet leave a passage to walk round, and finally that Castle Lavazzo, seen from a point about a quarter of a mile farther on, was the most picturesque view in the valley and the best worth sketching. Having delivered himself of which information, apocryphal and otherwise he lifted his shovel-hat with quite the air of a man of the world, and bad me good morning. Of course I went at once in search of the view of Castle Lavazzo, and finding it really characteristic of the val de Piave, succeeded in sketching it before it was time to return to breakfast. By night we were on the road again, following the narrow gorge that was soon to lead us into the real world of dolomite. The morning was now alternately bright and showery, and the dark, jagged peaks that closed in the distance were of just that rich, deep, incredible, ultramarine blue that Titian loved and painted so often in his landscape backgrounds. At Terminae, a little timber-worked hamlet noisy with sawmills about a mile beyond Castle Lavazzo, the defile narrows so suddenly that one gigantic gray and golden crag seems to block the end of the village street. The women here are handsome and wear folded cloths upon their heads, as in the hills near Rome, and the men wear wooden clogs as at Lugano. A slender waterfall wavers down the face of a cliff on the opposite side of the river. With breakwaters like huge baskets of rude wicker work filled with stones, here stem the force of the torrent brawling through its narrow bed, and some of these have had their place so long that young trees have had time to take root and flourish in them. Next comes Hospitale, another little brown-roofed hamlet perched on a green rise like Castle Lavazzo, with the usual cluster of sawmills and sawpits down by the water's edge, and now entering the commune of Perorolo in a smart shower we rattle through a succession of tiny villages built in the Swiss way, with wooden balconies, outer staircases, and deep projecting eaves. In most of these places, it being now between ten and eleven o'clock a.m., the good people are sitting in their doorways dining primitively out of wooden bowls. So we go on, and so the Piave, greenish in color, interrupted by a thousand rapids, noisy, eager, headlong, comes ever rushing towards us, and past us, and away to the sea. So too the brown and gold pine trunks come whirling down with the stream. It is curious to watch them in their course. Some singly, some in crowds. Some blunder along sideways in a stupid, buffeted, bewildered way. Some plunge madly up and down. Some run races. Some get tired. Just a while under the shelter of the bank, and then, with a rouse and a shake, dash back again into the throng. Others creep into little stony shallows, and there go to sleep for days and weeks together, while others, again, push straight ahead, nose first as if they knew what they were about, and were bent on getting to their journey's end as quickly as possible. Nearing Pararolo, glimpses of the peaks, anguilles, and snow-fields of Montecredola, 8,474 feet, the highest point of the Premamagiore Range, are now and then seen to the right, through the openings in the lower mountains. Montezucco abruptly blocks the end of the gorge. Country carts upon the road, women working in the fields, a party of children scrambling and shouting among the bushes by the wayside, now indicate that we are not far from a more thickly inhabited place than any of the preceding villages. Then the road takes a sudden turn, and Pararolo, with its handsome new church, new stone bridge, public fountain, extensive wood yards, and general air of solid prosperity comes into view. Yet a few yards farther, and a second bridge is crossed, a new valley rich in wood and water opens away to the left, and a wonderful majestic vision, draped in vapors and hooded in clouds, and suddenly before us. The coachman, preparing his accustomed cout de theatra, is not allowed to speak. We know at once in what presence we are. We know at once that yonder vague and shadowy mass which shores beyond our side and seems to gather up the slopes of the valley as a robe can be none other than the Antileo. A grand but a momentary sight, the coachman with a jealous glance at the open maps and guidebooks that have forstalled his information, whips on his horses, and in another moment valley and mountain are lost in the turn of the road, and we are fast climbing the hill leading to the great zigzag of Montezucco. Still we have seen, however imperfectly, the loftiest of all the giants of Cadore. We have seen the mouth of the famous Empesothal, and we begin to feel that it is not all a dream that we are among the Dolomites at last. And now, for a weary while partly on foot and partly in the carriage, we toil on and on up the new road constructed of late years by the Emperor Ferdinand. The Piaf, here quite choked by a huge stationary mass of pine trunks, winds unheard some hundreds of feet below. Perorolo, the great center of all this timber-trade, dwindles to a toy hamlet in the valley. New peaks rise on the horizon. New valleys glitter in the distance. Still the road climbs, winds among vast slopes of pine forest, makes the entire circuit of Montezucco, and finally, with one long last pull, reaches the level of the upper plateau. Here at Ty Cadore, a tiny village backed by cultivated slopes, we are to take our midday rest. Here too we catch our first glimpse of Titian's birth-place, Piaf de Cadore, a small white hamlet nestled in a fold of the hills close under a ruined castle on a wooded knoll, about a mile away. Now Piaf de Cadore was down in our route as a special excursion to be taken hereafter from Cortina and the Ampezzo Valley, but our impatience was great, and the sun was shining brilliantly, and our first thought was to employ these two hours rest in walking there and back, and just seeing, though it were only the outside of it, the house in which the great painter was born. It was first necessary, however, to take luncheon at Ty, which we did seated at a bare table in an upper room of the clean little inn, beside a window commanding a magnificent view of the Premigiori Range. Meanwhile, the capricious sky clouded over again, and by the time we should have been ready to start, the rain was coming down so heavily that Piaf de Cadore was unavoidably left to be seen later on. A little way beyond Ty Cadore begins one of the finest drives in Europe. The road that enters the Ampezzo Valley at an elevation which can scarcely be less than twelve hundred and fifty feet above the foaming biota, and a close, lofty, witchly wooded valley, like a sublimar, valed, ansaza, opens the way to more rugged scenery beyond. Vast precipices tower above, scattered villages cling to the green slopes halfway down, and brilliant passages of light and shadow move rapidly over all. Now one peak is lighted up, and now another. Here a brown roof, wet from the last shower, glistens like silver in the sunshine. There a grassy slope, fringe with noble chestnuts, glows in a green and golden light. While on yonder opposite height, a dark fur forest shows blue and purple in an angry storm shadow. At Vannas, the overhanging eaves, outer staircases, and balustrated balconies are wholly swiss. While inscriptions such as Quisi Vanda, Vina D'Asti, Colonial, and Altrigeneri remind us that, although close upon the Austrian frontier, we are not yet out of Italy. And now the valley widens. The Anteleo, still obscured by floating mists, again comes into sight, a near mass of clustered pinnacles, then the pelmo on the opposite side of the valley, uplifted in the likeness of a mighty throne canopied by clouds, and approached by a giant staircase, each step of which is a precipice laden with eternal snow, and trodden only by the chamois hunter. Next, on the same side as the pelmo, but farther up the valley appears the Rochetta, a chain of wild, confused crags like a line of broken vatements, piled high on huge buttresses of sward and pine forest. Beneath the small wayside hamlets of Vodo and Borca, the road is cut through an enormous slope of stony debris, the scene of a burgfall which fell from the Anteleo in 1816, and overwhelmed two villages on the opposite bank of the Boita. More sudden and almost more cruel than the lava from Vesuvius, it came down, as almost every burgfall comes down, at dead of night, crushing the sleepers in their beds and leaving not a moment for escape. UNTRODDEN PIECES AND UNFREQUITED VALIES UNTRODDEN PIECES AND UNFREQUITED VALIES AMIDST SUMMER RAMBLE AND THE DOLOMITES BY AMILIA B. EDWARDS CHAPTER III TWO GREAT MOUNDS OF SHATTERED LIME STONE, EACH AT LEAST ONE HUNDRED FEET IN HEIGHT, MARK THE SIGHT OF THE LOST VILLAGES, AND STRANGE TO TELL THE TORRENT INSTEAD OF BEING DAMNED AND DRIVEN BACK AS AT CERAVAL, FLOWS ON ITS WAY UNIMPEDED SAVE BY A FEW TITANIC BOLDERS. HOW SO TREMENDOUS A FALL COULD HAVE CROSSED THE STREAM IN SUFFICIENT VOLUME TO BEARY EVERY HOUSE, CHURCH, AND CAMPANEAL ON THE OTHER SIDE, AND YET HAVE FAILED TO FILL UP THE BED OF THE INTERVENING TORRENT IS INFINITELY MISTERIOUS. I ENQUIRED THEN, AND LATER, WHETHER THE STREAM MIGHT NOT HAVE BEEN TEMPORARILY CHOKED, AND AFTERWARDS CLEARED BY THE LABOR OF THE OTHER AMPESAN COMMUNITIES, BUT THOUGH ALL WHOM I ASKED TEEMED TO THINK SUCH A TASK IMPOSSIBLE OF Fulfillment AT ANY TIME, NONE COULD ANSWER ME. IT HAPPENED, SENIORA, fifty-six years ago. WAS THE INVARIABLE ANSWER. CHILOSSA. WAS THAT SO LONG A TIME? IT SEEMED STRANGE THAT AFTER THE LAPS OF LITTLE MORE THAN HALF A CENTURY, EVERY DETAIL OF SO TERRIBLE A CATASTROPHY SHOULD BE FORGOTTEN IN A PLACE WHERE EVENTS WERE NECESSARLY FEW. AND NOW, FOLLOWING THE GREAT SWEEP OF THE ROAD, WE MAKE AT LEAST ONE-THIRD OF THE CIRCUT OF THE ENTILEO, WHICH BECOMES MOMENTARILY GRANDER AND CHANGES ITS ASPECT AN OUTLINE WITH EVERY TURN. THE SNOW ON THIS SIDE FINDS NO RESTING PLACE SAVE ON A SCANT LEDGE HERE AND THERE, AND THE MOUNTAIN CONSISTS APARENTLY OF ENUMERABLE JAGGED BUTTRESSES, HUGE SLOPES OF SHALY DEBRI, AND AN INFINITELY VARYED CHAIN OF PALID PEEKS AND PINNICLES. SOME OF THESE ARE ALMOST WHITE, SOME OF A PAIL SULPHURUS YELLOW STREAKED WITH VIOLET, SOME SPLASHED WITH A VIVID, RUSTY RED INDICATING THE PRESENCE OF IRON. ONE KEEN, SPLINTERED ANGWILLS, SHARP AS A LANCE AND CURVED AS A SHARKS TOOTH, LOOKED LIKE A SIMITAR FRESHLY DIPPED IN BLOOD. NOW AT SENVITO THE ANTILO BEGINS TO BE LEFT BEHIND, AND THE LONG RIDGE OF THE CROTA MALCORA, WITH ITS HIGHEST PEEK, SORAPUS, RACING BOLDLY OUT AGAINST A BACKGROUND OF STORM CLOUD, ENTERS ON THE SCENE. A LITTLE FARTHER YET, AND THE AUSTRIAN FRONTERE IS REACHED. A STRIVED POLLE, ALTERNATELY BLACK AND YELLOW, LIKE A LEG OF ONE OF THE POPES' GUARD, BESTRIED THE ROAD IN FRONT OF A DELAPIDATED LITTLE CUSTOM HOUSE. HERE SOME THREE OR FOUR RAGGED LOOKING AUSTRIAN SOLDIERS ARE PLAYING AT BOLES, WHILE A COUPLE OF OFFICERS LONGING IN A BENCH OUTSIDE THE DOOR SMOKE THEIR CIGARETS AND WATCH THE GAME. One of these, very tall, very shabby, very dirty, with a glass screwed into his eye and a moustache about eighteen inches in length, saunters up to the carriage door. Being assured, however, that we carry nothing contraband, he lifts his cap with an indescribable air of fashionable languor, and bids the coachman drive on. From this point, the invisible political line being passed, one observes an immediate change, not only in the costumes, but in the build and features of the people. They are a taller, fairer, finer race. The men wear rude capes of undressed skins. The women, no longer bare-legged, no longer coifféed with red and yellow handkerchiefs, wear a kind of bare-knees dress consisting of a black petticoat, a black cloth bodice like a tightly-fitting waistcoat, white linen undersleeves reaching to the elbow, a large blue apron, and a round felt hat like a man's. By this time the pelmo is out of sight. The Roschetta is left behind. Sorapis is past, and still new mountains rise against the horizon. To the left, a continuation, indeed, of the Roschetta, the red demizzotti and the ridge of Bucalungo stand out like a row of jagged teeth. On a line with these, but at least a mile farther up the valley, the huge bulk of the Tofana looms up in sullen majesty, headed by a magnificent precipice, like a pyramid of red granite. While to the right, Montecristallo, a stupendous chevaux de frise of gray and orange pinnacles, forms a grand background to the clustered roofs, lofty campanile, and green pastures of Cortina. For at last we are inside of the place which is to be our headquarters for the next week, and the wonderful drive is nearly at an end. Already within the compass of some fifteen English miles, i.e. from Te to Cortina, we have seen six of the most famous Dolomites, three on the right bank and three on the left of the Boite. Ever out of the six succeed ten thousand five hundred feet in height, while the Anteleo is, I believe, distanced by only two of its rivals, namely the Marmolacta and the Simon de la Pala. The new and amazing forms of these colossal mountains, their strange coloring, the mystery of their formation, the singularity of their relative positions, each being so near its neighbor, yet in itself so distinct and isolated, the curious fact that they are all so nearly of one height, their very names so unlike the names of all other mountains, high sounding, majestic, like relics of a prehistoric tongue, all these sights and facts in sudden combination confuse the imagination, and leave one bewildered at first by the variety and rapidity with which impression after impression has been charged upon the memory. It was therefore almost with a sense of relief that, weary with wonder and admiration, we found ourselves approaching the end of the day's journey. And now the road, which has been gradually descending for many miles, enters Cortina at about four hundred feet above the level of the Boite. First comes a scattered house or two, then a glimpse of the old church, the cemetery, and the public shooting-ground, in a hollow down near the river, then a long, irregular street of detached homesteads, hostelries, and humble shops, the new Campanile, the pride of the village, two hundred and fifty feet in height, the post house at the corner of a little piazza containing a public fountain, and finally, being the last house in the place, the Aquila Nera, a big, substantial albergio built in true Tyrolean fashion, like a colossal Noah's Ark, with rows upon rows of square windows with bright green shutters, and a huge roof with jutting eaves that looks as if it ought to take off like a lid to let out the animals inside. This then is our destination, and here we arrive towards close of day, rattling through the village and dashing up to the door with our driver's usual flourish, just as if the grays, instead of having done thirty-five miles today and thirty-four yesterday, were quite fresh and only now out of the stable. The Gueninas, father and two sons, come out, not with much alacrity to bid us welcome. The writer, however, mentions a name of might, the name of Francis Fox-Tuckett, and, behold, it acts upon the sullen trio like a talisman. Their goodwill breaks forth in a ludicrous melody of Italian and German. How! The Signora is a friend of Il-Tuckett, of the grand brave Signore, whose achievements are famed throughout all these valleys? Gotten himel! Shall not the whole house be at her disposal? Echo! The Aquila-Nara will justify the recommendation of Il-Brave-Tuckett. Hereupon we alight. The old landlord puts out an enormous brown paw, we shake hands all around. The chalnerian is summoned, the best rooms are assigned to us, the cooks, and there seem to be plenty of them in the huge gloomy kitchen, are set to work to prepare supper. A table is laid for us on the landing, which, as we find henceforth, is the place of honor in every inn throughout the Dolomite Tyrol, and all that the Aquila-Nara contains is laid under contribution for our benefit. It is a thorough Tyrolian hostelry, by no means scrupulously clean, yet better provided and more spacious than one would have expected to find, even in this, the most important village of the district. The bedrooms are immense, though scantily furnished. A few small mats of wolf and chamois skins are laid about here and there, but there is not such a thing as a carpet in the house. At the Dépendance, however, a new building on the opposite side of the road, charmingly decorated with external frescoes by one of the younger Gerdinas who is an artist in Vienna, there are smaller rooms to be had, with good iron beds-deads and some few modern comforts. But we knew nothing of this till a day or two after, when we were glad to move into the more quiet house, though at the cost of having always to cross over for meals. In the way of food a kind of rough plenty reigns, luxuries, of course, are out of the question, but of veal, sausage, eggs, cheese, and sauerkraut there is abundance. Drovers, guides, peasant farmers and travelers of all grades are eating, drinking, smoking all day long in the public rooms, of which there are at least four in the lower floors of the big house. The kitchen chimney is smoking, the cooks are cooking, the taps are running from more until dewey eve. We arrive at dewey eve, come in for an all-pervading atmosphere of tobacco and garlic, the accumulated incense of the day's sacrifices. With all this plenty, however, and all this custom, the wealthiest and most fastidious traveler must fare off the same meats and drinks as the poorest. The only foreign wine that Gerdina keeps in his cellar is a rough Paedmonte's vintage called Vino Barbera, which costs about two francs the bottle. If you do not like that, you must drink beer, or thin country wine, either red or white, or an inexpressibly nauseous spirit distilled from the root of a small plant nearly resembling the ordinary plantago major, or common English plantain. An inferior kind of kersvasser is, I believe, also to be had, but as for Brandy I doubt if there is one drop to be found in the whole country between Beluno and Brunec. For the rest the inn is well enough, though one feels the want of a mistress in the establishment. Gerdina Pair is a wealthy widower, and his three stalwart sons, all unmarried, live at home and attend in a grim, unwilling way to the housekeeping and stabling. Their horses, by the way, are first-rate, far too good for rough country work, while in the adjoining outbuildings are to be found a capital landow, a light shea,s some three or four carotene, and a side saddle. How this article, in itself neither rare nor beautiful, came presently to occupy the foremost place in our affections and desires. How we fought for its possession against all comers. How we begged it, borrowed it, and finally stole it will be seen hereafter. Meanwhile, arriving late and tired, we were glad to accept the big rooms in the big house, to put up with the atmosphere, to sup on the larding, to hear downstairs revelers going away long after we were in bed, and even to be wakened by the wild cry of the village watchmen and intervals all through the dark hours of the night. It was not, perhaps, quite so agreeable to be aroused next morning at earliest dawn by a legion of carpenters in the street below, flinging down loads of heavy planks, driving in posts by the wayside, hammering, shouting, and making noise enough to wake not only the living, but the dead. For this, however, as for every discomfort, there was the compensation at hand, and our satisfaction was great on being told that the grand yearly sagro, or church festival, would be celebrated a few days hence, and that our noisy friends outside were already beginning to erect booths in preparation for the annual fair, which is held at the same time. It is the most important fair in all this part of the Austrian and Italian Tirol, and is attended by an average concourse of from twelve to fifteen hundred peasants from every hill and valley for nearly thirty miles round about Cortina. End of Section Six Untrodden Peaks and Unfrequentin Valleys Section Seven This is the LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Untrodden Peaks and Unfrequentin Valleys Amid Summer Ramble through the Dolomites by Amelia B. Edwards Chapter Four At Cortina, Part One Situated on the left bank of the Boite, which here runs nearly due north and south, with the Trecrace Pass opening away behind the town to the east, and the Trecace Pass widening before it to the west, Cortina lies in a comparatively open space between four great mountains, and is therefore less liable to danger from Bergfalls than any other village, not only in the Val d'Ampezzo, but in the whole adjacent district. For the same reason it is cooler in summer than either Capriol, Agordo, Primario, or Pradaso, all of which, though more central, are stopping places and in many respects more convenient, are yet somewhat too closely hemmed in by surrounding heights. The climate of Cortina is temperate throughout all the year. Ball gives the village an elevation of 4,048 feet above the level of the sea, and one of the parish priests, an intelligent old man who has devoted many years of his life to collecting the flora of the Ampezzo, assured me that he had never known the thermometer to drop so low as 15 degrees of frost even in the coldest winters. The soil for all this is a bleak and barren look. The maize, here called grano turco, grows thin and hungrily, and the vine is unknown. But then agriculture is not a specialty of the Ampezzo Thal, and the wealth of Cortina is derived essentially from its pasturelands and forests. These last, in consequence of the increase in the increasing value of timber, have been lavishly cut down of late years by the commune, too probably at the expense of the future interests of Cortina. For the present, however, every inn, homestead, and public building bespeaks prosperity. The inhabitants are well fed and well dressed. Their fairs and festivals are the most considerable in all the south-eastern Tyrol. Their principal church is the largest this side of St. Ulrich, and their new Gothic Campanile, 250 feet high, might suitably adorn the piazza of such a city as Bergamo or Beluno. The village contains about 700 souls, but the population of the commune numbers over 2,500. Of these, the greater part, old and young, rich and poor, men, women, and children are engaged in the timber trade. Some cut the wood, some transport it. The wealthy convey it on trucks drawn by fine horses, which, however, are cruelly overworked. The poor harness themselves, six or eight in a team, men, women, and boys together, and so under the burning summer sun drag glows that look as if they might be too much for an elephant. Going out, as usual, before breakfast, the morning of the day following our arrival at Cortina, the first site that met my eyes was a very old woman. Perhaps eighty years of age and a sick little boy of about ten wrote to a kind of rough sledge piled up with at least half a ton weight of rough planks. Eight o'clock mass is performed at each church alternatively, every morning throughout the year. Today it happened to be down at the old church, and thither, attracted by their quaint costumes, I followed a party of chattering peasant girls, some of whom had their milk cans and market baskets in their hands. These they carried into the church, taking off their hats at the door like men and remaining uncovered throughout the service. The congregation consisted of some three or four score of very old women with scant white poles, a sprinkling of square-headed robust-looking damsels with silver pins in their cubbed and plated hair, and a few old men, so tanned and gnarled and bent that they looked as if carved out of rough brown wood. Then trooped noisily in some four hundred children of both sexes and filled the benches next to the altar, while the old bell-ringer, having rung his last peal, came hobbling up the aisle in heavy wooden clogs and baggy breeches, and lit the candles on the altar. Presently appeared a priest in black and gold vestments, attended by little red-headed acolyte, like one of John Bellini's angels. The organist, by no means a bad player, led off with acilla mort, on a tremolo stop, the congregation dropped on their knees and the service began. Musically speaking it was one of those performances which one enjoys the more the less one hears of it. A showy operatic mass by some Italian composer, a reedy organ, an aquire that might have been better trained, made up an ensemble that soon sent the writer creeping towards the door. It was delightful to get out again into the glorious morning. The sun was now shining deliciously, the air was heavy with the scent of new-mone hay, and the birds were singing their own little hymn of praise in a way that turned the cortine aquire to unmitigated discord. It was one of those mornings steeped in dewy freshness, when distant sounds and sights are brought supernaturally near, when lights are strangely bright and shadows transparent, and the very mountains look more awake than usual. Even Tofana, rarely seen without a turbine of storm-cloud, rose sharp and clear today against the sky. Just opposite the old church lies the village cemetery. The gate stood ajar and I went in, not certainly expecting to find the god's acre of this wealthy commune a mere weed-grown wilderness. But so it was, here a confusion of rough stone heaps marking the graves of the poor, yonder a few marble tablets and iron crosses against the wall, recording the names of the better-class dead, everywhere coarse-deep grass, thistles, nettles, loose stones, broken pottery, and trampled clay. A couple of hand-bears, a pile of black trestles, a spade and a coil of rope lay ready for use under a stone arcade at the farther end of the enclosure. Not a flower was there, not a touch of poetry or pathos in the place, nothing but indifference, irreverence, and neglect. This ugly sight, somehow, brought back the recollection of an alms-box that I had seen not long ago, outside a pretty little cemetery near Luino, bearing the following inscription. MESSA FUNERALLE NEL NOMA DE LA BIATA MARIA CARITA PORNOE Funeral Masses We implore charity in the name of the Blessed Mary. This appeal, coming like a voice from the dead, had struck me at the time as very awful, but here it would have been still more awful and more appropriate. Going homewards I found sheds and booths of all sizes bringing up the whole length of the village street, and a great wooden enclosure like a circus being erected in the piazza opposite the albergio of the Stelladoro. A huge colored poster representing feats of the trapeze, clowns, human pyramids, and the like, pasted on a space of blank wall close by, sufficiently accounted for the shape and size of this building. But what is this sagro, I asked of a young priest who is gravely watching the carpenters at their work? Is it a fair? It is a festival of the church, senora, he replied, with an air of reproof, and walked away. A sagro, however, as I soon came to know, is both a fair and a religious festival, and takes place once a year in every village on the anniversary of the consecration of the church, or on the festa of the saint to whom the church is dedicated. And there are so many villages scattered about the country that a sagro is said to be going on somewhere every day in the year. Hurrying back now to breakfast, I found the Gedinas, our courier, and a group of guides and peasants assembled outside the door of the Aquilinera, staring up at the rugged peak known as the Be de Mazzotti on the opposite of the valley. Telescopes were being passed from hand to hand amid exclamations of ecoli, brave senora, brave inglesi, and old Gedina, steadying his own glass for me against an angle of wall, bade me look up yonder for my countrymen. Two English gentlemen then staying with their wives in the dependence of the Aquilinera had, it seemed, this morning achieved the first ascent of that singular peak so aptly described by Mr. Gilbert as a carious tooth of Dolomite. The beck itself looked neither very high nor very difficult, but I afterwards learned that it was peculiarly steep and fissured, and that they had had hard work to conquer it. Gedina's glass proved to be a good one, and I distinctly saw the figures of the climbers in their guides standing together on the topmost peak, relieved against the sky. It being our intention to spend some little time at Cortina, thence making such excursions as lay within easy reach, we decided to devote this first day to getting ourselves acquainted with the general lay of the country. The most effectual way of achieving this end is, of course, to ascend some height. So, having consulted Gedina's written list of excursions, we agreed to spend the morning in rambling about the village, and after luncheon, to stroll up to the Creppa de Velvedere, a little summer house, or Jager Lodge, lately erected at a point of view on the face of a cliff overlooking Cortina and the valley, about an hour and a half's easy walk from the village, and about twenty minutes to the left of the cross on the road to the Tracacipas. The Belvedere, a tiny white speck against a scar of red cliff in the midst of a long sweep of fur forest, is seen from the windows of the end and lies before the climber all the way. Meanwhile, however, we breakfasted, wrote letters, examined the paintings and frescoes in and about the two houses, and made arrangements for shifting our quarters into the quieter and better furnished rooms over the way. Two of the younger Gedina's, it seemed, were painters, a third carved cleverly in wood, and the fourth, a grave, practical man devoted to the business, the stabbling, and the wood trade, played a trombone in the village band. Both houses are full of heads and studies in oil, designs for large pictures and sketches of unequal merit. Ahead of a bearded man in one of the upper chambers of the Aquilinari, and two half-links of his father and mother in the dining room, may be taken as fair specimens of the skill of the portrait-painting son, while the external frescoes of the dependents, two in the new church, and all sorts of rough-and-ready designs, some military, some religious, some grotesque, flung here and there upon the walls of staircases, cartsheds, neighbor's house fronts, and so forth, represent the superior gifts and culture of the brother who lives in Vienna. As for the decorations of the dependents, they are full of power, and to the sound-drawing and skillful designing of the Munich school add a warmth and tenderness of color almost Italian. Three large groups representing sculpture and architecture, painting and the physical sciences, and three medallions containing portraits of Raphael, Titian, and Albert Durer, cover all that is not window-space above the ground floor. The figure of Mercury in the first group, and of Urania in the last, and the way in which such stubborn objects as the steam engine, camera, and telegraphic apparatus seem to have been pictorially treated, are deserving of particular notice. To Albert Durer, like a true German, the artist gives the middle place among the medallions. Very different, though almost as good in their way, are the mounted cossacks, wild horses, and medieval-men-at-arms that skirmish all over the white-washed walls of the outhouses and stables of the Aquilinera. To say nothing of the fantastic devil, all teeth and claws that grins upon unsuspecting customers from outside the stove in the only chemists' shop in Cortina. We asked for the painter, but he was far away in Vienna, and his studio, they told us, was not only closed but empty. To ascend the Campanile and get the near view over the village was obviously one of the first duties of a visitor. So, finding the door open and the old bell ringer inside, we mounted laboriously to the top, nearly a hundred feet higher than the leaning tower of Pisa. Standing here upon the outer gallery above the level of the great bells, we had the village and valley at our feet. The panorama, though it included little which we had not seen already, was fine all around, and served to impress the main landmarks upon our memory. The Empetzothal opened away to north and south, and the twin passes of the Trecroce and the Tre Sasi intersected it to east and west. When we had fixed in our minds the fact that Landro and Brunec lay out to the north, and Perorolo to the south, that Oronzo was to be found somewhere on the other side of the Tre Croce, and that to arrive at Capriol it was necessary to go over the Tre Sasi, we had gained something in the way of definite topography. The Marmalata and Cevita, as we knew by our maps, were on the side of Capriol, and the Marmarole on the side of Oronzo. The Palmo, left behind yesterday, was peeping even now above the ridge of the Rochetta, and a group of fantastic rocks, so like the towers and bastions of a ruined castle that we took them at first sight for the remains of some medieval stronghold, marked the summit of the Tre Sasi to the west. But what mountain is that, far away to the south, we asked, pointing in the direction of Perorolo? Which mountain, Signora? That one yonder like a cathedral front with two towers. The old bell-ringer shaded his eyes with one trembling hand and peered down the valley. Eh, he said, it is some mountain on the Italian side. E una montagna della parta d'Italia. But what is it called? Eh, he repeated with a puzzled look. Cilosa, I don't know that I ever noticed it before. Now it was a very singular mountain, one of the most singular and the most striking that we saw throughout the tour. It was exactly like the front of Notre Dame, with one slender aguil, like a flagstaff, shooting up from the top of one of its battle-minted towers. It was conspicuous, for most points, on the left bank of the Boate. But the best view, as I soon after discovered, was from the rising ground behind Cortina, going up through the fields in the direction of the begontina torrent. From thence I made the accompanying sketch, and to this spot we returned again and again, fascinated as much perhaps by the mystery in which it was enveloped, as by the majestic outline of this unknown mountain, to which, for want of a better name, we give the name of Notre Dame. For the old bell-ringer was not alone in his ignorance. Ask whom we would, we invariably received the same vague reply. It was a mountain della parte Italia. They knew no more, and some, like our friend of the Campanile, had evidently not noticed it before. What with the great heat of the afternoon, which made uphill work difficult and rapid walking impossible? What with the wonderful wildflowers that enticed us continually from the path? What with chatting to peasants by the way, stopping to study the landscape, sketching, and so forth, we never reached the chalet of the Belvedere after all. We came very near it, however, and gained a magnificent view over the valley, the Cristallo Group, and the range of the Crota Malcora. Here also, from a grassy knoll near the cross below the Crespa, the rider devoted a long hour to making a careful drawing of the Anteleo, which is here seen to its greatest advantage. From no other point indeed is it possible, so far as I'm aware, to get so good a view of the great snow slope at the back of the summit, in combination with the splintered buttresses that strike down towards Borco and Voda in the front. The first ascent of the highest peak of this mountain was achieved by that famous climber, Dr. Groman, in 1863, and the second in 1864 by Lord Francis Douglas of Hapless Memory, accompanied by Mr. F. L. Latham and by two guides named Matteo Assi and Santo Siorpas. The latter, a brave, hearty, faithful fellow who traveled with us later in the autumn among the Italian Alps and through the Zermatt District, assured me that Lord Francis, though so young, was an excellent mountaineer, and described him as Buono Bello e Biondino. Good, handsome, and fair. The ascent is taken from a pass called the Forsello Piccola, which divides the mass of the Marmarelle from that of the Anteleo, and is most quickly reached from San Vito. Owing to the long snow slope before mentioned, this mountain, up to a certain point, is considered to be easier than any other great Dolomite except the Marmalata. But the last pull up the actual pinnacle, which rises with formidable steepness to a height of some three hundred feet, and curves over like a horn, is said to be difficult. It was supposed to be inaccessible till Dr. Gromen's time, when the fortunate discovery of a certain cleft by one of his Cortina guides opened the way to the German cragsman and to all who should come after him. A good climber can ascend from and return to San Vito in eleven hours, exclusive of halts. The country folk were all coming up to their homes on the pastures of Monte Avarau, as we went down again in the cool of the early evening, some with empty milk-pales having sold their milk in Cortina, others carrying home their store of bread and flour just purchased. One or two begged somewhat objectively for a soldo por l'amour de Dio, but for the most part they passed with a brisk step, a pleasant smile, and a cheerful guden aven, or buena sera. A civil, kindly people on the whole, as we soon came to know right well. A people ready with good wishes and little friendly salutations which, even if they have come to be spoken as mere matters of course, yet help to keep warm the spirit of good will. If they pass through the room where you are at meals, they will wish you good appetite. If you are going out, a pleasant walk, if you are on your way to bed, sound sleep and happy dreams. You yawn and they wish you felicita, you sneeze and they say salutte. That evening, as we were sitting down to a meal which was dinner, or supper, or both, we were startled by a furious discord of drums and brass instruments in the street below. It was the company of strolling acrobats who had just arrived and were parading through the village, followed by all the boys and idlers in the place. A drummer on stilts, a buffoon in high collars and a tall hat, like Paul Pry, some half-dozen athletic fellows in the traditional fillets and fleshings, and about as many hideous-looking muscular women, tramping the dusty road in white shoes and the briefest conceivable skirts. The theatre, it seemed, was open to-morrow, although the sagro would not be held until Sunday. It was on the morning of the third day after we had settled down at Cortina that the storm which had so long been gathering burst at last. Supported by the consciousness of his own merit, the courier had born with us till he could bear with us no longer. Now, however, the near prospect of being dragged over passes and up mountains, of having to ride on a mule for days in succession, and of living for many weeks to come in Tyrolean albergio several degrees less comfortable than the Aquilinera, was too much for the great man's philosophy. He understood, he said, that there were no carriage-roads to most of the places laid down in our maps, and no suitable accommodation such as he was accustomed to when traveling with parties who placed confidence in his opinion. He therefore begged to leave to tender his resignation and his accounts. Our vagabond tastes, in short, were too much for him, and he deserted us, if that could be called desertion, which must, in all likelihood, have taken the form of dismissal ere long, just at the time when the protection of a trustworthy and respectable man had become an indispensable condition of our journey. It is needless to add that the fortnight's notice which he offered was summarily rejected, and that he was then and there paid off and done with. As for El, by whom he had been retained for months before we joined forces in Naples, she transacted the whole affair with an amount of withering sang frois that speedily reduced the offender to a condition of abject humility. He made an effort by and by to assert his indifference by playing at bowls in front of the albergio, but went away in the afternoon outside the long-grown schnell wagon, quite crestfallen. And now what was to be done? Could we possibly go on with only guides and no courier? Or must the tour through the wild heart of the country be given up, just as we had come with inside of our promised land? These were questions that must be solved before we could venture one day's journey beyond the post-roads of Cortina. As a matter of choice, we indefinitely preferred the absence of our discontented friend. It was so delicious, indeed, to be without him, that El said she felt as if a necklace of millstones had been taken from round her neck. But then, as a matter of expediency, his defection was undeniably inconvenient. Could he, however, be in any way replaced? Not, of course, by another courier, that kind of article being quite unknown in these primitive valleys, but by some reliable man, as, for instance, Santos Ciorpas, who had been especially recommended to us beforehand, and who was reputed to be the best head-guide in Cortina? To send for him and offer him an engagement for the whole journey was the first step to be taken. He came, a bright-eyed, black-haired mountaineer about forty, a mighty chamois-hunter, an ex-soldier in the Austrian army, and now a custodian of forests, and local inspector of roads, an active eager fellow, brown as a berry, with honesty written in his face in an open, vivacious manner that won our liking at first sight. Unfortunately, however, this jewel of a guide was pledged for the next six or eight weeks and could not, by any means, get free. Had he no friend, we asked, whom he could recommend to take his place? He pondered the question and looked doubtful. There was old Lassidelli, he said, but he was too old, and there was young Lassidelli, but he was too young. Also there was a certain Angelo, but he was away, and would not be back for a month. Then again most of the men about Cortina were good enough at rough climbing, but not used to traveling with ladies. Well, he would think it over, he would think it over, and let the senoras know. But when would he let us know, this evening? He shook his head. This evening he was engaged to start for some distant valley with a party of gentlemen who were to ascend a mountain to-morrow. No, he could not promise to see us again before Sunday, but he would then wait upon us after high mass. This was all we could obtain from him. It was not much, and we began to have dismal forebodings of the failure of our plans. Meanwhile, however, it was of no use to despond. There was plenty to be done at Cortina, whatever happened. We could go to Piav de Cadore, to Aranzo, to Landro, by good carriage roads. We could see about the sidesaddles. We could even go into what our landlord called a caretta, as far as Falzarego, the hospice on the summit of the Tresace Pass, and then obtain a view of the Marmalata. During the present uncertainty, it was some comfort, first of all, to agitate this question of the sidesaddles. In the event of our being able to carry out the journey, they were of more real importance than a whole army of couriers. Without them, certainly, we could do nothing in the way of peaks or passes. Now we knew from previous information that Madame Pezzi, landlady of the Inn at Caprile, had a saddle which was, in fact, brought out from England and presented to her for her own use by FFT. A persuasive note couched in the writer's best Italian was therefore sent over by a special messenger, who had instructions to bring the precious object back, if possible, upon his shoulders. Then Old Cadina also possessed one, but divining perhaps that we should be overlong borrowers, he was particularly reluctant to show it. It was not till the writer succeeded in following him one day into the stable that this mysterious treasure was allowed to see the light. It proved to be a fairly good saddle, but then it was only one, and even if we obtained Madame Pezzi's we should still require a third. I am expecting a new cella di Donna from Vienna, sputtered the old landlord in his polygot patois. I'm Schoner Sattel. When will it arrive? I asked eagerly. Diavolo, I don't know, perhaps tonight, perhaps next week. I have been expecting it every day for the last three months. I relapsed into hopelessness. The old man grinned from ear to ear. He had a large, brown, flat face that looked as if it had been sat upon, and patted me on the shoulder with a paw like a Bengal tiger's. Tutt, tutt, he said. You are a brava senora. You shall not be disappointed. We'll dress up a busta for the Camari era, and all shall be well. This promise of the busta was obscure but comforting. I had not the slightest idea of what a busta was, and Gidina could only tell me what it was not. It was not a side saddle. It was not a chair. It was not a railed seat with a fit wrist like a child's donkey saddle. It had to be made when required and should be forthcoming when wanted. Beyond this point we could not get, and there the matter had to rest at all events for the present. A Midsummer Ramble through the Dolomites by Emilia B. Edwards Next morning we ordered the caretta to take us to Falls Guerrego. It would be difficult, perhaps, to say why, but we were longing to see the Marmalata, and could not rest till we had achieved at least a distant glimpse of him. In the first place it is supposed to be the highest of all the Dolomites. In the second it's snow fields and glaciers are more extensive than those of any of its neighbors. And in the third place it is so hemmed in on all sides by other mountains that it is very difficult to obtain a view of it at all. The morning was somewhat doubtful. The Tofana had, on its helmet of cloud, and though the sun shone brilliantly at times, there was an unsettled, uncertain look about the rolling cumuli that kept us hesitating till nearly eleven a.m. Then Old Godina pronounced in favor of the weather, and we resolved to venture. I shall not soon forget our dismay at first sight of the caretta. It was simply a wooden trough on four wheels, some seven feet in length by three and a half in breadth, with a crosswise plank to sit upon. The horse, a magnificent light chestnut full seventeen hands high, with a huge leather collar like an Elizabethan ruff, towered above the vehicle, and a boy sat on the shafts to drive. Springs of course there were none, cushions there were none, but mats and rugs were piled in abundantly, and so we started. Our way lay over the bridge, and up past the cross where we had rested and sketched a day or two before. Again the great view over the valley became unrolled like a scroll beneath our feet. Again the Cristalo, the Crota Malcora, Sorapis, and Anteleo seemed to rise as we rose, and the Tofana loomed nearer and more threatening with every step of our progress. Now mounting ever higher among green slopes gorgeous with wildflowers, and through pine woods all a bloom with strawberry blossoms, we left the Cortina view behind, and passed close under the southwest face of the Tofana, so close that we could distinctly see the mouth of a famous cavern, which is said to penetrate from any hundred feet into the heart of the mountain. Seen from the Trissasi Road it looks perfectly inaccessible, a mere rabbit hole in the face of a vertical and triangular precipice, like the entrance to the great pyramid. This cavern, however, is one of the sites of Cortina, and can be reached without difficulty when there is an accumulation of snow upon the slopes beneath. And now as we mount higher, rounding the last buttresses of the Tofana, and coming in sight of the first outlying ridge of Monte Lagazui, we begin to meet frequent groups of peasants, some two and three, some twelve or fifteen strong, some carrying huge loads of homespun freeze and linen on their backs, some laden with wooden wear, some with live poultry, all in their holiday clothes, and all bound for the great sagro. They are of all ages, and apparently of all grades, old folks and young, farmers and farm servants, a stumpy, sturdy, fresh-colored, honest-looking race, the women with legs like pillars, and the men averaging from five foot five to five foot seven in height. The old men wear knee breeches and comica little freeze coats, very short and full in the skirts, with two large buttons set high up in the middle of their backs, like a pair of eyes. The young fellows affect trousers and embroidered braces, and carry little bundles of colored feathers and artificial flowers in their hats. The costumes of the girls, however, are quite overwhelming, and unlike anything that we have yet seen. They wear hats like the men, and adorned in the same manner. Dark green, blue, or brown skirts laid in close folds like the plating of a kilt, and starting from just between the shoulders, like a sack, bodices open in front and laced with purple braid, sleeves tight to the arm and wrist, but slashed at the top with a puffing of white linen, and round their necks bright scarlet and yellow handkerchiefs of printed cotton. What people are these, we asked, as the first of many such apparitions appears before us at a turn of the road. To which the boy on the shafts, a laughing merry fellow named Giovanni, replies that these are Contadini from Bucienstein, Luvena Lungo, and Carforra. But Carforra is a long way off, exclaims Elle, who is better up in her maps than myself, and knows something of the distances. Eh, some of them come forty, fifty, sixty miles over the mountains, some walk all night, both coming and going. Echo, with a critical glance at the pillars before mentioned. What are the miles to a Donzella like that? Meanwhile we are suffering agonies of dislocation for the road, which is only just wide enough for our wheels, and overhangs the precipice at the bottom of which foams a roaring torrent, is full of loose stones over which the caretta jolts and blunders, creeks, leaps, and rolls in such a distracting manner that we are faint at last to get out and walk. The glen grows narrower, and the castellated rocks which we had already observed from Cortina are seen high above sloping woods on the opposite bank of the stream. Giovanni, who knows everything, informs us that they are here called the torrent, and form part of the crest of Montenuvelu, and that the torrent which takes its rise somewhere among the fastnesses of the Lagaswe is known as the Costina. More and more pedestrians, meanwhile, keep trooping past. The farther we go, the thicker they come. Where will they all sleep tonight? The Aquilinera and the Stelladoro, where they each four times their present size, would not hold more than half of them, and yet this is only one road out of many. At this moment they are tramping into Cortino from Oronzo, from Piav de Cadore, and from all the villages of the Ampetsothal. There will be fifteen hundred strangers, says our driver in Cortina tonight. And now quite suddenly we come upon a better dressed group than any we have yet met. Too tall, gentlemanly looking young men and a lady, followed by a countryman with their luggage on his back. The lady is young and pretty, with a rose in her black hair and no bonnet. The young men lift their hats as they pass. The countrymen, plodding after them, looks up with a somewhat knowing expression and touches his cap. But what is he carrying on his back? Not their luggage, after all. A sidesaddle, a large, new, London-made sidesaddle with a third pommel to screw and a velvet-lined stirrup dangling down behind it. It was our own messenger. It was Madame Pezzi's saddle. Hearing a duet of joyful exclamations in the rear, the young lady turned round, smiling. The young men came forward, smiling also. They were Madame Pezzi's two sons. Lieutenant Césaré Pezzi, an ex-Giribaldian officer, and young Agostino Pezzi, who, with his mother, keeps the inn at Capril. The damsel with the rose in her hair was Agostino's wife. They had come over the pass on foot and were bound, like every one else, for the sagro at Cortina. Concluding, of course, that we were on our way to Capril, their surprise was great that we should have left Cortina without waiting for the festival. But they were still more astonished on finding that we had come up all this way only to peep at the Marmelata and go back again. Shall we get a good view? I asked, somewhat anxiously, for the clouds had been gathering gloomily during the last half hour. They shook their heads and looked doubtful. The mists were thickening fast, they said, on the other side. We must push on it once for the top and delay for nothing at the hospice. The mountain was quite clear half an hour ago, but soon there would be nothing of it visible. This opinion brought our interview to an abrupt conclusion, and with the promise of meeting again tomorrow sent us hurrying away towards the hospice, a small white cottage by the roadside about a quarter of a mile ahead. Here we left the caretta, bad Giovanni attend to the comforts of his horse, and hastened on alone towards the top. We had but to follow the road which swept round and across a wild slope of barren moor bounded by the crags of Lagazui on the one hand and by the low-lying ridge of Montenuvelu on the other. Tall posts, each the stem of a stout fir tree, were here set at regular intervals along the side of the path, like telegraph posts, to mark the course of the road, a necessary precaution at this height, seven thousand seventy-three feet, where the snow lies deep for eight months out of every twelve. Even now on the sixth of July every rift and hollow held its yet unmelted snowdrift. And now a rough wayside cross comes into sight a few yards farther ahead. A swift runner overtakes us, and Giovanni, breathless and flush, exclaims, Echo signora, echo la croce, dila bedre mal la marmalata, si signora yonder is the cross, from there we shall see the marmalata. And from there by rare good fortune we do see it, a huge, roofed-shaped mast sloping and smooth and snowy white against a leaden sky. For vastness of expression and extent of snow as seen from this side it recalls Mont Blanc. Distance, instead of diminishing its bulk, seems by contrast with surrounding heights to enhance it. The two valleys of Andres and Louvinolango, the Monte Padon on a whole sea of minor peaks, occupy the intervening space, and yet the marmalata seems to fill the scene. But only for a few seconds, even as we stand there, eagerly gazing at it, the summit becomes dimmed, the outline fades, a pale gray tint spreads over the snow-fields, and there remains only a blurred, gigantic, indefinite something, scarcely to be distinguished from the mist by which it is surrounded. The avolo of a marmalata, exclaims Giovanni, the signoras were only just in time, but they have seen him pulito. Now this word pulito, clean, in one sense or another, is always on the tip of Giovanni's tongue. And, as I soon afterwards find, is used indiscriminately for clear, brilliant, successful, intelligible, and a dozen other meanings throughout this part of the Tyrol. Your mule goes pulito. Your new boots fit you pulito. Your field glass shows objects pulito. You achieve a creditable bit of climbing and are complimented on having done it pulito. Your driver was drunk last evening, but you are assured that he is pulito in the sense of sober this morning. It is, in short, a word of most elastic capabilities, but somewhat puzzling to strangers for that reason. The marmalata, having retired from the scene, we now turn back, taking a shortcut across the dreary coal and finding by the way some exquisite specimens of wild Daphne, Daphne Sonorum, abundance of the small mountain Gentian, Gentiana Verna, and large clusters of a very lovely, tiny pink flower with wax-like petals, minute and close as a lichen and unlike anything that either of us has ever seen before. Arrived at the hospice and being by this time very hungry, we go in and are welcomed by a clean, smiling padrona who, because her one public room is full of peasants eating, drinking, and smoking, invites us into the kitchen, a model kitchen like a kitchen in a Dutch picture, with a floor of bright red bricks and a roaring wood fire and rows upon rows of brass and copper pans shining like mirrors. She proves to be richer, however, in cooking utensils than in provisions, for dry bread, eggs, butter, and, of course, un-eatable mountain cheese are all she has to offer. Still, with eggs and butter, one is not obliged to starve. The writer, in a moment of happy inspiration, undertakes the part of cook and offers to concoct a certain dish known as buttered eggs, or more politely, as hasty omelet. So an apron is borrowed, and to the unbounded entertainment of the landlady and her servant, the savory mess is prepared in a few minutes. From that moment I am known at Falzarego as the senora cuaca, the senora cook, and greeted by that title the next time I appear at the hospice and am remembered by it, doubtless to this day. By the time we are again ready to start, the mists have rolled up to the top of the pass, and the sky all around looks black and threatening. Some peasants outside predict a storm and counsel us to get down into the valley as quickly as may be. So the chestnut is hastily put to, and we rattle off just as the first heavy drops come splashing down to a low accompaniment of very distant thunder. The storm, however, if there was a storm, remained locked in on the other side of the pass. We soon left it behind, and long before we reached the point leading to the crepe de velveteer, the sun was shining brilliantly.