one on the slopes of Monte Tofana! If narrow and steep is the way and
hard and toilsome the climb this Monte Tofana route most certainly
repays one when it reaches the Falzarego Pass (6,945 feet high) which is
certainly an earthly Paradise! One can not aptly describe a view like
that! It is all a picture; as if every part was purposely what it is,
here rocky, here green, here snowy, with summits, valleys, ravines and
villages and even a partly ruined castle to form a whole such as an
artist or poet would revel in.
After a pause on the summit of the Pass, again comes a steep descent,
as the drive is resumed, which continues to Andraz, where déjeuner
is taken. One can not live on air or scenery and even the most
indefatigable sightseer sometimes turns with longing to luncheon! Then
one returns with added zest to the feast of eye and soul. And at Andraz,
as one lingers awhile after luncheon on that high mountain terrace,
a lovelier scene than that spread before the eye could scarcely be
imagined. Indeed it is a "dream-scene," and as seen in the sleepy
stillness of the early afternoon, when the shadows are already playing
with the lights and gradually overcoming them, it seems like fancy, not
reality.
Again the carriage is taken and soon the road is climbing once more,
this time giving fine views of the Sella group of peaks and going
through a series of picturesque valleys. At Arabba (5,255 feet), a
pretty little village, the final ascent to Pordoi begins. The
scenery undergoes a change. It becomes more wild and barren and the
characteristics of the high Alps appear. The hour begins to be late and
it becomes cold, but the light still lingers as the carriage reaches the
summit of the pass and stops at the new Hôtel Pordoi (7,020 feet high)
facing the weird, fantastic shapes of the Rosengarten and the Langkofel,
on the one side and on the other the snowy Marmolata and the summits
about Cortina....
The following morning the start is made for Botzen. The way steadily
descends for hours, past the pretty hamlets of Canazei, Campitello and
Vigo di Fassa, surrounded by an imposing array of Dolomite peaks. After
crossing the Karer Pass the scenery becomes much more soft and pastoral.
Below the pass, most beautifully situated is a little green lake called
the Karer-See....
At Botzen the drive through the Dolomites ends. At best it gives but
a glimpse of this delightful region! That glimpse leaves a lasting
impression, not of snowy summits and glistening glaciers, but of
wonderful rocks and more wonderful coloring and of great peaks of
fantastic form, set in a garden spot of green. And Botzen is a fitting
terminus. It dates far back to the Middle Ages. It boasts of churches,
houses and public buildings of artistic merit and architectural beauty
and over all there lingers an atmosphere of rest and refinement,
refreshing to see, where there might have been the noisy bustle and
hopeless vulgarity of so many places similarly situated.
There is plenty going on, nevertheless, for Botzen is quite a little
commercial center in its own way, but with it there is this charm
of dignified repose. One wanders through the town under the cool
colonnades, strolls into some ancient cloisters, kneels for a moment in
some finely carved church and then goes out again to the open, to see
far above the little city that beautiful background of the Dolomite
peaks, dominated by the wonderfully impressive and fantastic Rosengarten
range, golden red in the western sun. With such a view experience may
well lapse into memory, to linger on so long as the mind possesses the
power of recalling the past.
CORTINA[27]
BY AMELIA B. EDWARDS
Situate on the left bank of the Boita, which here runs nearly due north
and south, with the Tre Croci pass opening away behind the town to the
east, and the Tre Sassi Pass widening before it to the west, Cortina
lies in a comparatively open space between four great mountains, and is
therefore less liable to danger from bergfalls than any other village
not only in the Val d'Ampezo but in the whole adjacent district. For
the same reason, it is cooler in summer than either Caprile, Agordo,
Primiero, or Predazzo; all of which, tho' more central as stopping
places, and in many respects more convenient, are yet somewhat too
closely hemmed in by surrounding heights. The climate of Cortina is
temperate throughout the year. Ball gives the village an elevation of
4,048 feet above the level of the sea; and one of the parish priests--an
intelligent old man who has devoted many years of his life to collecting
the flora of the Ampezzo--assured me that he had never known the
thermometer drop so low as fifteen degrees[28] of frost in even the
coldest winters. The soil, for all this, has a bleak and barren look;
the maize (here called "grano Turco") is cultivated, but does not
flourish; and the vine is unknown. But then agriculture is not a
specialty of the Ampezzo Thal, and the wealth of Cortina is derived
essentially from its pasture-lands and forests.
These last, in consequence of the increased and increasing value of
timber, have been lavishly cut down of late years by the Commune--too
probably at the expense of the future interests of Cortina. For the
present, however, every inn, homestead, and public building bespeaks
prosperity. The inhabitants are well-fed and well-drest. Their fairs
and festivals are the most considerable in all the South Eastern Tyrol;
their principal church is the largest this side of St. Ulrich; and their
new Gothic Campanile, 250 feet high, might suitably adorn the piazza of
such cities as Bergamo or Belluno.
The village contains about 700 souls, but the population of the Commune
numbers over 2,500. Of these, the greater part, old and young, rich and
poor, men, women, and children, are engaged in the timber trade. Some
cut the wood; some transport it. The wealthy convey it on trucks drawn
by fine horses which, however, are cruelly overworked. The poor harness
themselves six or eight in a team, men, women, and boys together, and
so, under the burning summer sun, drag loads that look as if they might
be too much for an elephant....
To ascend the Campanile and get the near view over the village, was
obviously one of the first duties of a visitor; so, finding the door
open and the old bellringer inside, we mounted laboriously to the
top--nearly a hundred feet higher than the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
Standing here upon the outer gallery above the level of the great
bells, we had the village and valley at our feet. The panorama, tho' it
included little which we had not seen already, was fine all around, and
served to impress the mainland marks upon our memory. The Ampezzo Thal
opened away to north and south, and the twin passes of the Tre Croci and
Tre Sassi intersected it to east and west. When we had fixt in our minds
the fact that Landro and Bruneck lay out to the north, and Perarolo to
the south; that Auronzo was to be found somewhere on the other side of
the Tre Croci; and that to arrive at Caprile it was necessary to go over
the Tre Sassi, we had gained something in the way of definite topography.
The Marmolata and Civetta, as we knew by our maps, were on the side
of Caprile; and the Marmarole on the side of Auronzo. The Pelmo, left
behind yesterday, was peeping even now above the ridge of the Rochetta;
and a group of fantastic rocks, so like the towers and bastions of a
ruined castle that we took them at first sight for the remains of some
medieval stronghold, marked the summit of the Tre Sassi to the west.
"But what mountain is that far away to the south?" we asked, pointing in
the direction of Perarolo.
"Which mountain, Signora?"
"That one yonder, like a cathedral front with two towers."
The old bellringer shaded his eyes with one trembling hand, and peered
down the valley.
"Eh," he said, "it is some mountain on the Italian side."
"But what is it called?"
"Eh," he repeated, with a puzzled look, "who knows? I don't know that I
ever noticed it before."
Now it was a very singular mountain--one of the most singular and the
most striking that we saw throughout the tour. It was exactly like
the front of Notre Dame, with one slender aiguille, like a flagstaff,
shooting up from the top of one of its battlemented towers. It was
conspicuous from most points on the left bank of the Boita; but the best
view, as I soon after discovered, was from the rising ground behind
Cortina, going up through the fields in the direction of the Begontina
torrent.
To this spot we returned again and again, fascinated as much, perhaps,
by the mystery in which it was enveloped, as by the majestic outline of
this unknown mountain, to which, for want of a better, we gave the name
of Notre Dame. For the old bellringer was not alone in his ignorance.
Ask whom we would, we invariably received the same vague reply--it was
a mountain "on the Italian side." They knew no more; and some, like our
friend of the Campanile, had evidently "not noticed it before."
IX
ALPINE RESORTS
THE CALL OF THE MOUNTAINS[29]
BY FREDERIC HARRISON
Once more--perhaps for the last time--I listen to the unnumbered
tinkling of the cow-bells on the slopes--"the sweet bells of the
sauntering herd"--to the music of the cicadas in the sunshine, and the
shouts of the neat herdlads, echoing back from Alp to Alp. I hear the
bubbling of the mountain rill, I watch the emerald moss of the pastures
gleaming in the light, and now and then the soft white mist creeping
along the glen, as our poet says, "puts forth an arm and creeps from
pine to pine." And see, the wild flowers, even in this waning season of
the year, the delicate lilac of the dear autumn crocus, which seems to
start up elf-like out of the lush grass, the coral beads of the rowan,
and the beech-trees just begun to wear their autumn jewelry of old gold.
As I stroll about these hills, more leisurely, more thoughtfully than I
used to do of old in my hot mountaineering days, I have tried to think
out what it is that makes the Alpine landscape so marvelous a tonic to
the spirit--what is the special charm of it to those who have once felt
all its inexhaustible magic. Other lands have rare beauties, wonders of
their own, sights to live in the memory for ever.
In France, in Italy, in Spain, in Greece and in Turkey, I hold in memory
many a superb landscape. From boyhood upward I thirsted for all kinds of
Nature's gifts, whether by sea, or by river, lake, mountain, or forest.
For sixty years at least I have roved about the white cliffs, the moors,
the riversides, lakes, and pastures of our own islands from Penzance to
Cape Wrath, from Beachy Head to the Shetlands. I love them all. But
they can not touch me, as do the Alps, with the sense at once of
inexhaustible loveliness and of a sort of conscious sympathy with every
fiber of man's heart and brain. Why then is this so?
I find it in the immense range of the moods in which Nature is seen
in the Alps, as least by those who have fully absorbed all the forms,
sights, sounds, wonders, and adventures they offer. An hour's walk will
show them all in profound contrast and yet in exquisite harmony. The
Alps form a book of Nature as wide and as mysterious as Life.
Earth has no scenes of placid fruitfulness more balmy than the banks of
one of the larger lakes, crowded with vineyards, orchards, groves and
pastures, down to the edge of its watery mirror, wherein, beside a
semi-tropical vegetation, we see the image of some medieval castle, of
some historic tower, and thence the eye strays up to sunless gorges,
swept with avalanches, and steaming with feathery cascades; and higher
yet one sees against the skyline ranges of terrific crags, girt with
glaciers, and so often wreathed in storm clouds.
All that Earth has of most sweet, softest, easiest, most suggestive of
langor and love, of fertility and abundance--here is seen in one vision
beside all that Nature has most hard, most cruel, most unkind to
Man--where life is one long weary battle with a frost bitten soil, and
every peasant's hut has been built up stone by stone, and log by log,
with sweat and groans, and wrecked hopes. In a few hours one may pass
from an enchanted garden, where every sense is satiated, and every
flower and leaf and gleam of light is intoxication, up into a wilderness
of difficult crags and yawning glaciers, which men can reach only by
hard-earned skill, tough muscle and iron nerves....
The Alps are international, European, Humanitarian. Four written
languages are spoken in their valleys, and ten times as many local
dialects. The Alps are not especially Swiss--I used to think they were
English--they belong equally to four nations of Europe; they are the
sanatorium and the diversorium of the civilized world, the refuge, the
asylum, the second home of men and women famous throughout the centuries
for arts, literature, thought, religion. The poet, the philosopher,
the dreamer, the patriot, the exile, the bereaved, the reformer, the
prophet, the hero--have all found in the Alps a haven of rest, a new
home where the wicked cease from troubling, where men need neither fear
nor suffer. The happy and the thoughtless, the thinker and the sick--are
alike at home here. The patriot exile inscribed on his house on Lake
Leman--"Every land is fatherland to the brave man." What he might have
written is--"This land is fatherland to all men." To young and old,
to strong and weak, to wise and foolish alike, the Alps are a second
fatherland.
INTERLAKEN AND THE JUNGFRAU[30]
B.T. ARCHIBALD CAMPBELL KNOWLES
It is hard to find a prettier spot than Interlaken. Situated between two
lovely lakes, surrounded by wooded heights, and lying but a few miles
from the snowy Jungfrau, it is like a jewel richly set. From Lucerne
over the Brunig, from Meiringen over the Grimsel come the travelers,
passing on their way the Lake of Brienz, with the waterfall of the
Giessbach, on its southern side.
From Berne over Lake Thun, from the Rhône Valley over the Gemmi or
through the Simmenthal come the tourists, seeing as they come the white
peaks of the Oberland. And Interlaken welcomes them all, and rests them
for their closer relations with the High Alps by trips to the region
of the Lauterbrunnen, Grindelwald, and Mürren, and the great mountain
plateaux looking down upon them. Interlaken is not a climbing center.
Consequently mountaineering is little in evidence, conversation about
ascents is seldom heard, and ice-axes, ropes, and nailed boots are seen
more often in shop windows than in the streets.
Interlaken is not like some other Swiss towns. Berne, Geneva, Zurich,
and Lucerne are places possessing notable churches, museums, and
monuments of the past, having a social life of their own and being
distinguished in some special way, as centers of culture and education.
Interlaken, however, has little life apart from that made by the throngs
of visitors who gather here in the summer. There is little to see except
a group of old monastic buildings, and in Unterseen and elsewhere some
fine old carved chalets, but none of these receives much attention.
The attraction, on what one may call the natural side, centers in the
softly beautiful panorama of woods and meadows, green hills and snow
peaks which opens to the eye, and on the social side in the busy little
promenade and park of the Höheweg, bordered with hotels, shops, and
gardens. Here is ever a changing picture in the height of the season,
in fact, quite kaleidoscopic as railways and steamboats at each end of
Interlaken send their passengers to mingle in the passing crowd.
All "sorts and conditions of men" are here, and representatives of
antagonistic nations meet in friendly intercourse.
On the hotel terraces and in the little cafés and tea rooms, one hears
a babel of voices, every nation of Europe seeming to speak in its own
native tongue. Life goes easily. There is a gaiety in the little town
that is infectious. It is a sort of busy idleness. "To trip or not to
trip" is the question. If the affirmative, then a rush to the mountain
trains and comfortable cabs. If the negative, then a turning to the
shops, where pretty things worthy of Paris or London are seen side
by side with Swiss carvings and Swiss embroidery and many little
superficial souvenirs. As the contents of the shops are exhibited in the
windows, so the character of the visitors is shown by the crowds, and
the life of the place is seen in the constant ebb and flow of the people
on the Höheweg.
Interlaken is undoubtedly a tourist center, for few trips to Switzerland
overlook or omit this delightful spot. Thousands come here, who never go
any nearer the High Alps. They are quite content to sit on the benches
of the Höheweg, listening to the music and enjoying the view. There is a
casino, most artistically planned, with plashing fountains, shady paths,
and wonderful flowerbeds. Here many persons pass the day, and, contrary
to what one might expect, it is quiet and restful, lounging in that
parklike garden.
For, notwithstanding "the madding crowd," Interlaken is a little gem of
a mountain town, with an undertone of repose and nobility, as if the
spirit of the Alps asserted herself, reigning, as one might say, for
all not ruling. And always smiling at the people, as it were, is the
majestic Jungfrau, ever seeming close at hand, altho' eight miles
away....
The pleasures of this little Swiss resort are exhaustless. The wooded
hills of the Rugen give innumerable walks amid beautiful forests, with
all their wealth of pine and larch and hardwood, their moss-clad rocks
and waving ferns. In that pleasant shade hours may be passed close
to nature. The lakes not only offer delightful water trips, but also
charming excursions along the wooded shores, sometimes high above
the lakes, giving varying views of great beauty. While, ever as with
beckoning fingers, the great peaks, snow-capped or rock-summitted, call
one across the verdant meadows into the higher valleys of Kienthal,
Lauterbrunnen, Grindelwaid, and Kandersteg, to the terraced heights
above or up amid the great wild passes.
Interlaken is, above all, a garden of green. Perhaps the unusual amount
of rain which falls to the lot of this valley accounts for its verdure.
In any event, park, woods, meadow, garden, even the mountain sides are
green, a vari-colored green, and interspersed with an abundance
of flowers. Nowhere is the eye offended by anything inartistic or
unpicturesque, but, on the contrary, the charm is so comprehensive that
the visitor looks from place to place, from this bit to that bit, and
ever sees new beauty.
To complete all, to accentuate in the minds of some this impression of
green, is the majestic Jungfrau. Other views may be grander and more
magnificent, but no view of the Jungfrau can compare in loveliness to
that from Interlaken. A great white glistening mass, far up above green
meadows, green forests, and green mountains, rises this peak, a shining
summit of white. Fitly named the Virgin, the Jungfrau gives her
benediction to Interlaken, serenely smiling at the valley and at the
town lying so quietly at her feet--the Jungfrau crowned with snow,
Interlaken drest in green!
In the golden glory of the sun, in the silver shimmer of the moon, the
Jungfrau beckons, the Jungfrau calls! "Come," she seems to say, "come
nearer! Come up to the heights! Come close to the running waters!
Come." And that invitation falls on no unwilling ears, but in to the
Grindelwald and to the Lauterbrunnen and up to Mürren go those who love
the majestic Jungfrau! What a wonderful trip this is! It may shatter
some ideals in being taken to such a height in a railway train, but even
against one's convictions as to the proper way of seeing a mountain,
when all has been said, the fact remains that this trip is wonderful
beyond words. There is a strangeness in taking a train which leaves a
garden of green in the early morning and in a few hours later, after
valley and pass and tunnel, puts one out on snow fields over 11,000 feet
above the sea, where are seen vast stretches of white, almost level with
the summit of the Jungfrau close at hand, and below, stretching for
miles, on the one side the great Aletsch Glacier, and on the other side
the green valleys enclosed by the everlasting hills!
The route is by way of Lauterbrunnen, Wengen, and the Scheidegg, and
after skirting the Eiger Glacier going by tunnel into the very bowels of
the mountain. At Eigerwand, Rotstock, and Eismeer are stations, great
galleries blasted out of the rock, with corridors leading to openings
from which one has marvelous views.[31] Eismeer looks directly upon the
huge sea of snow and ice, with immense masses of dazzling white so close
as to make one reel with awe and astonishment. In fact, this view is
really oppressive in its wild magnificence, so near and so grand is it.
The Jungfraujoch is different. One is out in the open, so to speak;
one walks over that vast plateau of snow over 11,000 feet high in the
glorious sunlight, above most of the nearer peaks and looking down at a
beautiful panorama. On one side of this plateau is the Jungfrau, on the
other the Mönch, either of which can be climbed from here in about three
hours.
Yet the eye lingers longer in the direction of the Aletsch Glacier than
anywhere else, this frozen river running for miles and turning to the
right at the little green basin of water full of pieces of floating ice,
called the Marjelen Lake, or See, at the foot of the Eggishorn, which is
unique and lovely. Long ago it was formed in this corner of the glacier,
and its blue waters are really melted snow, over which float icebergs
shining in the sun. In such a position the lake underlaps the glacier
for quite a distance, forming a low vaulted cavern in the ice. Every now
and then one of these little bergs overbalances itself and turns over,
the upper side then being a deep blue, and the lower side, which was
formerly above, being a pure white.
Again turning toward the green valleys, one with the eye of an artist,
who can perceive and differentiate varying shades of color, can not but
admit that the Bernese Oberland is "par excellence" first. Even south of
the Alps the verdure does not excel or even equal that to be seen here.
There is something incomparably lovely about the Oberland valleys. It
is indescribable, indefinable, for when one has exhausted the most
extravagant terms of description, he feels that he has failed to picture
the scene as he desired. Yet if one word should be chosen to convey the
impression which the Oberland makes, the word would be "color." For
whether one regards the snow summits as setting off the valleys, or the
green meadows as setting off the peaks, it matters not, for the secret
of their beauty lies in the richness and variety of the exquisite
coloring wherein many wonderful shades of green predominate.
THE ALTDORF OF WILLIAM TELL[32]
BY W.D. M'CRACKAN
Let it be said at once that, altho' the name of Altdorf is indissolubly
linked with that of William Tell, the place arouses an interest which
does not at all depend upon its associations with the famous archer.
From the very first it gives one the impression of possessing a distinct
personality, of ringing, as it were, to a note never heard before, and
thus challenging attention to its peculiarities.
As you approach Altdorf from Flüelen, on the Lake of Lucerne, by the
long white road, the first houses you reach are large structures of the
conventional village type, plain, but evidently the homes of well-to-do
people, and some even adorned with family coats-of-arms. In fact, this
street is dedicated to the aristocracy, and formerly went by the name
of the Herrengasse, the "Lane of the Lords." Beyond these fashionable
houses is an open square, upon which faces a cosy inn--named, of course,
after William Tell; and off on one side the large parish church, built
in cheap baroco style, but containing a few objects of interest....