Ticino

“ August 8.—‘Now, Ammer, for a glimpse of Italy;’ as, at 6 A.M., starting from the almost undistinguishable watershed that divides the head-stream of the Reuss from that of the Ticino—an affluent of the Rhine from an affluent of the Po—we began to cut off the many zigzags of the Vale of Trembling, at a good pace, as became the frosty morning—frosty at that altitude—and our inspiriting destination. ”

“ The stone chalets in Ticino have their fronts painted pink, and decorated in Italian fashion, with garlands of flowers and symbolical vases, pouring out wine and milk. The finest of these houses are not ducal palaces, the poorest are never hovels. A real Swiss cottage is as much adapted to Swiss scenery as the Gothic is suited to the holy and sublime feelings of devotion; there is a fitness in the subdued color of the resin from the larch to an association which requires extreme simplicity ”

“ From the bridge of the Ticino the scenery was decidedly tamer. The Alps fell more into the background, and with their white peaks disappeared the chief glory of the scene. The plain was so level, and its woods of mulberry and walnut so luxuriant, that little could be seen save the broad road, with its white lines of curb-stones running on and on, and losing itself in the deep foliage of the plain. Its windings and turnings, though coming only at an interval of many miles, were a pleasant relief from the sameness of the journey. Occasionally side views of great fertility opened upon us. ”

“ Mulberry trees and vines gradually begin to appear, and the little church towers (called in Italian, Campanili) becoming more frequent as one goes south, greatly add to the picturesqueness of the landscape.
Here it may be as well to remind our girls that the Canton Ticino, though Italian in language, in scenery, in architecture, and, in fact, in all its characteristics, yet politically belongs to Switzerland. ”

“ It is a marvellous thing to see the Reuss and the Ticino bid each other an eternal farewell and take their opposite ways down the two sides of the Saint-Gotthard: their cradles touch; their destinies are separate: they go to seek different lands and different suns; but their mothers, always united, do not cease, from the height of solitude, to feed their disunited children. ”

“ Think, I repeat, what that south slope of the Alps might be: one paradise of lovely pasture and avenued forest of chestnut and blossomed trees, with cascades docile and innocent as infants, laughing all summer long from crag to crag and pool to pool, and the Adige and the Po, the Dora and the Ticino, no more defiled, no more alternating between fierce flood and venomous languor, but in calm clear currents bearing ships to every city and health to every field of all that azure plain of Lombard Italy.... ”

“ The upper slopes of the mountains, on either side, were{351} clustered with fir-trees, and the deep blue water of the Ticino, here gently murmuring, there hastily dashing over some rocky impediment, made grateful music in our ears and imparted additional beauty to the way. ”

“ Two pools, on the Saint-Gotthard table-land, give birth, one to the Ticino, the other to the Reuss. The source of the Reuss is lower than the source of the Ticino, so that, by digging a canal of a few hundred paces, one would throw the Ticino into the Reuss. If one were to repeat this work in the case of the principal tributaries of those streams, one would produce strange metamorphoses in the regions at the foot of the Alps. A mountaineer can afford himself the pleasure of suppressing a river, of fertilizing or sterilizing a country: there is something to take down the pride of power. ”

“ Down the road of the Ticino valley I felt again my terror of this new world which is coming into being on top of us. One always feels it in a suburb, on the edge of a town, where the land is being broken under the advance of houses. But this is nothing, in England, to the terror one feels on the new Italian roads, where these great blind cubes of dwellings rise stark from the destroyed earth, swarming with a sort of verminous life, really verminous, purely destructive. ”

“ Beyond the town of Lugano, the hills and wide vale are thickly sprinkled with towns and houses. Small lakes (to us their names unknown) were glittering among the woody steeps, and beneath lay the broad neck of the Peninsula of St. Salvador—a tract of hill and valley, woods and waters. Far in the distance on the other side, the towers of Milan might be descried. The river Po, a ghostly serpent-line, rested on the brown plains of Lombardy; and there again we traced the Ticino, departed from his mountain solitudes, where we had been his happy companions. ”

“ Let any one watch the Ticino flowing into the Lago Maggiore after a few days’ heavy rain, and consider how many tons of mud per day it must carry into and leave in the lake, and he will wonder that the gradual filling-up process is not more noticeable from age to age than it is.
Anzone, whence the sad torrent derives its name, is an exquisitely lovely little hamlet close to Mesocco. Another no less beautiful village is Doera, on the other side of the Moesa, and half a mile lower down than Mesocco. Doera overlooks the castle, the original hexagonal form of which can be made out from this point. ”

“ It was pleasant on this sunny morning to get out of the stifling heat of Airolo. Before we could enter the Val Bedretto we had to cross the Ticino, close to the mouth of the railway tunnel. Here was presented to us a very busy scene, which showed how much work was doing, and would have to be done. No sooner had we entered the Val Bedretto than we were met by a current of crisply fresh air descending it. There is nothing to a cursory glance particularly striking in this valley. ”

“ Here at Biasca the valley took on a different aspect. It became wider and more of a countryside; the vast hills, receding, took on an appearance of less familiar majesty, and because the trend of the Ticino turned southerly some miles ahead the whole place seemed enclosed from the world. One would have said that a high mountain before me closed it in and rendered it unique and unknown, had not a wide cleft in the east argued another pass over the hills, and reminded me that there were various routes over the crest of the Alps. ”

“ For the valley of the Ticino is made up of distinct levels, each of which might have held a lake once for the way it is enclosed: and each level ends in high rocks with a gorge between them. Down this gorge the river tumbles in falls and rapids and the road picks its way down steeply, all banked and cut, and sometimes has to cross from side to side by a bridge, while the railway above one overcomes the sharp descent by running round into the heart of the hills through circular tunnels and coming out again far below the cavern where it plunged in. ”

“ To these minute creatures the space between the mountains on the two sides of the Ticino valley must be as great as that between England and America to a codfish. Many, doubtless, live in the mid-air, and never touch the bottom or sides of the valley, except at birth and death, if then. ”

“ It is therefore an artificial land, just as its inhabitants form an artificial nation, though nowadays it is becoming more homogeneous in both respects. Its political boundaries thus do not coincide with those of nature.
The entire canton of Ticino is south of the Alps, as are the valleys of Simplon (Valais) , Mesocco, Bregaglia, Poschiavo and Münster (all in the Grisons) ; the whole canton of Schaffhausen and part of that of Basel are north of the Rhine, while a large part of the Grisons lies to the east of the Rhine basin, and Porrentruy is far down on the western slope of the Jura. ”

“ The mountains which flank the Alps on this side, are still giants—lofty and bare, and covered with snow in many places. The limit of the German dialect is on the summit of St. Gothard, and the peasants saluted us with a "buon giorno" as they passed. This, with the clearness of the skies and the warmth of the air, made us feel that Italy was growing nearer.
The mountains are covered with forests of dark pine, and many beautiful cascades come tumbling over the rocks in their haste to join the Ticino. ”

“ Save the Ticino valley between Biasca, Bellinzona and Locarno, and the environs of Lugano, the canton is principally composed of hills and mountains, and is therefore poor from the material point of view, though rich in fine scenery. ”

“ Three hours' walk brought us to Bellinzona, the capital of the canton. Before reaching it, our road joined that of the Splügen which comes down through the valley of Bernardino. From the bridge where the junction takes place we had a triple view, whose grandeur took me by surprise, even after coming from Switzerland. We stood at the union of three valleys—that leading to St. Gothard, terminated by the glaciers of the Bernese Oberland, that running off obliquely to the Splügen, and finally the broad vale of the Ticino, extending to Lago Maggiore, whose purple mountains closed the vista. ”

“ The Ticino, in its course to Lago Maggiore has to make a descent of nearly three thousand feet, passing through three valleys, which lie like terraces, one below the other. In its course from one to the other, it has to force its way down in twenty cataracts through a cleft in the mountains. The road, constructed with the utmost labor, threads these dark chasms, sometimes carried in a tunnel through the rock, sometimes passing on arches above the boiling flood. The precipices of bare rock rise far above and render the way difficult and dangerous. ”

“ I who had cut a path across Europe like a shaft, and seen so many strange places!--now to have to recite all the litany of the vulgar; Bellinzona, Lugano, and this and that, which any railway travelling fellow can tell you. Not till Como should I feel a man again ...
Indeed it is a bitter thing to have to give up one's sword.
I had not the money to wait; my defeat had lowered me in purse as well as in heart. I started off to enter by the ordinary gates--not Italy even, but a half-Italy, the canton of the Ticino. It was very hard. ”

“ The acquisition of the province of Ticino in 1512 gave the Swiss Confederation a foothold upon Lake Maggiore, perhaps the most important waterway of northern Italy, and the possession of the Val Leventina, which now carries the St. Gotthard Railroad down to the plains of the Po. Every bulge of Russia's Asiatic frontier, whether in the Trans-Caucasus toward the Mesopotamian basin and the Persian Gulf, or up the Murghab and Tedjend rivers toward the gates of Herat, is directed at some mountain pass and an outlet seaward beyond. ”

“ In the Ticino valley or in the Val Bavona, though the people are as Italian as Catullus, yet politically they count as part of Switzerland; and therefore if you enter Italy thereby, you are not suddenly introduced to that country, but, as it were, inoculated, and led on by degrees, which is a pity. For good things should come suddenly ”

“ Ticino stands in a comparatively low position as regards moral, educa tional, agricultural, and commercial matters. It has pro duced a number of sculptors, painters, and architects. Many of the men migrate during the summer in search of work as picture-dealers, waiters in cafes, chimney-sweeps, and especially as masons, plasterers, labourers, and navvies. A large quantity of fruit is grown; the chief articles ex ported are cattle, hay, fish, chestnuts, and earthenware. In manners, customs, and general character the inhabitants strongly resemble their Italian neighbours. ”

“ I took a trap from Faido to Ambri, and thence walked over to Quinto; here the path begins to ascend, and after an hour Ronco is reached. There is a house at Ronco where refreshments and excellent Faido beer can be had. The old lady who keeps the house would make a perfect Fate; I saw her sitting at her window spinning, and looking down over the Ticino valley as though it were the world and she were spinning its destiny. ”

“ The volume of the Ticino, when at its highest, almost equals the average volume of the Nile, and if it were not for the regulating influence of the lake from which it issues, it would alternately convert the plains of Lombardy into a sheet of water and leave them an arid tract of land.65
The Alpine lakes of Italy thus play an important part in the economy of the country. They render the climate more equable, serve as high-roads of commerce, and, being the centres of animal life, attract a dense population. ”

“ Already in 1403 Uri and Obwalden had taken advantage of a quarrel with the duke of Milan as to custom dues at the market of Varese to occupy the long narrow upper Ticino valley on the south of the pass called the Val Leventina; in 1411 the men of the same two lands, exasperated by the insults of the local lords, called on the other members of the League, and all jointly (except Bern) occupied the Val d’Ossola, on the south side of the Simplon Pass. ”

“ The fortune of the Ticinese emigrants now settled in California alone is estimated at nearly two millions, and from one valley in Ticino, the Vallemaggia, there are forty men who went out from a little cottage such as I have described, and who could now any one of them buy up almost the entire district. ”

“ The strain of northern blood in the people, derived from their Gallic origin, readily received the impress of the ultramontanes who flowed down throughout the centuries into the fertile plains of Po and Ticino, and the thoughts and ideas which they brought, assimilating with the natural instincts of the soil, and with the ancient traditions of the Latins, resulted in an artistic character which is quite Italian, though very different from the more southern populations. ”