Italian Alps. Freshfield Douglas William

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СКАЧАТЬ the hills stand back and leave in their midst a happy oasis crowded with cultivation and life, and blest with the gifts alike of mountain and of plain, the fresh Alpine breeze and water, and the sun and fertility of Lombardy. In the midst of maize-fields lie spacious well-built towns; on the slopes, shaded by their walnut and chestnut groves, a score of brilliant whitewashed villages.

      What a living brightness in southern lands is the white which in the north, among our duller colours and opaque atmospheres, is only a dead chill! Beyond the Alps it seems the appropriate colour for men's homes. We in England can ill afford to dispense with the suggestion of warmth and dryness given by red brick and tiles. But domestic architecture is a subject too painful for the victims of ninety-nine years' leases and speculative builders to think about. Few Londoners can bear to look without a shudder on the outside of what they call 'home.' If the old fashion of white paint was chilly, it was at least better than the new stucco squares and streets, the exact colour of our native fogs and roadways. Why should we live in a monotone of mud, as if we were some species of snail whose only chance in the struggle for existence lies in making itself and its shell undistinguishable from the surroundings?

      The plain in which stand the prosperous towns of Malesco and Santa Maria Maggiore, though called Val Vigezzo, sends down its torrent to Locarno. Such an imperceptible bank of heather as divides the Drave from the Pusterthal still severs us from the western Val Vigezzo. In clear weather Monte Rosa must shine upon this upland basin; in the pouring rain all I saw of the drive to Domo d'Ossola was a narrow picturesque river-bed and a wide sodden plain, at the end of which a ferry close to the town gates carried us and our carriage across the swollen waters of the Tosa.

      CHAPTER III.

      WEST OF THE BERNINA

THE PEAKS AND PASSES OF VAL MASINO. 12

      Il montera, descendra, traversera, remontera, redescendra, retraversera, etcetera. —French Play.

      And when I most go here and there,

      I then do most go right.

Shakespeare.THE MOUNTAINS OF VAL MASINO – THE AVERSTHAL – MADRISER PASS – VAL BREGAGLIA – ZOCCA PASS – PROMONTOGNO – VAL BONDASCA – PASSO DI FERRO – BAGNI DEL MASINO – PASSO DI MONTE SISSONE – THE FORNO GLACIER

      To the crowd, which having sat down in a draught on the roof of Europe spends its time mostly in bemoaning the cold, to the water-drinkers of St. Moritz or the pensioners of Pontresina, the mountains of Val Masino are unknown. Yet had they eyes to see they might often be attracted by the vision of two square towers rising far beyond the blue lakes and the green ridge of the Maloya, and shining like an enchanted keep through the warm haze of Italy.13 They are indeed the ramparts of Paradise, for on the further side they look down upon the gardens of Lago di Como.

      Even to climbers this western wing of the Bernina has remained little known. So long ago as 1862 Messrs. Kennedy and Stephen carried at the second assault its proudest peak, the Monte della Disgrazia. But I could count on my fingers the names of all the Englishmen who have since penetrated Val Masino. Foreign Alpine Clubs have for the most part held aloof. The Swiss have found enough to do elsewhere, and have not as yet chosen Val Bregaglia – politically a Swiss valley – as the 'gebiet' of one of the summer 'excursions' in which they contrive to combine so happily the features of a prolonged picnic and a mountain-battue. That practical, and in some respects energetic, body, the Italian Alpine Club, is only beginning to turn its attention to a district containing one of the few wholly Italian peaks of over 12,000 feet.

      Those who have been already somewhat disappointed in the Upper Engadine and the heart of the Bernina will perhaps argue that there cannot be much worth seeing in its extremities, where the peaks are lower and the ice-fields as a whole less extensive. Such an assumption, however, would be ill-founded. For scenic effects, every one will allow, the measurement of a mountain must be taken, not from the sea level, but from its actual base. Moreover the lower the base the richer and more varied will be the contrast in vegetation. On applying this test we find that the Punta Trubinesca14 towers 8,500 feet above the chestnut trees of Promontogno, while Piz Bernina itself rises 1,000 feet less, and far more gradually, above Pontresina. The icy ridges of the Disgrazia soar 11,000 feet above the vineyards of the Val Tellina, or as much as Mont Blanc above Courmayeur.

      The peaks, moreover, are of a durable granite. They have, therefore, that combined boldness of outline and solidity which often belongs to this hardy rock. Other mountains have the air of having been built up; granite peaks seem rather to have been rough-hewn like a sculptor's block out of a larger mass. In glaciers the group possesses almost every known variety. The Bondasca and the eastern glaciers of the Disgrazia worthily represent the frozen cataract type, tumbling in broken billows from cope to base of the mountain; the Albigna is an ice-lake fed by huge snow-basins; the Forno a stately stream surpassing in length the Morteratsch.

      Here, however, I gladly break off from the conventional tone of recommendation in which discoverers are apt to assert their own merits.

      For the people who either cannot or will not walk, the large class which, taking advantage of the shade of contempt already attached to the epithet by Vatican infallibility, I may venture to call the 'Subalpine Club,' Val Masino has few attractions. Inaccessible on three sides except to pedestrians, this valley will probably remain for long a sure refuge for the misanthropic climber driven away from the peaks of the central Bernina by the demands of the guides or the clatter of his fellow-countrymen.

      In the summer of 1864 I set out from Splugen with two companions and François Devouassoud for the Bernina. Our route led us through the Avers Thal, a cross-road of travel still but little frequented, though no better reason than fashion can be assigned for its neglect. For mile after mile the Averser Rhein, a strong blue-grey torrent, leaps and roars between masses of marble crag tinted with lichens, and clasped about by huge pine-roots. Tributary streams rush down from the rugged precipices towering on either side the gorge, and shoot with a creamy rush into the deep cleft which holds the larger flood.

      Above the long defile lies a broad grassy upland dotted with some of the highest villages in Europe, and encompassed by green slopes which divide the waters of three seas. The landscape is, it is true, tame to the eye; but on a sunny August morning, when the vast hayfield is alive with mowers and the air fragrant with the smell of ripe grasses, it contains much to tickle other senses than sight.

      We turned up a side branch of the valley, the Madriser Thal. Near its head a white line seamed the slopes we had yet to surmount. On nearer approach this resolved itself into a laboriously-built stone staircase, showing that we were on what was once a frequented passage for beasts of burden. Judging from the solidity and care with which it had originally been put together the 'pavé' might have been Roman. I do not venture to say it is. More probably in the middle ages this was an alternative route for the Septimer. Perhaps the indefatigable explorer and describer of his native Alps, Herr Theobald, or some other curious enquirer, has told the date and story. If so I have failed to fall on the passage.

      It was from the ridge which divides the Rhine from the Maira that I gained my first general view of the mountains of Val Masino. Opposite, and separated from our stand-point, the Madriser Pass, only by the deep but narrow trench of Val Bregaglia, a great mountain-mass glowed in the afternoon sunshine. Its base was wrapped in chestnut woods, its middle girt with a belt of pines, above spread a mantle of the eternal snow. The sky-line was formed by a coronet of domes and massive pinnacles carved out of grey rocks, whose jagged yet stubborn forms revealed the presence of granite. Full in front the curving glacier of Val Bondasca filled the space beneath the smooth cliff-faces, and at one spot a gap between them irresistibly suggested a new pass for the morrow.

      The descent on the southern side of the Madriser Pass, long, rough, СКАЧАТЬ