THE TYROL AND LAKE COMO.
CADENABBIA, LAKE COMO, August 30th.
The Rev. Dr. Bellows of New York is to blame--or "to praise"--for our
last week's wanderings; for he it was who advised me by no means to
leave out the Tyrol in our European tour--and if he could have seen
all the delight of these few days, I think he would willingly take the
responsibility. The Tyrol is less visited than Switzerland; it is not
so overrun with tourists (and this is a recommendation); but it is
hardly less worthy of a visit. To be sure, the mountains are not quite
so high as Mont Blanc and the Matterhorn (there are not so many
snow-clad peaks and glaciers), but they are high enough; there are
many that pierce the clouds, and the roads wind amid perpetual
wildness, yet not without beauty also, for at the foot of these savage
mountains lie the loveliest green valleys, which are inhabited by a
simple, brave people, who have often defended their Alpine passes with
such valor as has made them as full of historical interest as they are
of natural grandeur.
Innsbruck is the capital of the Tyrol, and the usual starting point
for a tour--but as at Ober-Ammergau we were to the west, we found a
nearer point of departure at Partenkirchen, a small town lying in the
lap of the mountains, from which a journey through Lermos, Nassereit,
Imst, Landeck and Mals, leads one through the heart of the Tyrol,
ending with the Stelvio Pass, the highest over the Alps. It is a long
day's ride to Landeck, but we ordered a carriage with a pair of stout
horses, and went to our rest full of expectation of what we should see
on the morrow.
But the night was not promising; the rain fell in torrents, and the
morning was dark and lowering; but "he that regardeth the clouds shall
not reap," so with faith we set out, and our faith was rewarded, for
soon the clouds broke away, and though they lingered in scattered
masses, sufficient to shade us from the oppressive heat of the sun,
they did not obscure the sight of the mountains and the valleys. The
rains had laid the dust and cooled the air, and all day long we were
floating through a succession of the most varied scenes, in which
there was a mingled wildness and beauty that would have delighted our
landscape artists.
The villages are less picturesque than the country. They are generally
built very compact, apparently as a security against the winter, when
storms rage through these valleys, and there is a feeling of safety in
being thus "huddled" together. The houses are of stone, with arched
passage-ways for the horses to be driven into a central yard. They
look very solid, but they are not tasteful. There are not good
accommodations for travellers. There are as yet none of those
magnificent hotels which the flood of English tourists has caused to
be built at every noted point in Switzerland; in the Tyrol one has to
depend on the inns of the country, and these, with a few exceptions,
are poor. Looking through the one long, narrow street of a Tyrolean
village, one sees little that is attractive, but much to the contrary.
Great heaps of manure lie exposed by the roadside, and often not only
before the barns, but before the houses. These seem to be regarded as
the agricultural riches of the cultivators of the soil, and are
displayed with as much pride as a shepherd would take in showing his
flocks and herds. These features of a hamlet in the Tyrol a traveller
regards with disgust, and we used often to think of the contrast
presented to one of our New England villages, the paradise of neatness
and comfort.
Such things seem to show an utter absence of taste; and yet this
people are very fond of flowers. Almost every house has a little patch
of ground for their cultivation, and the contrast is most strange
between the filth on one side and the beauty and bloom on the other.
Another feature which strikes one, is the universal reverence and
devotion. The Tyrolese, like the peasants of Bavaria, are a very
religious people. One can hardly travel a mile without coming to a
cross or a shrine by the wayside, with an image of Christ and the
Virgin. Often on the highest points of the mountains, where only the
shepherd builds his hut, that he may watch his flocks in the summer as
they feed on those elevated pastures, may be seen a little chapel,
whose white spire, gleaming in the sunset, seems as strange and lonely
as would a rude chapel built by a company of miners on some solitary
peak of the Rocky Mountains.
These summer pastures are a feature of the Tyrol. High up on the sides
of the mountains one may descry here and there, amid the masses of
rock, or the pine forest, a little oasis of green (called an _Alp_),
where a few rods of more level ground permit of cultivation. It would
seem as if these heights were almost inaccessible, as if only the
chamois could clamber up such rocks, or find a footing where only
stunted pines can grow. Yet so industrious are these simple Tyroleans,
and so hard-pressing is the necessity which compels them to use every
foot of the soil, that they follow in the path of the chamois, and
turn even the tops of the mountains into greenness, and plant their
little patches almost on the edge of the snows. Wherever the grass can
grow, the cattle and goats find sustenance on the scanty herbage. To
these mountain pastures they are driven, so soon as the snows have
melted off from the heights, and the tender grass begins to appear,
and there they are kept till the return of cold compels them to
descend. We used often to look through our spyglass at the little
clusters of huts on the very tops of the mountains, where the
shepherds, by coming together, try to lighten a little the loneliness
of their lot, banished for the time from all other human habitations.
But what a solitary existence--the only sound that greets their ears
the tinkling of the cow-bells, or the winding of the shepherd's horn,
or the chime of some chapel bell, which, perched on a neighboring
height, sends its sweet tones across the valley. Amid such scenes, we
rode through a dozen villages, past hills crowned with old castles,
and often looked down from the mountain sides into deep hollows
glistening with lakes. As we came into the valley of the Inn, we
remembered that this was all historic ground. The bridges over which
we passed have often been the scene of bloody conflicts, and in these
narrow gorges the Tyrolese have rolled down rocks and trees on the
heads of their invaders.
We slept that night at Landeck, in a very decent, comfortable inn,
kept by a good motherly hostess. The next morning we exchanged our
private carriage for the _stellwaggen_, a small diligence which runs
to Mals. Our journey was now made still more pleasant by falling in
with a party of three clergymen of the Church of England--all rectors
of important churches in or near London, who had been, like ourselves,
to Ober-Ammergau, and were returning through the Tyrol. They had been
also to the Old Catholic Conference at Bonn, where they met our friend
Dr. Schaff. They had much to say of the addresses of Dr. Doellinger,
and of the Old Catholic movement, of which they had not very high
expectations, although they thought its influence, as far as it went,
was good. We travelled together for three days. I found them (as I
have always found clergymen of the Church of England) men of culture
and education, as well as gentlemen in their manners. They proved most
agreeable travelling companions, and their pleasant conversation, as
we rode together, or walked up the steep ascents of the mountains,
gave an additional enjoyment to this most delightful journey.
This second day's ride led us over the Finstermuenz Pass in which all
the features of Tyrolean scenery of the day before were repeated with
increasing grandeur. For many miles the line of the Tyrol is close to
that of Switzerland; across a deep gorge, through which flows a rapid
river, lies the Engadine, which of late years has been a favorite
resort of Swiss tourists, and where our friend Prof. Hitchcock with
his family has been spending the summer at St. Moritz.
Towards the close of the day we descried in the distance a range of
snowy summits, and were told that this was the chain that we were to
cross on the morrow.
But all the experiences of those two days--in which we thought our
superlatives were exhausted--were surpassed on the third as we crossed
the Pass of the Stelvio. This is the highest pass in Europe, and on
this day it seemed as if we were scaling heaven itself. Having a party
of five, we procured a diligence to ourselves. We set out from Mals at
six o'clock in the morning, and crossing the rushing, foaming Adige,
began the ascent. Soon the mountains close in upon us, the Pass grows
narrower and steeper; the horses have to pull harder; we get out and
walk, partly to relieve the hard-breathing animals, but more to see at
every turn the savage wildness of the scenery. How the road turns and
twists in every way to get a foothold, doubling on itself a hundred
times in its ascent of a few miles. And look, how the grandeur grows
as we mount into this higher air! The snow-peaks are all around us,
and the snow melting in the fiery sun, feeds many streams which pour
down the rocky sides of the mountains to unite in the valley below,
and which filled the solitudes with a perpetual roar.
After such steady climbing for seven hours, at one o'clock we reached
a resting place for dinner (where we halted an hour), a shelf between
the mountains, from which, as we were now above the line of trees,
and no forests intercepted the view, we could see our way to the very
summit. The road winds in a succession of zigzags up the side of the
mountain. The distance in an air line is not perhaps more than two
miles, though it is six and a half by the road, and it took us just
two hours to reach the top. At length at four o'clock we reached the
point, over nine thousand feet above the level of the sea, where a
stone monument marks at once the summit of the Pass and the dividing
line between the Tyrol and Lombardy. All leaped from the carriage in
delight, to look around on the wilderness of mountains. To the left
was the great range of the Ortler Alps, with the Ortler Spitze rising
like a white dome above them all. At last we were among the snows. We
were above the line of vegetation, where not a tree grows, nor a blade
of grass--where all is barrenness and desolation.
The Stelvio is utterly impassable the greater part of the year. In a
few weeks more the snows will fall. By the end of September it is
considered unsafe, and the passage is attempted at one's peril, as the
traveller may be caught in a storm, and lost on the mountain.
Perhaps some of my readers will ask, what we often asked, What is the
use of building a road amid these frightful solitudes, when it cannot
be travelled the greater part of the year? What is the use of carrying
a highway up into the clouds? Why build such a Jacob's ladder into
heaven itself, since after all this is not the way to get to heaven?
It must have cost millions. But there is no population along the road
to justify the expense. It could not be built for a few poor
mountaineers. And yet it is constructed as solidly as if it were the
Appian way leading out of Rome. It is an immense work of engineering.
For leagues upon leagues it has to be supported by solid stone-work to
prevent its being washed away by torrents. The answer is easy. It is a
military road, built, if not for purposes of conquest, yet to hold
one insecure dominion. Twenty years ago the upper part of Italy was a
dependency of Austria, but an insecure one, always in a chronic state
of discontent, always on the verge of rebellion. This road was built
to enable the government at Vienna to move troops swiftly through the
Tyrol over this pass, and pour them down upon the plains of Lombardy.
Hannibal and Caesar had crossed the Alps, but the achievement was the
most daring in the annals of ancient warfare. Napoleon passed the
Great St. Bernard, but he felt the need of an easier passage for his
troops, and constructed the Simplon, not from a benevolent wish to
benefit mankind, but simply to render more secure his hold upon Italy,
as he showed by asking the engineers who came to report upon the
progress of the work, "When will the road be ready to pass over the
cannon?" Such was the design of Austria in building the road over the
Stelvio. But man proposes and God disposes. It was built with the
resources of an empire, and now that it is finished, Lombardy, by a
succession of events not anticipated in the royal councils, falls to
reunited Italy, and this road, the highest in Europe, remains, not a
channel of conquest, but a highway of civilization.
But here we are on the top of the Pass, from which we can look into
three countries--an empire, a kingdom, and a republic. Austria is
behind us, and Italy is before us, and Switzerland, throned on the
Alps, stands close beside us. After resting awhile, and feasting our
eyes on the glorious sight, we prepare to descend.
We are not out of the Tyrol, even when we have crossed the frontier,
for there is an Italian as well as an Austrian Tyrol, which has the
same features, and may be said to extend to Lake Como.
The descent from the Stelvio is quite as wonderful as the ascent.
Perhaps the impression is even greater, as the descent is more rapid,
and one realizes more the awful height and depth, as he is whirled
down the pass by a hundred zigzag turns, over bridges and through
galleries of rock, till at last, at the close of a long summer's day,
he reaches the Baths of Bormio, and plunging into one of the baths,
for which the place is so famous, washes away the dust of the journey,
and rests after the fatigue of a day never to be forgotten, in which
he made the Pass of the Stelvio.
For one fond of mountain climbing, who wished to make foot excursions
among the Alps, there are not many better points than this of the
Baths of Bormio. It is under the shadow of the great mountains, yet is
itself only about four thousand feet high, so that it is easily
accessible from below, yet it is nearly half-way up to the heights
above.
But we were on our way to Italy, and the next day continued our course
down the valley of the Adda. Hour after hour we kept going down, down,
till it seemed as if we must at last reach the very bottom of the
mountains, where their granite foundations are embedded in the solid
mass of the planet. But this descent gave us a succession of scenes of
indescribable beauty. Slowly the valley widened before us. The
mountains wore a rugged aspect. Instead of sterile masses of rock,
mantled with snows, and piercing the clouds, they began to be covered
with pines, which, like moss upon rocks, softened and beautified their
rugged breasts. As we advanced still farther, the slopes were covered
with vineyards; we were entering the land of the olive and the vine;
terrace on terrace rose on the mountain side; every shelf of rock, or
foot of ground, where a vine could grow, was covered. The rocky soil
yields the most delicious grapes. Women brought us great clusters; a
franc purchased enough for our whole party. The industry of the people
seemed more like the habits of birds building their nests on every
point of vantage, or of bees constructing their precious combs in the
trunks of old trees or in the clefts of the rocks, than the industry
of human creatures, which requires some little "verge and scope" for
its manifestations. And now along the banks of the Adda are little
plots of level ground, which admit of other cultivation. Olives trees
are mingled with the vines. There are orchards too, which remind us of
New England. Great numbers of mulberry trees are grown along the road,
for the raising of silk is one of the industries of Lombardy, and
there are thousands of willows by the water-courses, from which they
are cutting the lithe and supple branches, to be woven into baskets.
It is the glad summer time, and the land is rejoicing with the joy of
harvest. "The valleys are covered over with corn; they shout for joy;
they also sing." It was a warm afternoon, and the people were
gathering in the hay; and a pretty sight it was to see men and women
in the fields raking the rows, and very sweet to inhale the smell of
the new-mown hay, as we whirled along the road.
These are pretty features of an Italian landscape; I wish that the
impression was not marred by some which are less pleasant. But the
comfort of the people does not seem to correspond to their industry.
There is no economy in their labor, everything is done in the
old-fashioned way, and in the most wasteful methods. I did not see a
mowing or a reaping machine in the Tyrol, either on this or the other
side of the mountains. They use wooden ploughs, drawn by cows as often
as by oxen, and so little management have they, that one person is
employed, generally a woman, to lead the miserable team, or rather
pull them along. I have seen a whole family attached to a pair of
sorry cattle--the man holding the plough, the woman pulling the rope
ahead, and a poor little chap, who did his best, whipping behind. The
crops are gathered in the same slipshod way. The hay is all carried in
baskets on the backs of women. It was a pitiful sight to see them
groaning under their loads, often stopping by the roadside to rest. I
longed to see one of our Berkshire farmers enter the hay-field with a
pair of lusty oxen and a huge cart, which would transport at a single
load a weight, such as would break the backs of all the women in an
Italian village.
Of course women subjected to this kind of work, are soon bent out of
all appearance of beauty; and when to this is added the goitre, which
prevails to a shocking extent in these mountain valleys, they are
often but wretched hags in appearance.
And yet the Italians have a "gift of beauty," if it were only not
marred by such untoward circumstances. Many a bright, Spanish-looking
face looked out of windows, and peered from under the arches, as we
rattled through the villages; and the children were almost always
pretty, even though in rags. With their dark brown faces, curly hair,
and large, beautiful eyes, they might have been the models of
Murillo's beggars.
We dined at Tirano, in a hotel which once had been a monastery, and
whose spacious rooms--very comfortable "cells" indeed--and ample
cellars for their wines, and large open court, surrounded with covered
arches, where the good fathers could rest in the heat of the day,
showed that these old monks, though so intent on the joys of the next
world, were not wholly indifferent to the "creature comforts" of this.
Night brought us to Sondrio, where in a spacious and comfortable inn,
which we remember with much satisfaction after our long rides, we
slept the sleep of innocence and peace.
And now we are fairly entered into Italy. The mountains are behind us,
and the lakes are before us. Friday brought us to Lake Como, and we
found the relief of exchanging our ride in a diligence along a hot and
dusty road for a sail over this most enchanting of Italian, perhaps I
might say of European, lakes; for after seeing many in different
countries, it seems to me that this is "better than all the waters" of
Scotland or Switzerland. It is a daughter of the Alps, lying at their
feet, fed by their snows, and reflecting their giant forms in its
placid bosom. And here on its shores we have pitched our tent to rest
for ten days. For three months we have been travelling almost without
stopping, sometimes, to avoid the heat, riding all night--as from
Amsterdam to Hamburg, and from Prague to Vienna. The last week, though
very delightful, has been one of great fatigue, as for four days in
succession we rode twelve or thirteen hours a day in a carriage or
diligence. After being thus jolted and knocked about, we are quite
willing to rest. Nature is very well, but it is a pleasant change once
in a while to return to civilization; to have the luxury of a bath,
and to sleep quietly in our beds, like Christians, instead of racing
up and down in the earth, as if haunted by an evil spirit. And so we
have decided to "come apart and rest awhile," before starting on
another campaign.
We are in the loveliest spot that ever a tired mortal chose to pillow
his weary head. If any of my readers are coming abroad for a summer,
and wish for a place of _rest_, let me recommend to them this quiet
retreat. Cadenabbia! it hath a pleasant sound, and it is indeed an
enchanting spot. The mountains are all around us, to shut out the
world, and the gentle waters ripple at our feet. We do not spend the
time in making excursions, for in this balmy air it is a sufficient
luxury to exist. We are now writing at a table under an avenue of fine
old trees, which stretch along the lake to the Villa Carlotta, a
princely residence, which belongs to a niece of the Emperor of
Germany, where oranges and lemons are growing in the open air, and
hang in clusters over our heads, and where one may pick from the trees
figs and pomegranates. Here we sit in a paradise of beauty, and send
our loving thoughts to friends over the sea.
And then, if tired of the shore, we have but to step into a boat, and
float "at our own sweet will." This is our unfailing resource when the
day is over. Boats are lying in front of the hotel, and strong-armed
rowers are ready to take us anywhere. Across the lake, which is here
but two miles wide, is Bellaggio, with its great hotels along the
water, and its numerous villas peering out from the dense foliage of
trees. How they glow in the last rays of the sunset, and how brilliant
the lights along the shore at evening. Sometimes we sail across to
visit the villas, or to look among the hotels for friendly American
names. But more commonly we sail up and down, only for the pleasure of
the motion, now creeping along by the shore, under the shadow of the
mountains, and now "launching out into the deep," and rest, like one
becalmed, in the middle of the lake. We do not want to go anywhere,
but only to float and dream. Row gently, boatman! Softly and slowly!
_Lentissimo!_ Hush, there is music on the shore. We stop and listen:
"My soul was an enchanted boat,
That like a sleeping swan did float,
Upon the waves of that sweet singing."
But better than music or the waters is the heaven that is above the
waters, and that is reflected in the tranquil bosom of the lake.
Leaning back on the cushioned seat, we look up to the stars as old
friends, as they are the only objects that we recognize in the heavens
above or the earth beneath. How we come to love any object that is
familiar. I confess it is with a tender feeling that I look up to
constellations that have so often shined upon me in other lands, when
other eyes looked up with mine. How sweet it is, wherever we go, to
have at least one object that we have seen before; one face that is
not strange to us, the same on land or sea, in Europe and America.
Thus in our travels I have learned to look up to the stars as the most
constant friends. They are the only things in nature that remain
faithful. The mountains change as we move from country to country. The
rivers know us not as they glide away swiftly to the sea. But the
stars are always the same. The same constellations glow in the heavens
to-night that shone on Julius Caesar when he led his legions through
these mountains to conquer the tribes of Germany. Caesar is gone, and
sixty generations since, but Orion and the Pleiades remain. The same
stars are here that shone on Bethlehem when Christ was born; the same
that now shine in distant lands on holy graves; and that will look
down with pitying eyes on our graves when we are gone. Blessed lights
in the heavens, to illumine the darkness of our earthly existence! Are
they not the best witnesses for our Almighty Creator,
"Forever singing as they shine
The hand that made us is Divine?"
He who hath set his bow in the cloud, hath set in the firmament that
is above the clouds, these everlasting signs of His own faithfulness.
Who that looks up at that midnight sky can ever again doubt His care
and love, as he reads these unchanging memorials of an unchanging God?