Italian Alps

The broken pinnacles of the Corno dei Tre Confini shot up opposite us on the right, and between two broad snowy depressions rose the comb of Monte Gleno. To reach it we must ascend the glacier. The ice, though in places steep, was not rent by any wide fissures, and an hour's quick walking brought us to the gap at the north-east base of the mountain. Below us, as we had hoped, lay Val Belviso.

Fifteen minutes of rapid scrambling finished the peak, the highest between the Barbellino and Aprica Passes.35 There was no sign on the summit of any earlier visitor.

The distance was for the most part in cloud, but the Adamello group was excellently seen, and the rock-wall above Val Miller, by which I had once descended, appeared as impossible as any easy climb well could. Val di Scalve was at our feet, and looked inviting, as did the carriage-road winding away from it towards Clusone over the spurs of the fortress-like Presolana.

Two clefts or chimneys offered themselves for the descent. We were I think right in choosing the northernmost or furthest from the peak. The other, as seen afterwards from below, seemed steep for a greater distance. The first few hundred feet required considerable care. The centre of the cleft was swept bare and smooth by spring avalanches, and cut in many places by low cliffs. We made therefore frequent use of the more broken crags on our right, where there was plenty of hold both for legs and arms. We did not meet with any serious difficulties, although we suffered now and then from a momentary embarrassment consequent on having put the wrong foot foremost, a mistake which the practised climber is always ready to retract.

Had it not been for the course of action pursued by one of my companions we might perhaps have got down in shorter time. Having some old grudge, as what Alpine Clubman has not, against a loose stone, he had this year constituted himself the foe of the race, and the chief adjutant of Time in his attack on the mountains. Did an unlucky rock show the smallest tendency to looseness, down it went. Resistance was useless, for my friend's perseverance and patience are proverbial; the rock might retain roots which would have held it for a century, but an ice-axe will serve also as a crowbar, and sooner or later, – down it went.

The process was necessarily sometimes tedious, and those behind watching it from a constrained perch, even if not susceptible enough to see in the downward roar and shiver of the released rock what might happen to themselves if they did not hold on, were liable to become impatient and to protest against the violence of the attack on a peak which had really done nothing to provoke such treatment, and might possibly take to reprisals. A volley from the upper ledges would have been anything but pleasant.

After creeping round the edges of some snow-beds, too short and steep to glissade, the angle of the slope diminished and banks of loose stones fell away to a brow overlooking the highest pasturage. This consists of two shelves, divided by a low cliff and cut off by a much deeper one from the valley. At the châlets on the lower shelf the herdsmen recommended us a long circuit round the head of the glen. With some hesitation we decided to trust the map, and took to the left, keeping at a level for twenty minutes as far as another group of huts. Thence we descended rapidly a trackless hillside, until on drawing near the forest we found a shady path to take us to the bottom.

The upper half of Val Belviso is smooth, green, and pleasant, with fine backward views of Monte Gleno and its gullies, and near at hand a clear, copious stream always dashing in and out of still, deep-coloured pools. Lower down the path becomes steep, stony, and tiresome, and everyone was glad when the last bridge – a bold arch near some ruined mills – seemed to put us within a definite distance of the end. I have seldom known a warmer or more beautiful half hour's walk than the climb of a thousand feet round a projecting hillside to the village of Aprica.

But the high-road to the Adamello marks the close of the Bergamasque valleys.

CHAPTER VII.

VAL CAMONICA AND THE GIUDICARIA

Vineyards and maize, that's pleasant for sore eyes. – Clough.

THE APRICA PASS – EDOLO – VAL CAMONICA – CEDEGOLO – VAL SAVIORE – LAGO D'ARNO – MONTE CASTELLO – VAL DI FUM – VAL DAONE – LAGO DI LEDRO – RIVA – THE GORGES OF THE SARCA – VAL RENDENA – THE PRA FIORI – VAL D'ALGONE – STENICO – THE HIGH ROAD TO TRENT

Our acquaintances might, I sometimes fancy, be roughly divided into two classes. There are some who find sympathy in inanimate nature by itself; there are many to whom the universe speaks only through the person of their fellow creatures.

With the latter, human interests and emotions are always in the front, and the most glorious landscape or the most thrilling sunset makes only a background to the particular mites in whom they are for the moment interested. Nature is just thought worthy to play a humble accompaniment to the piece – to act the part of the two or three fiddlers who are left in the orchestra to give forth soft music when the heroine dreams, or a triumphant squeak at the approach of the hero. Such dispositions, and they are often those of most strength or genius, colour nature out of their own consciousness rather than accept impressions from without.

There is much to be said at the present day for this mood. The long line of evolution so slightly alluded to in the Book of Genesis between the mud and the man has been nearly made out. Why should we waste more time over the lower developments of matter than is necessary to ascertain our own family history? The human intelligence, philosophers tell us, is the crowning flower of the universe. Let us then no longer worship stocks and stones, or invisible and inconceivable abstractions, but reserve all our attention for the highest thing we know, and concentrate ourselves on our fellow creatures. Thus perhaps we shall best urge on that true golden age, when mankind, grown less material, will burn with a purer jet of intellect, when Mr. Wallace will talk with spirits who can talk sense and Mr. Galton and artificial selection will have replaced Cupid with his random darts.

Yet we can never wholly separate ourselves from the system of which we form a part. 'Homo sum nihil humani' requires such extension as will include the universe. Positivist congregations are, I believe, in the habit of expressing their grateful acknowledgments to interplanetary space. Even advanced thinkers therefore may pardon a sentiment for such much nearer relations as the crystalline rocks.

Those, however, who deliberately prefer at all times the study of human emotion to the inarticulate voice of nature must not – unless indeed they are prepared to live, as few travellers can, amongst the people of the country – come to the Lombard Alps. Their field of observation is on the terrace at St. Moritz or on the summit of Piz Languard; and they will do well to picnic in company amongst Swiss pines rather than to wander alone under Italian beeches.

The road which links the Adamello country to the Stelvio highway, and through it to the Bernina Pass and Upper Engadine, leaves the Val Tellina midway between Tirano and Sondrio, and only a few hours' drive from Le Prese. For many miles it climbs in one enormous zigzag through the chestnut forests, until from the last brow overlooking the Val Tellina it gains a view which, of its kind, has few rivals. I have seen it twice under very different circumstances.

First in early morning, half-an-hour after a June sunrise, the air ringing with the song of birds and bells, the high crest of the Disgrazia golden in light, the long shadows of the Bergamasque mountains falling across their lower slopes, the white villages caught here and there by sunbeams, the broad valley throwing off a light cover of soft mist. Beneath us Italy, around the Alps; and when these two meet lovingly, what can nature do more?

Again on a late autumn afternoon, in dumb sultry heat, the sunlight veiled for the most part in yellow mists, but breaking forth from time to time with vivid force, and answered by lightning from the thick impenetrable pall lying over the Disgrazia, and the masses of storm-cloud gathering on the lower ranges. The valley silent and mournful, all peace and harmony gone, the mountains glaring savagely from their obscurity, as if their wild nature had broken loose from the shrinking loveliness at its feet, and was preparing for it outrage and ruin.

From the inn known as 'The Belvedere' it is still half-an-hour's ascent to the smooth meadows which form the watershed between the Val Camonica and the Val Tellina, the well-named Aprica Pass.

The descent towards Edolo lies through the green and fertile Val Corteno. As the capital of the upper Val Camonica is approached lofty snow-capped crags tower opposite. These are not part of the main mass of the Adamello, but belong to the outlying group of Monte Aviolo.

Edolo lies on either side of a strong green torrent, fed by the eternal snows, which seems a river compared to the slender streams of the Bergamasque valleys. Across the bridge on a high platform stand a large white church and campanile, backed by rich foliage and a hillside, steep yet fertile, which rises straight into the clouds. The little mountain-town is mediæval and Italian in character. The streets are narrow and shady; old coats-of-arms are carved on the walls, queer-headed monsters glower between the windows, arched loggias run round the interior courtyards. The place tells you it has a history, and one wonders for a moment what that history was. We know that German emperors came this way through the mountains, that Barbarossa confirmed the liberties of Val Camonica, and that Maximilian once halted within these walls. Further details must be sought in the works of local historians and in the libraries of Bergamo or Brescia.

Edolo has long been notorious for bad inns. Lately, however, the 'Leone d'Oro,' the house in the centre of the town, has come into the hands of a most well-meaning proprietor, who provides very fair food and lodging at reasonable prices. Unfortunately nothing seems to get rid of the extraordinarily pungent flavour of stables which has for years pervaded the premises. I can only compare it to that of an underground stall in Armenia, in which it was once my ill-fortune to spend the night. Such a smell convinces one that at least there can be no difficulty as to means of conveyance. Strangers are doubly annoyed when they discover that they are in one of the few towns in the Alps where it is often impossible at short notice to get horses or a carriage. If animals even cannot endure the atmosphere, it is surely high time to advertise 'Wanted a Hercules.'

On my last visit the demand for a carriage and pair was triumphantly met by the production of a diligence that had retired on account of old age and failing powers from public service, but was still ready to do a job for friends. Although built to contain some fifteen persons, it was so ingeniously arranged that, except from the box-seats, nothing could possibly be seen except the horses' tails and a few yards of highroad. We were compelled to cluster round the driver like a bunch of schoolboys, leaving the body of our machine to lumber along empty in the rear.

To drive down Val Camonica on a fresh summer's morning before the sunlight has lost its first grace and glitter, when, without a breath of wind, every particle in earth and air, and even our own dull frames, seem to vibrate with the joy of existence, is to have one of the most delicious sensations imaginable. The scenery rivals and equals that of the Val d'Aosta near Villeneuve. The valley curves gracefully, the hillsides are cut by ravines or open out into great bays rich with woods. Every bush stands clearly defined in the translucent air, every leaf reflects back from a lustrous surface, unclogged by damp and smuts, the welcome sunbeams with which the whole atmosphere is in a dance. Lower down the slopes sweep out in folds of chestnut forest. High overhead a company of granitic peaks stand up stiff and straight in their icy armour against an Italian sky.

Below the opening of Val di Malga there is a long straight reach of road; then Val Paisco, with a path leading to Val di Scalve, is passed on the right and a bridge crossed. Amidst broken ground and closing hillsides we approached Cedegolo, a considerable village, built between two torrents and under sheltering rocks, in a sunny romantic situation. As we drove up the street a quack doctor, taking advantage of the assembly drawn down to Sunday high mass, was haranguing a crowd of bright-kerchiefed girls and bronzed peasants from the hill villages. Women from the lower valley were offering for sale grapes, figs and peaches of the second crop, the latter red as roses and hard as bullets.

The inn here has been visited and commended by several travellers as clean and comfortable. Such praise it fully merits, but on other grounds we had much reason to complain of the Cedegolans.

The habit of asking a very great deal more than you expect to get, common in foreign, and particularly in Italian shops, is perhaps as often an amusement as a vexation. The practice is most likely a survival from the old system of barter, which must have necessarily been incompatible with fixed prices. It will always be routed when time becomes of more value to the purchaser than a possible diminution in price. Heavy denunciations of its immorality sound to me rather odd when they come from the mouths of those who themselves adopt in large affairs the very same practice they condemn in small. Why it should be dishonest to ask more than you will take for a ring or a piece of lace, but perfectly right and fair to do the same for a house or estate is a difficult question. The answer must be sought from our worthy countryman who discourses on the rascality of the Jew with whom he haggled six months for a cameo, and if he wants to get rid of a farm is ready to fight for the hundreds sterling as hardly as ever shopkeeper for the francs.

But the inconvenience of a system of bargain becomes, it must be allowed, intolerable, when it is adopted by innkeepers. Their charges differ from others in not being usually a subject of previous arrangement. From the beginning the relation is a friendly one; there is, or ought to be, a tacit understanding between host and guest that no undue advantage will be taken. An extortionate bill is felt by the traveller as a breach of good faith, and he resents it accordingly. Of course it is always open to him to settle the price of everything before he takes it. But fortunately this precaution is seldom necessary, and it is much too tiresome to be adopted generally on the chance.

However, I must, I fear, recommend this last resource to those who visit Cedegolo, or the more western Bergamasque valleys. If they do not adopt it they will often have to choose between paying five francs for a bed or having their parting delayed and embittered by a discussion, which, whatever its result weak concession or successful protest, leaves behind it nothing but unpleasant recollections.

In this respect the unfrequented German Alps are happier resorts for the wanderer. One could wish that these Italians had a little less vigour of imagination, and did not see in every foreigner a mine of unlimited wealth. If the story of the golden-egg-laying goose exists in their language, the nearest branch of the National Alpine Club would do well to distribute it as a tract throughout Cedegolo, and in one or two other villages which I should be happy to indicate.

Val Saviore, the valley which joins Val Camonica at Cedegolo, is a deep, short trough running west and east. The hillsides on the left bank of its stream are steep and uninhabited. High upon them a white spot is conspicuous against the green. It is an ice-cave, where the snow never melts from year's end to year's end. The opposite sunward-facing slopes are more gentle, and the principal villages lie high up on the mountain side. Behind them two torrents issue out of deep recesses, the Val di Salarno and Val d'Adame, the heads of which are closed by branches of the great Adamello ice-field.36

A short zigzag amongst the boles and roots of an old chestnut forest brought us to the level of the straight trench-like valley, from which no view is gained of the neighbouring snows. But the scenery had scarcely time to grow monotonous before we reached Fresine, a smutty charcoal-burners' hamlet on the banks of the Salarno torrent, and at the foot of the northern hillside.

A little further are the few houses of Isola, so called from their peninsular position between the torrent issuing from Val d'Adame and the smaller stream from Lago d'Arno. The hillside to be climbed before we could see this lake, shown on maps as one of the largest of high Alpine tarns, looked very long, steep and warm, and it proved considerably longer, steeper and warmer than it looked. It is one of the greatest climbs of its kind in the Alps. The Adamello valleys abound in steep steps or 'scalas,' but this surpasses all the others, near or far. From Isola to the water's edge the barometer showed a difference of level of over 4,000 feet. For two-thirds of the ascent the gradient and character of the path are the same as those of a turret staircase, and the only level places are old charcoal-burners' platforms. For the rest of the way the track, after having climbed the cliff-faces which enclose the lower falls, penetrates the mountain side by a cleft, through which the stream descends in a succession of cascades and rapids. Except for its ambition to do too many feet in the hour, the path could not be pleasanter. It winds through a shifting and picturesque foreground of wood, crag and water, behind which the far-off peaks of the Zupo, Bella Vista and Palu shine like snowy pavilions spread out against the evening sun.

It might be worth a geologist's or physical geographer's while to follow this track. On the vexed question of the share of work done by glaciers in excavating valleys and lake-basins I do not presume to offer an opinion. But I think a careful examination of the Adamello group could scarcely fail to repay the trouble and add some new materials for the discussion. In the numerous lakes scattered amongst the upper branches of Val Camonica the followers of Professor Ramsay may find support for their views. The believers in the potent action of glaciers in the excavation of valleys will see in the Val di Fum one of the few valleys in the Alps which answer to the picture fancy draws of what a nice-dug valley should be like. On the other hand they would be called on to explain how the majority of glaciers came to act in a manner so unlike planes, and left the Val di Genova, and nearly every other valley of the group, a mere flight of stairs. If the bed of the Lago d'Arno was once occupied by ice it must have presented an appearance not unlike the lowest plain of the Mandron Glacier, with a tongue curling over towards Val Saviore.

A warm glow still rested on the granite ridges and glaciers, but in the hollow all was already blue and grey, when the level of Lago d'Arno at last opened before our eyes. A long, still sheet of dark water wound away out of sight between bare hillsides, broken only here and there by a solitary pine. There was no sound but the gentle lapping of the waves or the continual murmur of a distant waterfall. The air seemed fraught with a solemn peacefulness, the strange mere to be a living thing asleep among the dead mountains. It was a scene to recall all old legends of enchanted pools, and a spectre bark or an arm 'robed in white samite' would in the falling gloom have seemed perfectly natural and in keeping.

The character of the landscape was in no respect Italian. It was scarcely Swiss, but rather, if I may judge of the unseen from painters, Norwegian. High Alpine tarns are for the most part circular or straight-sided; seldom, like Lago d'Arno, long, serpentine sheets of water. Moreover its great height above the sea, by giving sternness to the shores and bringing the snows down close upon them, naturally suggests a more northern latitude.

We hurried along the rough hillside in search of the fisherman's hut which was to be our night quarters. We found it among the boulders on the very brink of the water.

Previous experience of Adamello huts had inspired me with the deepest distrust of our prospects. But this time our shelter, if lowly in outward appearance, proved comfortable enough inside. At one end of the little cabin blazed a cheery fire, the smoke of which, for a wonder, found its way out without first making the round of the interior. At the other end was a hay-bed, arranged like a berth in two shelves, one above the other. The centre was occupied by a bench; and there were spoons and mugs stuck into odd holes and corners. Two worthy but fussy fowls cackled away under the roof, apparently embarrassed by the hospitable reflection that with their best endeavours they could hardly provide eggs for the whole party. The only other tenant in possession was a bright-eyed boy. A great many English boys would have seen in his tenement their ideal of a Robinson Crusoe home. Even to us disillusioned wanderers it looked fascinating, and had we been any of us fishermen we might have been induced to spend a day or two in paddling about in the triangular tub which was moored close by.

Daylight had barely lighted us to our goal, and now night added its mystery to this wild spot. Faint rays from a still unseen moon lit up the opposite peaks and snows, the great stars shone and were reflected in the dark depths of sky and lake which faced each other.

In the earliest dawn the fisherboy launched his craft, and soon returned with a fine pink-fleshed trout which we carried off with us. He then led us up the steep rocks behind his hut to regain the track we had left the night before.

The path from Isola is not the only route to the Passo di Monte Campo. We shortly joined a broader track, which makes a long circuit from the lower valley, and is said to be passable for horses, which the staircase we had climbed could scarcely be called, though cows were evidently in the habit of using it. When we left our boy it was quite a pleasure, after the impositions of the last few days, to see his simple delight over a piece of silver. The metal is rare in Italy in these days of paper currency.

The lake, seen from the high terraces which we were now traversing, appeared to be about three miles in length. It does not entirely fill the basin, at the upper end of which is an alp and a small pool. Higher up on the right lie the ice-fields and blunt summits of Monte Castello. The ridge to be crossed now comes into view – a long saw, the teeth of which, tolerably uniform in height, stretch from a rocky eminence (Monte Campo) on the north to the glaciers on the south. The path, running as a terrace along a steep hillside, gains, with little climbing, a broad grassy gap near the foot of Monte Campo. The ruined cabin on the crest may either be a douanier's outpost or a relic of the Garibaldian corps, which in 1866 bivouacked here with bold intentions but small result. This country has not been fortunate for the Italian Irregulars. A body who established themselves near Ponte di Legno, and talked largely about invading Val di Sole, were surprised one morning by the Austrians anticipating their visit. The unlucky volunteers were all at breakfast, scattered about the village, and before they could offer any effective resistance were crushed with great slaughter.

Beyond the level meadows of Val di Fum rose the massive peak of the Carè Alto, on this side an impossible precipice. But otherwise the view was limited, and we readily decided to add the Monte del Castello to our day's work. A most convenient goat-path, skirting the roots of the rock-teeth, brought us to the edge of the ice. The glacier was steep and slippery, and only just manageable without steps. The top proved a double-crested ridge of loose granite boulders. On the further and slightly lower point was a wooden cross, planted probably by some shepherd from the Val del Leno, the glen on the southern flank of the mountain. It would be easy to climb Monte del Castello from the level of Lago d'Arno and to descend by this valley to Boazze; and the route is recommended to mountaineers who already know Val di Fum. In itself, Monte Castello is, it must be confessed, a very inferior peak. It does not reach 10,000 feet, and it is out-topped by a southern outlier, probably Monte Frerone. But as a view-point it has merits. The long line of glaciers and peaks between the Adamello and the Carè Alto presents an imposing appearance. From the opposite horizons the Schreckhorn and Cimon della Pala, a worthy pair, exchange greetings. The Grand Paradis is also in sight; but too many famous and familiar forms are conspicuous by their absence, and one finds oneself longing for the extra 1,000 feet of height which would sink half the subordinate ridges and give true greatness its proper place.