M. DELLA NEVE--VAL DI DENTRO--BORMIO--VAL DI BRAULIO--SANTA MARIA--THE
STELVIO--TRAFOI--THE ORTLER.
Where nature seems to sit alone
Majestic on her craggy throne.--WARTON.
_August 16._--Last night when we returned to our beds the snow was
still falling: but we took it for granted that it could not continue
into a third day, and, therefore, ordered breakfast for 4.40 this
morning. True to time were we, and so was the breakfast. Nor were we
disappointed in our anticipation of the weather. It had arranged itself
favourably. Snow must have ceased to fall for some hours, for it was
beginning to disappear from the valley bottom; nor was the cloud canopy
either low down, or quite unbroken. With the expectation, then, that
the day would be equal to our wishes, at 5 A.M. we were off. As to
that indispensable part of the ceremony of taking leave--the bill--on
so promising a morning I was not sorry, perhaps I was rather pleased,
that the good man should find in it a reason for looking back with
satisfaction to our visit, and with hope that it might be repeated.
In respect of his bill the most attentive of Grison landlords, even
one who on fête-days has his thoughts turned towards Paradise, and is
desirous of helping others to take the right road to it, is likely to
prove only a Grison man, or simply only a man. Francs here are very
precious, and the opportunities for making them are very limited: we
will, therefore, condone our friend’s inability to withhold himself
from turning his opportunity to the best account. As we were leaving
the house, good nature, or, perhaps, conscience, prompted him to follow
us into the road with a black bottle and two little glasses from the
table on the left side of the hall. The morning was cold, and we ought
to take something to fortify us against the cold. We declined on the
ground that we had just breakfasted. Would we then fill our flasks?
We should feel the want of something strong in crossing the mountain.
This offer Christian in part accepted; and having again shaken hands,
we went straight across the sloppy meadow, and began the ascent of the
eastern mountain.
The first stage up to the forest was almost as sloppy as the valley
bottom. The path through the forest was better. Above the forest the
snow was dry. At 6 o’clock we had reached Trepalle, a scattered hamlet
with a church. Nobody was stirring. Immediately beyond Trepalle is a
little valley, but as it is very much higher than that of Livigno, it
was completely buried in snow. So was every mountain side, and top
within our range of vision all round. It was a polar scene. It gave us
also a good idea of what these valleys and mountains must be in winter
to the eye. What strikes one who comes on such a scene in summer is
that the distinctions of colour are gone: the bright green prairie, the
sunburnt houses, the dark green forest, the foamy silver stream, the
brown green alpine pastures, the gray, or still darker crags, are now
all alike. There is a grandeur in this, but a diminution of interest.
You soon tire of it; but of the colour-varied scene you never tire. A
little further on we came on a large flock of Bergamesque, Roman-nosed
sheep, attended by a tall, shaggy-headed shepherd in a sheepskin cloak.
Months it seemed must have passed since he last washed his face, or
combed his hair, or beard. His flock were bleating piteously, being
pinched by the cold and their empty stomachs, for since the ground had
been buried, which up here must have been at an early hour yesterday,
they could have had nothing to eat. He seemed to have some difficulty
in preventing them from straying; his object being to keep them on the
side of the hill on which the sun would first melt the snow. Some way
beyond the shepherd and his flock, as we were nearing the top of the
second range, where the new snow was in places two or three feet deep,
we lost our buried path, and were some little time before we recovered
it: but this was a matter of no consequence as we could not miss the
right direction. Just on the top of this ridge we came on a black lake,
with a black shaly margin; all the blacker because everything else was
white.
From this point it was all down hill to the valley that would take
us to Bormio. As soon as we could command the valley a strange sight
opened on our view. The main valley, its ramifications, and the spurs
of mountains protruded into it, were, at the distance from which we
saw them, and with at the time no sunshine to light them up, of a
dark, almost black aspect, for green hardly showed at all in their
colouring. This blackness was in the valley bottoms, and about half-way
up the mountain sides. At that height the snow began; and it began
at an uniform height on all the mountains bounding the valley, and
projecting into it. The snow line was as true, as if it had been set
out by human hand. The upper part of the mountains, down to about half
their height, was with perfect regularity uniformly white; the lower
half as uniformly black. The division between the two colours had
been made quite fairly, and the line had been drawn quite truly. We
soon reached Foscagno, from which the Pass takes its name. Foscagno
was just on the line where to-day the snow ceased. Semogo came next,
still on the mountain side. Isolaccia was the first town in the valley.
Then Pedenosso. After that Torripiano and Premadio. The number and
size of the churches might alone have shown us that we were in Italy.
By the time we had reached the valley the sun was shining brightly,
and down in the bottom, though it is wide and airy, we felt midsummer
heat. At Premadio we saw just the tip of the Ortler, peering over the
intervening ranges, and looking like a snow _châlet_ perched on the
summit of the highest of them. At 11 o’clock, not having had any delays
or halts, we reached the hotel of the New Baths of Bormio.
The altitude of the house is 4,580 feet. This, as it faces to the
south, ought to admit of its having a pretty good summer climate,
though I suppose considerable deductions must be made, particularly in
the first part of the summer, for the contiguity of the vast snowfields
of the Ortler, and for the other snowy eminences behind it. Its
immediate _entourage_ has a bleak, starved, naked aspect, the ground
being poor, and only partially clothed with vegetation. This might
at first be wearisome, and then repulsive, to one who was obliged to
remain a week or more at the place, though it is just what gives it its
character, and makes it interesting to the passing pedestrian, who only
sees what can be seen in coming and going, and whose stay is limited to
the time that is requisite for his dinner within doors, and his cigar
on the terrace outside. He notes only with satisfaction the poverty of
the immediate neighbourhood, the grand contiguous mountain masses, and
the rich colouring of the long valley below open to the midday sun;
and, before this source of satisfaction has been exhausted, is on
his way to other scenes, full of pleasant anticipations for himself,
seasoned perhaps a little with the commiseration he feels for those he
leaves in quarantine, at all events at anchor, at Bormio. If you are to
stay at a place, I almost think it preferable to be low down (of course
not quite in the valley bottom) than to be high up. In the latter
case you have a feeling that you have already seen everything. At all
events you have no desire to go down into the valley: that is what, as
a matter of fact and practice, no one does. But if your station is low
down, you always feel an impulse on you to climb up some mountain, or
to go somewhere or other to get a view, or to see something more of the
country. We must except from this remark those cases where the height
and the view are just what one has come for.
At 1 P.M., that is to say after a stay of two hours, which is about
the right time for a midday halt, which is to include one’s dinner,
and which, too, seemed time enough for Bormio, we began the ascent to
the Stelvio. As soon as you face up towards the Pass its distinctive
character begins to display itself. The first mile brings you to the
old Baths, constructed on a lofty cliff-niche, like an eagle’s nest,
high above the gloomy gorge of the Adda. As you pass the waste overflow
of the hot spring, you feel that the air by its side has received some
of its warmth. But this hardly withdraws your attention for a moment
from the gray ravine, and the gray mountain, below steep and deep,
and above steep and high. Beyond this the road, still carried high
up on the right hand mountain flank, becomes more impressive. On the
left, beyond the point at which the Adda enters the Pass from the Val
Fraele, the road bends somewhat to the right, and you enter a still
more impressive stage of the Pass. You are now in the gorge of the
Braulio. The mighty Braulio is on your left, and the south-western
buttresses of the still mightier Monte Cristallo are on your right. The
Braulio has here, and for some miles on, been cut down in mountain-high
perpendicular precipices of a yellowish-brown, for the rock is
dolomitic. On that side no road could have been constructed; but so
much the better, for it is very grand as looked at from the road on
the opposite side. On your side, the road side, the mountains are not
mountain walls, but mountain scarps. The scarps, however, are so steep,
and so seamed with _couloirs_, that there was the utmost difficulty
in making the road, as there still is, and ever will continue to be
in maintaining it. As you look up the mountain side from the road,
you see, above, masses of detached rock, as big as barns, temporarily
arrested in their descent, and ready on the slightest provocation to
crash down on the road. Sooner or later they all must come. At the
_couloirs_ is the great danger and the great difficulty. In them there
is no solid foundation for the road that must be carried across them.
Its foundation, therefore, had to be formed of masonry. And when it
had thus been carried across them, it was always exposed to be swept
away at any time by a storm, which for the nonce makes the _couloir_
the channel of a raging torrent of commingled water and rocks. It,
therefore, became necessary first to put the road in a masonry tunnel,
and then to fill the _couloir_ immediately above it with solid masonry,
in order that the commingled torrent of water and rocks might not dash
upon it, but rush down over it. And, again, in places where there was
not a _couloir_, but still, where rocks in bad weather might fall
upon the road, or avalanches in spring, similar precautions became
necessary: in such places the road must be either an excavated tunnel,
or a constructed culvert. These precautions are indispensable both
for the maintenance of the road, and for the protection of travellers
in bad weather. And however strongly the work may be done, it has
frequently to be renewed, for it is frequently broken in, or swept
away. In several places we saw men at work repairing the damages of
this kind of last spring. In some places the rocks that had fallen
on the roof of the tunnels and galleries had done them more or less
injury; in others it was the torrents that had dilapidated the masonry.
Everything here is impressive: the deep gorge with the angry stream far
below the road; the iron-faced mountain precipices opposite to you;
the steep mountain side above you, which you see is only waiting for
a storm to mobilize it; and which storm, as you look up at the great
rocks caught on the loose _débris_, you think can hardly be needed for
bringing them down; because, indeed, for anything you can see, there
is nothing to keep them from falling upon you while you are observing
their massiveness and position. If you look down into the gorge your
flesh creeps; if you look across it, your mind is solemnized by a sense
of the grandeur of those sheer mountain-high precipices; if you look up
at the rocks ready to fall upon you, your mind is awed by a sense of
the inexorableness of nature.
Beyond this stage, which had been, pretty generally, for some miles,
more or less on a level along the mountain flank, the scene changes.
You now by a steep ascent cut off several zigzags, and reach a higher
level, at the further end of which, some three miles on, is the fourth
_cantoniera_, that of Santa Maria, where your day’s work will end,
and you will take up your quarters for the night. On this higher
level we again encountered the snow. The day had been bright, and
the snow-plough had not been used here, and so for the last three
_kilometres_ of this distance we had to walk through sloppy snow slush.
In three hours and a half from the new Baths of Bormio, that is to say
at 4.30 P.M., we reached our destination. It is a large building, for
it contains a barrack, a custom-house, an inn, and lodgings for the
people who keep the road open and in repair. It is well situated in a
sheltered bend of the mountain basin, which lies below, and on the
south side of, the summit of the Pass.
We found half-a-dozen Germans in the house: some of them had come
up that morning from the Munsterthal. A little later, a dozen more
arrived from the Tyrol side, in a light omnibus-like diligence, and its
supplement. Of the whole number only three slept here: all the rest
went down to Bormio. I was the only Englishman in the house, and in
the visitors’ book the proportion of English names was small; which,
however, implies not so much that few English parties cross the Pass,
as that few stay here for the night, or have any reason for entering
their names in the book. Scarcely a French name was to be found in it.
The sun was still bright, and as it was full on the verandah, it was
pleasant to sit in and feel its warmth, while everything around on
which the eye could rest was buried in snow.
I reminded Christian of how varied, and full of interest, our day had
been. In the early morning Livigno, and the broad snowy ridges of M.
della Neve, where nothing but snow had been seen, then the long green
Val di Dentro with its meadows, cornfields, towns, and churches, then
Bormio, then the awe-inspiring Braulio, and now a return to the snow
world as complete as what we had crossed in the early morning. ‘Yes,’
he said, for I knew that I was talking to a man who had a sense of the
elements of interest in mountain scenery, ‘yes, but we have not done
wisely. We should have stopped at Bormio for the night. We might in
some way or other have found this too much, and then the pleasure of
the rest of our walk might have been much diminished.’ I had myself not
been without this thought, and, therefore, as he had to carry the load,
I had at Bormio left it to him to decide whether we should go on from
that point or not. But being a good and true man, because he knew what
was my wish, and because it was left to him to decide, he had raised
no objection to going further. Now, however, when the work was done,
and there could be no suspicion of a wish to shirk, he could say what
he really thought. I could only reply that the imprudence was all my
fault: and that, as it was I who had nothing to carry, I ought not to
have thrown the decision on him.
When those who were to pass the night at Bormio or elsewhere than
at Santa Maria, had cleared out, and the sun was setting, the buxom
and rather boisterous damsel, who had charge of the guests, brought
in a large basketful of wood, and announced her intention of giving
us a fire, which she forthwith kindled in a smaller room off the
_salle-à-manger_, where there was an open fire-place. As the wood
was cembra, in five minutes we had a blazing fire, and together with
the three Germans, who were full of good-nature and talk, we spent a
pleasant evening at an elevation of 8,317 feet in the highest house,
the books say, in Europe, with, though it was the 16th of August, a
sharp frost outside, which had lost no time in reasserting its dominion
so soon as the sun retired from the scene.
The buxom boisterous damsel assigned to me for the night a large room
with three beds. One of these I invited Christian to occupy. He had
spent the evening with us, and as we sat round the blazing cembra fire
had taken part in the conversation, for he had in youth, as is the
custom with so many of his countrymen, gone abroad, where he had learnt
French and German. This bedroom had double windows, which appeared to
be never opened: and this probably is the case from fear of letting
in the cold. If so the room can only be aired, or rather dried, on
the occasions when the stove is heated. The bedding, and everything
in the room appeared damp. This I was told was a result of the snow
being continuous throughout almost all the year, which keeps the roof
and walls permanently chilled through. One cannot but suppose that
dampness, as well as cold, must be a consequence of such conditions: at
all events I could not but believe that my hempen sheets, three heavy
blankets, and heavy coverlet, owed some of their weight, I might almost
say of their adhesiveness, to this cause. In the morning, however, we
found that whatever had been the hygrometric state of the beds, and
of the room, in which we had slept, we were ourselves none the worse.
I believe that when you are taking a great deal of exercise you can
resist the bad effects of a damp bed far more effectually than you
can when your manner of life is sedentary. Your system is acting more
vigorously, and giving off a greater amount of animal heat, which
enables you to repel the damp, and saves you from becoming its victim.
In fact, you do yourself air your bed before it can do you any harm. Be
the cause, however, what it may, we suffered not from cold or damp that
night, while sleeping high above all the other sleepers of Europe.
_August 17._--As we were to have an easy day--only to Trafoi at the
foot of Ortler--we were not off till 6 A.M. The sun was not yet on
our path, and the morning was arctic. If there were such things as
summer mornings at the pole, such might a fine one be there. Everything
was hard bound in frost, and everything was deep buried in snow,
except the black streak along the centre of the road, from which
the snow from Santa Maria to the summit had been cleared off by the
snow-plough. Of course overcoats, gloves, and scarfs are unknown on
these excursions, so on first emerging from the hotel I felt as if I
were thinly clad, and my ungloved hands were soon pocketed. But as
our way was at first all up hill, and the air quite still, the chill
of the first contact with the frost was soon lost, which, however,
had indeed not been much more than the chilliness of the interior of
the house in the early morning without a fire. By the time we had
reached the summit (somewhat under an hour) we were ready to blunder
through the knee-deep new snow up to a little eminence on the left of
the road, from which there is a commanding view. The path to it leaves
the road just alongside of the road-mender’s quarters on the summit
of the Pass, at the point of junction of the Austrian and Italian
frontiers. It is ascended in twenty minutes; or if there be less snow
than there was to-day, then in a little less time. To the north-east,
in which direction you can see furthest, the view is very extensive.
To the west it is grandly intercepted by the contiguous mighty masses
of Umbrail and Braulio. Of these the former is in Switzerland, the
latter in Italy. To the south are the still mightier masses of Monte
Cristallo, and of the dome-topped Ortler, which send down towards you
two mighty and strangely contrasted glaciers; that on the right is
long and broad, has a gentle descent, and had on this day a surface
that was white and smooth from the lately fallen snow; its neighbour
to the left, and which is only separated from it by a narrow rocky
ridge, is most unlike it in every one of the above respects. As seen
from our point of observation it appeared of no great length; it was
not spread out into a large field, but jammed into a narrow ravine
between two mountains. It was not in the form of a stream, but of a
cataract, of ice; its surface, too, was much rent and fissured; and
to complete the contrast, for some reason which did not appear, the
lately fallen snow had not rested upon it. As to the general effect
of this extensive view, it seemed to me to be more than half lost
by the covering of snow that had been laid over everything. If form
is the first element of interest in a wide mountain scene, colour
undoubtedly is the second; for colour it is that gives distinctiveness,
and the suggestion of life, to the forms you are looking at. It not
only enables you to distinguish more readily between the forms, but
also to make out the peculiarities, and interpret the character of
each. Meadows, cornfields, forests, villages, rocks, Alpine pastures,
lakes, glaciers, as well as the snowfields, are all signalized and
understood by their colour. But when colour is obliterated, and every
object made white, the power of distinguishing mere form, even that of
great masses, is greatly diminished, while all minor objects become
pretty generally effaced. All nature has then but one aspect. The scene
before us supplied us with a proof of this value of colour. The only
exception to the universal white were two enormous black holes by the
side of Mount Umbrail. These were points at which we could look down
into the Munsterthal to somewhat below the line up to which the snow
had been melted. As the sun was not yet touching these depths, they
looked almost completely black by the side of the otherwise universal
white. Of course the eye went back to them again and again, for they
were more suggestive, and so more interesting, than anything else
that could be seen. These two, as they appeared, black bottomless
pits were just the two places in the world around us where the deep
valley opened out most, and the sun had most power. They were, then,
the most favoured spots; and we could translate their blackness into
scenes of industry and village life. If the snow had been suddenly
removed from the whole scene, with the exception of those summits it,
on account of their height, legitimately occupies, then they would
have been distinguishable from their lesser brethren. We should have
known that they were the highest tops, however far off in the view they
might have been, and so we should have regarded them with the respect
that was their due. And in like manner with all the rest of the scene:
every object, having been interpreted by its colour, would have become
interesting. We should have been given to understand what it was, and
should have known what to think of it. While as things were, the whole
scene, because deprived of colour, was dumb. Nothing could give us any
account of itself except the glaciers. Vegetation, which is the garb of
nature, and which to so large an extent puts nature into relation to
man, was lost to sight. Another proof of the value of colour is that,
when it has been effaced by snow from an extensive view, the eye soon
wearies of the view, and to such a degree as to refuse to attend to it
any longer.
The descent was now commenced. As is usual in Alpine Passes, there was
no resemblance between the two sides. That by which we had ascended to
the top was long, and had been formed by nature into several distinct
stages, each possessing features and a character of its own. This
presented nothing that at all corresponded to the upper crateriform
stage on the other side, nor anything at all like the awe-inspiring V.
di Braulio. The descent was very rapid, by an innumerable series of
zigzags, constructed on so steep a face, that it was a long time, at
all events now that the mountain side was covered with snow, before a
cut-off could be made. The road continued steep, though the gradient
was being eased all the way down to Trafoi, in reaching which we
diminished our altitude by 4,000 feet. We could not but observe that
the Austrian side was not so well cared for as the Italian. Here, for
instance, the snow-plough had not been used at all. We had, therefore,
as the sun was now well up, to walk through some miles of sloppy snow.
On this side, too, there were no refuges. Probably, however, this
omission arose from the fact that the whole of the first two or three
miles is equally exposed to snow avalanches; there was, therefore, no
more reason for protecting one part than another, and it would have
cost too much to have protected the whole. We saw to-day evidence
of this general exposure, for even the late midsummer fall of snow
had yielded some half dozen avalanches; some small, but others of
sufficient mass to have blocked the road; these, therefore, it had
been necessary to remove, in order to make a way for the traffic: they
would, probably, have upset a carriage had they fallen upon it.
The contour of a mountain results from the nature of the rock of which
it is formed. Here it is of talcose slate. This is readily broken up
by frost. The consequence is that in the course of ages enough of the
mountain has been disintegrated to form an incline from top to bottom,
just at the angle at which it is possible for such rubble to rest.
Such mountains will, therefore, be without precipices; their _pente_,
however, will be very considerable. It was in the steep rubbly incline
of this mountain that the zigzags had to be made. It will be also seen
that in such a formation there can be no flat spaces, or protruding
rocks. On such a face, therefore, snow will, as a general rule, begin
to slide before it has accumulated to any great amount. There being
nothing from the first to hold it up, as soon as it begins to gather
weight, down it must come. Here therefore the avalanches will be very
frequent, but not very serious.
When we were about half way down to Trafoi the snow ceased, as I have
so frequently had on this excursion to observe of summer snow, at just
about the line where the forest commenced. We were now descending along
the north-western roots of the group of the Ortler, of which, and of
its glaciers, we had frequent glimpses. As we approached Trafoi, we
had a magnificent view down the Trafoier valley, in consequence of a
bend in the road having opened the distance to us: a world of far-off
summits, some topped with white, were in a moment brought into the
field of the eye. One stood pre-eminent above all the rest. I was
told that its name was Weisstobel. It was of purest white, in form
resembling the black mountain superimposed on a mountain I had noticed
at Livigno. It was as symmetrically shaped as if it had been the long,
lofty nave of a cathedral, with a slanting roof, but without towers or
pinnacles. It must be the king of the mountains of that district.
We reached Trafoi at 10 A.M. An Austrian custom-house officer was
standing at the door of the inn. We asked him if it was there that he
would inspect the little we had with us. He seemed to take it rather
amiss, almost to be disposed to be offended, that we should have
imagined him capable of so mean an action, one that might seem to
imply some distrust. We found that he was staying at the inn, and was,
as might be inferred from his forbearance, a goodnatured, convivial
variety of the species.
Again what a contrast! Three hours ago I had been standing on the
little rocky eminence above the Pass. Everything was buried deep in
snow, and bound hard in frost. In the level rays of the early sun, the
hard frozen particles on the surface of the deep snow around us gleamed
like so much diamond dust. Around to the distant horizon the landscape
was only arctic. Now the climate had been changed as well as the scene,
for I was seated on the spacious verandah of the Trafoi inn, with the
scattered village, its little church, and garden plots around me, not
dazzled, nor scorched, but only so quickened by the flood of light and
warmth the sun was pouring down on the spot, as to feel that they were
life to myself, as I saw that they were to all organized nature around
me.
The view from this verandah is food, and, too, very pleasant food,
for the eye. The point of central attraction is the Ortler, with its
smooth, massive, dome-shaped cap of snow. It seems quite close to you.
To the right of it, standing well to the front of the snow-field, and
very near to you, is the mighty black pyramid of the Madatsch. On this
day it was profusely reticulated with veins of the new snow that had
lodged in its crannies. The Ortler and the back of the Madatsch are,
as viewed from this point, apparently joined together, on the furthest
horizon, high up against the sky, by a long mountain wall of purest
white. Between them, projecting toward you from this distant horizon
of the snow wall, is Trafoier Spitze, a ridge of black, or of white,
precipices, as each happens to be of naked rock, or to be faced with
snow. On each side of this ridge of the Trafoier Spitze is a great
glacier, one descending from the Ortler, the other from the Madatsch.
The lower part of the Madatsch is cut diagonally by an ascending ridge
which is clothed with a thick forest of dark green pine. All this is on
your right, as you sit on the verandah with your back to the house, and
just at the best distance for taking in all the features of the scene,
the dark forest that rises athwart the lower part of the Madatsch being
quite close to you. In front of you, beginning at the Ortler, beyond
the green meadows and the Trafoier Bach, which are below you, is a
range of slaty coloured mountains, so near that you can make out every
object upon them, the detached rocks, the cattle, and the decaying
trunks of fallen pines. The first of this range runs athwart the roots
of the Ortler, its gray summit being overtopped by the Ortler’s snowy
dome. This range is steep, barren at its summit, and shagged with
cliffs, some gray, and some stained black with lichens. Its flanks are
seamed with slaty coloured _couloirs_, between which are breadths of
Alpine pasture above, and below the more or less scattered pines of an
open forest, in contrast with the close forest that rises against the
black Madatsch. Then on your left, as you look down the Trafoier valley
are many distant summits of the Tyrol: supreme among these is the snowy
cathedral nave, gleaming in the bright midday sun.
This view was my most distant point; and it seemed a worthy conclusion
of my outward course. It was a grand and varied scene: mountains black,
and mountains gray, and mountains white; snowfields and glaciers,
cliffs and _couloirs_; forests of closely set, and forests of
scattered, pines; emerald meadows in the valley, and sombre pastures
on the heights. Within hearing the appropriate music of the Trafoier
Bach. Above all the luminous field of unfathomable blue, sparingly
chequered with a few streaks and flecks of white cloud, just as on
the earth beneath the intermingled shade varied the bright sunlight
that was being shed over the forests, and the mountain sides, and the
cliffs of the ridges. Close by, somewhat to the left, was a small
cluster of humble shingled _châlets_, the village of Trafoi, to
suggest the hopes and fears, the joys and sorrows of the peasant’s
life; just in front, was the last and chief structure of the little
village, the little church with its humble shingled spire, to suggest
the villager’s anticipations of a life beyond the present scene. At 4
P.M. clouds began to form on the highest summits. First, the distant
snow-wall, that seemed to connect the further side of the Ortler and of
the Madatsch, became lost to sight; then the Ortler and the Madatsch
themselves put on their cloud-woven _bonnets de nuit_. The bottom line
of this cloud-mass was now ruled straight. It just reached down to the
glaciers. All above and beyond them was utterly lost to sight. The
level, gray cloud-mass was to the eye a solid stratum, which originated
the glaciers, and out of which they streamed down into our valley.
In the evening we walked through the meadows and pine woods, and across
the Trafoier Bach, to the foot of the glaciers.