Lake Garda

“ The first, beginning from the lake, is the Val del Lago, the deep trench which forms the continuation of the Garda basin. Two or three miles through high-walled gardens and vineyards which recall the environs of an eastern city bring us to Arco, lying under a huge castled crag. After leaving behind the broad streets and cypress avenues of the hot-looking town, the drive grows monotonous. The road stretches on through the half-desolate, half-luxuriant valley, from time to time the wheels rattle over pavement, and we pass through the long, gloomy street of some roadside village. ”

“ A railway platform like a terrace in a typical Italian garden, ornate with a row of carved stone vases of perfect form, and vines in festoons from vase to vase, and dark trees behind, and then a downward slope and little white houses asleep in the distance. This I think was close to Brescia. Then Desenzano, and what I took to be the distant glimmer of Lake Garda under the stars. Verona I passed in my sleep, having now crossed the boundary of Lombardy into Venetia, and Vicenza and Padua are nothing from the train. ”

“ Certainly the lake of Garda displays a rare combination of the beautiful and sublime. The shores abound in the wild and majestic, in variety and beauty of local tints, and picturesque vicissitudes of light and shade; while the olive-crowned Sirmio, [Pg 54] like the island-realm of a Calypso, reposes in regal pride upon the waters, and seems to hold in vassalage the opposite shores and amphitheatre of mountains. ”

“ Naples, Rome, Florence, Venice and then Switzerland and the Rhine is still too often the itinerary of hurried papas and fond mamas. Even if the automobilist does not drop down on Mantua and Cremona he should take things leisurely{313} through the lake region and stop en route as often as fancy wills. The Lago di Garda is the most easterly of the Italian Lakes and the largest.
It is of great depth, 350 metres or more, is sixty odd kilometres in length, and in places a third as wide. It is a product of the rivers and torrents flowing down from the mountains of the Italian Tyrol. ”

“ I learned that there are a few hardy old mountaineers fighting shoulder to shoulder with the youngsters up on the peaks; but these, of course, are exceptions such as one will find anywhere, for the capability of endurance is no longer the same as it was when on the right side of thirty, and the strain on the heart at these altitudes especially is enormously increased. But to revert to our excursion.
Our road for some distance skirted the shore of Lake Garda, which is intersected by the Austrian frontier at its northern end, where the important fortified town of Riva is situated. ”

“ The villa we inhabit during the summer heats is in the most charming district of Lombardy, and near the spot where the rapid Mincio receives the pure waters of the lake of Garda. You must accompany me to this earthly paradise, where we can enjoy the cool breezes from the lake and mountains, and explore the bright scenery of its classic shores and the peninsula of Sirmio, sung in glowing verse by Catullus. There we can repose under the dark umbrage of orange and myrtle groves, drink deep of the beauties of Pindar, and bind our temples with wreaths of laurel. ”

“ The great defensive strength of this plateau had from the first attracted his attention. There the Adige in a sharp bend westward approaches within six miles of Lake Garda. There, too, the mountains, which hem in the gorge of the river on its right bank, bend away towards the lake and leave a vast natural amphitheatre, near the centre of which rises the irregular plateau that commands the exit from Tyrol. Over this plateau towers on the north Monte Baldo, which, near the river gorge, sends out southward a sloping ridge, known as San Marco, connecting it with the plateau. ”

“ A very little above its source, on the lake, stands the house of Cameron, belonging to Mr Smollett, so embosomed in an oak wood, that we did not see it till we were within fifty yards of the door. I have seen the Lago di Garda, Albano, De Vico, Bolsena, and Geneva, and, upon my honour, I prefer Lough-Lomond to them all, a preference which is certainly owing to the verdant islands that seem to float upon its surface, affording the most inchanting objects of repose to the excursive view. Nor are the banks destitute of beauties, which even partake of the sublime. ”

“ The first incident of this strange history, however, occurred while I was spending the early spring at Gardone. Possibly you, as an English reader, have [Pg 40] never heard of the place. If, however, you were Austrian, you would know it as one of the most popular resorts on the beautiful mountain-fringed Lake of Garda, that deep blue lake, half in Italian territory and half in Austrian, with the quaint little town of Desenzano at the Italian end, and Riva, with its square old church-tower and big white hotels, at the extreme north. ”

“ The front line extends from Stelvio Pass in the Ortler Alps along the then Italian-Austrian boundary to Tonale Pass to Lake Garda, thence a little south of Altissimo, Asiago, to Mt. Grappa, Corduna and along the Piave to the sea. ”

“ A desire to visit an Italian lake, as yet unknown, made us select the Brenner pass and the Lago di Garda for our entrance into the Peninsula. The extreme beauty of the country in which we are, makes us desire to see as much of it as possible ”

“ The Alpine lakes break up into a southern and northern subdivision—the former consisting of the Lago Maggiore, and the lakes of Lugano and Como, Lago d’Iseo, and Lago di Garda, all connected by affluents with the system of the Po; and the latter the Lake of Geneva threaded by the Rhone, Lakes Constance, Zürich, Neuchâtel, Biel and other Swiss lakes belonging to the basin of the Rhine, and a few of minor importance belonging to the Danube. ”

“ And thus most lakes have been made by mountains, as the lake of Garda, the lakes of Como and Lugano, and the Lago Maggiore. The Mediterranean fell but little on the confines of Syria, in consequence of the Gaditanean passage, but a great deal in this passage, because before this cutting was made the Mediterranean sea flowed to the South East, and then the fall had to be made by its run through the Straits of Gades. ”

“ It only remains now to speak of Sirmione, the most interesting perhaps after Soave, of the sites around Verona, and which the traveller should on no account omit to visit. The Peninsula of Sirmione on the Lake of Garda was famed in Roman times, and is a{295} spot whose praises have been sung by bards in all ages and tongues. Covered with olive and bay trees it would seem to invite poets to inhabit its groves, and to chant of the soft balmy air that floats round its shores. ”

“ The men we already know through the wandering Tyrolese. In the country their appearance is less fresh than that of the women, perhaps because the latter have more bodily labour, and are more in motion, while the former sit at home as traders and workmen. By the Garda Lake I found the people very brown, without the slightest tinge of red in their cheeks; however they did not look unhealthy, but quite fresh and comfortable. Probably the burning sunbeams, to which they are exposed at the foot of their mountains, are the cause of their complexion.
FROM VERONA TO VENICE. Verona, Sept. ”

“ Garda was the Episcopal seat of Greenland. Freydis and her husband went to Vinland with Karlsefne. It was she who frightened the Skrællings.
[208] It appears that the route to Vinland had become so well known, that the Saga writers no longer thought it necessary to describe it.
[209] Mount Hope bay is still often called a lake. These waters always appear like lakes. Brereton, in his account of Gosnold's voyage, calls these same bays, lakes. ”

“ The rags of sentimentality flutter from every crag and olive-tree and orange-tree in all Italy,—like the wilted paper collars which vulgar tourists leave by our own mountains and streams, to commemorate their enjoyment of the landscape.
The town of Como lies, a swarm of lights, behind us; the hills and shadows gloom around; the lake is a sheet of tremulous silver. There is no telling how we get back to our hotel, or with what satisfied hearts we fall asleep in our room there. The steamer starts for the head of the lake at eight o'clock in the morning, and we go on board at that hour. ”

“ I had from early associations a delightful impression of the beauty of this lake, and it did not disappoint me. It is far superior, I think, to the Lago Maggiore, because the scenery is more resserrè, lies in a smaller compass, so that the eye takes in the separate features more easily. The mountains to the north are dark, broken, and wild in their forms, and their bases seemed to extend to the water edge: the hills to the south are smiling, beautiful, and cultivated, studded with white flat-roofed buildings, which glitter one above another in the sunshine. ”

“ The bay of Ajaccio resembles a vast Italian lake—a Lago Maggiore, with greater space between the mountains and the shore. From the snow-peaks of the interior, huge granite crystals clothed in white, to the southern extremity of the bay, peak succeeds peak and ridge rises behind ridge in a line of wonderful variety and beauty. The atmospheric changes of light and shadow, cloud and colour, on this upland country, are as subtle and as various as those which lend their beauty to the scenery of the lakes, while the sea below is blue and rarely troubled. ”

“ Now they had started, past the Chiesa San Giacomo into the Grand Canal, down the broad waterway, past the Ca' d'Oro, which the Contarini built, to the narrow Rio di Felice; then out into the Sacca della Misericordia, and there, before them, the broad stretch of the silent Lagoon--a lake of opal water that never ended, but as silently became the sky, with no line of light or shade to mark the alchemy of change.
"And across this," said John,--"with their hour glasses spilling out the sand, come the gondolas with the dead, to the cemetery that lies in the water in the midst of the Lagoon. ”

“ Farther to the north-west I had before me the famous pastoral highlands of Niolo, the most elevated basin of the island, with its black lake Nino, from which the Tavignano flows.
These diminutive lakes are all of great depth, and swarming with trout.
As you stand on the summit you hear a continual sound of rushing waters; part of them are forcing their way under ground. This rigid, blasted wilderness, we perceive, overflows with living fountains, which descend to bless the valleys, and there make culture and human society possible ”

“ So that it is evident, from these figures, the Lago di Garda cannot afford to grow its lemons much longer. The gardens are already many of them in ruins, and still more 'Da Vendere'.
We went out of the shadow of the lemon-house on to the roof of the section below us. When we came to the brink of the roof I sat down. The padrone stood behind me, a shabby, shaky little figure on his roof in the sky, a little figure of dilapidation, dilapidated as the lemon-houses themselves.
We were always level with the mountain-snow opposite. A film of pure blue was on the hills to the right and the left. ”

“ There are so many châteaux to be visited, and so many excursions on the lake to be made that we could stay here a month and have a charming plan for each day. This morning, we climbed a winding mountain path to the Villa Serbelloni and wandered through the hillside garden, with its grottoes and tunnels, to a natural balcony overhanging a precipice of sheer rock that rises above the lake. From this height there is a view of the whole northern part of Lake Como, with the Alps beyond, and here one realizes the beauty of Bellagio which along the water front is but a long line of shops. ”

“ Among the high peaks which overhang the Cembra valley, lies a solitary mountain lake whose little outlet falls into the foaming Nevisbach. A small hut at the pointed end of the lake, and a deserted mine which stands close by, surrounded by large heaps of débris, give evidence to the former activity of the spot.
This dark lake is called “Lago Santo” (or Holy Lake) .
Where it now stands there used to be a flourishing [182] village, whose inhabitants found in the neighbouring mines plenty of work and wealth; they were a happy and contented race. ”

“ Here and there were little houses standing hidden in leaves, and soon I crossed the railway, and at last above the trees I saw the sight of all the Bellinzona valley to the north; and turning my eyes I saw it broaden out between its walls to where the lake lay very bright, in spite of the slight mist, and this mist gave the lake distances, and the mountains round about it were transfigured and seemed part of the mere light.
The Italian lakes have that in them and their air which removes them from common living. Their beauty is not the beauty which each of us sees for himself in the world ”

“ There is nothing more sad than to see the corpse of a dead city slowly falling into dust in the sun and rain. One at least buries human bodies. [Pg 62]
LAKE LUGANO [19] BY VICTOR TISSOT
On emerging from the second tunnel, [20] beyond a wild and narrow gorge, there lies suddenly before us, as in a gorgeous fairyland or in the landscape of a dream, the blue expanse of Lake Lugano, with its setting of green meadows and purple mountains, with the many-colored village spires, and the great white fronts of the hotels and villas. ”

“ The panorama which on a fine day spreads itself out before one who walks in these grounds is of singular beauty. The northern arm of the lake, wider and more regular than the others, opens up a long vista of headlands and bays [Pg 32] and red-roofed villages as far as where Domaso peeps out from a grove of giant elms. Beyond, the view is bounded by the snow-covered Alps. Close at hand, near Varenna, the Fiume di Latte, a milk-white waterfall, leaps down from a height of a thousand feet. ”