Freshfield Douglas William
Italian Alps
As we approached the pass a family group of three chamois were seen moving before us on the snow. Presently a gun was fired from among the rocks of the Corni del Confine, and a solitary hunter sprang forward. The shot had missed, and the chamois, whom we had been unconsciously driving, raced past us. One of them was quite young, and it was touching to see how the two parents not only would move no faster than the pace of their child, but placed themselves on either side of it, as if purposely sheltering it from danger. My condolences with the sportsman were not very heartfelt.
A steep gully, an easy glacier, a pathless hillside, helped us quickly down to the first châlet in Val d'Avio. A few yards beyond it the valley is broken by a lofty cliff. At the foot of a steep zigzag beside the thundering waters we entered one of the level platforms common in this group. Its smooth expanse of meadow was alive with cows and goats, now collected for the night round the herdsmen's huts. Two torrents – one the grey child of the glaciers, the other clear and spring-born – rushed down upon us in splendid cascades. In the background the Adamello raised its icy horn.
Immediately below the alp lies a large lake. The scene somewhat resembles the Lac de Gaube, but the features of the landscape are more savage, bolder, and on a larger scale. The lake itself, however, is unfortunately of the ordinary murky-grey colour of Swiss glacier water.
Beyond the platform of the lake the glen falls with extraordinary rapidity, and a very stony path, mainly on the left bank, leads down past a succession of waterfalls, any one of which in another country might become famous.
The lower level of the valley is devastated by the torrent. For Ponte di Legno it is best to cross its stony bed and follow a cart-track joining the Tonale road a little below Pontagna. When we entered the high-road night overtook us, and we walked the three uphill kilomètres to Ponte di Legno at our fastest pace, killing distance and fatigue with the present pleasure of rapid motion.
CHAPTER X.
PINZOLO AND CAMPIGLIO
For August be your dwelling thirty towers
Within an Alpine valley mountainous,
Where never the sea wind may vex your house,
But clear life, separate, like a star, be yours.
So alway drawing homeward ye shall tread,
Your valley parted by a rivulet,
Which day and night shall flow sedate and smooth,
There all through noon ye may possess the shade.
Folgore da san Gemignano, A.D. 1260;Rossetti's Translation.
PINZOLO – THE CHURCHES OF VAL RENDENA – HISTORY AND LEGENDS – VAL NAMBINO – THE BRENTA GROUP – LA MADONNA DI CAMPIGLIO – HOSPICE AND PENSION
Pinzolo is conspicuous amongst the villages which cluster round the head of Val Rendena by its tall campanile of Adamello granite, a pretty feature of the landscape, but, as I shall afterwards show, an evil sign of the times. Its houses, gathered along two stone-paved streets and round a little open space – the piazza – stand close against the eastern hillside at the point where the mountain-ranges, bending towards one another and almost joining, enclose in their semicircular folds the lower valley. Great torrents rush out of two clefts in the hills, the openings of Val Nambino and Val di Genova, and but for human industry would devastate the low ground on their banks. But they are held fast in fetters of their own contriving. The huge granite boulders, which in former floods they have borne down from the heart of the Presanella or the Adamello, have been turned to account for the building of massive dykes through which so much water only is allowed to pass as will suffice to irrigate the plain and turn its alluvial soil into the richest of water-meadows.
The beauty of the situation does not, like that of Grindelwald or Chamonix, depend on mountain sublimity. On one side some shreds of snow and granite belonging to the Presanella come into view. On the other the southern crest of the Brenta group lies couched like a huge gold-red Egyptian sphinx on the green back of a lower hill. But these are mere glimpses of the upper world, valuable and suggestive glimpses it is true, but not sufficient to decide the character of the whole landscape. The hills which encircle the head of Val Rendena rise in steep but nowhere perpendicular banks, swathed in chestnut woods about their base, lying open higher up in sloping meadows fringed with mountain ash, birch and pine. The valley floor, a smooth, brilliantly green carpet, gives an impression of wealth and softness rendered more welcome by the knowledge of the rugged grandeur so close at hand.
It would be hard to find a more delightful spot in which to idle away a sunny day than the hillside immediately behind Pinzolo. It is only needful to climb a few hundred yards among the chestnut-boles to find platforms covered with a soft carpet of moss, ferns and delicate southern flowers. Here under the shade of dancing leaves, fanned by soft breezes and lulled by the cool tinkle of falling water and the murmur of innumerable living things which fills an Italian noon, the restless traveller may for once enjoy unmixed with other thoughts the sympathetic delight of coexistence with a world seemingly for the moment wholly given up to enjoyment.
In another mood he may climb higher and higher through the forest, gaining at each step new glimpses of the bright fields and villages of Val Rendena, and watching the icy horns of the Adamello group as they shoot out one by one against the sky. Then entering a hidden upland glen he will reach a gap where, in the opposite direction, the dolomite towers soar stark and red over the green slopes. Hence he may descend into Val Agola, and so to Campiglio, or, turning to the right, wander along shady forest paths to the ridge of the Pra Fiori. But left of the depression, and cut off by it from the other hills, rises a grassy down which must give one of the most perfect views of the surrounding ranges, raking as it does Val di Genova, Val Rendena, and Val Nambino. There is a châlet within five minutes of the meadow-top, but any lady who likes the walk may, so far as I know, boast herself afterwards of having made 'the first ascent by travellers' of the Dos di Sabione.
If the rain-clouds hang low on the hills and the woods are too wet for loitering in, the old churches of the valley may give employment. The mother-chapel near the mouth of Val di Borzago has been already referred to. The large modern church in the village, with its campanile built at the cost of the noble forests of Val di Genova, has no particular interest.52 But five hundred yards north of Pinzolo stands San Vigilio, a plain building consisting of a nave and small chancel, with a belfry, probably of older date, at the western end. The southern face is decorated with a frescoed Dance of Death, dated 1539, a work of some spirit, and retaining traces of rich colouring. We may stroll further across the valley to the romantically situated chapel of San Stefano perched high among the woods on a granite bluff above the mouth of Val di Genova. The outside is covered with representations of the life of the saint, and another Triumph of Death, dated 1519; within is a very curious fresco of Charlemagne – I beg Mr. Freeman's pardon, the great Karl – engaged, in company with a Pope, in baptising the heathen. Close by, a long and most interesting inscription tells the history of the campaign, in the course of which the great emperor penetrated this remote region. The following is a very curtailed summary of the events there recorded.53
Lupus, Lord of Bergamo, was a pagan, and Charles strove with him to convert him. But Lupus took a certain Sandro and many others and cut off their heads; whereupon there appeared six burning torches, no one holding them; and by God's grace the bells rang without earthly aid. Seeing this miracle, Lupus with all his people was converted to the Catholic faith, and joined Charles. The host, numbering 4,000 spears, marched up Val Camonica, slaying heretics, such as Lord Hercules and King Comerus, destroying castles, and building churches. Then they crossed a mountain where there was a great fight between the Christians and pagans, at a place since known as 'Mortarolus.'
From the 'Mons Toni' (the Tonale) the army descended to Plezau (Pelizzano), where it made a great slaughter of the heathen, and so reached Val Rendena by the route of the Ginevrie Pass. 'And they came to the church of San Stefano and baptised a very great people. And the said Charles made an end of converting all the Jews and pagans at the church of San Stefano, and there he left a book in which were contained all the things he had done throughout the world.'
The chroniclers tell us little of all these matters.54 The Alpine Passes of the Middle Ages is a chapter of history which, so far as I know, has not yet been satisfactorily written. Much material for it doubtless exists, although not in a form very easy of collection. It would be a work full of interest to trace how in succeeding centuries first one then another route rose into importance; and the present moment, when the Alps are for all practical and commercial purposes on the brink of annihilation, when mountain roads are about to yield to burrows, seems peculiarly well suited for a review of the whole subject.
Higher in the hills between Val di Genova and Val di Borzago, beside a little lake, lies the chapel of San Giuliano, a tempting object for an excursion, including a visit to the latter valley, and perhaps an ascent of the Corno Alto, one of the high points seen from Val Nambino against the Lares snows. The saint, according to local legend, seems to have been a somewhat testy old hermit. Having been refused milk by some shepherds, he at once turned them and their flocks into boulders, which may still be seen. I suspect San Giuliano was no saint at all, but some mountain spirit known to earlier times, who reappeared under this new disguise with the malicious intention of discrediting the new religion.
I can only indicate briefly the varied attractions of Pinzolo and its immediate neighbourhood, leaving to each visitor the pleasure of fresh discovery. But on looking back I find that I have left out what ought to have been the most prominent object in my picture. Most English travellers are disposed to agree with Dr. Johnson that the most beautiful landscape in the world would be improved by a good inn in the foreground. It is too late to put Signor Bonapace's in this position, but I will do my best to repair the slight by describing it at once, and with some minuteness.
The house remains up to the present time a good specimen of the country inn of Southern Tyrol. It is kept by well-to-do people, who drive an excellent trade with their own country-folk, and until the last year or two looked with some astonishment on the few pleasure-travellers whom each summer brought them. An arched doorway opens out of the paved street into a sort of barn, whence a steep stone staircase leads up into a dark, low-roofed hall or lobby, crowded with benches and tables. Out of it open two still gloomier inner chambers. In one a faint glimmer of bright copper, a sound of hissing, and a bustling of Marthas, reveal the kitchen; in the other, at the foot of an enormous family bed, leaning over a table, sits the master of the house, one eye intent on accounts, the other keeping a quiet watch over what goes on around. At his order a handmaiden will leave her labours in the kitchen and conduct you up another steep flight of stairs, and into a large dormitory containing five beds, three tables, and two washing-basins, which used to be considered to fulfil every possible requirement for night accommodation. Now, however, several smaller apartments have been furnished for guests, and a cheerful room in the next house, over the grocer's shop, is also put at the service of English prejudice. Meals cooked in the fashion of the country, but very plentiful, are served in a little room with a bed in the corner, which opens out of the lobby.
Both are generally filled of an evening with a crowd of customers of the peasant-farmer class, perfectly well conducted, but too talkative and fond of smoking to be altogether agreeable companions. Yet dark and dingy and crowded though it is, there is romance about this typical Italian mountain inn. Its discomforts are soon forgotten, and it lives in our memories by many cheerful sights and sounds: the splash of the fountain at the corner under the walnut-tree, where the women in their bright-coloured handkerchiefs wash their linen, and call out cheerily to the barefooted little Pietros and Marias playing in the sunshine; the sudden bustle and tinkle of the goats returning from the mountain as they troop off in little companies to their separate homes; the noise of the bowls and the laughter of the players, kept up till there is no longer light to pursue the game: last of all, as if in solemn contrast to the exuberant life of the day, the melancholy voice of the watchman ringing out through the silent night.
The larger of the two streams which meet at Pinzolo issues from Val di Genova; the second flows out of a gap in the hills continuing the line of depression of Val Rendena. Scarcely two miles higher, beyond the neighbouring village of Caresolo, this torrent again divides. On the left Val Nambrone leads up towards the flanks of the Presanella. A steep ascent is necessary to gain the highest stretch of Val Nambino, a wide, sunny vale, studded with cottages and surrounded by green slopes and forests.
The old cart-track, lately converted into a good carriage-road, skirts continuously the western hillside, leaving the stream far below in a narrow bed. Behind us the snows of the Carè Alto and its neighbours gradually rise into sight above a lower ridge graced with singularly symmetrical summits.
But our attention is soon riveted on the new mountain range which rises beyond the valley. High amongst the clouds soar its red towers and pinnacles; the bold ridges which support them sweep down upon us in majestic curves. Three glens, green with beech copses, push up boldly into the heart of the mountain. The one opposite is Val di Brenta, rising towards its Bocca, the gap on the north of the most stupendous castle; the furthest, the Vallesinella, leads by another strange gateway to Molveno, the nearest is Val Agola, also with passes for mountaineers or paths for ramblers.
We have already seen from a distance, or skirted the sides of, the Brenta group. From the crests of the Adamello chain or from the depths of Val di Genova a mysterious range utterly unlike anything in the central Alps55 has been frequently before our eyes. At Pinzolo, or on the Pra Fiori, we have had glimpses of strange red peaks. But we seem now to have come for the first time into their immediate presence.
The spectator standing on the western slopes of Val Nambino sees high above everything else against the eastern sky two huge square fortresses built up of horizontal courses of masonry. The ground-colour of their walls is a yellowish grey, streaked with red and black, and broken here and there by lines of shining white, where a steep glacier-stair scales the precipice. The massiveness of these blocks adds by contrast to the effect of the surrounding pinnacles. Before the traveller's eyes rise towers, horns, cupolas, columns, spires, crowded together in endless variety. Here he fancies must be the workshop of Nature, and these are her store of models. Or he is reminded of some architectural drawing, a collection of the great buildings of the world, or the spires of Sir Christopher Wren.
These peaks are the advance-guard of the Tyrolese dolomites, boldly thrown across the valley of the Adige, as if to challenge on their own ground the snowy ranks of the Orteler and Adamello. They are separated from the granite by no wide depression such as divides the Venetian Alps and the Tauern, but only by a single valley. The boulder which rolls from the flanks of the Presanella will scarcely halt before it rests on dolomitic soil.
The Eastern Alps could scarcely have put forward a nobler champion than the range before us. Primiero and Auronzo may perhaps equal the marvellous skyline; but they offer nothing to rival the symmetry of the whole mass of the Brenta as it rises above Val Nambino. Consider the lower stories of the huge edifice. The slope is not monotonous in uniformity, yet the platforms which break it are too narrow to diminish by foreshortening the apparent height of the summits. From our feet rise powerful spurs, below dark with pines, above bare and white; their form is simple and severe, but every shifting light brings out fresh details in the fretwork which time has carved deeply into their sides. Like the flying buttresses of some vast cathedral they lead the eye up to the straight perpendicular lines of the crowning towers.
When we come to study the range more generally, what incomparable variety of beauty! On the west lies a green, open Alpine valley. The Lago di Molveno reflects in its blue mirror the eastern crags. The southern slopes are a rich tangle of vines and chestnuts; the beeches push up and dispute with the pines the inner glens; the cyclamens and gentians gird with successive belts of brightness the mountain form.
The traveller, when he penetrates this fantastic chain, finds himself at first in narrow glens watered by clear streams, now smooth-flowing over lawns of the softest turf, now dancing through beechwoods, now plunging deep into some miniature ravine hung with mosses and bright-berried ashes. He forgets, in the charm of what is near at hand, what he came to see. Then suddenly through the tree-tops an incredible yellow flame, set for ever between the green and blue, recalls the presence of the dolomites, and urges him to further exertion. He climbs a steep barrier, and the pinnacles range themselves as portions of a vast amphitheatre of rock. He advances a few hundred yards further along the level and the scene is changed. One solitary tower overclimbs the clouds and mixes with the sky. A second ascent brings another shift. Rocks, grey, gold, red, brown and black, cluster round his bewildered eyes, and he begins to doubt whether the scene is a solid reality or some Alastor-inspired Vision of Solitude.
Then, after wandering all the morning between red rocks and over two or three hours of ice, he may find himself in the evening amongst figs, olives and lemon-groves. For the Brenta group is planted not in the midst of a mountain maze, but on the edge of the deepest cleft in the Alps. From the white crown of the highest peak to Alle Sarche is a descent of 10,500 feet.
It is a disappointment to find that, for the moment, we must turn our backs on all this beauty, and that our resting-place lies out of sight of it, a mile further on.
The builders of the hospice of 'La Madonna di Campiglio' were more anxious for safety in winter than for a fair prospect in summer. They naturally preferred a meadow secure from avalanches, yet sufficiently protected from the north by low banks, to the steeper and more broken hillsides of the lower Val Nambino. After turning a corner beyond which the wooded spurs of Monte Spinale cut off the view of the Brenta chain, the road crosses the stream and enters a broad, smooth hay-field, surrounded by slopes the summits of which lie too far back to give dignity to the landscape. In the centre of this plain, far away from any village, stands the hospice and pilgrimage church of Campiglio.
The existence of so large a building on a route now so little frequented must strike everyone as curious and unexpected. But in fact these remote valleys were once the highways of traffic. Not only, as has been shown in an earlier chapter, did emperors lead their hosts through the recesses of the Lombard Alps, but the merchandise of Venice also sought these roundabout paths.
In olden times the gorge of the Adige was narrow and perilous for an invader, crowded with feudal castles, each claiming its toll from commerce. Princes and merchants seem to have frequently turned westwards from Botzen across the Tonale, or southwards through Pinzolo and Val Buona to Brescia. Then Campiglio was built, it is said by the Templars, to lodge the frequent passers-by and break the long stage between the inhabited valleys.
Similar hospices are found elsewhere in the Eastern Alps: at San Martino, Paneveggio, and Auf der Plecken. But Campiglio is the largest establishment of its kind. The buildings are ranged in the form of a quadrangle, of which the hospice occupies three sides. Long galleries lead from wing to wing and give access to the rooms, which all face outwards and are cheerful and well lighted. The church, at the building of which, according to local legend, angels assisted, occupies part of the fourth side of the quadrangle. It contains a fresco, not without merit, of the early part of the sixteenth century.
After some centuries traffic turned into other channels, and the monks who had hitherto fulfilled the duties of hospitality departed, leaving their place scantily filled by a peasant farmer, who kept one or two rooms ready for strangers. On my first visit the old hospice was in this phase of its existence. The fare was rough but good, and the milk, cream, and butter delicious. The cows indeed seemed the mistresses of the place, and all the other living creatures their attendants. For their accommodation a new and spacious stable had been lately raised. The front was decorated with carving; the interior formed a sort of hall of columns, each column an unsmoothed fir-trunk. Down the centre ran a spacious passage, on either side of which thirty-five cows were ranged before their mangers.
Lately, however, the herd has been disturbed in its sole possession, and Campiglio has started on a new path to fame. The farmer who owns all the surrounding alps and woods, and whose wealth is locally looked on as boundless, conceived an idea. Why should not the big house be made use of? Rabbi, across the Val di Sole, was crowded with the fashion of the Trentino. Campiglio also should become a 'Stabilimento Alpino,' a 'Kurort' for Brescia and Botzen. He secured a coadjutor in the owner of a large inn at Arco, a young man with international views and desirous for more than a local success. In a Florence newspaper, addressed to tourists of all nations, appeared, in the spring of 1874, a large announcement of the opening of a 'magnifico stabilimento,' with polyglot attendance, a resident physician, and the usual advantages.
Last year I explored this new magnificence. Externally it displayed itself in some additions and wooden galleries over the courtyard. Indoors many of the rooms had been prepared for occupation and a large bare salle-à-manger added. There was also a comfortable general sitting-room.
The splendour was still growing, for, as new guests arrived, a carpenter employed downstairs ran up fresh furniture for their use, some of the hundred bedrooms of the advertisement being still in a state of more than conventual simplicity. The 'service bon et exact' was represented by three Italian youths, pale, untidy and swift-footed, who fled with the greatest alacrity from any guest whose face gave tokens of an approaching want. Their goodwill, however, was on the whole so much in excess of their capacities that it was impossible to treat them seriously.56 For instance, the head waiter, having been charged by an Englishman to wake him and get ready an early breakfast, was found in the morning fast asleep in a chair in which he had sat up all night with a fond intention of carrying out his instructions. It must in fairness be added that, if an early start was not better understood and provided for, it was chiefly the fault of the guests. With a few notable exceptions they were the least active and enterprising company I ever set eyes on. With exquisite scenes on every side of them within a short half-hour's distance, they were content to spend their days in the sleepy hollow, or, if they took a walk at all, strolled along the new road for three hundred yards, that is, nearly halfway to the corner of revelation where the great view bursts so splendidly into sight. Guide-books not having yet catalogued 'excursions from Campiglio,' it never seemed to enter their minds that there could be any; and they were content to loiter away their time among the glories of nature, having eyes and seeing nothing. If you asked your neighbour at the dinner-table which of the glens of the dolomites he had rambled into? he did not know there were any; if he had seen the Lares snow-fields flush at sunrise or swim in sunset haze? if he had stood on any crest or 'tower of observance' high enough to overlook the Trentino to where the peaks of Primiero and Cadore raise their ramparts against a golden sky? – he could only reply with a stare of dull incredulity.
But, once hardened to the contemplation of such misery in one's fellow-creatures, the state of the pension was not without its advantages. The gregarious British tourist was happily conspicuous by his absence; Germans were rare, and the few who passed did not care to linger where they were not allowed to smoke with their guides in a public room during other people's meals.
Consequently there were none of those absurd but most disagreeable differences over windows which arise whenever the haters of fresh air gather in any number. For even with the greatest respect for a nation and the strongest desire to fraternise with its members, it is hardly possible to get on well with people whose favourite atmosphere is to you as insupportable as Mars might be to the inhabitants of this earth. Extended travel must surely in time enable the North German mind to realise the existence, at least in others, of a horror of stuffiness. I am sure that when this fact is once grasped many worthy men will be saved from behaviour which if it did not arise from want of imagination would be intolerable bearishness.
But if we speak freely of the shortcomings of others we must not forget our own excesses. The appropriation, no matter for what purpose, of the public room of an inn by a section of the guests is a thoroughly selfish and unwarrantable proceeding. What should we think in Scotland if an American congregation were to take possession of the inn coffee-room every Sunday, and use it constantly on weekday evenings for practising hymns? Yet this is what on the Continent tourists of other nations have to submit to in all spots which have been discovered by either of our missionary societies. No one can reasonably object to English churches being built wherever the sick are sent, or even, as a luxury and by those who can afford it, at such places as Chamonix and Zermatt. But it is difficult to believe that our countrymen are so much creatures of habit that they cannot sometimes gratify their religious emotion in the Greek clearness of the mountain-top or under the Gothic shade of the neighbouring grove without intruding their devotions on their fellow-travellers of other creeds or countries.
At Campiglio, for the present at least, the Italian coming down on Sunday morning runs no risk of finding himself in the midst of a transformation scene; the tables chased, the chairs ranged in regimental ranks, his acquaintance in the grey suit of last night, black-coated and roped round his neck with a white tie, pinning up notices of hymns on the backs of 'menus,' and a much-embarrassed host endeavouring to explain to the non-British guests the cause of the general turmoil.
I must not dismiss the Stabilimento without a short mention of its two most important inmates at the time of my visit. The first was a young member of the local 'Societa Alpina,' whose adventures and heroism had made him a public character. Accompanied by the gardener and carpenter of the establishment, he had ventured to attack one of the limestone peaks east of Val Selva. The way proved longer and more arduous than had been expected, and night was falling as the party descended a narrow crest of the mountain. Suddenly they were made to pause by a terrific roar, and a few moments afterwards beheld, several hundred feet below, and on a spot they must pass, what they believed to be a large bear. The animal instead of walking off, as bears in every-day life are accustomed to do, behaved exactly like a bear in a story, or one of the animals which are the terror and delight of the modern nursery. Erect on his hind legs, he flashed fury from his eyes, opening his red mouth and snapping his jaws at intervals with ferocious significance. 'Si può immaginare nostra paura,' said the poor mountaineer. He and his companions prudently decided not to risk a nearer encounter with a monster who knew his part so perfectly. They stopped exactly where they were, and spent the night, haunted by deep breathings and strange sounds, which they attributed generally to wild animals, and more particularly to the bear, camozzi and contrabandisti.
The gardener who was a sharer in this adventure was, it appeared, permanently attached to the establishment. This gentleman spent many hours daily under the shelter of a vast felt wideawake, superintending the laying out of the surrounding grounds, which consisted of a flat square plot of meadow, perhaps thirty yards by twenty. But genius shows itself in small things as well as great. The variety of shape of which flower-beds are capable is endless; and with an underling provided with long strips of turf to mark the edges, our artist studied at leisure the most pleasing forms and combinations. The ground idea, one showing no slight originality, was taken from a plate of veal cutlets such as sometimes appeared at the midday meal. One cutlet a day was as much, however, as the creative mind could accomplish without risk of repetition; and this finished, the broad hat and its owner would after a few minutes of thankful contemplation retreat for rest to a neighbouring bench.