VAL VERZASCA AND VAL CANOBBINA.
On our other side is the straight-up rock,
And a path is kept 'twixt the gorge and it
By boulderstones, where lichens mock
The marks on a moth, and small ferns fit
Their teeth to the polished block. R. BROWNING.
PASSO DI REDORTA--VAL VERZASCA--A BROKEN ROAD--LOCARNO--VAL
CANOBBINA--VAL VIGEZZO.
Val Maggia is not the only unknown valley which opens on the famous
lake. Close beside it, and hemmed in between its mountains and those
on the west of Val Leventina, lies a still narrower and more obscure
recess, Val Verzasca. In olden days the natives of this glen bore a bad
name. In 1490 a writer speaks of them as 'homines sylvestres sparsim
ferarum ritu degentes;'[9] and the reputation for wildness so early
acquired still sticks to them. Knives are said to be more frequently
drawn among them, and with worse consequences, than in any other
district of Ticino. But there is no record of a stranger ever having
suffered from this tendency to blood-letting, and the ill-repute of the
valley can hardly be held accountable for its neglect by travellers.
So great has been this neglect that the Federal map was to us the
chief and almost the only source of information. Thus studied, the
peculiarities of Val Verzasca are seen to be the shortness of the side
glens which branch off the main stem, and the uniformly great elevation
of the surrounding ridges. From Bignasco a tolerably direct path leads
over to Brione by Val d'Ossola, and from what we saw I recommend the
next visitor to try this way in preference to the longer circuit which
we were induced to take by a conscientious desire to see the head
of the main Val Verzasca and an unfounded fancy that a carriage road
implied vehicles of some sort.
From San Carlo in Val di Prato a track leaving the path to Piz Campo
Tencca circles round the westward-facing hillside, and, above a
waterfall, traverses beside the torrent a narrow glen. Beyond some
châlets we penetrated a sombre funnel, choked with avalanches. It
expanded at its upper end into a basin floored with snow and hemmed in
by cliffs picturesquely broken and green with underwood. The stream
which poured down them was received at the bottom under a snow-arch,
bold in its span as an old Italian bridge. A few yards east of the
water-channel a goat track, sometimes difficult to follow, climbs the
steep slope and the rocks above it, where the easiest course is only
marked by the goats' droppings. Hands as well as feet are useful, but
there is no difficulty for anyone accustomed to mountains.
Above the cliff we found a wide sloping meadow covered with cows. At
first sight their presence seemed only to be accounted for by magic or
a medium-like faculty in the herd for self-elevation. But I believe
due enquiry would have established the existence of a rationalistic
explanation in the shape of a roundabout staircase not beyond the
powers of an Italian heifer.
The lowest saddle in the high ridge before us was the Passo di Redorta.
Despite the beauty of the day there was little distant view and no peak
near enough at hand to tempt to further exertion. Val Maggia itself was
almost hidden by the vertical lines of a bold, many-headed buttress,
and the eye ranged over the wilderness of its mountain-ridges, a savage
expanse of ruined gneiss naked of snow and void of prominent peaks
or bristling ridges. The rock cannot, like the firmer granites of Val
Masino or the Adamello, offer any stubborn resistance to the action of
the atmosphere. Hence the mountain-tops are one mass of comparatively
level ruin. Those who have looked down from some Syrian hilltop on an
ancient city, of which the ponderous materials cumber the ground, while
not a column is left standing, may exactly picture to themselves the
scene of desolation now offered on a vastly larger scale to our eyes by
the ranges of Val Maggia. In contrast the head of Val Verzasca, lying
as it were at our feet, was green, bright, and inviting.
We were joined on the pass by a young Verzascan, returning from a visit
to relatives at Peccia, laden with a store of simple delicacies, such
as white bread, honey and cheese. The pains he was at to transport such
a burden suggested comparative poverty in the land we were entering. We
descended together, but there was no need of any guide, as the valley
lay always straight before us, and the ground, though excessively
steep, was not precipitous. Near the foot of the descent a pretty fall
tumbles off the right-hand hillside.
A mile further, at a waters-meet, stands Sonogno, a deserted
savage-looking cluster of dingy stone houses, which, but for the
whitewashed church, might be in Ossetia. There were no inhabitants in
the streets, and those indoors, with the first instinct of savages and
wild animals, hurriedly thrust their heads back again through their
little square windows when we asked questions. It was with difficulty
we succeeded in getting one word, a simple negative, in reply to our
demand for a carriage.
For to this extreme corner of the mountains civilisation advances
in the shape of a road which has been carried up from the lake at an
expense of over £15,000, shared between the cantonal government and
the communes. Its engineers would seem to have determined to make no
needless ascent, and at the cost of cuttings, embankments, and lofty
bridges, they have carried out their purpose in the most thorough
manner. The workmanship of this remote track would bear comparison
with most of the highways of Europe. But the proverb of the ass taken
to the water's brink seems to apply to Val Verzasca. No force seems
capable of inducing the upper villages to use the boon intended for
them. As in the East a few years ago the old camel-track over Lebanon
was still trodden bare, while the grass grew on the new road made by
French enterprise, so here no wheels seemed ever to have worn in the
fresh stones. The nine miles to Lavertezzo must be walked.
The upper branch of the valley, although hemmed in by bold mountains,
is somewhat monotonous, and the foreground is too often defaced by
a broad torrent-bed. At the village of Brione Val Verzasca displays
the first landscape which is likely to leave any lasting impression.
The range on the right suddenly breaks off in a perpendicular crag
of singular boldness; and as the road, raised on a lofty embankment,
crosses a tributary stream a long vista of receding lines of cliff
and chestnut trees is seen for some minutes. This is Val d'Ossola,
through which runs the shortest and probably the most beautiful path to
Bignasco.
From this point to the lake for some fifteen miles the bed of the
Verzasca is simply a narrow cleft in the mountains, sinking deeper and
deeper, until at last it opens upon Lago Maggiore, at the village of
Gordola, opposite Magadino. Below Brione a great barrier, probably a
mountain-fall, is thrown right across the valley, which at the same
time drops considerably. The road makes a zigzag amidst the wildest
tangle of boulders and chestnut-trees, then leaps boldly on to the
opposite rocks, and creeps along a shelf blasted beside the blue
tumbling stream.
As far as Lavertezzo the trench is wide enough at the bottom to give
room for a few fields and houses. But this is not an agricultural
district. The natives we met, a strong, wild-looking race, were all
stone-quarriers, woodmen, or charcoal-burners. Many of them were
employed where a timber slide, built on an unusual scale, falls over
the cliffs from the mouth of a side-glen in the western range, through
which a hill-path leads over to Maggia.
For the next few miles the valley bends constantly, and Lavertezzo
seems to be always round the next corner. As at last we approach
the village the river, sliding out from amidst huge grey boulders,
two of them joined by a slender arch, is suddenly checked. The water
rests motionless in a chain of the most delicious pools--deep-green,
transparent bubbling crystals--contained in basins of the whitest
granite, smooth and polished as if made for a Roman bath. Henceforth it
glistens no more in the sunshine, but roars or rests deep in a hidden
cleft until it flows out to the fever-stricken plain of Gordola.
Lavertezzo itself consists of a campanile, a church, and a few white
houses, crowded into a green corner above the meeting of two streams.
Its name is adorned in maps with one of those curly horns which
indicate a post-station. Here at least we reckoned on finding something
on wheels. But a difficulty hitherto only dimly foreshadowed now met
us full in the face with stunning force. Our hopes were crushed by a
universal outcry of 'strada rotta.' But we still did not comprehend the
full force of the emphasis laid on the last word, and while accepting
the fact that our legs must carry us over the remaining eighteen
kilomètres to Locarno, looked for nothing more than the ordinary amount
of breakage caused by a mountain-storm--one bridge gone, or at most
two. What we had seen in the upper valley was not of a character to
prepare us for any very serious damage.
But the whole force of the great thunderstorm three nights before had
concentrated itself on the ridges round the head of Lago Maggiore. The
rain-torrents rushing with unrestrained fury from these lofty crests
(7,000 to 8,000 feet) down the barren hillsides, and gathering impetus
with every foot of fall, had filled and overflowed all the channels,
tearing as they went huge rocks out of either bank, mixing themselves
with the soil till they became as much earth as water, and sweeping
away every obstruction which lay across their path.
Everywhere the steep slopes, saturated by the terrible deluge, had
given way. The road might be said to be effaced rather than broken. For
mile after mile two-thirds of its breadth was buried in mud washed down
from the upper hillsides.
The post-house of Vogorno, a solitary farm by the roadside, was in a
lamentable plight. The stables had been carried away, and the whole
front of the house was blocked with mud. At every few yards we came on
immense barricades, the work of some puny trickle which now wandered
almost invisible amongst the ruin it had wrought. In the least exposed
spots stones as big as a hat-box were lying in the middle of the road.
The larger torrents, thought worthy of bridges, had carried away the
arches set over them, leaving deep gaps to be clambered round. Even
a magnificent bridge, standing at a height at least 200 feet over
a lateral ravine, had been undermined and swept bodily away. It was
necessary to descend into the torrent-bed and scramble up the opposite
bank. Another still loftier arch, one of the most striking works of
its kind in the Alps, had alone escaped the general destruction, owing
to its piers being built into the solid rock about 150 feet above the
ordinary water-level.
Yet, though the road was destroyed and the hillside scored in many
places by the terrible paths of the rocks and torrents, the general
aspect of the landscape was hardly affected. The left bank, round
the deep ravines of which the road, or what was left of it, circled
incessantly, was always steep and broken. But across the river the
chestnuts and rocks yielded, as the hills rose, to vineyards and fields
of maize. The valley was all ravine, but high on the mountains were
sunny bays and promontories, shining with villages bright and festal as
only Italian villages are. A horizontal streak drawn across the face of
a range of mural cliffs was the road linking these communes to Locarno.
In the variety and boldness of its scenery this portion of Val Verzasca
seemed to us equal to any of the southern defiles of the Alps.
At last the gorge expanded, and the broad surface of the most beautiful
of the Italian lakes spread across the centre of the landscape.
The most beautiful, for to me it seems that spaciousness of shining
surface--the quality which made Thrasimene so dear to Perugino--is
an essential in lake scenery. In narrow, many-winding lakes the
multitude of straight shore lines is apt to cut off harshly all the
mountain shapes, and to be an offence to the eye, which would be
better contented by the accidents of a green valley than with the
smooth water-floor. The landscapes of Como, fascinating in their rapid
changes--now picturesque and gay, now wild and severe--are too confined
and crowded for perfect beauty. Garda is noble in its sealike expanse,
but the shapes of its hills cannot compare with the stately Greek charm
of the mountains round Baveno.
Above Gordola a whole hillside had given way, and the great earthslip
had spread desolation amongst the lower vineyards. The brown ruin made
a sad foreground to the exquisite view over the pale evening lake and
the glowing hills. We took a short cut through the broken-down terraces
to the bridge over the Verzasca, where we joined the high-road from
Bellinzona to Locarno. Between us and the lake ran, in all the ugliness
of unfinished novelty, a railway embankment.
Still three miles to Locarno, and no carriage on the road or boat
on the water. In the morning we had walked over a seven hours' pass,
including an ascent of 6,000 feet; since midday we had covered some
eighteen miles of road. Yet, although all more or less way-weary, we
accepted the further march without much murmur. At a certain stage in
the day the muscles become dogged and go on with machine-like energy,
and to maintain the power of enjoyment it is only necessary to keep
the mind from worrying itself with idle speculations as to details
of time and distance. It is the old story. The sad or the impatient
heart collapses, while the contented one 'goes all the day;' and in an
Italian dusk on the shores of Maggiore it is easy to be contented.
Locarno itself had suffered severely from the storm. The channel of
the small stream which divides the town had been overfilled by a deluge
of horrible black mud, which, bursting out like a lava flood into the
streets, had flowed down them, breaking into the shops on the ground
floor, and finally spreading itself out in a pool several feet deep
over the wide open space in front of the Albergo della Corona.
Locarno is pretty well accustomed to violent catastrophes. A few
years ago the roof of the principal church gave way under a heavy
fall of snow, and, crashing in during mass, killed or wounded half
the congregation. Inundations are almost as frequent as earthquakes at
Torre del Greco, and here, as on the Bay of Naples, familiarity with
the outrages of nature seems to breed indifference, if not contempt.
The population of Locarno took the damage done as much as a matter of
course as the 'Times' reader in September a shocking railway accident.
The men in their broad felts and the women with their fans were, as
we entered, all abroad for the evening stroll, chatting and looking
on cheerfully at the labourers still at work removing the rubbish.
Shopkeepers had already reopened their stores, and were endeavouring to
remove from their wares the traces of the recent mud-bath.
No lives had been lost here, but across the water at Magadino the storm
had been more fatal. Several houses had been carried into the lake, and
so suddenly that in one case the inhabitants were drowned.
Next to Val Maggia, Val Centovalli is the largest of the valleys which
open on the fertile plain behind Locarno.[10] It is, in fact, not so
much a valley as a broad line of depression through the hill-region
separating the basin of Domo d'Ossola from the lake. The opening thus
offered by nature has, owing probably to political jealousy, never
been taken advantage of. The lower Val Centovalli is Italian, the
upper basin of the Melezza and the short eastern Val Vigezzo Swiss,
and no road passable for wheeled vehicles crosses the frontier. On the
whole, however, lovers of nature gain. But for political exigencies Val
Canobbina might never have been pierced.
This glen, as its name implies, opens behind Canobbio, a town reached
in two hours from Locarno, by a most beautiful road along the western
shore of the lake. On the hillside facing north, and a mile inland,
is a large bathing establishment or summer health-resort known as 'La
Salute,' and chiefly frequented by Italians. The situation is charming,
high enough to command over a green foreground the whole upper bay of
the lake closed by the bold mountains of Val Verzasca.
Val Canobbina is rather a tangle of glens than a valley. The road
climbs at once into a deep dell, refreshed by perpetual waters and
green with verdure only broken where the jagged rocks close in on the
stream to form a gorge, or 'orrido' in the local phrase. Oak thickets
and chestnut copses clothe the slopes; cyclamens, common as daisies at
home, bend their graceful heads on every sunny bank.
At one spot four valleys join, and it is impossible to guess which
will be chosen. The road plunges into the narrowest, and forces its
way near the torrent, until, suddenly turning in steep zigzags to
scale the hillside, it breaks off altogether.[11] The carriage halts,
the driver shouts, and tall, handsome girls drop down the stairs from
the neighbouring village of Orasso, and eagerly grasp the luggage.
The ascent is continued by a rough path, which circles terrace-like
for several miles between white hamlets and green hills. Nature shows
herself here very friendly, but also very southern, and full of a
delicate subdued beauty quite apart from the more homely charm of
northern scenery.
The glen again twists round on itself, and we almost fancy ourselves in
an issueless labyrinth, when the road suddenly reappears at our feet,
and boldly rushes into a tunnel which might not be much on a railroad,
but is a great work for a country byway.
On the further side the road, blasted out of the face of the rock,
makes its entrance into an upland basin, still part of Val Canobbina.
On a brow in its centre rises the village of Finero. The festival
of the patron saint of the church had collected thither all the
neighbourhood, and given occasion for a very tournament of bowls, a
game which in the lives of Northern Italians fills the place occupied
by croquet in those of some of our curates and officers.
Beyond Finero a broad low ridge sends down a stream northward into the
Italian head of Val Centovalli, and the road rapidly descends through
pine forests. We are no longer in a mountain-maze, the hills stand
back and leave in their midst a happy oasis crowded with cultivation
and life, and blest with the gifts alike of mountain and of plain,
the fresh Alpine breeze and water, and the sun and fertility of
Lombardy. In the midst of maize-fields lie spacious well-built towns;
on the slopes, shaded by their walnut and chestnut groves, a score of
brilliant whitewashed villages.
What a living brightness in southern lands is the white which in the
north, among our duller colours and opaque atmospheres, is only a dead
chill! Beyond the Alps it seems the appropriate colour for men's homes.
We in England can ill afford to dispense with the suggestion of warmth
and dryness given by red brick and tiles. But domestic architecture is
a subject too painful for the victims of ninety-nine years' leases and
speculative builders to think about. Few Londoners can bear to look
without a shudder on the outside of what they call 'home.' If the old
fashion of white paint was chilly, it was at least better than the new
stucco squares and streets, the exact colour of our native fogs and
roadways. Why should we live in a monotone of mud, as if we were some
species of snail whose only chance in the struggle for existence lies
in making itself and its shell undistinguishable from the surroundings?
The plain in which stand the prosperous towns of Malesco and Santa
Maria Maggiore, though called Val Vigezzo, sends down its torrent to
Locarno. Such an imperceptible bank of heather as divides the Drave
from the Pusterthal still severs us from the western Val Vigezzo. In
clear weather Monte Rosa must shine upon this upland basin; in the
pouring rain all I saw of the drive to Domo d'Ossola was a narrow
picturesque river-bed and a wide sodden plain, at the end of which a
ferry close to the town gates carried us and our carriage across the
swollen waters of the Tosa.
FOOTNOTES:
[9] Domenico Macaneo, in his _Verbani lacus locorumque
adjacentium chorographica descriptio_, quoted by Studer,
_Physische Geographie der Schweiz_. These notices suggest
that the Val Verzascans may be a relic of some primitive
tribe, but I have no authority for imputing to them
ethnological importance.
[10] Between the two valleys mentioned above is Val Onsernone
(see _Alpine Guide_, p. 315, and Appendix) penetrated for
some distance by a carriage-road. In a lively article in
the fifth Jahrbuch of the Swiss Alpine Club, Herr Hoffmann
Burkhardt describes the scenery as most varied and charming,
and the road 'as a magnificent example of a mountain-road,
and a most striking evidence of the talent of the Tessiners
in this department of human industry.'
[11] The carriage-road was expected to be finished throughout
in 1875.
[Illustration: THE VAL MASINO DISTRICT.
Stanford's Geogl Estabt, 55 Charing Cross, London
London: Longmans & Co.]