Italian Alps. Freshfield Douglas William
which made Thrasimene so dear to Perugino – is an essential in lake scenery. In narrow, many-winding lakes the multitude of straight shore lines is apt to cut off harshly all the mountain shapes, and to be an offence to the eye, which would be better contented by the accidents of a green valley than with the smooth water-floor. The landscapes of Como, fascinating in their rapid changes – now picturesque and gay, now wild and severe – are too confined and crowded for perfect beauty. Garda is noble in its sealike expanse, but the shapes of its hills cannot compare with the stately Greek charm of the mountains round Baveno.
Above Gordola a whole hillside had given way, and the great earthslip had spread desolation amongst the lower vineyards. The brown ruin made a sad foreground to the exquisite view over the pale evening lake and the glowing hills. We took a short cut through the broken-down terraces to the bridge over the Verzasca, where we joined the high-road from Bellinzona to Locarno. Between us and the lake ran, in all the ugliness of unfinished novelty, a railway embankment.
Still three miles to Locarno, and no carriage on the road or boat on the water. In the morning we had walked over a seven hours' pass, including an ascent of 6,000 feet; since midday we had covered some eighteen miles of road. Yet, although all more or less way-weary, we accepted the further march without much murmur. At a certain stage in the day the muscles become dogged and go on with machine-like energy, and to maintain the power of enjoyment it is only necessary to keep the mind from worrying itself with idle speculations as to details of time and distance. It is the old story. The sad or the impatient heart collapses, while the contented one 'goes all the day;' and in an Italian dusk on the shores of Maggiore it is easy to be contented.
Locarno itself had suffered severely from the storm. The channel of the small stream which divides the town had been overfilled by a deluge of horrible black mud, which, bursting out like a lava flood into the streets, had flowed down them, breaking into the shops on the ground floor, and finally spreading itself out in a pool several feet deep over the wide open space in front of the Albergo della Corona.
Locarno is pretty well accustomed to violent catastrophes. A few years ago the roof of the principal church gave way under a heavy fall of snow, and, crashing in during mass, killed or wounded half the congregation. Inundations are almost as frequent as earthquakes at Torre del Greco, and here, as on the Bay of Naples, familiarity with the outrages of nature seems to breed indifference, if not contempt. The population of Locarno took the damage done as much as a matter of course as the 'Times' reader in September a shocking railway accident. The men in their broad felts and the women with their fans were, as we entered, all abroad for the evening stroll, chatting and looking on cheerfully at the labourers still at work removing the rubbish. Shopkeepers had already reopened their stores, and were endeavouring to remove from their wares the traces of the recent mud-bath.
No lives had been lost here, but across the water at Magadino the storm had been more fatal. Several houses had been carried into the lake, and so suddenly that in one case the inhabitants were drowned.
Next to Val Maggia, Val Centovalli is the largest of the valleys which open on the fertile plain behind Locarno.10 It is, in fact, not so much a valley as a broad line of depression through the hill-region separating the basin of Domo d'Ossola from the lake. The opening thus offered by nature has, owing probably to political jealousy, never been taken advantage of. The lower Val Centovalli is Italian, the upper basin of the Melezza and the short eastern Val Vigezzo Swiss, and no road passable for wheeled vehicles crosses the frontier. On the whole, however, lovers of nature gain. But for political exigencies Val Canobbina might never have been pierced.
This glen, as its name implies, opens behind Canobbio, a town reached in two hours from Locarno, by a most beautiful road along the western shore of the lake. On the hillside facing north, and a mile inland, is a large bathing establishment or summer health-resort known as 'La Salute,' and chiefly frequented by Italians. The situation is charming, high enough to command over a green foreground the whole upper bay of the lake closed by the bold mountains of Val Verzasca.
Val Canobbina is rather a tangle of glens than a valley. The road climbs at once into a deep dell, refreshed by perpetual waters and green with verdure only broken where the jagged rocks close in on the stream to form a gorge, or 'orrido' in the local phrase. Oak thickets and chestnut copses clothe the slopes; cyclamens, common as daisies at home, bend their graceful heads on every sunny bank.
At one spot four valleys join, and it is impossible to guess which will be chosen. The road plunges into the narrowest, and forces its way near the torrent, until, suddenly turning in steep zigzags to scale the hillside, it breaks off altogether.11 The carriage halts, the driver shouts, and tall, handsome girls drop down the stairs from the neighbouring village of Orasso, and eagerly grasp the luggage. The ascent is continued by a rough path, which circles terrace-like for several miles between white hamlets and green hills. Nature shows herself here very friendly, but also very southern, and full of a delicate subdued beauty quite apart from the more homely charm of northern scenery.
The glen again twists round on itself, and we almost fancy ourselves in an issueless labyrinth, when the road suddenly reappears at our feet, and boldly rushes into a tunnel which might not be much on a railroad, but is a great work for a country byway.
On the further side the road, blasted out of the face of the rock, makes its entrance into an upland basin, still part of Val Canobbina. On a brow in its centre rises the village of Finero. The festival of the patron saint of the church had collected thither all the neighbourhood, and given occasion for a very tournament of bowls, a game which in the lives of Northern Italians fills the place occupied by croquet in those of some of our curates and officers.
Beyond Finero a broad low ridge sends down a stream northward into the Italian head of Val Centovalli, and the road rapidly descends through pine forests. We are no longer in a mountain-maze, 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
Il montera, descendra, traversera, remontera, redescendra, retraversera, etcetera. —French Play.
And when I most go here and there,
I then do most go right.
Between the two valleys mentioned above is Val Onsernone (see
The carriage-road was expected to be finished throughout in 1875.
This and the following chapter were originally written as a paper to be read before the Alpine Club.