When the excitement of the Festa had subsided, we were free to abandon
ourselves to the excursions in which the neighbourhood of Cortina
abounds, and to which the guide-book earnestly calls every right-minded
traveller. A walk through the light-green shadows of the larch-woods to
the tiny lake of Ghedina, where we could see all the four dozen trout
swimming about in the clear water and catching flies; a drive to the
Belvedere, where there are superficial refreshments above and profound
grottos below; these were trifles, though we enjoyed them. But the great
mountains encircling us on every side, standing out in clear view with
that distinctness and completeness of vision which is one charm of the
Dolomites, seemed to summon us to more arduous enterprises. Accordingly,
the Deacon and I selected the easiest one, engaged a guide, and prepared
for the ascent.
Monte Nuvolau is not a perilous mountain. I am quite sure that at my
present time of life I should be unwilling to ascend a perilous mountain
unless there were something extraordinarily desirable at the top,
or remarkably disagreeable at the bottom. Mere risk has lost the
attractions which it once had. As the father of a family I felt bound to
abstain from going for amusement into any place which a Christian lady
might not visit with propriety and safety. Our preparation for Nuvolau,
therefore, did not consist of ropes, ice-irons, and axes, but simply of
a lunch and two long sticks.
Our way led us, in the early morning, through the clustering houses of
Lacedel, up the broad, green slope that faces Cortina on the west, to
the beautiful Alp Pocol. Nothing could exceed the pleasure of such a
walk in the cool of the day, while the dew still lies on the short, rich
grass, and the myriads of flowers are at their brightest and sweetest.
The infinite variety and abundance of the blossoms is a continual
wonder. They are sown more thickly than the stars in heaven, and the
rainbow itself does not show so many tints. Here they are mingled like
the threads of some strange embroidery; and there again nature has
massed her colours; so that one spot will be all pale blue with
innumerable forget-me-nots, or dark blue with gentians; another will
blush with the delicate pink of the Santa Lucia or the deeper red of the
clover; and another will shine yellow as cloth of gold. Over all this
opulence of bloom the larks were soaring and singing. I never heard so
many as in the meadows about Cortina. There was always a sweet spray of
music sprinkling down out of the sky, where the singers poised unseen.
It was like walking through a shower of melody.
From the Alp Pocol, which is simply a fair, lofty pasture, we had our
first full view of Nuvolau, rising bare and strong, like a huge bastion,
from the dark fir-woods. Through these our way led onward now for seven
miles, with but a slight ascent. Then turning off to the left we began
to climb sharply through the forest. There we found abundance of the
lovely Alpenrosen, which do not bloom on the lower ground. Their colour
is a deep, glowing pink, and when a Tyrolese girl gives you one of these
flowers to stick in the band of your hat, you may know that you have
found favour in her eyes.
Through the wood the cuckoo was calling--the bird which reverses the law
of good children, and insists on being heard, but not seen.
When the forest was at an end we found ourselves at the foot of an alp
which sloped steeply up to the Five Towers of Averau. The effect of
these enormous masses of rock, standing out in lonely grandeur, like the
ruins of some forsaken habitation of giants, was tremendous. Seen from
far below in the valley their form was picturesque and striking; but as
we sat beside the clear, cold spring which gushes out at the foot of the
largest tower, the Titanic rocks seemed to hang in the air above us as
if they would overawe us into a sense of their majesty. We felt it to
the full; yet none the less, but rather the more, could we feel at the
same time the delicate and ethereal beauty of the fringed gentianella
and the pale Alpine lilies scattered on the short turf beside us.
We had now been on foot about three hours and a half. The half hour
that remained was the hardest. Up over loose, broken stones that rolled
beneath our feet, up over great slopes of rough rock, up across little
fields of snow where we paused to celebrate the Fourth of July with a
brief snowball fight, up along a narrowing ridge with a precipice on
either hand, and so at last to the summit, 8600 feet above the sea.
It is not a great height, but it is a noble situation. For Nuvolau is
fortunately placed in the very centre of the Dolomites, and so commands
a finer view than many a higher mountain. Indeed, it is not from the
highest peaks, according to my experience, that one gets the grandest
prospects, but rather from those of middle height, which are so isolated
as to give a wide circle of vision, and from which one can see both the
valleys and the summits. Monte Rosa itself gives a less imposing view
than the Gorner Grat.
It is possible, in this world, to climb too high for pleasure.
But what a panorama Nuvolau gave us on that clear, radiant summer
morning--a perfect circle of splendid sight! On one side we looked down
upon the Five Towers; on the other, a thousand feet below, the Alps,
dotted with the huts of the herdsmen, sloped down into the deep-cut vale
of Agordo. Opposite to us was the enormous mass of Tofana, a pile of
gray and pink and saffron rock. When we turned the other way, we faced
a group of mountains as ragged as the crests of a line of fir-trees, and
behind them loomed the solemn head of Pelmo. Across the broad vale
of the Boite, Antelao stood beside Sorapis, like a campanile beside
a cathedral, and Cristallo towered above the green pass of the Three
Crosses. Through that opening we could see the bristling peaks of the
Sextenthal. Sweeping around in a wider circle from that point, we saw,
beyond the Durrenstein, the snow-covered pile of the Gross-Glockner; the
crimson bastions of the Rothwand appeared to the north, behind Tofana;
then the white slopes that hang far away above the Zillerthal; and,
nearer, the Geislerspitze, like five fingers thrust into the air; behind
that, the distant Oetzthaler Mountain, and just a single white glimpse
of the highest peak of the Ortler by the Engadine; nearer still we
saw the vast fortress of the Sella group and the red combs of the
Rosengarten; Monte Marmolata, the Queen of the Dolomites, stood before
us revealed from base to peak in a bridal dress of snow; and southward
we looked into the dark rugged face of La Civetta, rising sheer out of
the vale of Agordo, where the Lake of Alleghe slept unseen. It was a sea
of mountains, tossed around us into a myriad of motionless waves, and
with a rainbow of colours spread among their hollows and across their
crests. The cliffs of rose and orange and silver gray, the valleys of
deepest green, the distant shadows of purple and melting blue, and the
dazzling white of the scattered snow-fields seemed to shift and vary
like the hues on the inside of a shell. And over all, from peak to peak,
the light, feathery clouds went drifting lazily and slowly, as if they
could not leave a scene so fair.
There is barely room on the top of Nuvolau for the stone shelter-hut
which a grateful Saxon baron has built there as a sort of votive
offering for the recovery of his health among the mountains. As we sat
within and ate our frugal lunch, we were glad that he had recovered his
health, and glad that he had built the hut, and glad that we had come
to it. In fact, we could almost sympathise in our cold, matter-of-fact
American way with the sentimental German inscription which we read on
the wall:--
Von Nuvolau's hohen Wolkenstufen
Lass mich, Natur, durch deine Himmel rufen--
An deiner Brust gesunde, wer da krank!
So wird zum Volkerdank mein Sachsendank.
We refrained, however, from shouting anything through Nature's heaven,
but went lightly down, in about three hours, to supper in the Star of
Gold.