Douglas William Freshfield

“ On a glorious August afternoon we drove down the high-road from Pinzolo to Borzago, whence a mountain-path leads into the glen to which the village has given its name.
At the top of the first ascent a very happily-balanced view opens. The valley slopes are feathered with light foliage. High above them shine the white folds of glacier, while the Carè Alto, half rock half a glittering ice-comb, is the centre of the landscape. Deeper in the glen, beyond the pine trees and the hay barns, great birches hang over the path which splits into branches in the forest. ”

“ 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. ”

“ From the wild bare crags of the inmost recesses of Val Masino and from the cold snows and savage ice-peaks of the Albigna, the traveller suddenly plunges over the edge of the uplands into a region of mountain-sides broken up by deep chasms fringed with pines and broad-leaved trees, and resonant with the roar of the great glacier torrent, which, scarcely released from its icy cradle, 'leaps in glory' down a stupendous cliff.
The Zocca Pass itself I have never crossed, but the omission can be supplied by the experience of friends. In ordinary years it is a simple glacier pass. ”

“ The ascent then became hot and tiresome for a time, where the path perversely left the woods and chose for its zigzags a loose, dusty, shadeless slope. The summit of the Presanella was now in view. The ungainly hump here representing the mountain is the greatest possible contrast to the noble mass which, with its long escarped sides and icy pinnacles, towers above the Tonale road. The Grivola is the only other peak I know of which undergoes so complete a transformation. Above the bare ascent lies a sloping shelf of meadow, dotted with hay-châlets. ”

“ Deep below lies a valley, narrowing to a savage gorge before it releases its stream to flow out into the sunny meadows of Val di Mel. Above its head a broad-shouldered isolated mountain, known by the simple name of Il Piz, towers high into the air.
The first village in Venetia, conspicuous by a large new church, offers itself for a midday halt. A grassy slope leads thence to the crests of the wooded ridges which divide the glens sloping towards Agordo. Numerous paths wander about their tops, and unless the first left-hand track is taken it is easy to miss the way amongst them. ”

“ If he wishes to paint the central snowy range as portions of the landscape rather than to study them for themselves, he should begin with the further side of the Alps. There, even in the clear summer weather, when the Swiss crags seem most hard and near, and the pine-trees crude and stiff, all the hollows of the hills are filled with waves of iridescent air, as if a rainbow had been diffused through the sky. The distances, purple and blue, float before the eye with a soft outline like that of the young horns of a stag. Even the snows are never a cold white ”

“ Sheer above it two bold granite walls rise out of the verdure, and form the entrance to a long avenue of great mountain shapes. Behind these foremost masses the hills fall valleywards in noble and perfectly harmonious lines. Each upper cliff flows down into a slope of chestnut-muffled boulders in a curve, the classical beauty of which is repeated by the vine-tendrils at its feet. In the distance the snows of the Basodine seen through the sunny haze gleam, like a golden halo, on the far-off head of the mountain.
Is human interest wanted to give completeness and a motive to the picture? ”

“ A second ascent brings another shift. Rocks, grey, gold, red, brown and black, cluster round his bewildered eyes, and he begins to doubt whether the scene is a solid reality or some Alastor-inspired Vision of Solitude.
Then, after wandering all the morning between red rocks and over two or three hours of ice, he may find himself in the evening amongst figs, olives and lemon-groves. For the Brenta group is planted not in the midst of a mountain maze, but on the edge of the deepest cleft in the Alps. From the white crown of the highest peak to Alle Sarche is a descent of 10,500 feet. ”

“ The Cima di Piazza stood up boldly as their leader, a noble mountain which almost persuaded us to change our plans and rush off at once to its assault. West of the green gap of the Passo di Verva rose a cluster of peaks about the head of the Dosdè Glacier, and further distant we recognised the sharp heads of the Teo and Sena, the former crowned by a stoneman of my own building. The whole mass of the Orteler group, from the long zigzags of the Stelvio road to the Gavia, was in sight. ”

“ The usual rough borderland between earth and ice scrambled over, we halted for breakfast on a smooth piece of ice conveniently furnished with stone stools and tables. Over our heads towered a range of pinnacles, one of which is known as Piz Cacciabella. In form and grouping they closely resemble, on a smaller scale, the Chamonix Aiguilles, as seen from the 'Plan.' Divided from them by a snowy bay, the source of the glacier, rose the splendid peak of the Punta Trubinesca. Only granite could show such a tremendous block, free from flaw or joint, and hopeless to the most fly-like climber. ”

“ Moreover, Alpine climbing has revealed the wonders of the kingdom of frost and snow. The imprisoned colours of glacier ice, the ruin of its fantastic towers and tottering minarets, the splendour of its fretted and icicle-hung caves are no longer familiar only to Arctic travellers. The overpowering height of some peak soaring majestically heavenwards can never have been felt as it is by those who understand through experience the dimensions and meaning of each rock and patch of snow on its ridges. ”

“ As an eclectic wanderer I can afford to state, with perfect frankness, my conviction that, if you can put up with the crowd, there is no place where great snow-peaks are so well seen as in the Bernese Oberland—that there is no climbing which equals that to be had within twenty miles of Zermatt—that the ice scenery on Mont Blanc is unsurpassable in Europe, and the climate of the Upper Engadine the most bracing south of the Arctic circle. And I can heartily agree in the conclusion that everyone who, wishing for nothing more, crosses the frontier of Italy, commits an act of folly. ”

“ The ambition of Piazza is leading it to erect a vast church with columns and porticoes, incongruous enough in a mountain landscape. Beneath the uncompleted edifice a car-road turns off to the upper Val Brembana and Branzi. The high-road goes away to the south through a narrow rift in the hills in company with the united streams. I longed to follow it and see something more of the Bergamasque valleys than their heads. Amongst these bold hills rising so near the plain there must be a crowd of landscapes of romantic beauty, and from every brow the most exquisite views. ”

“ On gaining this second depression we saw more slopes between us and the ridge which now seemed to be the watershed. The third pass in its turn proved only a gap in one of the numerous low spurs running across the great tableland which lies at the back of the rim of peaks seen from the valley of the Cismone.
We were now in the very heart of this huge stony wilderness. In every direction stretched an undulating expanse of whitish-grey rock, brittle in substance and pockmarked by weather. ”

“ And now we are present at the last struggle where, under a pall of cloud through which the parent peaks shine down a far-off farewell, the glacier makes its fatal plunge into the valley, for it a valley of death, and we see its end amid the earth and rock-heaps of the terminal moraine. But from under the muddy ruin springs out of a 'dusky door' a new and fuller life, and the mountain stream dashes off on its happy course through the new world of the fields and orchards. ”

“ Nature presents herself in Val Brembana in a bright fantastic mood, full of life and vigour, yet not so earnest and severe as to strain our comprehension or our sympathy, or so large as to be beyond—more than, in its many-sidedness, all nature is beyond—the grasp of even an unambitious art. To employ a much-abused yet useful phrase, the scenery is essentially picturesque.
The valley when it opens again is more Alpine, although we are still only at the moderate height of 2,200 feet. A village, Trabuchetto, stands on the edge of the first meadows of a long steep-sided basin fringed with pines. ”

“ Soon three or four were found in company under the sunny side of a heat-reflecting rock, until as we drew near Cavergno the whole slope became a vineyard, and the path an overarched alley between a double row of tall granite pillars, from which the ripe clusters hung down into our faces in too tempting luxuriance.
A straight line drawn from Faido, on the St. Gothard road, to Bignasco nearly passes through Piz Campo Tencca, the three-domed snow-crest which dominates the eastern range, and, like its loftier rival, the Basodine, peers down on that charming halting-place. ”

“ For ladies, botanists, and quiet strollers there is an unusual abundance of easy walks, through shady glades full of rare and beautiful flowers and ferns, by the side of clear dove-coloured brooks glancing down over the limestone shelves, or up to secluded tarns and grassy ridges whence the great horns and teeth glow orange against the sky, or the Adamello snows glitter in the sunlight. Moreover, active climbers have within easy reach a variety of glacier-work which all but two or three of the greatest Swiss centres might envy, and rock scenery such as Switzerland can nowhere rival. ”

“ As usual in this part of the Alps we scarcely reach the valley before meeting a fine waterfall. At first the 168 gorge descends in steps, separated by swampy platforms; lower down, its fall becomes more regular, gradually steepening as it approaches Boazze. The ground is broken and rugged, and the path until recent improvements must have been very bad. The Chiese is a noble torrent, green and clear despite its glacier birth, and a perpetual delight to the eyes, whether it leaps in white foam over some ash-hung crag or swirls in pure eddies in a bubbling caldron. ”

“ It is difficult, perhaps, to recommend the Baths as a stopping-place for any length of time to the ordinary traveller. Though so high (3,750 feet) they are too 60 much in a hole for beauty. But the situation, if it would not satisfy an artist, is not in the least commonplace, and has even a curious fascination of its own. On every side the eyes are met at once by almost perpendicular rocks capped here and there by sharp spires of granite. These cliffs are not bare and harsh like those of Val di Mello, but green with forest and bright with falling waters. ”

“ But our attention is soon riveted on the new mountain range which rises beyond the valley. High amongst the clouds soar its red towers and pinnacles; the bold ridges which support them sweep down upon us in majestic curves. Three glens, green with beech copses, push up boldly into the heart of the mountain. The one opposite is Val di Brenta, rising towards its Bocca, the gap on the north of the most stupendous castle; the furthest, the Vallesinella, leads by another strange gateway to Molveno, the nearest is Val Agola, also with passes for mountaineers or paths for ramblers. ”

“ The descent towards San Martino is at first steep; the mule-track lies some distance to the right, but a footpath a few yards to the left of the lake leads down at once into a picturesque glen. At the foot of the second descent is a 'casera' standing on a green lawn. Seen from this point the great turret-crowned wall is like a vivid but impossible dream of mountain splendour. The sweeping outlines of dark forest form a foreground out of which its rigid flame-coloured ramparts rise like some phantom castle against the Italian blue. ”