 UNTRADDEN PEAKS AND UNFREQUENTED VALIES. We had been told that in winter, when the lake was frozen and the ice not too thick, and in summer on very calm days, the walls and roofs of one of the submerged villages might yet be seen, like the traditional towers of the drowned city of Leonese, far down below the surface of the water. An oven and a flight of stone steps, according to one of the young pessies, were distinctly visible, to say nothing of other less creditable stories. At length, one delicious, idle, sunny afternoon, having nothing of importance to do elsewhere, we took a boat and went out upon the lake, just to test the truth of these traditions with our own eyes. Not a breath stirred when we started from Caprile, but by the time the boat was found and we were embarked in it, a light breeze had sprung up, and the whole surface of the water was in motion. Every moment the breeze freshened and the ripple grew stronger. The withered little old woman and the rosy-cheeked girl who were rowing bent to their oars and pulled with all their might, but having crossed the debauchere of the river, declared themselves unable to pull us round the headland. The water by this time was quite rough and we landed at the nearest point with difficulty. Scrambling up and along the bank for some distance, we came presently to a kind of little promontory. From whence, notwithstanding the roughness of the water, we could distinctly trace a long reach of wall and some three or four square enclosures, evidently the substructures of several houses. If it had been smooth enough and we could have rowed over yonder, said the old woman, pointing towards a more distant reach, the senoras might have seen the houses with their roofs still on and their chimneys standing. They are all there, deep, deep down. Have you yourself seen them? I asked. Seen them? Eh, senora, I have seen them with these eyes hundreds of times. Dio mio! There are those in a leggy who have seen stranger sights than I. There are those living who have seen the old parish church with his belfry all perfect, out yonder in the middle of the lake where it is deep water. There are those living, hear her voice drop to an awestruck whisper, who have heard the bells tolling under the water at midnight for the unburied dead. I have told the story of this little expedition out of its due place, in order to bring under one head all that I succeeded in gleaning at various times about the great Bergfall of seventeen seventy-one. It certainly did not come off till we had been established for some two or three weeks at Capriol, and had once or twice been absent upon distant excursions. Our first day at the Pezzies was spent in strolling about the neighborhood and seeing after mules. Also in getting rid of the Tugedinas who were returning to Cortina with their horses, but not if we could help it with their sidesaddle. How this delicate and difficult matter was, at last negotiated, matters little now. Enough that, being simple men with but few words at command, they were ultimately talked out of their convictions, and so departed, leaving the precious object behind them. We promised, of course, to pay for the hire of it. We promised to return it as soon as we succeeded in getting another. We promised everything possible and impossible, and were crowned with that success which is not always the rewards of virtue. The Padre will be furious with us, said the younger brother somewhat ruefully, as he pocketed his Buon Amano and turned to leave the room. It occurred to me that this was highly probable, and the Guedina pair might not be altogether a pleasant person to deal with under those circumstances. The poor fellows went away with evident reluctance, followed by Giovanni and the mule. Watched them down the street, and only breathed freely when they were fairly out of sight. That same afternoon, having engaged the exclusive services of a local guide and a couple of mules for as long and as often as we might require them during our surgeon in these parts, we walked to the Col di Santaluccia, a famous point of view in the neighboring Val di Fiorentino. Our way thither lay up yesterday's zigzag, a damp, muddy grove wriggling up the face of the steep hillside, about as pleasant to walk in as a marrow spoon and not much wider. Once we arrived at the top, we left the valley of Andres upon the left, and turned off towards the right, still as yesterday winding along the great pine slopes of Monte Frizzalate, but following the eastward instead of the westward face of the mountain. It was uphill nearly all the way. Giuseppe, however, had provided two stout alpinstocks of his own cutting, and with this good help we pushed forward rapidly. The path lay half in shade and half in sunshine, commanding now a peep into the depths of the valley below, now a view of the great slide on the opposite shoulder of Monte Frizzalate, and now a backward glimpse of the civita seen above a crowd of intervening hilltops. Thus, at the end of a long pull of rather less than an hour and a half, we found ourselves some fifteen hundred feet above the level from which we had started, and close upon the coldy Santa Lucia, a curious, saddle-backed hill like a lion cuchant, keeping guard just at the curb of the Val Fiorantino. His neck is crested with a straggling line of Swiss-looking wooden houses, and his head is crowned by a picturesque little white church. He looks straight down towards the Palmo, which closes the end of the valley magnificently, like a stupendous castle with twin towers reaching to the clouds. One would like to know what demigod piled those vastions, and why the lion crouched there waiting forever to spring upon him when he should venture out from his stronghold, and if he is still imprisoned in the heart of the mountain. But the answer to these questions would have to be sought in the cloudland of uncreated myths. Followed by all the children in the place we made our way into the churchyard, and there, at the extreme end of the little promontory, sat upon the wall to enjoy the view. A glance at the map showed that the Impesso Thal lay just beyond the Palmo, and that we were now looking at the mountain from exactly the reverse side. Seen from over yonder it had resembled a mighty throne. From here, as I have said, it showed as two enormous towers, tawny against the deep blue of the sky. A little white cloud resting lightly against the top of the farthest tower looked like a flag of truce floating from the battlements. Farther to the left, the curved beak of the Anteleo, like the prow of a Roman galley, peeped out faint and distant above a bank of gathering cumulus. The val fiorantino, green and sunny, and sprinkled with white villages, opened up like a beautiful avenue to the very foot of the Palmo, while northward the valley of Cololungo met the descending slopes of Monte Giusella, and showed a streak of winding path leading down from the path. Travelers who come that way from Cortina, instead of by the Trasasi, have a rugged and somewhat uninteresting road decline, and, for the sake of this one view which can afterwards be so easily reached from Capriol, lose the scenery of the exquisite upper Valle de Cordeval, perhaps the loveliest of all the Dolomite valleys. Turning away at last from the view we went in search of the house of the curae of Santaluchia, upon the outer walls of which, as the story goes, there once existed a fresco by Titian. Painted it was said in return for the hospitality, with which he was entertained there when weather-bound in winter on his way to Venice. Cap tells us how it represented death with his sith, surrounded by symbols of earthly vanity, and furthermore adds that, having been barbarously whitewashed by some parochio of the last century, it was with difficulty recovered. Where, however, Mr. Ball and Mr. Gilbert had, as they tell us, both failed, the present rider could scarcely hope for success. A carved stemna, or coat of arms, over a side door was all that the parsonage had to show, and no trace of the fresco was anywhere discernable. I shall not soon forget that evening walk back to Capriol, the golden splendor of the sky, the sweet scent of the new-mown hay. Neither shall I forget the two tired pedestrians, all knapsacks, beards, and knicker-buckers, looking for Capriol, nor the shy little maid in the iron-spiked shoes, timid and silent, keeping goats by the pathside, nor the goats themselves, who had no mauvaise haunt, and were almost too friendly, nor, above all, that wonderful rose-colored vision that broke upon us as we turned down again into the valley, that vision of the civita, looking more than ever like a mighty organ, with its million pipes all gilded in the light of the sunset. The sky above was all light, the wooded hills below were all shade. Montepesa, soaring out from a mist of purple haze, caught the rich glow upon its rocky summit. Capriol nestled snugly down in the hollow. The little village of Roca, high on a green plateau, lifted its slender campanile against the horizon, while yet farther away a couple of tender gray peaks, like hooded nuns, looked up to the eastern sky as if waiting for the evening star to rise. Then the rose-colored paled upon the lower crags, and the radiant cloud wreaths hovering midway across the face of the civita, like an amber and golden scarf, turned gray and ghost-like. A few moments more, and the last flush faded. The sky turned a tender, greenish gray, flecked with golden films. The birds became silent in their nests. The grasshoppers burst into a shrill chorus. The torrent, steel-colored now, with here and there a gleam of silver, rushed on, singing a wild song and eager for the sea. Presently a feeble old peasant came across the pine-trunk bridge, staggering under a load of hay that left only his legs visible, and was followed by his wife, a brisk old woman with five hats piled upon her head, one on top of another, and a sheaf of rakes and siths under her arm. So we lingered spellbound till at last the gloaming came and drove us homeward. Some hours later the clouds that we had seen gathering about the Anteleo came up, bringing with them rain and heavy thunder, whereupon the ringers got up and rang the church bells all night long while the storm lasted. End of Section 18 Untrodden Peaks and Unfrequented Valleys, Section 19 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Untrodden Peaks and Unfrequented Valleys, Amid Summer Ramble through the Dolomites. By Amelia B. Edwards. Chapter 8 At Capril, Part 1 The good people of Capril were difficult to please in the matter of weather. The bells having rung all night, the population turned out next morning in solemn procession at five a.m. to implore the Virgin's protection against storms. The clouds cleared off accordingly, and a magnificent morning followed the tempest. At midday, however, the procession formed again, and with more ceremony than before, a tall, bare-footed Contadino and a tumbled Suplice coming first, with a huge wooden crucifix, then a shabby priest with his hat on, intoning a litany, then two very small and very dirty boys in red capes, carrying unlighted lanterns on poles. Lastly, a long file of country-folks marching two and two, the men first, the women next, the children last, all with their hats in their hands and all chanting. In this order they wound slowly round the village, beginning at the Contraditi San Marco. What is the procession for now, I asked, turning to a respectable-looking peasant who was washing down a cart under an archway. They are going up to the church to pray for rain, Senora, he replied, pulling off his hat as the procession went by. But it rained last night, said I, and this morning you were all praying for fine weather. Nay, Senora, we prayed this morning against the thunder and lightning, not against the rain, said my peasant gravely. Oh, I see, you want the rain, but you prefer it without the thunder. Yes, Senora, we want the rain badly. We have been praying against the drought these ten days past. But it seems to me, said I, that you would waste less time if, instead of praying against the thunder and the lightning and the drought, you just ask the Madonna to put the wind round to the southwest and send forty-eight hours of steady rain immediately. The man looked puzzled. It may be so, Senora, he said apologetically. The Perreo settles all that for us, he knows best. The poor fellow looked so humble and so serious that I turned away, quite ashamed of my own levity. After this we had unsettled weather for several days, during which it was invariably fine in the mornings and tempestuous towards night. This being the case the procession came round quite regularly, twice a day, to protest against the storm or the sunshine according as the skies were foul or fair. And while the bell-ringers must have had a hard time of it, for much to our discomfort, though greatly to the satisfaction of the people of Capriol, the bells were going almost every night. The poor I found believed that this pious exercise dispersed the evil spirits of the storm, while the better sort conceived that it occasioned some kind of undulation in the air, and so broke the continuity of the electric fluid. Who would have expected to find these exploded stuporcitions yet in force in any corner of Europe? It was like being transported back into the Middle Ages. To be condemned to a few days of uncertain weather at Capriol is by no means the worst faith that made befall a traveler in these parts. The place is full of delightful walks, all near enough to be enjoyed between the last shower and the next, of woods and glands and pastures rich in wildflowers, of easy hills for those who love climbing, of shade for the student, of trout for the angler, of ferns for the botanist. In a lovely little ravine among overhanging firs and mossy nooks of rock, not a quarter of a mile from the village, Elle found specimens of the Cystopterus fragilis, Cystopterus alpina, Asplenium septentrionale, and several varieties of maiden hair. And for the matter of sketching, a subject starts up before one at every turn of the path. Nor does one, as in too many Dolomite villages and valleys, pay the penalty of starvation in exchange for all these pleasures. The food is very fairly good, and Madame Pizzi's cooking unexceptionable. Beef, even though disguised in cinnamon, is welcome after a long and fatiguing course of veal cutlet. The salmon trout of a leggy is excellent, the bread, the wild strawberries, the rich mountain cream are all quite delicious, and even vegetables are not wholly unknown. Then besides the walks, and the ferns, and the sketching, capril, like almost every Italian place, has its special characteristics, its local curiosities, its own little root of medieval history, and these are things that do not come out unless one happens to be idling about for a few days, talking to the people, making friends with the parochio, and borrowing all the dusty old vellum-bound books in the place. In this way we light upon a few odd scraps of fact, more interesting to pick up, perhaps than to relate. Thus we learned that there were great iron mines once at the Col de Santa Lucia, that both a leggy and capril were famous for their skilled ironsmiths and armorers, and that they used to supply knives and swords to Venice. That exquisite old bronze door-handle wrought in the form of a mermaid, and that twisted hammer beaten out of one solid piece, which I admired so much yesterday on the door of yonder dilapidated stone house at the farther end of the village, came probably from some anvil now buried at the bottom of the lake. There were forty mines once, they say, in the province of Belluno, where now only four are in operation. The old name of capril was Pagus Gabrielis. I could not learn that any inscriptions, urns, or mosaics had ever been found here, as at Longaron and Castilevazzo, so that the ancient Latin name seems to be the only Roman relic left. Towards the middle of the fifteenth century the men of capril and cedore united their political fortunes and placed themselves under the protection of Venice, whereupon the Republic appointed them a governor with the title of Captain General. It was one of these captains who erected the column of Saint Mark yonder at the extreme end of the village. At this time capril was a flourishing commercial center and the chief commune in these valleys. Among the natural curiosities of the place they point you out a small hole in the face of a neighboring rock, and tell you it is the mouth of a spring impregnated with sulfur-redded hydrogen, once worked to some profit but now abandoned. We also heard of the recent discovery of a vein, a fine alabaster at a place called Digenera, a little farther up the valley, said to equal in quality the best alabaster of Tuscany. Then, too, there is the dialect, unaccountably smacking of French in a country locked in between Venetia and Austria. Almost every little separate place in these parts has its own vocabulary, and an enthusiast like Professor Max Müller might doubtless by means of a comparative analysis of these hundred and one dialectic varieties extract all kinds of interesting philological flies and amber. More curious, however, than any fact having to do with capril is the history of Roca. A small village perched upon a hill just against the mouth of the val Petorina and fronting the precipitous northern face of Montepesa. This tiny place, known in the Middle Ages as Roca de Piatore or Roca Bruna, if never in the strictest sense of the word or republic, was at all events self-governed, owing only a nominal allegiance to the Archdeacon of Capodistria and enjoying a special immunity from tax, impost, or personal service. Imposta occulta o faziani personale. This interesting little community consisting of forty-five families, the men of which were nearly all armors, was constrained in 80, 1389, to acknowledge the suzerainty of the Visconti who placed it under the jurisdiction of the Belunis. Not even so, however, would Roca resign its cherished liberties, but stipulated that all the articles of its ancient statute should be observed and violent. The manuscript original of this remarkable document, drawn out in sixty-six clauses and registered at Beluno in the year fourteen-eighteen, is now in the possession of Signora Pezia of Capril. When by and by the Visconti attempted to levy attacks upon their steelwork, the men of Roca rebelled, and later still, in A.D. 1659, being then subject to the Venetians and jealous as ever of their privileges, they dispatched an ambassador to the Senate, reminding that August body how, being situated on the frontier and exposed to the attacks of enemies beyond the border, the people of Roca had at all times testified to their patriotism with their blood, and preserved intact those privileges which were dearer to them than the pupils of their eyes. In all but Nema Republic, this little free state, smaller than either Marino or Andor, finally lost its independence when seated to the Austrians with the rest of Lombardo Venetia in eighteen-fourteen. It now ranks as an ordinary parish in the district of Beluno. Its castle has disappeared, and only four roofless walls of rough masonry in a green meadow at the foot of the hill on the side next Capriol remain to mark the site of its former municipal palace. It is an ugly, gabled-ended ruined, and it looks like the shell of a small church. In the way of local notabilities, Roca has its painter, one Domenico di Bezzo, whose works are supposed to have merit, while Capriol rejoices in a certain Padre Barnabas of the Capuchin Order, famous for the eloquence of his sermons, which have been published in Beluno. Having neither seen the paintings nor read the sermons, I am unable to pronounce upon the excellence of either. End of Section 19. UNTRADON PEAKS AND UNFREQUENTED VALLEY, SECTION XX. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. UNTRADON PEAKS AND UNFREQUENTED VALLEYS AMID SUMMER RAMBLE THROUGH THE DOLOMITES, BY AMILIA B. EDWARDS. CHAPTER VIII. AT CAPRIOL PART II. The two really remarkable natural curiosities of the place, however, are the Gorge of Sotoguda and the Sassadi Ranch. Every visitor to Capriol is shown the first. We, I believe, were the first travelers who ever took the trouble to go up in search of the second. The Gorge of Sotoguda, a deep, narrow cleft between overhanging cliffs, distant about four-and-a-half or five miles from Capriol, is, in fact, the upper end of the Val Petorina, which here creeps between the lower spurs of Monteguda and the Montefoy. It is neither so narrow nor so dark nor so deep down as feffers or trient, but it reminds one of both, and, though on a smaller scale, is very fine and curious in its way. That the whole Gorge is a mere crack in the rocks produced by some prehistoric natural convulsion is evident at first sight. I even fancied that I could see how, in certain places, the rent cliffs might have been fitted together again like the pieces of a child's puzzle. The length of the Gorge, which wriggles in and out like a serpent, is rather more than a half-mile windings included. Within this short distance the torrent that flows through it is crossed by seventeen bridges of rough pine trunks. So abrupt are the terns and sinuosities that never more than two of these bridges are visible at the same time, and sometimes the traveler, who is only one bridge in advance, is entirely lost sight of by his companions. The torrent roars along in great force, and is echoed and re-echoed in a deafening way from the cliffs on either side. The Gorge is, in many places, not more than twelve feet wide. The precipices, at a rough guess, rise to a height of about six or seven hundred feet. The scale, after all, is not gigantic, but the light and shadow come in grandly at certain hours, throwing one side of the defile into brilliant sunshine and the other into profoundest gloom, with an effect never to be obtained in either feffers or trient. We first saw Soto-Guda on a showery afternoon when the lights were unusually shifting and beautiful, and all the trees and bushes overhead, and all the rich red and brown and golden mosses on the rocks and boulders down below, were sparkling with raindrops. A woman standing on a slender bridge formed of a single pine-trunk thrown across a rift of rocks some three hundred feet above our heads looked down, knitting, as we wound in and out among the bridges and rapids. She smiled unspoked, but the roar of the water was such that we could not hear her. We saw the motion of her lips, and that was all. Presently a little white goat came and thrust its head forward from behind her skirts, and also peered down upon the wayfarers below. The blue sky and the green bushes framed them round and made a picture not soon to be forgotten. Most travelers see Soto-Guda from Capril, but it is approached to more advantage from the side of the Fidea Pass and should, if possible, be first taken from that direction. Those, however, who are not equal to the fatigue of crossing the Pass, may go to Soto-Guda and bat from Capril in about three hours with mules, or four hours on foot. To go to the Sasodi Ranch, however, takes quite half a day. It is a very curious spot, and one of which the rider may claim to be in a very small way the discoverer. Wandering about as usual before breakfast the first morning after our arrive in Capril, and taking the road towards Elegé, I observed a strange, solitary chimney of rocks standing out against the sky, high upon the sloping shoulder of Monte Mignon, about two thousand feet above the level of the valley. Seen from below, it had apparently no thickness proportionate to its height and breadth, and looked like a gigantic paper knife stuck upright in a bed of green sward. A few trees and a couple of chalets nestled at the foot of this eccentric object, and scaling it by these I concluded that it could not measure less than two hundred and fifty feet from base to summit. I had come out that morning to see the civita, but having taken a long look at that queen of dolomites, I nevertheless sat down there and then upon a big boulder in a flood of burning sunshine, and, with the help of an opera-glass, sketched the Sasodi Ranch. From that moment I was tormented by the desire to see it more nearly. There were houses up there, so it was fair to conclude there must also be a path, and of the view it must command in at least two directions there could be no doubt. Giuseppe, however, knew nothing about it, and none of the pezzies had ever taken the trouble to go higher than Roca, or last day, or the cross on the brink of the cliff about half way between the two, where strangers are taken to see the view over the civita. There is nothing up yonder, said young Signora Pezzi contemptuously. Nothing but an old stone and a couple of poor cottages. But the old stone had fastened our imaginations, so one fine morning we sent for Clementi and the mules, and started upon our voyage of discovery. Clementi must be introduced. Clementi and the mules. Clementi is our capril guide. He either belongs to the mules or the mules belong to him. It is impossible to say which. One mule is black, the other white, and both are named nestle, which is perplexing. Our nestle is El's mule, a gentle beast, weak but willing, given to stopping and staring at the landscape in a meditative way, but liable to odd and sometimes inconvenient prejudices. Yesterday he objected to bridges, which in the gorge of Sotoguda was particularly awkward. Today he suddenly abhors everything black and kicks up his heels at the curae before we are out of the village. Dark nestle, being bigger and stronger, is assigned to me. He is a self-sufficient brute, one who, in the matter of roads and turnings, invariably prefers his own opinion to that of his rider. His appetite is boundless, omnivorous, insatiable. He not only steals the young corn by the roadside and the flowers inside garden fences, but he eats poison berries, chicken bones, vark, eggshells, and potato pairings. He would eat the encyclopedia Britannica if it came his way. El and her mule are the best friends in the world. She feeds him perpetually with sugar, and he follows her about like a dog. My mule and I, on the contrary, never arrive at terms of intimacy. Perhaps he knows that I am the heavier weight and resents me accordingly. Perhaps he dislikes the society of ladies and prefers carrying half-ton loads of hay and charcoal, which is the sort of thing he has been brought up to do. At all events he refuses from the first to make himself agreeable. Both mules, however, do their work carefully and climb like cats upon occasion. Clemente is a native of Capriol, and lodges with his old mother on the ground floor of a big stone house in the middle of the village. He is a short, active, sturdy, black-eyed little fellow, hot-tempered, ready-witted, merry, untiring, full of animation and gesture, with an honest bulldog face and an eye that is always laughing. He wears his trousers tucked up around the ankles, a bunch of cox feathers in his hat, and a bottle slung over his shoulder. It is impossible to look at him without being reminded of the clown in a Christmas pantomime. Such is Clemente, the very antipodes of Giuseppe, whom I described long since. With these two men in these two mules we traveled henceforth as long as we remained among the Dolomites. Setting off that bright July morning for the Sassodi ranch, our way lies at first in the direction of Roca. The path, however, turns aside at the ruins of the old municipal palace, and bears away to the right, striking up at once through the fur-woods, which on this side clothe the lower slopes of the Monté-Mignon. Thus, in an alternating shade and sunshine, it winds and mounts as far as the cross, a point of view on the giddy edge of an abrupt precipice facing the south. The cliff here goes down sheer to the valley, a thousand feet or more, and Clemente tells how the cross was put there, not to mark the point of view for Messieurs les Etangées, but to commemorate the death of a poor little goat herd only eleven years of age, who, going in search of a stray kid, fell over and was dashed to pieces before he reached the bottom. The view from here is fine, considering at what a moderate elevation we stand. The Savita rises before us, grandly displayed, five valleys open away beneath our feet, and the slated roofs of Capriol and Roca glisten in the morning sunshine hundreds of feet below. A greenish-blue corner of the lake gleams just beyond the last curve of the Val d'Elegui, while between that point in this, there extend, distance beyond distance the fur-woods, the pastures, and the young corn slopes of Montépéza. From hence a better path winds round toward the northeast in the direction of Laste, a small white village on a mountain ledge high above the valley, looking straight over towards Buchenstein. From here the gray-old castle on its pedestal of crag, the green valley of Andres, and the mountains of the Tresace Pass are all visible, but the main feature of the view on this side is the Pelmo, just as the main feature of the view on the other side is the Savita. Seen through a gap in the mountains it rises magnificently against the horizon, looking more than ever like a gigantic fortress. I have called the Savita the Queen of Dolomites, and so in like manner I would call the Pelmo King. The one is all grace and symmetry, the other all massiveness and strength. It is possible to associate the idea of fragility with the Savita. It is possible to conceive how that exquisite perpendicular screen, with its thousands of slender pilasters and pinnacles, might be shivered by any great convulsion of nature. But the Pelmo looks as if rooted in the heart of the great globe itself, immovable till the day of the last disruption. For a distant view, this of the Pelmo from near last day on Mount Aminjean is the grandest with which I am acquainted. From this point we next struck up across a green slope wooded like an English park, and so came out upon another path, steep and stony and glaring, which led to the cottages that I had seen from the valley. A woman scouring a brass pan at the spring, and two others turning the yellow flax upon the hillside, stopped in their work to stare in speechless wonder. The children shouted and ran indoors as if we were goblins. We stayed a moment at the spring to fill our water-flasks and let the mules drink. Have you never seen any ladies up here before? laughed Clemente. Never! said one of the women, throwing up her hands emphatically. Never! What have they come for? We explained that our object was to see and sketch the sassow up yonder. Hill sassow, she repeated, half incredulously, hill sassow? She evidently thought us quite demented. Another bit of rough path, another turn, and the great paper-knife rock like a huge solitary men here is nodding over our heads. It looks even bigger than I had expected, bigger and thinner, but also more shapeless and less interesting. It is a marvel that the first high wind should not blow it down instantly, but then it had this effect from below. Don't you think we have taken a great deal of trouble for nothing? says Elle, in a tone of disappointment. I would not acknowledge it for worlds, but I had been thinking so myself for some minutes. I push on, however, turn another corner, and arriving at the top of the call comes suddenly upon a most unexpected and fantastic scene, a scene of a mountain in ruins. For not only is the whole appearance of the sassow changed in the strangest way by being seen in profile, but behind the ridge on which the sassow stands there is revealed a vast circular amphitheater, like the crater of an extinct volcano, strewn with rent crags, precipices riven from top to bottom, and enormous fragments of rock, many of which are at least as big as the clock tower at Westminster. All these are piled one upon another in the wildest confusion, all are prostrate, save one gigantic needle which stands upright in the midst of the circle, like an iceberg turned to stone. What was the nature of this great catastrophe, and when did it happen? It could not have been a burgfall, for the mountain slopes above are all grassy out, and the very summit of Montemignonne is a space of level pasture. It could not have been an eruption, for these fragments are pure dolomite limestone, and dolomite, it is now agreed, is not volcanic. Unable even to form a guess as to the cause of this great ruin, I can only say that, to my unscientific eyes, it looks exactly as if an volcano had burst up beneath a dolomite summit and blown it into a thousand fragments like a mine. CHAPTER VIII. AT CAPRIEL PART III. Meanwhile here, on the ridge, apart and alone, like a solitary remnant of outer battlement left standing beside a raised fortress, rises to a height of at least two hundred and fifty feet above the grass at its base, the Sasso d'Ranch. Seen thus in profile, it is difficult to believe that it is the same Sasso d'Ranch which one has been looking at from below. It looks a mere aguille or spiral, disproportionately slender for its height and curved at the top, as if just ready to pitch over. Someone has compared the Matterhorn to the head and neck of a war horse, rearing up behind the valley of Zermatt. So might the Sasso d'Ranch from this point be compared to the head and neck of a giraffe. Standing upon its knife-edge of ridge, all precipice below, all sky above, the horizon one long sweep of jagged peaks. It makes as wild and weird a subject as I ever sat down to sketch, before or since. Thus the morning passes. At noon we rest in the shade of the Sasso to eat our frugal luncheon of bread and hard-boiled eggs. Then being refreshed, pack up the sketching traps and prepare to go home. It is not long, however, before we call another halt, this time in the midst of a beautiful open glade a little way below the cottages. Here framed in by a foreground of velvet turf, a chalet and a group of larches, and only divided from us by the misty abyss of the Val Petrina, rise the vertical cliffs and craggy summits of Montepesa. It is a ready-made sketch and must be seized on the spot. There ought to be a fine view from that point yonder, I remark, mixing a pale little pool of cobalt, like a solution of turquoise's, and addressing myself to no one in particular. Hereupon Clementi, apropos, as it would seem, of nothing, says briskly, would the senoras like to make a first ascent? A first ascent, I repeated vaguely, adding a softening drop of brown matter, and so turning the whole pool into a tender pearly gray. What do you mean? I mean, would the senoras like to be the first to mount to the top of the Sasso Bianco? The Sasso Bianco, says El, beginning to be interested in the conversation. Where is the Sasso Bianco? Clementi points to my sketch, and then to the mountain opposite. But that is the Monte Piesa, I exclaim. Scusate, senora, the Sasso Bianco is the summit of the Monte Piesa. No traveler has ever been up there. It is new, new, new. How can it be new, I ask, incredulously? It is not a very high mountain. Scusate, ancora, senora, it is not a mountain of the first class, but it is high, very high, for a mountain of the second class. It is higher than either the Frisale, the Fernanza, or the Mignon. Still it is much less difficult than the Civita, and the Civita has been ascended several times. How then should the Sasso Bianco have escaped till now? Because, senora, the Sasso Bianco is too difficult for ordinary travelers, and not difficult enough for the club Alpino, to advise Clemente oracularily. Il bal, il tukit, il whitwell care nothing for a mountain which they can swallow at one mouthful. This sounds logical. I begin to look at my mountain with more respect, and to take extra pains with my sketch. At the same time I venture to remind Clemente that El and I are only ordinary travelers, and as such might find the Sasso Bianco too tough to be swallowed, even in many mouthfuls. But he will not listen to this view of the question for a moment. If we choose to do it, we have but to say so. He will undertake that the senora shall go up pulito. The sketch being by this time finished we go down, talking always of the Sasso Bianco. Clemente is eager for us to achieve the honor of a prima ascensione, and advocates it with all his eloquence. Giuseppe, anxious that we should attempt nothing in excess of our strength, listens gravely, puts in a question here and there, and reserves his opinion. According to Clemente, nothing can be finer than the view or easier than the ascent, but then he admits that he himself has never been higher than the upper pastures, and has never seen the view he praises so highly. Still, he has gone far enough to survey the ground. He knows that we can certainly ride as far as the last group of chalets, and he is confident that the walk to the summit cannot be difficult. On the whole the thing sounds tempting. Our plans, however, are already laid out for a long excursion to be begun, whether permitting, to-morrow. So the subject of the Sasso Bianco, having been discussed, is for the present dismissed. Dismissed but not forgotten. Those words, prima ascensione, are cabalistic, and haunt the memory strangely. They invest the Monte Pesa with a special and peculiar interest, so that it is no longer as other mountains are, but seems henceforth to have a halo around its summit. But I must not forget the old peasant whom we met a little way below the go-thirds cross, as we went down that afternoon. He was a fine old man, still handsome, dressed in a new suit of homespun frieze and evidently well-to-do. He was sitting by the pathside. A basket and a long stick lay beside him. As we drew near he rose and bowed, so being on foot, the men and mules following at a distance, we stopped to speak to him. He, of course, immediately asked where we had been and where we were going. These are the invariable questions. I said that we had been up to the Sasso di Ranch. To the Sasso, he repeated, ah, you have been up to the Sasso? Did you see the ruins of the castle? I replied that, not knowing there were ruins, we had looked for nothing of the kind. I, he said, shaking his head, and unless you knew where to find them you would never notice them. But they are there. I have seen them myself many a time, when I was younger and could climb like you. Do you know to whom the castle belonged? Si, si, si, lo penso bene. Will the senora be pleased to sit while I tell them all about it? With this he resumed his seat on the grassy bank, wiped his brow with his handkerchief, and talked away with the air of one who was accustomed to be listened to. The castle, he said, was built by the Visconti, the cruel Visconti of Milan. They erected it towards the close of the fourteenth century to overall the Republica of Roca, over which they then exercised a nominal sovereignty. But when the rule of the Visconti came to an end, the brava commune, fearing lest the nobles of Vilunos should seize and occupy this stronghold to the ruin of the people, pulled it down, leaving scarce one stone standing upon another. That was between four and five centuries ago. Then the nobles of Vilunos, finding they could obtain no footing on the mountain, went and built the castle of Andres up yonder on the valley of Buchanstein, and there made themselves a terror to all the country. Had the senora seen the castle of Andres? Oh, well, that, too, was now a ruin, pulled down by the French in 1866, according to international treaty. As for the Antico Castello up by the Sasso, it was like an old tree of which the trunk was cut down, and only the roots left. Nothing remained of it but the foundations. Being built of rock, they looked so like the rock that you might pass them a hundred times without observing them. There were not many people now living, he said, who knew where to look for them. When he was a young man, the Contadini used to go up and dig there for hidden treasure, but they always had been frightened away by the demons. The ruins were full of demons underground in the subterraneous dungeons, the entrances to which were now lost. They were want to appear in the form of snakes, and they raised to terrible storms of wind and thunder to drive away those who sought to discover the secrets of the ruin. Had he ever seen the demons himself? Why, no, he could not say that he had, for he had never cared to tempt the devil by going to dig for treasure, but he had seen and heard the tempest raging up there, about the top of the mountain, many and many a time, when it was fair weather down in the valley. And he had once known a man who went up at midnight on the eve of Santo Giovanni to dig in a certain spot where he had dreamed he should find buried gold. When he had dug a deep hole, echo his spade struck against an earthen spot, and he thought his fortune was made, but when he took the lid off the pot there came out only five small black snakes, no bigger than your finger. At this site, being both alarmed and disappointed, he up with his spade and cut one of these little snakes in twain and low, in one instant the hole that he had dug was full of snakes. Big black venomous twisted, hissing snakes, thousands and thousands of them all pouring out upon him in a hideous throng, so that he had to fly for his life, and only escaped death by a miracle. But has nothing ever been found in the ruins, I asked, when at the end of this story the old man paused to take breath. Nothing but rubbish, senora, he replied, a few small coins, a rusty cask or two, some fragments of armor, nyante pui. He would have talked for an hour if we could have stayed to listen to him, but we were in haste, and now wished him good day. So he rose again, took off his hat, and in quaint, set terms wished us good health, a pleasant journey, a safe return, and the blessing of God. The rest of that afternoon was spent in laying out our route by the map, unpacking and selecting stores, and endeavoring to solve the oft-perpounded problem of how to get the contents of a large portmanteau into a small black bag. For the days of caretty, land owls, and carriage-roads were over. Henceforth our ways would lie among mountain paths and unfrequent mule tracks, and to-morrow we must start upon an expedition of at least ten days, with only as much luggage as each could carry packed behind her own saddle. Giuseppe it was arranged, should carry the sketching-traps, and Clementi the provision-basket. In this order we were to take a long round beginning with San Shediga and Agordo, going thence to Primario, Pena Veggio, and Predazzo, and coming home by Campadelo and the Fidaha Pass. In the meanwhile, owls made was to be left in charge of the rooms and under the kindly care of the Paisies. End of Section 21. Untrodden Peaks and Unfrequented Valleys, Section 22. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Untrodden Peaks and Unfrequented Valleys, a mid-summer ramble through the Dolomites by Emilia B. Edwards. Chapter 9. To Agordo and Primiero, Part 1. Having risen, literally, with the dawn, we are on the road next morning before six, bound for Agordo. The Paisies gather about the house door to see us off. The Austrian officer, who lodges over the way and soothes his customs-laden soul by perpetually torturing a cracked zitter, leans out in his shirt-sleeves from a second-floor window to see us mount. He is already smoking his second, if not his third, mirsham, and only pauses now and then to twirl his moustache with that air of serene contempt for every one but himself, which so eminently distinguishes him. It takes some little time to strap on the bags to say good-bye and to induce dark nestle to receive me upon any terms. He has a hypocritical way of standing quite still till the very moment Giuseppe is about to put me up, and then suddenly ducks away to my immense disconfiture and the undisguised entertainment of the neighborhood. When this performance has been repeated some six or seven times, he is hustled into a corner and pinned against the wall by main force, while I mount, ignomiously, at last, by the help of a chair. The road to San Saniga lies by way of a leggy, so that for the first five miles or so it is all familiar ground. The air feels fresh, but the sky is already one blaze of cloudless sunlight. The civita rises before us in shadowy splendor. The larks are singing as I had thought they never sang any ware-save on the campanaga between Rome and Tivoli. Between forty and fifty bronzed and bare-legged peasants are collecting floating timber this morning at the head of the lake. Some wade, some pilot rough rafts of tree-trunks loosely lashed together, some stand on the banks and draw the logs to shore by means of long boat-hooks. One active fellow sits his pine-trunk as if it were a horse, and paddles it to shore with uncommon dexterity. The whole scene is highly picturesque and amusing, and the men, with their shirt-sleeves rolled above their elbows and their trousers above their knees, look just like Neapolitan fishermen. Every now and then they all join in a shrill, prolonged cry which adds greatly to the wildness of the effect. Skirting the borders of the lake, we draw nearer every moment to the lower cliffs of the civita, and arrive at the scene of the Great Bergfall of 1771, a wilderness of fallen rocks like the battleground of the Titans, somewhere beneath these mountains of debris lie the two buried villages. No one any longer remembers exactly where they stood, nor even which of the four they were. That a leggy lay near the middle of the present water seems to be the only fact about which everyone is confident. A solitary white-house, half Podera, half albergio, stands on a hill just above the point where the carnivore, swelled by all the torrents of the civita, rushes out at the lower end of the lake, and pours impetuously down the steep and narrow gorge, leading to San Seneghi. Here the path, after being carried for a long way high on the mountainside, gradually descends to the level of the river, crossing and recrossing it continually by means of picturesque wooden bridges. Here, too, an adder, sunning itself on a heap of stones by the wayside, wiggles away at our approach, and is speedily killed by Clementi, who skips about and flourishes his stick like a maniac. Meanwhile a tremendous southwest wind blows up the gorge like a hurricane, without in any way mitigating the pitiless blaze of the sun overhead, or the glare which is flung up at a white heat from the road underfoot. At length, about ten-thirty a.m., we arrive in sight of San Seneghi, a small village in the open flat just between the Val Cordeval and the Val de Canale. The Monte Pelsa, which is, in fact, a long, wild buttress of the Civita, the Sema di Pappe, a volcanic peak 8,239 feet in height, and the southward ridge of the Monte Pelsa, enclose it in a natural amphitheater, the central area of which is all fertile metal land traversed by long lines of feathery poplars. Putting up here for a couple of hours at a poor little inn in the midst of the village, we are glad to take refuge from the wind and sun in a stuffy upstairs room, while the men dine and the mules feed and where we take luncheon. One soon learns not rashly to venture on strange meats and drinks in these remote villages. We now habitually provide ourselves before starting in the morning with fresh bread and hard-boiled eggs, and so, on arriving at a new place, ask only for cheese, wine, and a fresh lettuce from the garden. The cheese is not often very palatable, and we generally give the wine to the men. But as something must be ordered and paid for, the purpose is answered. When we are unusually tired or minded to indulge in luxuries, we light the etna and treat ourselves to libic soup or tea. Beyond Cincinnati the character of the scenery changes suddenly. It is still the Valcourt of Albe, but is wholly unlike its former pastoral self, either above or below Capriol. Even precipices, scarred by a thousand bergfalls, close in the narrow way, fallen boulders of enormous bulk like piled everywhere in grand and terrible confusion, while the road is again and again cut through huge barricades of solid debris. Frequent wayside crosses repeat the old tragic story of sudden death. The torrent, chafed and tormented by a thousand obstacles rages below. Wild Dolomitic peaks start up here and there, are seen for a moment, and then vanish. A blind beggar woman curled up with her crutches in the recesses of a painted shrine by the roadside, uplifts a wailing voice at our approach. All is mournful, all is desolate. By and by the gorge widens, the great twin towers of Monte Lucano and the splintered peaks of Monte Pies come into sight. And like a rapid change of scene upon a mighty stage, a sunny Italian valley, rich in vines and chestnuts and fields of Indian corn, opens out before us. From thence the road, winding now in shade, now in sunshine, perverses a country which would be as thoroughly southern as the inland parts about Naples, were it not that the houses in every little village are decorated in the Tyrolian way, with half obliterated frescoes of Madonna's and Saint's. Large rambling farmhouses built over gloomy arches peopled by pigs, poultry, and children, enliven the landscape with an air of slovenly prosperity, quite companion. A wayside hysteria hangs out the traditional withered bow and announces in letters a foot long. Buon acqua gratis e vendita di buon vino. Good water for nothing and good wine for sale. By and by a scattered town and an important new-looking church and a dome and two small cupolas come into sight at the far end of the valley. This is a gordo, an arch-deaconry, and the capo luogo, or chief place of the district. Too long last sultry miles of dusty flat, and we are there. A large albergio at the upper end of the piazza is as big at least as Trafalgar Square, and receives us on arrival, a pretentious, comfortless place with an arcade and a cafe on the ground floor, and no end of half-furnished upper rooms. Being ushered upstairs by a languid damsel with an enormous chignon, for there seems to be neither master, mistress, nor waiter about the place, we take possession of a whole empty floor looking to the front, and ask, of course, the tired traveller's first question. What can we have for dinner? The answer to this inquiry comes in astounding form of a regular bill of fare. We can have anything from soup to ices if we choose, so, in an evil hour, we order a real dinner to consist of several courses, including trout and a boiled chicken. We even talk vaguely of spending a day or two in a gordo for the longer enjoyment of such luxurious quarters. In the meantime, having rested, we stroll out to see the town. Strange to say there is no town, there is only the piazza. Houses enough there may be possibly to make a town if one could only bring them together and arrange them within reasonable limits. But here they show as a mere brick-and-mortar fringe, thinly furnishing three sides of a great desolate enclosure where all the children and all the stray dogs and all the palo players must do congregate. Three sides only, for the fourth is wholly occupied by Count Manzoni's dilapidated villa, with its unpainted shutters, its curtainless windows, and its outside multitude of tenth-rate gods and goddesses, which crowd the skyline of the façade like an army of acrobats and ballet girls in stone. The church, a modern work in the renaissance style designed by Segucini, stands near the hotel at the upper or eastern end of the piazza. The door being open, we lift the heavy leather curtain and walk in, but it is like walking into chaos an old night. Every blind is down, every avenue is closed against the already fading daylight. A capuchin monk and some three or four women kneel here and there, more shadowy than the shadows. A lamp burns dimly before the high altar. A few tapers flare before the shrine of the Madonna. Faint gleams of gilding, outlines of frescoes, of altar pieces, of statues, are indistinctly visible. To gain any idea of the decorations, or even of the proportions of the church, is so impossible that we defer it altogether till tomorrow, and make instead the tour of the piazza. Having done this, and having peeped into a very narrow, dirty, backstreet running up the hill behind the town, we come home, home being the albergio of the miniere, to dinner. And here I should observe that the house is so called after the copper, lead, and zinc mines that form the commercial treasure of the district. These mines, lying at the mouth of the Val in Perina, about two miles from Agordo, belonged formerly to the Republic of Venice and are now government property. Of the wealth of their resources there seems to be but one opinion. Yet the works are carried on so parsimoniously that the net profit seldom exceeds five hundred thousand lira, or about two thousand English per pound. A quick silver mine near Gosalda, about six miles off in another direction, worked by a private company, is reported to pay better. Did I say that we came home to dinner? Ah, well, it was a sultry, languid evening, there was thunder in the air, and happily we were not very hungry. I will not dwell upon the melancholy details. Enough, if I observe, that the boiled chicken not only came to the table in its headdress of feathers like an African sheaf in Grand Tenu, but also with its internal economy quite undisturbed. The rest of the dishes were conceived and carried out in the same spirit. Non-ragonum de l'or, et cetera, et cetera, for my own part I believed to this day that the cook was a raving maniac. That dream of spending a day or two at Agordo vanished in the course of dinner. We resolved to push on as quickly as possible for Primiero, and so, as soon as the cloth was removed, sent for Giuseppe and ordered the mules to be at the door by half-past six the next morning. That night there came a tremendous storm, the heaviest we had yet had. It began suddenly with a peel of thunder just over the roof of the hotel, and then continued to lighten and thunder incessantly for more than half an hour before any rain fell. The lightning seemed to run slant-wise along the clouds and jagged streams, and to end each time with a plunge straight down into the earth. These streams of electric fluid were in themselves blinding white, but the light they flashed over the landscape was of a brilliant violet, as rich in color as a burst of bangle-light. I never saw anything to equal the vividness of that violet light, or the way in which it not only stripped the darkness from the great mountains on the opposite side of the valley, but brought out with intense distinctness every separate leaf upon the trees, every tile upon the farthest house-tops, and every blade of grass in the piazza below. These flashes for the first ten minutes followed each other at intervals of not longer than fifteen seconds, and sometimes at intervals of five, so that it almost seemed as if there were flashes of darkness as well as flashes of light. The church bells, as usual, were rung as long as the storm lasted, but the thunder-peels overlapped each other so continually, and were echoed and re-echoed in such a grand way from the amphitheater of mountains around about, that one only heard them now and then for a moment. By and by, at the end of perhaps forty minutes, there came a deafening, final explosion, as if a mountain had blown up, and after that heavy rain and only rain till about two o'clock a.m. At half-past six, however, when we rode out of a gordo, the weather was as brilliant as ever. Long fleets of white clouds were sailing overhead before the wind. The air had that delicious freshness that follows a thunderstorm in summer. The trees, the grass, the wildflowers, even the mountains looked as if their colors had just been dashed with a wet brush, and so left for the sun to dry them. Our way lay across the Cordeval Bridge, and then up a steep path, very narrow, partly paved, and shaded on both sides by barberry bushes, wild briars all in bloom, and nut trees already thick with clusters of new fruit. Monte Lucano, in form like a younger brother of the Pelmo, towered high into the morning mist on the one hand, and the wild peaks of Monte Piz and Monte Añera, peered out fitfully now and then upon the other. Thus we reached and passed Vultago, a picturesque village surrounded by green fir woods and slopes of Indian corn. In the valley below gleamed a gordo with its white dome, and against the eastern horizon rose the pinky peaks of Monte Lastier, the shadowy ridge of Monte Pramper, and the strange solitary needle called the Giusella de Vescova, like a warning finger pointing to the sky. Next came a cherry country, thick with orchards full of scarlet fruit, then a romantic ravine called the Val Molina, then the scattered village of Fresene, with its little church in the midst of a mountain prairie surrounded by fir woods. Who would dream of finding a Piano Forte manufactory in such a lost corner of the hills, or a maker of violins and contrabasi a little way lower down at Vultago? Yet at Fresene, one Giuseppe Dalla Lucia turns out pianos of respectable repute, and the fiddles, little and big, of Valentino, Conadora of Vultago, are said to be of unusual excellence. And now as we ride across this space of pleasant meadowland, the mist part suddenly overhead and reveal a startling glimpse of three enormous, pallid obelisks, apparently miles high against the blue. These are the peaks of the Sasso di Campo, one of the Primiero giants, as yet unascended, and estimated by ball at something little short of ten thousand feet above the level of the sea. The mist part enclose again, the peaks stand out for one moment in brilliant sunshine, and then melt like things of air. It is our first and last sight of the Sasso di Campo. The path, always rising, now winds through a wooded district, stony but shady, the haunt of gorgeous butterflies. Higher still it becomes a tunnel of greenery, only just wide and high enough for man and mule. The larch's meat and rustle overhead, tiny falls trickle deliciously from rock to rock, and gush every now and then across the path, while the banks on each side are tap astreied all over with rich mosses, wild strawberries, and pendant festoons of osmunda oak and beach ferns. If the footway were not so steep and slippery, and the work so heavy for the mules, no place could be imagined more delicious on a day like this, for it grows hotter every hour as the sun climbs and the vapors roll away. But the pull is too long and too difficult, and the path in many places resolves itself into a mere broken staircase of wet rock, up which the two nestles, though riderless, clamor and struggle with the utmost difficulty. CHAPTER IX. TO A GORDO AND PREMIERO, PART II At length one last great step is surmounted, and an immense park-like plateau scattered over with clumps of larches and furs, threaded by numberless tiny torrents and radiant with wildflowers, opens away for miles before our eyes like a rolling sea of rich green sward. This is the summit of the Gosalda Pass. The village of Gosalda, a rambling hamlet lying high on the mountainside, facing Monte Pizon, Monte Prebello, and the valley of the Mies, is reached about two miles farther on. Here we put up for the regular midday rest at a very humble little albergot, where, however, we are well content to take possession of a clean landing, a deal-table, a couple of wooden chairs and an open window commanding a magnificent view over the valley and the mountains beyond. We ask, as usual, for bread, cheese, and wine, explaining that the wine is for the men, and that we require tea cups and spoons for ourselves. But the landlady, a stupid, civil body with a goiter, shakes her head and stands bewildered. Taza, she repeats, wonderingly, Taza. Finding it impossible to make her understand what Taza are, I sketch a cup and spoon upon the whitewashed wall, whereupon she triumphantly supplies us with two pudding basins and two metal gravy spoons of enormous size, so that we look like comic characters taking tea in a bandamime. Echo, you carry fire about with you, exclaims this child of nature, staring at the blazing yetna with the open mouth astonishment of a savage. Not caring to enter into an explanation of the nature and uses of spirits of wine, I venture to remind her of the bread, and inquire if she has yet served the men with their wine. She nods and then shakes her head again, with a pause between. Vino, si, she replies, oricularily. Pane, no. Wine, yes, bread, no. It seems only reasonable to suggest that, having no bread in the house, she should send out for some immediately. But no, she wags not her head this time but her forefinger, a gesture purely Italian. It is of no use to send out for bread. There is none to be had. There is none in the pièce. No one has any, no one in Gosalda, not even the parroco. It all comes up from the valley when they have any. It ought to come up twice a week, but the baker is not always punctual. It is now five days since he came last, and there is not a crust left in the village. But why do you not make your own bread, up here in Gosalda? I ask, when she came to the end of this astounding statement. Yes, senora, we have no baker. And what do you eat when the baker does not come? Yes, senora, we eat polenta. Happily we had a little bread in the luncheon basket, but less than usual, having given some to the mules after their hard scramble up the pass. We were better off, however, than Giuseppe and Clementi, who got nothing, not even a dish of polenta, and this in a village numbering at least some four or five hundred souls. The peasants of the mountain district between Agordo and Premiero seemed, as far as one could judge in a single day's journey, altogether poorer, dirtier, and more ignorant than elsewhere. Most of those whom we passed on the road or sought work in the field had goitres, and few understood anything but their own barbarous patois. Even the landlady of the Gasolda El Bergeau, although she was no doubt superior to many of her neighbors, spoke very little intelligible Italian, and had no kind of local information to give. Being asked the name of the noble mountain that formed the main feature of the view before her window, she replied that it was the Monteserita, then that it was the Sassaudimise, and finally admitted that she did not know for certain whether it had a name at all. Yet this was a question that she must have been continually called upon to answer. The mountain, however, as set down in Bal's map, proved to be the Monteprabalo, the highest point of which, sometimes called Il Piz, and sometimes Il Pizoco, rises according to mayor to a height of six thousand seven hundred thirty-three feet above the sea level. A second pass, the Paso della Sarita, yet lies between us in Primiero. The distance is reported to be about two hours and a half from Gasaldo, and a good mule-track all the way. The path begins pretty well, being steep but shady, and winding up between rocky banks, high hedges, and overarching trees. This, however, is too pleasant to last, and soon it begins to exhibit, in an exaggerated degree, all the worst features of the worst parts of the Gasaldo pass. The Gasaldo pass was steep, but the Sarita pass is indefinitely steeper. The Gasaldo pass was wet underfoot, but the Sarita pass is for miles neither more nor less than the bed of a small torrent. Nor are other and larger torrents wanting, for twice we have to dismount and make our way on foot from stone to stone across rushing streams some thirty feet in width. The wonder is that anyone should be found to live in a place so difficult of access. Yet we continually pass cottages and clusters of cottages by the wayside. And the great valley down below is quite thickly populated. One woman standing at her garden gate, nursing a wizened baby of about six months old, inquires eagerly where we come from, and if we do not find it a bruta paes. Being assured, however, that the senoras consider it not bruta, but bellissima, she is struck quite dumb with amazement. And where, oh, where are you going, is her next question, ask with a frenzied kind of eagerness, as if her life depended on the answer. I reply that we are going to Premiero, Predazzo, Vigo, and other places. To Premiero, she repeats breathlessly, to Predazzo, jesu Maria, what a number of bad roads you have before you. So saying, she leans out over the gate and watches us with unfaigned compassion and wonder as long as we remain in sight. Now the valley sinks lower, and the mountains rise higher with every step of the way. The road achieves an impossible degree of steepness. The mules, left to themselves, climb in the cleverest way and act as pioneers to those on foot. At last comes a place which can no longer be described as a road but a barrier, being in truth the last rock-wall below the plateau to which we have all this time been mounting. Here even the mules have to be helped, and, partly by pushing, partly by pulling, reach the top at last. In now another great prairie, somewhat like the Gosalda Summit, only more wild and barren opens away in the same manner and in the same direction, like the enchanted meadow in the fairy-tail that stretched on forever and had no ending. A little lonely Osteria in the midst of all this wilderness is so joyfully hailed by our famishing guides, who find here not only good wine but good white bread and plenty of it. It has to be a short rest, however, for the day is advancing and we have already been nine hours on the road, including haunts. How long is it now to Premiero, asks Giuseppe, as we are moving off again? To which the good woman replies in the self-same words as she of Gosalda, two hours and a half. As a rule the finest wildflowers throughout these mountain districts have lovely exposed situations, and flourish most luxuriously on heights not far below the limit of vegetation. On the Serita, instead of growing in rich confusion as at other places, they separate into distinct masses, showing here as a hillside of fire-colored lilies, yonder as a pinky-dell of ragged robin, farther on still as a long blue tract of wild vetch interspersed with slender spires of canterbury bells. No painter would dare faithfully to represent these incredible slopes of alternate rose and gold and blue. At last the path begins to dip and our hopes to rise. Every moment we expect to see the opening of some green vista with Premiero at the end of it. Meeting a decently-dressed peasant of the farmer class, however, and putting the same question to him in the same words as before, we are confounded to receive precisely the same answer. Circa Dua, Lore Meza, Signore, about two hours and a half, ladies. Profoundly discouraged we ride on after this in mournful silence. It is now more than three hours since we left Cosalda, and yet we seem to be as far as ever from Premiero. If we were not tired, if we were not hungry, if the mules were not beginning to stumble at every step, the thing would be almost comic, but as it was we go on funerally, following always the course of a small torrent and skirting long pasture-tracks dotted over with brown chalets. By and by, having made another two or three miles of way, we come upon a gang of countryfolk at work in the new-mone hay. This time Giuseppe raises his voice and shouts the stereotyped inquiry. The answer comes back with crushing distinctness. About three hours. I begin to think we are under the dominion of some dreadful spell. I have visions of jogging on forever like a party of wandering Jews till all four have become old gray and decrepit. Suddenly Clemente turns round with an eye all smothered glee and says, Don't you think, senora, we should get there quicker if we turned back? It is a small joke, but it serves to make us merry over our misfortunes. After this we put the same question to every one we meet. To a group of women carrying faggots. To an old man driving a pig. To a plump priest riding sensilly on an ass, like Sancho Pazza. To a woodcutter going home with his axe over his shoulder like a herdsman out of livery. Each of course gives a different answer. One says two hours, another two hours and a half, a third three hours, and so on. And then all at once when we are not in the least expecting it we come upon a grand opening and see Castle Pietra on its inaccessible peak of clove and rock, standing up straight before us. Another moment and the valley opens out at an untold depth below, a glittering vision of chestnut woods, villages, vineyards, and purple mountains about whose summits the storm clouds are fast gathering. Echo Premiero, says Clementi, pointing to a many steeple town at the end of a long white road, still miles and miles away. This Castle Pietra, the chromolithograph of which, as seen from the valley, is already familiar to most readers in Gilbert and Churchill's book, is the property of a certain Count Velsberg, by whose ancestors it was built in the old feudal times, and who still lives in Premiero. The solitary tooth of rock on which it stands has split from top to bottom some time within the last century, since when it is quite inaccessible. The present owner, when a young man succeeded once and once only by the help of ropes, ladders, and workmen from Premiero in climbing with some friends to the height of those deserted towers. But that was many a year ago, and since then the owls and bats have garrisoned them undisturbed. The castle stands, a lonely sentinel, at the opening of the great Dolomite cul-de-sac, known as the Val de Canale, and is a conspicuous object from all parts of the valley north of Premiero. The final dip down from the castle Pietra Rock is achieved by the means of a stony and almost perpendicular road, compared with which the descent from the gemmy on the Luke side is level and agreeable walking. Two stones that roll from beneath the foot and abrupt slopes of slippery rock make it difficult for even pedestrians with Alpenstocks, but it is worse still for the mules, which slide and struggle and scramble in a pitiful way, being helped up behind by the ends of their tails, ignomiously. At last we reach the level, hurry along the dusty road, pass through the ruinous looking village of Tonadigo, and, just as the church clocks are striking seven p.m., ride into Premiero. Here at the Aquilinera, kept by Signora Bonetti, we find rest, good food, a friendly welcome, and better rooms than the outside of the house, and above all the entrance would lead one to expect. That entrance is dreadful, a mere dark arch leading to a goat stable, but then the kitchen and public rooms are on the first floor and the visitors' rooms on the second, so that the house may said to only begin one remove above the level of the street. It is curious how soon one learns to be content with these humble Tyrolian albergios, and to regard his friends and almost equals the kindly folks that keep them. Nor indeed without reason, for setting aside that perfume of antique republicanism that seems yet to linger in all the air that was once Venice, those Tyrolian innkeepers are, for the most part, peoples of ancient families who have owned lands and filled responsible offices in connection with their native communes ever since the Middle Ages. Thus we hear of a gidina of the Ampezzo holding an important military command at the beginning of the fifteenth century. The Giacomellis, who now keep the Nave d'Oro at Pradaso were nobles some few hundred years ago, the Pezzies date back as far as Capriol has had records to show, and take their name for Montepezza on the lower slopes of which they yet hold the remnant of their ancient estates. And the Cersanas of Forno di Zoldi, of whose in I shall have more to say hereafter, are mentioned, as we find by Mr. Gilbert's book on Cadore, in documents more than five hundred years old. I do not know whether the Bonetis of Primero claim either a long bourgeois pedigree or a past nobility, but they are particularly courteous and hospitable, and I see no reason for supposing them to be in any respect less well-born than the others. It is only right that persons traveling or intending to travel in these valleys should be acquainted with the foregoing facts. And it would be well if they remembered they are not dealing here with innkeepers of the ordinary continental stamp, but with persons who are for the most part quite independent of the albergue as a source of profit, and ready to receive strangers with a friendliness that does not appear as an item in the bill. If the accommodation is primitive it is at all events the very best they have to offer, and it is immensely cheap. If the attendance is not first-rate there is a pleasant homeliness about the domestic arrangements that more than makes up for any little shortcomings in other ways. The mother of the family generally cooks for her guests, the father looks after the stabling, the sons and daughters wait at table. I'll take a personal interest in one's comfort. All are anxious to oblige. To treat them with hauteur or with suspicion or to give unnecessary trouble is both unjust and impolitic. I have seen old Signora Pezzi wounded almost to tears by the way in which a certain English party secured all their possessions under lock and key every time they ventured outside the doors. The same people on going away disputed every item of their moderate bill, as if no matter how little they were charged it was to be taken for granted that they were being imposed upon somehow. The ultimate result of such conduct on the part of our dear country people is sufficiently obvious. The old in-keeping families will ere long close their houses against us in disgust. A class of extortionate speculators, probably Swiss, will step in and occupy the ground. Newer and smarter but far less comfortable hotels will spring up like mushrooms in these quiet valleys. All direct communication between the native townsfolk and the traveling stranger will be intercepted. And the simplicity, the poetry, the only charm of the Dolomite district will be gone forever. CHAPTER X. The town of Primero lies partly in the plain and partly climbs the hill on which the church is built. The houses in the flat have a semi-Venetian character like the houses at Sinida and Longaron. The houses on the hill are of the quaintest German gothic and remind one of the steep-roofed, many-turreted medieval buildings in Albert Durer's backgrounds. The curious juxtaposition of dissimilar architectural styles is accounted for by the fact that Primero, in itself more purely Italian than either Capriol or Agordo, became transferred to Austria and partly colonized by German operatives about the latter end of the 14th century. The tedisci, drafted thither for the working of a famous silver mine, took root, acquired wealth, built the church, and left their impress on the place, just as the Romans left theirs in Gaul and the Greeks in Sicily. The early history of Primero, how it became subject first to the Goths, then to the Lombards, next AD 1027, to the bishops of Trent, next again AD 1300, to the Scallagieri of Verona, then AD 1315, to Prince Charles of Luxembourg, and finally to an archduke of the House of Habsburg, is but a repetition of the history of most places along the line of the Bellinese frontier. That the valley was at least twice or thrice invaded and Castle Pietra is often besieged by the Venetians is also a matter of history. It does not appear, however, that Primero ever became an actual appendage of the Great Republic, although the neighboring village of Transaqua, which is indeed almost a suburb of Primero, and is only separated from the town by the Sismone and a meadow or two, was ceded to and held by Venice in undisputed right for a length of time both before and after the date when the rest of the valley passed into the strong grasp of Austria, a grasp unloosen to this day. For Primero so Italian in its scenery, its climate, its language, its national type is Austrian still. We passed the frontier somewhere about halfway between the village of Gosalda and the Austeria on the Syrie to pass, but there was no black and yellow pole to mark the boundary, and we re-entered the dominions of the Emperor Francis Joseph without knowing it. So lately as last summer, the month of July, 1872, Primero was as inaccessible for wheeled vehicles as Venice. Whatever there may be now there was no line of unbroken carriage-road leading to or from the valley in any direction. Be your destination what it might, you could drive but a few miles this way or a few miles that, and then must take to either the Alpenstock or the saddle. In short, every avenue to the outer world was barred by a circle of passes, all of which were practicable for mules, but not one practicable throughout for even carotene. A fine military road is, however, now in course of construction between Primero and Predazzo, so that a direct communication for vehicles will soon be established with new marked on the Boatsen and Brenner line. This road was already open last summer as far as the hospice of San Martino, and was in progress for some miles farther. Perhaps by now it may reach as far as the Val Travigniello. Another excellent road runs southward from Primero to Pantetto, the limit of the Austrian frontier, but there, unfortunately, it is joined on the Italian side by a steep and very rough mule track, which continues as far as Fonsazzo. From Fonsazzo, however, another carriage-road leads to Feltra, and at Feltra one is in the center of a network of fine highways radiating to Belluno, Treviso, Bassano, and Triente. Less than ten years ago Primero was even more primitive than now. The daily posts, we are told, came in and went out on muleback. No rattle of wheels disturbed the silent streets. No wheel tracks guard the pavement. At night the good townsfolk went about with little twinkling lanterns and hung an oil lamp here and there outside their doors. Those are not quite so Arcadian now. The letter bags are carried for at least a few miles down the valley in a light caretta. The rattling of wheels has ceased to be regarded as a phenomenon. A gasometer has been erected near, too near, the entrance to the town, and the inhabitants are doing all they can to get a telegraphic wire in connection with Feltra. The town is very clean, cheerful, and picturesque. In the piazza on the flat and in some of the side streets, where there are side streets in Primero, one sees many large and really good houses. They call them palazos. Some of these are built over great cavernous arched entrances, and lighted by Venetian twin windows with a geve arched tops and twisted pillars. Some are enriched with elegant balconies of wrought iron, and on one door I observed an elaborate knocker and two handles in the form of half-linked female figures of exquisite workmanship. The German houses going up the hill, the foot pavement of which, by the way, consists of squares of wood, are quite different. They have tiny windows filled with circular glass panes about three inches in diameter, and high steep roofs pierced by rows of dormers, and surmounted by fantastic weathercocks. The ancient first ompt, with its quaint aureal turrets, looped old walls, medieval windows, and rows of frescoed shields charged with faded armorial bearings, would be quite in its proper place if transported to Wärtsberg or Ohm. This curious building, which stands at the top of the hill just over against the church, was erected by the early silver-workers, probably as a kind of fortified guard-house, and as a place of deposit for their store of precious metal. Many houses, both on the hill and down in the flat, are decorated externally with friezes and arabesques of a simple character, while over almost every house-door is painted up this pious phrase, Christus no Beschemstadt. Our first day in Primero befell upon a Sunday. The church bells began ringing merrily before five a.m. and went on till ten. The streets were thronged with peasants in their holiday clothes, and in the piazza sat a group of country-women with baskets of crimson cherries, little golden pairs, and green lettuces for sale. It was a gay and animated scene. The men with their knee-breaches, white stockings, conical felt hats, and jackets loosely thrown across one shoulder like a cloak, looked as if they had just stepped out of one of Pinnelli's etchings. Some wore a crimson sash about the waist, and some a bunch of flowers and feathers in the hat. The women wore white cloths upon their heads tied cornerwise, and had the hair cut across the forehead in a savignier fringe. Their voices were curiously alike, soft and deep and guttural. Looking in at the church-door while mass was being performed, I saw the whole nave as one sea of white-head dresses, and for the moment fancied myself peeping once more into the chapel of the Beguinage at Brugge. It is a gloomy church, externally more Tyrolian than German, with an unusually high steep roof and lofty spire, internally of a severe, well-proportioned, thirteenth-century Gothic. Two recessed and cannibid state pews of old carved oak stand on either side of the principal entrance, facing the east window and the altar, and the armorial bearings of the silver-workers are emblazoned again on the walls of the chancel. Having heard much of a certain antique silver monstrance or portable shrine for the exhibition of the host, made of the pure silver of the Primero Mines and presented to the church by the same silver-workers some six hundred years ago, we waited till the congregation had dispersed, and then asked to be permitted to see it. A grave and gentlemanly young priest received us in the sacristy, and the monstrance was taken out of a great oak press, as old apparently as the church itself. This curious historical relic, preserved uninjured throughout all the vicissitudes of the Middle Ages, stands about two feet high. A light Gothic spire informed somewhat like the spire of Milan Cathedral, surrounded by a gilt cross and wrought into a multitude of delicate little pinnacles enclosing tiny niches peopled with figures of evangelists and saints. Our curiosity gratified we thanked the young parochial and took our leave, whereupon, drawing himself up in a stately fashion, he wished us viaggiosano, buon divertimento, y salute. A kind of limited benediction fitted for the dismissal of well-dressed heretics. It was impossible not to be continually startled that Sunday morning by the repeated discharges of musketry and small cannon which kept waking the mountain echoes round about, especially just before and after high mass. This came from the little hamlet of Transaqua on the other side of the cismone, where the villagers were making high festa in honor of the arrival of a new parochial. Walking that way towards evening we found a green triumphal arch erected at the opening of the Transaqua Road on the farther end of the bridge, and another at the entrance to the village. The porch was also festooned with garlands and devices. All was now still. The parochial had gone to his new home, and the villagers to their cottages. We strolled into the empty church, and saw, by a little written notice wayfared against the door, that it was dedicated to St. Mark as might be expected in a parish that had once been a dependency of Venice. The senioris have come to see Artician, said a croaking voice at my elbow, but it is too dark, too dark. It should be seen at midday when the light comes through the side window. I turned and saw a shriveled, slip-shod sexton, all in black, with a big key in his hand. He had come to lock the church up and found the forestry inside. Every insignificant little town, every obscure village that has ever belonged to Venice, has its pretended Titian to show. Setting aside the Titians of Piavda Cadore, which are unquestionably genuine, and one at Zope, of which I shall have to tell by and by, there are dozens of others scattered through the country, which it would be flattery to describe even as copies. There was one to be seen the other day, for instance, at Senzenighi, but having heard that it was more than doubtful, we preferred resting in the shelter of the albergio to toiling up to the church in the broiling sunshine. The altar-piece at Transaqua is an ideal portrait of St. Mark, only the head and hands of which, however, are claimed as the work of Titian. It is said to have been presented to the church by one of the doges of Venice. It looks a poor thing, seen thus in the gathering-desk, but the light is so bad that one may as well give its authenticity the benefit of the doubt. CHAPTER X. PREMERO TO PRIDASO PART II The view from the bridge at evening, looking over toward Castel Pietra and the mountains at the head of the Primero Valley, is singularly wild and beautiful. The Sime Sime de, bristling all over with peaks and pinnacles like a porcupine, the Sasse Mayor, a mighty double-headed monster, compared by Mr. Leslie Stephen to the upraised finger and thumb of a gigantic hand, the Sime de Bal, so-called after the dauntless author of the Alpine Guide, and a long array of other summits, many of which are nameless to this day, here climb against the sky in strangest outline and take the last glow of the western sun. I name them from here after knowledge, but so many and so bewildering are these Primero Dolomites, that it is not till one has been a day or two in the place, and has seen them again and again from various points of view, that one comes to identify them with anything like certainty. The Sasse Mayor, a corruption of Sasse Maggiore, or Great Rock, must, however, be accepted from this general assertion. It is a mountain which, once seen, can never be besnaken for any other, but which at the same time is only to be viewed under its most extraordinary aspect, from either the Val Privatali or the Val di Canale, two diverging forks of the great upper valley behind the castle Pietra. We devoted the Monday following our arrival to the Val di Canale, which is undoubtedly the great sight of Primero. The way thither lies through Tonedigo, along the road by which we came down that weary Saturday evening, and up the stony steep crowned by Castile Pietra. Once at the top we bear away almost due north, leaving to the right the path leading to the Suri de Paz, and striking up behind the castle along the left bank of a rapid torrent rushing down toward the valley. Having followed this track for about three-quarters of an hour, we emerged upon an open space of grassy lawn about a mile in length, by perhaps a mile and a half in length, at the upper end of which stands a modest white house, surrounded by sheds and farm buildings. This little summer residence has been built of late years by Count Velsberg, who also owns a palazzo in Primero, and whose ancestors once seniors of all the valley, with power of life and death over their vassals, erected yonder castle-witch, perched on its inaccessible rock like St. Simeon steel-ates on his solitary pillar, yet keeps watch and ward at the mouth of the valley. Dark first-lopes enclose this pleasant prairie round about. The torrent brawls unseen in a bushy hollow to the left. Cows and goats browse here and there on the green turf, while the whole pastoral scene is set, as it were, in a cirque of Dolomite peaks of the first magnitude. A cirque with which the caram malcora, grand as it is, will not bear a moment's comparison. Where the mountains surrounding the Vabwona lie out in a wide amphitheater, but here the shattered walls of Dolomite, all gray and sulfur-streaked, and touched with rusty red, close in upon the valley in two long, seared ranks, not more than a mile and a half apart at their widest point, and narrowing till they meet in the form of an acute angle at the head of the glen. Here where the sword is smooth and the space yet broad between, new converging lines of peaks are already arrayed before our eyes, one extending nearly due east and west, the other running up from the southeast to meet it. The first is far the grandest, beginning with the Sima Simeta, from behind which the sas mayor suits out its extraordinary impending thumb, more of the perpendicular than the leaning tower of Pisa, the chain leads on in one unbroken sweep, giving first a more distant glimpse of the Pala de San Martino, coming next upon the magnificent Sima de Fragusta, next after that upon two nameless lower peaks, broken up into sheaves of splintered arrowheads, lastly upon the Sima de Canale, apparently loftiest of all the range as seen from this point. No glaciers find a resting place among these perpendicular precipices, only a narrow ledge outlined in white, or a tiny intermediate plateau sheeted with dazzling snow, serves here and there to mark the line of eternal frost. Two small but very curious features in the scene deserve mention. These are two circular holes, one just piercing the top of a solitary saber-blade splinter jutting out from a buttress of the anonymous peak next before the Sima de Canale on the left of the valley, and another precisely similar peat pole piercing a precisely similar saber-blade jutting out from a spur of the sasso ortiga on the right of the valley, precisely opposite. What may be the actual diameter of these strange holes I am unable to guess, but they look as clean cut and about as large as the shot hole made by a large cannon-ball. Anyone who has ever visited the valley of Grindelwald will remember a similar orifice, locally known as Martin's Lock in the crest of the Iger. Being here only long enough to get the accompanying outline of the range as seen from Count Velsberg's meadow, we again push on, for clouds are already beginning to gather about the summit of the Sima de Canale, and we are still far from the head of the valley. Hence the path lies for a long way in the shade of the fir woods, then by the side of the torrent bed, here very wide and bordered by a broad tract of glaring white stones, then through more woods with openings here and there through which the great mountains are seen to be ever closing in, nearer and loftier. For the farther one penetrates up this wonderful glen, the more overwhelming is the effect, till the hole culminates at last in a scene of savage grandeur unsurpassed, if I may venture to say so, by even the great impasse, at Macaugnana. By the time we reach this ultimate point, however, the rapid mists have already gathered in a way which, though it enhances the mystery and sublimity of the view, is yet sufficiently disappointing at the end of more than three hours' journey. The Saçade Campo, which we are destined never to see clearly, is so shrouded in dense vapors that only the lower flanks of it are seen reaching up into the gloom. The huge Sima de Canale, visible less than an hour ago, towers overhead, already half lost in a heavy gray cloud. Along serrated line of stony coal uniting these two great masses shows all stray aided and ribbed by the action of prehistoric glaciers. Green pastures and above these dark fir woods climb to about one-third of the height of the Sima de Canale, while innumerable threads of white waterfall are seen leaping from ledge to ledge and wavering down the cliffs in every direction. These waters, gathered into three roaring torrents, hence rush down from three different points, and unite somewhat lower in one broad impetuous stream. The sound of them fills the air like the roaring of the sea upon an ironbound coast. The fir trees shiver as if a storm were at hand. I doubt if a more lonely, desolate, and tremendous scene is to be found this side of the Andes. So many interesting excursions may be made from Primero that the traveler who has only two or three days to dispose of cannot hope to achieve even the half of them. The place indeed is one to be chosen for a lengthened sojourn and treated as headquarters till the neighborhood is exhausted. We regretted at the time that it was not in our power to do so. The ascent of Montepavione, an uncommon-looking mountain in a shape like a stunted pyramid, lying away to the southwest of Primero and forming the highest point of the range known as the Vete di Feltra, is said not to be difficult. The view from the summit commands the whole sweep of the Adriatic coast from the mouth of the Isonza at the head of the Gulf of Trieste on the one side to Tciogia, twenty miles south of Venice on the other. Many rarest plants are also to be found on the mountain, amongst which the following are enumerated by Baal, anemone Baal Densis, anemone Narcissiflora, Renanculis Segueri and Renanculis Thora, Delfinium Montantum, Popover Perensianum, Arabus Pamilla, Elysium Wolfinianum, Cochlearia Rivicalis, Alcini Lanciolata, Alcini Graminifolia, Cerastium Tomentosum, Faca Fragida, Potentilla Nittata, Saxifragia Petri, Valeriana Ilangata, Tarmica Oxyloba, Scorzonera Purpurria, Pederota Agiria, Pederota Bonarota, Pedicularis Rosia, Primula Facini, Cortusa Mathioli, Avina Hosti and Esplanium Silosi. This excursion involves a knight and a hay-bed in a chalet on the Anurola Alp at the foot of the Pevion Rocks, but this is a difficulty that would not have deterred us had we been traveling in a larger party. The ascent of Monte Erzon, a mountain rising about eighty-seven hundred feet and situated in a fine central position about three miles northwest of Primero, is also strongly recommended by the local guides. A very interesting excursion, however, and one which can be accomplished all the way on mules, is to the Ponte de la Shios on the Monte Verderne, a small wooded mountain bordering the west bank of the Sismone, about three miles below Primero. The way thither lies along the main road as far as the villages of Mizzano and Emer, thence over the Sismone bridge and up a rough caretta-track, all black underfoot from charcoal droppings, which skirts the pine-slopes overhanging the gorge of the Nonna. The path rises and winds continuously. The Primero Valley is left behind and soon lost to sight. The torrent down below becomes inaudible. We meet a train of mules laden with huge black sacks of charcoal and have to back up against the rock to let them pass. They, however, according to the nature of mules, prefer the brink of the precipice and pick their way past with half their bulky burdens overhanging the abyss. At length, when we have mounted to a height of perhaps fifteen hundred feet above the valley, we pass under an impenting roof of rock and find ourselves at the mouth of a gigantic cavern, which looks as if it might have been scooped out by some mighty water-power ages ago, when the world was as yet unfinished. Beyond this cavern there rises a semicircular wall of vertical precipice, at the end of which a small cascade leaps out over the ledge and is dispersed in mist before it reaches the brown pool below. Our path turns abruptly into and round the inside of the cavern, then along a giddy wooden shelf supported on pine trunks driven into the face of the rock wall opposite. This is the Ponte de los Sios. The shelf looks horribly unsafe, but is extremely picturesque, and the whole scene, though on a grander scale, reminds one of the cavern and wooden gallery at Tivoli. A little carved and painted Christ under a penthouse roof is fixed against the rock, just at the beginning of the bridge, and an old white-haired man coming down that way pulls off his hat and stays to mutter an ave as we pass. From this point a short ascent of about another thousand feet would bring us out, we are told, upon the Anura Alp, but we dare to go no farther, for the sun is already near setting and we fear to be overtaken by the dusk. Still, it is nonetheless tantalizing to find that we have made nearly one-third of the ascent to Monte Pivione without knowing it. Leaving Primero for Pradaso, but stay, how can I leave Primero without one word of Sr. Prospero? Sr. Prospero, genial, fussy, courteous, enthusiastic, indefatagable, valuable Sr. Prospero, whose glory it is to be a member of the Italian club Alpino, who believes the British nation to be the most enlightened that the sun shines upon, who so worships the very names of Bal and Leslie Stevens, that he all but takes off his hat when he mentions them as if they were his patron saints, who vaguely imagines that every English tourist must be in some way or other illustrious, that all our autographs are worth having, and that the universal family of Smith represents the flower of the human race. End of Section 25