Steinach.--Its torrent and gloomy strait.--Achievements of
Industry.--A sleepy Region.--Beautiful country round Brixen.
July 28.
I rose early to enjoy the fragrance of the vegetation, bathed in a
shower which had lately fallen, and looking around me, saw nothing but
crags hanging over crags, and the rocky shores of the stream, still dark
with the shade of the mountains. The small opening in which Steinach is
situated, terminates in a gloomy strait, scarce leaving room for the
road and the torrent, which does not understand being thwarted, and will
force its way, let the pines grow ever so thick, or the rocks be ever so
formidable.
Notwithstanding the forbidding air of this narrow dell, Industry has
contrived to enliven its steeps with habitations, to raise water by
means of a wheel, and to cover the surface of the rocks with soil. By
this means large crops of oats and flax are produced, and most of the
huts have gardens filled with poppies, which seem to thrive in this
parched situation.
“Urit enim lini campum seges, urit avenæ,
Urunt Lethæo perfusa papavera somno.”
The farther we advanced in the dell, the larger were the plantations
which discovered themselves. For what specific purpose these gaudy
flowers meet with such encouragement, I had neither time nor language to
enquire; the mountaineers stuttering a gibberish unintelligible even to
Germans. Probably opium is extracted from them; or, perhaps, if you love
a conjecture, Morpheus has transferred his abode from the Cimmerians to
a cavern somewhere or other in the recesses of these endless mountains.
Poppies, you know, in poetic travels, always denote the skirts of his
soporific reign, and I do not remember a region better calculated for
undisturbed repose than the narrow clefts and gullies which run up
amongst these rocks, lost in vapours impervious to the sun, and
moistened by rills and showers, whose continual trickling inspire a
drowsiness not easily to be resisted. Add to these circumstances the
waving of the pines, and the hum of bees seeking their food in the
crevices, and you will have as sleepy a region as that in which Spenser
and Ariosto have placed the nodding deity.
But we may as well keep our eyes open for the present, and look at the
beautiful country round Brixen, where I arrived in the cool of the
evening, and breathed the freshness of a garden immediately beneath my
window. The thrushes, which nest amongst its shades, saluted me the
moment I awoke next morning.