VETTURINI are always hanging about the hotels at Bellaggio, to be
engaged either by the landlords or directly by travellers, although
their usual course is to refer the inquirer to the landlord, to
arrange with whom no doubt they have an understanding. But one
labours under the disadvantage, by hiring at Bellaggio, of not seeing
either the carriage or the cattle which are to convey you over the
mountain—perhaps, too, in a thunderstorm. Therefore, and because of
the high charge at the hotels, I took, before travelling, the steamer
to Colico at the head of the lake, and arranged for a carriage thence
to be waiting the arrival of the boat on the following Monday; and an
English gentleman and his wife agreed to accompany us.
* * * * *
Monday proved a fine day, without too much sun, and we left Bellaggio
by steamer at half–past ten with not a little regret. The sail up the
lake, amongst the bold mountains with which it is enclosed, and by
the nine little Italian villages on its margin, to visit which the
steamer crosses from side to side, giving thus alternately the view
from each side at different points, is very enjoyable, although it
was trying to think we were so soon to bid adieu to it all. At Colico
the mountains are rugged and bare, and the lake gets very marshy, so
that the locality is unhealthy. Here the carriage was ready for us, and
it took about three hours’ drive to reach Chiavenna, the road winding
for a long way by the Lagunes of the lake. Upon leaving Colico we were
immediately among the mountains, the road gradually ascending. The
drive was beautiful, but extremely dusty.
Chiavenna is an Italian and old Roman village town about 1100 feet
above the level of the sea, very picturesquely buried among the bluff
high mountains which closely hem it in on every side, and upon the
heights of some of which patches of snow were visible in many places.
It lies at the foot of the Splugen Pass, and on the river Maira, which,
crossed by a good stone bridge, pours a torrent of water down from the
snowy heights. We had time, both before dinner and after, to stroll
about and see the little that was to be seen. Chiavenna is celebrated
for its beer, and we thought it our duty to try it as the wine of the
country, expecting to get it in perfection, but found it very flat. We
had had it better at Bellaggio.
* * * * *
Soon after seven o’clock the following morning, we left the hotel,
and had three hours of a most laborious ascent to Campo Dolcino,
only eight miles distant. The three horses with which we started,
afterwards supplemented by a fourth, toiled up innumerable zigzags,
getting higher and higher at every turn, but making very little onward
progress; so that generally some of us would get out of the carriage,
and by climbing up at the end of one zigzag to the end of the next,
meet its slow arrival there. The distant views as we proceeded were
fine, and improved the higher we mounted; while in the narrow valley
beneath,—farther and farther beneath as we got higher and higher,—the
river was seen wending its foamy course, augmented at little intervals
by every fresh rivulet which rushed to embrace it from the lovely
waterfalls descending in long, silver–grey, horsetail streams from
the mountains opposite, in bright white contrast with the brown rocks
over which they dashed and fell. There is not much to be seen at
Campo Dolcino. It is a small village in a bleak–looking district;
but, stopping for three hours to rest the horses, look about, and
obtain lunch at the little inn, we proceeded on our way up the pass.
Soon afterwards we reached the Madesimo waterfall, which is near to
the road; and all turned out to see this famous cascade from a small
stone gallery above it, whence the water is observed rolling over and
tumbling and sinking in one grand heap 700 feet down, scattering, by
the mere force of the descent, into a cloud of spray below. Little by
little we continued ascending, passing in the way through three long
tunnels (one of them 1530 feet in length), built to protect from the
avalanches, which at certain seasons would otherwise bury the road; and
at last we reached the region of perpetual snow, where the inaccessible
Alpine roses bloom, and amidst blue gentians springing from the banks
on the roadside. Mile after mile we passed along the road cut through
the snow, not pure or clean, standing consolidated on each side, like
the Red Sea when the Israelites passed over its channel and the waters
were divided and became ‘a wall unto them on their right hand and on
their left;’ very possibly by the action of frost upon the sea as it
fled from the pressure of the fierce east wind which made the sea dry
land. But though there was no fear of our experiencing the fate of
Pharaoh’s host, our walls were slowly melting away in little trickling
streamlets at every part, under the influence of the hot sun, no doubt
to be made good again by a snowstorm from the next moisture in the air.
As we approached the top of the pass, the scene became wild and dreary.
Immense fields of snow lay spread out in a melting condition, sending
down innumerable streams, all converging on the river which descends
to Chiavenna, and by whose side, though generally at a great elevation
above, our road had all along lain, the large roaring torrent at
Chiavenna being here but a small turbid stream. But the cold–looking,
slushy snow–field afforded an admirable notion of how these rivers are
fed.
* * * * *
We reached the summit, which is 6945 feet high, and is surrounded
by lofty mountains, one of them 9925 feet, and another 10,748 feet
high, covered with their white mantle, and, by an optical illusion,
looking nearer and lower than they really were. The feeling (perhaps
arising out of our having been so lately in the midst of all that was
suggestive of heat) was strange upon finding ourselves in the vicinity
of such cold peaks, and very much as if we had been suddenly tumbled
into the arctic regions—desolate, barren, impassable retreats for man,
and yet not altogether so; for the boundary line between Switzerland
and Italy lies at the top of the pass, and not far below this great
altitude the Italian _douane_ station has been built. One would imagine
the position hardly tenable by the poor custom–house men in winter
months. The traveller into Switzerland, however, is not troubled by any
_douanier_.
Here two of the horses were liberated, and dashing down with the
remaining two along many zigzags, we gradually came in sight of the
village of Splugen, 2200 feet below, and about five miles distant from
the summit, passing by on the way a river which gradually got larger
and larger, and proved to be the source, or one of the sources, of the
Rhine. We arrived about half–past five, making it a journey of fully
ten hours to traverse a distance, between Chiavenna and Splugen, at
least as the crow flies, of not more than sixteen miles.