Brenner Pass

“ RESCHEN SCHEIDECK. This Alpine pass is in some sort the pendant of the Brenner Pass, but leads from the upper valley of the Inn or Engadine to the upper valley of the Adige. It is but 4902 ft. in height. ”

“ The Brenner line, which lies between Innsbruck and Botzen, and constitutes a portion of the railway connecting Bavaria and Italy, although it passes through tunnel after tunnel, until the weary traveller is prone to abandon all hope of obtaining any view of the scenery, nevertheless is not content with getting through the pass, but proudly mounts to the top and passes over the summit level before beginning the descent. ”

“ The Brenner afforded the most direct connexion between Venice and southern Germany, on a route leading also to northern Germany by way of Ratisbon and afterwards the rivers of the Elbe basin, and finally (from the end of the 14th century) by a canal to Lübeck, which was the great distributing centre of these and other products for the Baltic. To take the most direct route to the Rhine valley and north-western Europe some other pass (the Seefeld or the Fern) in the Bavarian Alps had to be crossed and the Rhine valley reached by Augsburg, and thence either by way of Ulm or Frankfort. ”

“ The River Eisach joins the Rienz south of the Brenner, and afterwards meets the Adige at Botzen, whence it is known by the last name for the rest of its course to the Adriatic. Botzen, Meran, and Brixen are the most important places in this central zone. On the heights of the Brenner pass little produce can be grown, but in descending one comes again on fruitful fields of Indian corn, walnut trees growing luxuriantly, fruit trees of every kind, especially cherries, and lastly, vineyards plentiful and promising as we get on to the lowlands near the Lago di Garda. ”

“ So it will be, and the reason is this, that the very low pass at one end of it will soon be crossed by a railway. It is the only low pass in the Pyrenees, and it is so gradual and even (upon the Spanish side) that the railway will everywhere be above ground. Within perhaps five years it will be for the Pyrenees what the Brenner is for the Alps, and when that is done any one who has read this may go and see for himself whether it is not true that from that plain at evening the frontier ridge of Andorra seems to be the highest thing in the world. ”

“ Scarcely less important than pass or gap is the avenue of approach to the same. This is furnished by lateral or transverse valleys of erosion. The deeper their reentrant angles cut back into the heart of the highlands, the more they facilitate intercourse and lend historical importance to the pass route. The Alpine passes which are approached by a single valley from each side are those crossed by railroads to-day,—Mont Cenis, Simplon, St. Gotthard and the Brenner. ”

“ We therefore forbore to mention Brenner, the station in the Alps between the Austrian Tyrol and Italy, which I believed to be even higher.
The town of Roccaraso is above the station, a castello perched aloft on a spur of one of the upper Abruzzi. Below us is a wide, flat valley, all around us are crowding blue mountains, head rising above head, like inquisitive giants peeping over one another’s shoulders. The air is like rarefied electricity; the water has been tested and guaranteed absolutely pure—you know bad water is the danger of these remote, primitive villages. ”

“ Yet men still kept hoping that Terry Brennan would come in time. To their minds he alone could put things right; he alone could avert the disaster which the ruin of the bridge would bring. Never had the West been dishonored by such a spirit of disorder and destruction.
A detachment of the Mounted Police was also due from the east—the Riders of the Plains. But the strikers were armed—mostly rough French-Canadians, they were men who had spent their years chiefly in the winter lumber-camps and running the river in the summer with their pike-poles, their cribs and rafts and vast drives of logs. ”

“ Lucerne, July 17th.—A short ride from Interlaken this morning early brought us to Lake Brienz, which we sailed across, stopping for a short time at Giessbach to see the falls, which are formed from numerous cascades. Their reputation is the greater part of them. We left the steamer at Brienz and took steam cars to travel over the Brunig Pass. Until this summer, travellers have been obliged to make this journey by carriage or mules. The new railroad is narrow, and the sides of the little cars are of glass, so that the scenery all about us can be easily seen. ”

“ The streams which come from the mountains leave deposits of nothing but this stone, and of the grey limestone.
Geology—My fellow travellers.
Not far from here must be the granitic base on which all rests. The maps show that one is on the side of the true great Brenner, from which the streams of a wide surrounding district take their rise.
The following is my external judgment of the people. They are active and straightforward. In form they are pretty generally alike: hazel, well-opened eyes; with the women brown and well-defined eyebrows, but with the men light and thick. ”

“ The tunnels too are as numerous as the viaducts. In fact the train no sooner emerges from a tunnel than it finds itself skimming over a viaduct, only to plunge once more into a tunnel or a gallery. The device for crossing a lateral valley described above in the case of the Brenner is also resorted to here, and need not be further alluded to.
The proportionate cost of the Semmering railway was more than double that of the Brenner, being about sixty thousand pounds per mile. ”

“ Mart Brenner's wife laid down the ladle with which she had been stirring the contents of a pot that was simmering on the big, black stove, and, dragging her crippled foot behind her, she hobbled heavily to the door.
As she opened it a new horde of fog-wraiths blew in. The world was a gray, wet blanket. Not a light from the village below pierced the mist, and the lonely army of tall cedars on the black hill back of the house was hidden completely.
"Who's there?" Mrs. Brenner hailed. But her voice fell flat and muffled. Far off on the beach she could dimly hear the long wail of a fog-horn. ”

“ A natural consequence of bad roads and inefficient police was the prevalence of highwaymen, who were then to be met with in both countries. They usually infested the roads which had to be passed by traders at fairs or by men employed in collecting rents. A noted highwayman named Brennan was the terror of all who traveled in the northern part of the county of Cork. After some outrages more than usually daring, no one in the service of a gentleman in that neighborhood could be found brave enough to pass the lonely mountain-road to bring home a balance of rent remaining due. ”

“ The Brenner Railway, by which trains cross from Tyrol into Italy, has a rise of one foot in forty: on railway lines generally one foot in eighty may be taken as an available gradient: hence it will be understood that a locomotive able to run straight up hill without miles of zigzag will admit of much economy in railway construction. ”

“ The object in making it was political and military, not commercial; and now that not only Lombardy, but Venetia have become Italian, it is probable that a road, which in magnificence of conception and in grandeur of construction, exceeds even the Simplon, and which could only be maintained at great annual cost, will fall into decay. [4] For all the practical purposes of commerce it is useless, as within a short distance from it is the Brenner, the oldest, and at the same time the lowest carriage road across any of the Alpine passes. ”

“ There is no place upon it where we could well pass the night. We might do so on yonder col upon the snow, but there we should be almost frozen to death, and totally unfit for the work of the next day. On the rocks there is no ledge or cranny which could give us proper harbourage; and starting from Breuil it is certainly impossible to reach the summit in a single day.’ I was entirely taken back by this report. Bennen was evidently dead against any attempt upon the [123] mountain. ”

“ She laughed at this, dropping her sewing and looking at the old man with eyes almost shut.
"Oh, Daddy John," she gurgled. "How clever you are!"
An hour later they began the crossing. The ford of the Vermilion was one of the most difficult between the Kaw and the Platte Valley. After threading the swift, brown current, the trail zigzagged up a clay bank, channeled into deep ruts by the spring's fleet of prairie schooners. It would be a hard pull to get the doctor's wagon up and David rode over with Bess and Ben to double up with the mules. ”

“ Bennington had bought the little bronco, and together they extended their investigations of the country in all directions. They rode to Spring Creek Valley. They passed the Range over into Custer Valley. Once they climbed Harney by way of Grizzly Gulch.
Thus they grew to know the Hills intimately. From the summit of the Rock they would often look abroad over the tangle of valleys and ridges, selecting the objective points for their next expedition. Many surprises awaited them, for they found that here, as everywhere, a seemingly uniform exterior covered an almost infinite variety. ”

“ Pack trains dropped from the line, spreading themselves along the rim of earth between the trail and the shrunken current. Courant's party moved on, going higher, veiled in a cloud of brick-colored dust. The hills swept up into bolder lines, the pines mounted in sentinel files crowding out the lighter leafage. At each turn the vista showed a loftier uprise, crest peering above crest, and far beyond, high and snow-touched, the summits of the Sierra. ”

“ Courant left them to reconnoiter, and at mid afternoon came back to announce that farther on the trail bent to an outcropping of red rock where he thought there might be water. It was the hottest hour of the day. The animals strained at their harness with lolling tongues and white-rimmed eyeballs, their sweat making tracks on the dust. To lighten the wagon Daddy John walked beside it, plodding on in his broken moccasins, now and then chirruping to Julia. The girl rode behind him, her blouse open at the neck, her hair clinging in a black veining to her bedewed temples. ”

“ In exhaustion the camp lay resting, tents unpitched, the animals nosing over the grass. David and Daddy John slept a dead sleep rolled in blankets on the teeming ground. Courant built a fire, called Susan to it, and bade her dry her wet skirts. He lay near it, not noticing her, his glance ranging the distance. The line of whitened peaks began to take on a golden glaze, and the shadows in the hollow mounted till the camp seemed to be at the bottom of a lake in which a tide of some gray, transparent essence was rising. ”

“ Travellers to or from the West by the Great Western Railway are generally much impressed, between Yatton and Bridgwater, by the strange solitary hill of Brent Knoll that rises abruptly from the plain of Burnham Level, and looks oddly like some long-extinct volcano with its cone shorn off or fallen in. Fast trains do not stop at the little wayside station also called “Brent Knoll,” and while passengers are still gazing curiously at the hill, they are whirled away in midst of other interesting scenery. ”

“ From there, you can see the dazzling snow top of the Bernina, a high mountain between Switzerland and Italy, with a much travelled pass leading from the Engadine to the Valteline Valley. Journeying from Poschiavo over the Bernina, one passes a desolate spot formerly occupied by the small town of Zarera. The inhabitants of that place are said to have taken advantage of their position on the highway294 between Italy and Switzerland, to extort money from all the pack-drivers and travellers who passed through there. ”

“ To her multiform duties she added that of assistant in the diggings, squatting beside her husband in the mud, keeping the rocker going, and when Glen was worked out, not above taking a hand at the shovel. Her camp showed a comfortable neatness, and the children's nakedness was covered with garments fashioned by the firelight from old flour sacks.
There was no crisp coming of autumn. A yellowing of the leafage along the river's edge was all that denoted the season's change. Nature seemed loth to lay a desecrating hand on the region's tranquil beauty. ”

“ BRIENZ, LAKE OF, in the Swiss canton of Bern, the first lake into which the river Aar expands. It lies in a deep hollow between the village of Brienz on the east (2580 inhabitants, the chief centre of the Swiss wood-carving industry) and, on the west, Bönigen (1515 inhabitants) , close to Interlaken. Its length is about 9 m., its width 11/2 m., and its maximum depth 856 ft., while its area is 111/2 sq. m., and the surface is 1857 ft. above the sea-level. On the south shore are the Giessbach Falls and the hamlet of Iseltwald. On the north shore are a few small villages. ”

“ The boiler-room was still dry, it seemed, for the incandescent lights burned without a flicker, even after the grimy oilers and stokers had come pouring up on deck.
O'Neil climbed to the bridge. "Is this Halibut Bay?" he asked Captain Johnny.
"It is. But we're piled up on the reef outside. She may hold fast—I hope so, for there's deep water astern, and if she slips off she'll go down."
"I'd like to save my horses," said the younger man, wistfully. Through all the strain of the past half-hour or more his uppermost thought had been for them. But Brennan had no sympathy for such sentiments. ”