Alpini

“ The Alpini are specially used for warfare in the mountains. They wear in their hats a single long feather. Closely attached to the Alpini are the Mountain Artillery, armed with light guns of about the same calibre as our own twelve-pounders. They too are recruited from the mountaineers and wear the Alpino hat and single feather. The Alpini have a magnificent regimental spirit and, in my judgment, are the equals of any troops in the world.
The Cagliari and Sassari Brigades, two of the best in the Italian Army, are composed entirely of Sardinians. ”

“ Nor should it be forgotten that up to the very last the Alpini had their traditional foe mastered [Pg 247] along all that hundred and fifty miles of sky-line positions—from the Carnic Alps, through the Dolomites to the Trentino—which ultimately had to be abandoned only because their rear was threatened by the Austro-German advance along the Friulian plain from the Isonzo. The loss of this line under these conditions, therefore, detracts no whit from the magnificent military skill and heroism by which they were won and held. ”

“ The Italian dispositions are very complete, and it is at this point necessary to say a few words upon Alpini warfare, which the Italians have brought to such a pitch of perfection. They are not the only mountaineers in the world, nor the only people to possess warriors famous on the hillside, but they were the first people in Europe, except the Swiss, to organize mountain warfare scientifically, and in their Alpine groups they possess a force unrivaled for combat in the higher mountains. The Alpini are individualists who think and act for themselves and so can fight for themselves. ”

“ Not a man of them sought safety by flight, though a retirement would have been quite justified, considering what a hell the Austrians' guns were making of the summit. The enemy counter-attacked at nightfall, but despite superior numbers and the almost complete exhaustion of that little band of Alpini heroes, they were able to retake only a half of the summit. Here, at a ten-metres-high ridge which roughly bisects the cima, the Alpini held the Austrians, and here, in turn, the latter held the reinforcements which I was finally able to send to the Alpini's aid. ”

“ Almost facing us to the left were the precipitous slopes of the Freikoffel, which the Alpini had captured at the point of the bayonet, and under the fire of the Austrian guns a short time previously.
How mortal man could be found to scale these giddy heights at all, leave alone under such awful conditions, baffles me. ”

“ We were soon, all of us, either on horse or on foot, clambering up Riffelberg,—now under the leadership of Ignace Biner, the best guide in this Alpine region. And ever, as we climb, we behold the Alp-horizon become more extensive; one ice-peak after another rises up, and immense ice-fields spread out their white, shining table-cloths, between them, until the whole northern chain of Swiss Alps stands in a vast semicircle around the horizon. We halt upon gum plains on the mountain, to contemplate the glorious spectacle, whilst we rest in the sunshine. ”

“ The people of the inland villages contain a goodly proportion of the Alpine stock, although, as our maps show, it is more attenuated than in either Savoy or Auvergne. To the eye this Alpine lineage appears in a
roundness of the face, a concave nose in profile, and broad nostrils. Along the coast intermixture has narrowed the heads, lightened the complexion, and, perhaps more than all, increased the stature. For an example of these contrasts our maps will serve as an illustration. ”

“ They saw already those giants of winter, the Swiss and Tyrolese Alps, in their encampment; those sons of the gods stood, armed with avalanches and cataracts and winters, sentinels around the divine land where gods and men reciprocally imitated each other. How often did Albano, when the sun at evening glowingly blended with the snow-clad Alpine heights, gaze with a pang of sadness at those thrones, which he had once beheld quite otherwise, much more golden, so hopefully and trustingly, from Isola Bella! ”

“ The shadows are pitch black, the snow dazzling as with a radiance of its own, the “battlements that on their front bear stars” loom awfully out of the sky. In close-shuttered châlets the peasants sleep. In the brilliant overheated salons of hotels hundreds of little human beings dance and make music and play bridge. But out there, in this silent world of ice and stars, the enormous mountains dream solemnly upon their ancient thrones, unassailable, alone in the heavens, forgotten. The Alps, in these hours of the long winter night, come magnificently into their own. ”

“ Their native restlessness, the joint product of cold weather and a hard life, became converted into a magnificent spirit of enterprise whenever it blended with Alpine hardiness or Mediterranean ambition. The Alpines, often considered as the intellectual type, also imparted the virility of highland physiques as they migrated to the lowland. ”

“ There had been before him some few Alpine climbers, and there were after him some few more; but the twentieth-century tourist to Switzerland—who is chiefly interested in the Alps as difficult mountains to climb, presenting great problems of ice and cliff traverses, seasoning the joy of difficult achievement with a pronounced spice of danger—follows a sport so modern that there are men now living who were born before the passion for Alpine climbing came to birth. ”

“ Instinctively we summon up recollections of the Alps for comparison with the mountains we are leaving. And the comparison is not found to be entirely a sacrilege. The Alps are first and preeminent among European mountains; the repose of their immensity, the sense of power, the indefinable, spell they exert, lesser ranges cannot in general features attempt to rival. But this is not to say that a lesser range, is a wholly inferior range,—that even in this effect of immensity, of power, it may not at certain points bear almost full comparison. ”

“ One cannot even guess the place where they have been. Here sit Silence and Immobility, terrifically enthroned and close to heaven.
The Alps, tainted in summer with vulgarity, in winter are set free; for the hordes of human beings that scuttle about the fields at their base are ignored by the upper regions. Those few who dare the big peaks are perforce worthy, and the bold ski-runners who challenge the hazards of the long, high courses are themselves, like the birds, almost a part of the mountain life. The Alps, as a whole, retire into their ancient splendour. ”

“ The Alps came on with more slow and majestic pace. As peak after peak passed by, it seemed as if the whole community of hills had commenced a general march on Monte Viso, with all their crags, glaciers, and pine-forests. One might have thought that [Pg 147] Sovran Blanc had summoned the nobles and high princes of his kingdom to meet him in his hall of audience, to debate some weighty point of Alpine government. An august assembly as ever graced monarch's court, in their robes of white and their cornets of eternal ice, would these tall and proud forms present. ”

“ But, lo! the mists are rising, and yonder are the Alps. Now that the curtain is rent, one flashing peak bursts upon you after another. They come not in scores, but in hundreds. And now the whole chain, from the snowy dome of the Ortelles in the far-off Tyrol, to the beauteous pyramid of Monte Viso in the south-western sky, is before you in its noble sweep of many hundreds of miles, with thousands of snowy peaks, amid which, pre-eminent in glory, rises Monte Rosa. Turning to the south, you have the purple summits of the Apennines rising above the plain. ”

“ They resist our best climbing qualifications and are as inaccessible as the mists above our highest tops. And we prefer, naturally, our talking companions, those who shrink not from the task of ready interpretation.
“The Alps form a book of nature as wide and mysterious as Life,” says Frederic Harrison in his Alpine Jubilee, in one of those clear-cut and well-measured passages of mountain homage, which are balm to the tormented hearts of those who feel themselves afloat on the clouds of mystery. “To know, to feel, to understand the Alps is to know, to feel, to understand Humanity.” ”

“ MEN AND MOUNTAINS—MOUNTAIN-HATERS—A LITERARY EXAMPLE—POETS AND PAINTERS—THE PLACE OF ART—ALPINE SCENERY AND ART—THE VARIETY OF THE ALPS—THE SNOW WORLD—MONS. LOPPÉ'S PICTURES—CONCLUSION.
Switzerland, from a distance practically beyond that of the Caucasus at the present day, has in the last thirty years been brought within a few hours of our homes. Increased facilities of travel and of residence in Alpine regions, acting in unison with many less obvious but equally real influences, have extended human sympathy to Nature in her wildest forms and created a new sentiment, the Love of the Alps. ”

“ We should be very grateful to Harding and Stanfield if they would refresh us a little among the snow, and give us, what we believe them to be capable of giving us, a faithful expression of Alpine ideal. We are well aware of the pain inflicted on an artist's mind by the preponderance of black, and white, and green, over more available colors; but there is nevertheless in generic Alpine scenery, a fountain of feeling yet unopened—a chord of harmony yet untouched by art. It will be struck by the first man who can separate what is national, in Switzerland, from what is ideal. ”

“ Men paint best as a rule the scenery of their own homes. Perugino gives us Umbrian hills and the lake of Thrasimene; Cima and Titian Venetian landscapes and colours; Turner loves most English seas and mists. It is useless, except for a rare genius, to go once to Switzerland and paint one or two pictures, for in the mountains knowledge is especially needed. The first view of the Alps is in most cases a disappointment. Our expectations have been unconsciously based on the great mounds of cumulus cloud which roll up against lowland skies. ”

“ Alp was still piled on Alp, but we had reached the summit of the pile. The only valleys we saw were fearful scars in the mountain flank, half filled with eternal snow, and the crumbling skeletons of dead Alps. No sound—no herdsman's jödle—no cowbell's tinkle ever reached to half way up our [Pg 349] rocky perch: we were far above the vulture and the chamois. We were alone with the rock, and snow, and sky! It seemed profanity to whisper—and yet there was Joseph, after a glance round, and a short "schöne panorama!" ”

“ The great masters of the Renaissance never painted the Alps, continues the other, with, remembering Titian, doubtful accuracy. In short, we are given to understand, as politely as may be, that the hill-country may be good for those dull souls which, incapable naturally of appreciating more delicate or subtle charms, require to be strongly stirred; but that to the artist's eye the Alps are the chromolithography of nature—that, in fact, a taste for mountain scenery is bad taste. ”

“ I saw the Alpine chain, like floating cloud mountains; below mist, above dark shapes with glancing glaciers.”
“Yes, Otto,” said Rosalie, and her eyes sparkled with youthful fire; “so looks the Alpine chain when one goes from Le Locle to Neulfchâtel: so did I see it when I descended the Jura for the list time. It was in August. The trees, with their autumnal foliage, stood yellow and red between the dark firs; barberries and hips grew among the tall fern. The Alps lay in such a beautiful light, their feet blue as heaven, their peaks snow-white in the clear sunshine. ”

“ The sunset, and sunrise, and the stars of Lombardy, its level horizons and vague misty distances, are a source of absolute relief after the narrow skies and embarrassed prospects of a mountain valley. Nor are the Alps themselves ever more imposing than when seen from Milan or the church-tower of Chivasso or the terrace of Novara, with a foreground of Italian cornfields and old city towers and rice-ground, golden-green beneath a Lombard sun. Half veiled by clouds, the mountains rise like visionary fortress walls of a celestial city—unapproachable, beyond the range of mortal feet. ”

“ On the flanks of these mountains, and on the sub-Alpine ranges of hills or plains adjoining them, those appearances which have been so often alluded to, as distinguishing or accompanying the drift, between the 50th and 70th parallels of north latitude, suddenly reappear and assume, in a southern region, a truly arctic development. Where the Alps are highest, the largest erratic blocks have been sent forth; as, for example, from the regions of Mont Blanc and Monte Rosa, into the adjoining parts of Switzerland and Italy ”

“ The pure, unmixed Alpine race finds its expression in the plateaus of Bavaria and Würtemburg, in the Schwarzwald, the Rauhe Alp, and parts of the Thüringerwald. Such is our third type, with its rounded face and skull foreshortened from front to back. Our representative here photographed was dark brown both in hair and eyes, nose rather irregular, less finely molded perhaps; certainly considerably broader at the nostrils than in the Teutons. At the same time the stature was short, only five feet one and a half
Alpine Type. ”

“ The spirit of the world hath here not yet grown old. She is as young as on the first day; and the Alps are a symbol of the self-creating, self-sufficing, self-enjoying universe which lives for its own ends. For why do the slopes gleam with flowers, and the hillsides deck themselves with grass, and the inaccessible ledges of black rock bear their tufts of crimson primroses and flaunting tiger-lilies? Why, morning after morning, does the red dawn flush the pinnacles of Monte Rosa above cloud and mist unheeded? ”