CHAPTER V.
VAL TREMOLA—AIROLO—DAZIO GRANDE—FAIDO—BODIO—BELLINZONA—LOCARNO—LUGANO—BELLAGGIO—COMO.
O Italy, how beautiful thou art!—Rogers.
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. In just half an hour the zigzags of this once alarming descent, whence its name, were all behind, or rather above us, and we turned to the straight road along the gorge. Here we passed the still very considerable remains of two avalanches, which in the spring had fallen from the heights, one from the right, and one from the left, and were, but now some way below the road, blocking the valley. One was of clean snow; the other was largely compounded of stones, and sods, and earth, which it had swept off the mountain side in its long glissade. This latter one was of such mass, that if it had encountered York Minster on its way, York Minster would either have been buried beneath it, or would have had to accompany it to the bottom of the valley.
A little beyond the remains of this great avalanche we left the carriage-road, and took pretty nearly a straight line all the way to Airolo; at first through alpes, that is mountain pastures, then through prairies, that is grass land for mowing: sometimes at very steep inclines. When we entered Airolo we had been out one hour and fifty minutes from St. Gothard. Here, as at Göschenen, the commencement of the great tunnel had caused a great deal of building. Beyond Airolo the valley often has a flat bottom; and the near scenery, at times, is tamer than you might have expected to find it in the immediate neighbourhood of a great and famous Pass. But whatever there may be of this kind, for some little distance below Airolo, is completely compensated for by the gorge of Dazio Grande.
Here the Ticino descends rapidly, broken and blustering, through a deep defile it has cut out for itself. In the cliffs above the present channel man, too, has cut out for himself his path. The best part of the gorge begins, and ends, with a bridge; and is about three quarters of a mile in length. The channel, worn by the stream through the tough rock, is narrow, perpendicular, rugged, and tortuous. The water, from variations in its depth, and in the speed at which it is moving, and from the varying effects of the light in which it is seen, is, when looked at from the upper bridge, of a brownish bottle green: while in the gorge itself it is of a clear whitish green. In several places the foam is so touched by the light as to present a pale tint of pink, which still more softens it. This softness of its colour you contrast with the force it is exerting to cut away the rock, and with the aspect of the hard dark rock itself, but which you see, notwithstanding its hardness, is being ground down, and excavated, often on the sides into little rounded holes, by what appears to be only soft, feathery, almost downy, white foam, touched with this faint tint of pink.
As I was loitering through the gorge, noting what nature had done, and was doing—the din of the water, and the engineering boldness of the zigzags, gouged out of the perpendicular cliffs, awakened and enforced attention—a party of travellers in a four-horse carriage passed down: two ladies, and two gentlemen. Of the latter one was asleep, and the other seemed completely absorbed in watching the familiar sight of the smoke of his cigar. The party were not conversing, and no notice was being taken, certainly by the gentlemen, of the scene they were passing through. Let us hope that they did not hail from England. One could not but speculate a little on the cause of such strange insouciance to striking and interesting natural objects as the occupants of this carriage exhibited. Was it a result, if they had come from beyond the Channel, of that estimate of all knowledge (of course, with the exception of what we call practical knowledge, that is to say knowledge that will enable one to make money) which a man’s having been kept, grinding, through all his blessed youth, at that instrument of torture, our ‘Public School Latin Grammar,’ must, in most minds, give rise to? Here we have a not unlikely source. An affluent to this may, perhaps, be found in the ideas of what is desirable in life, which must to some extent be engendered by our English form of society: the most conspicuous exponents of which are our English dinner-parties. I do not mean to imply that our dinner-party-engendered ideas are like those of an old Squire I used to hear of—his day was a little before mine—who was in the habit of affirming that ‘conversation spoilt society:’ by society he meant the animal enjoyment of venison, and the port wine of his day. Still I think it may be held, and not without some show of reason, that there is a sense in which half of his idea is not far from the mark, for that society, as perhaps it would be better to have it, has in this country been spoilt to some extent; and, too, at the dinner-table; but that, as respects conversation, it is rather that society has spoilt it, than that it has spoilt society.
Beyond Airolo, the road is straight, and there can be no short cuts. We reached Faido, seventeen miles by road, at 11.30. We now encountered a great deal of dust, for the heavy storm of Friday, a week back, had been confined to the north of the St. Gothard mountains; I, therefore—and also because I had but little time for this little piece of by-work—gave up walking for the present, and engaged a four-horse return carriage for Bodio, which Ammer had heard of while I was taking an early dinner at the Prince of Wales. After an hour’s halt we were again en route. The road was straight; and the wind, from behind, was moving at about the same rate as the carriage. This kept us for the ten miles to Bodio in the centre of the cloud of dust our four horses and wheels were raising. On descending from the carriage, Ammer’s first thought was to get a clothes-brush. The landlord brought it himself, presenting it with the remark, that ‘a dusty road with the wind behind was the devil.’ ‘Yes:’ I replied, ‘it is often so on the road. But within the Hotels he not unfrequently assumes the form of flies, accompanied with a bad smell.’ I had been tormented with flies at Faido, while at dinner, and had unpleasant recollections of the stenches I had met with in many Swiss Hotels. This little sally at once placed us on an easy conversational footing. He told me that he was the physician of the place; that land in his Canton was too much divided to be of much use to anybody; that this kept everybody poor; that all their best young men were emigrating to the United States, chiefly to California; and that emigration was winnowing the population, sending away all the good grain, and leaving at home only the dross. This was during the half-hour while the carriage for Bellinzona, which he had ordered for me, was being got ready. At parting he expressed a hope that I might return the same way, in order that we might continue our conversation on the condition of the people, &c.
The merits of this valley are underrated: there is much in it worthy of notice. Its character is manifestly Italian, as is that of the people, who in all probability would feel irresistibly attracted towards the Kingdom of Italy, if only (but this is an if of the kind that interposes, in the case of such lovers of money, an impassable gulf) the taxation of the Kingdom were as light as that of the Republic. The regular increase in the variety and richness of the vegetation must strike even a somewhat unobservant traveller, as he rapidly makes the descent. The contour, too, and colouring of the mountains are somewhat distinctive. Those just below Faido had, this year, their barren tops in August flecked with snow. This attracts your eye as you are passing through fields of luxuriant maize, and trellised vineyards at their feet. You see how vegetation has struggled to ascend them. It begins by having it all its own way. Down below it covers all the ground. After a time it finds the struggle harder, and fails in places. Then comes a zone in which bare rock predominates. One step more, and to the eye vegetation dies out altogether; and cold and nakedness are supreme. All this you here take in at a glance.
Further on you pass along the foot of a long mountain range, in which the rock, wherever it is exposed, as high up as you can make it out, has evidently been smoothed, and rounded off by glacier action, or that of running water, for either could have set that kind of face upon it. I am, however, disposed to think that some, at all events, of the effects you may here observe, are due to the action of the stream of the Ticino in some remote past; for I saw little polished excavations in the otherwise smooth and even face of the rock, of precisely the same kind as those I had seen in the gorge of Dazio Grande, where there could never have been moving ice. These excavations exactly resembled the half of a reversed basin, and could have been formed by running water only. Of course they were produced by pebbles and grit being thrown by the stream against, and gradually working into, accidentally soft spots.
Was jolting over the pavement of Bellinzona a little after 4 P.M. Ordered supper at 8. Engaged the carriage and pair of my talkative acquaintance, the landlord of the Hotel de la Poste at Bodio, that had brought me to Bellinzona, to take me on to Lugano early the next morning; and there to wait for my return from Como. By the way, I observed here as in the other towns of this valley—it is the same at Andermatt—that the main streets have granite tramways, which wear the appearance of being old institutions. I suppose their object is to lessen not so much friction, which is our object, as noise; and to keep carriages in the middle of the roadway: both desirable objects where the streets are very narrow.
I had some hours to walk about the place, and note the aspect of things. Judging from the size of the old houses with their colonnades, and the number of churches, Bellinzona must have been formerly a place of more importance than it is at present; or perhaps, which may be the true explanation, wealth, may have been more unequally distributed then than it is now. For it is impossible to suppose but that the produce of the district is worth, at the present day, a great deal more than it was in the church-building age here; and that it can support now a great many more mouths than it could when those old mansions were built. More land has been reclaimed; the culture of the vine—which pays the best of all the plants cultivated here—has been much extended; potatoes and maize have been introduced, which, by reason of their greater productiveness, have almost superseded the old cereals; silk-culture has been superadded without displacing anything else; and then the great modern stream of travellers brings, every year, into the valley, and leaves in it, a great many nuggets of refined gold. There can, therefore, be no question about there being in these days, a great deal more wealth. The only questions are what becomes of it? By whom, and how, is it held? And how is it used?
I will suggest two answers. Suppose there are a score, or so, of proprietors, who have, each of them, five or six hundred acres of land. They will be able to live in such houses as surround the old Place of Bellinzona. But divide these estates among five score proprietors, and not one will be able to live in such houses. And this process you may carry on, till they have all become peasant proprietors. And, then, one step more, and these landed proprietors will all be landed in semi-starvation. This I take to be an answer that accounts for a great part of the change. The other answer is, that formerly people lived in towns, because it was not safe to live in the country; but that, in these quiet and peaceable days, people live just where they find it pleasantest to live. What well-to-do people, therefore, there may still be in the neighbourhood of Bellinzona now probably live on their properties. So far Bellinzona has gone out of town.
My Hotel, judging from the position of the town as respects the river, was on the north side of the modern Place. There was, as far as I observed, no one staying in it but myself. At all events I was shown to what I took to be the best room in the house; it was large and lofty, and led me to suppose, that the house, which had an old fashioned air about it, dated from the time of the old mansions just referred to, and might be numbered among them. On the opposite side of the Place was a new-looking Hotel, which I did not see anyone enter, or leave. On the east side was a chapel—though that may not be the correct word—over the door of which was the inscription ‘Divo Rocho.’ I saw the congregation, that had attended Vespers, leaving it. They were all women. In the Place itself there were never wanting several little groups of people—these were all men—flâneurs—standing about, apparently for the accustomed purpose of seeing, and commenting on, perhaps of getting a little something out of, the arrivals and departures of travellers. But, this afternoon, there was not much of this kind to suggest either hope, or conversation; and so there was nothing to interrupt their combustion of the leaf that should be fragrant. In the centre of the older part of the town, in the small old Place, surrounded by the above-mentioned goodly old houses, fronted with colonnades, I found a tree of Liberty surmounted by the cap of Liberty. This took me rather by surprise. What can stir the mind of Bellinzona so deeply as to prompt such an erection? And why should these republicans be fussy about what they have, and with which there is no one to interfere? Or was it a demonstration of that portion of the townsfolk, who are for the regeneration of society, against the richer sort, who live in country houses? I cannot answer these questions I can only say that the tree had the appearance of age; and so possibly may have been set up during the excitement of ‘48, a wave of which may have reached, and transiently stirred, the stagnancy of Bellinzona.
August 9.—As I had much before me I was up at 4.30 A.M. On looking out of the window, to ascertain what kind of morning I had for the day that was to take me to Como, I saw a woman, on the opposite side of the street, seated in front of her house, busily plying her needle. It will be some time yet I thought before her little ones begin their day. When, an hour later, I left the Hotel, she was still there at work. I was reminded of Virgil’s touching picture of what I was looking on. I was sure that he had often looked upon, and read aright, such sights in the northern Italy of his day. He describes the picture as it might have been seen not at midsummer, but in winter, and, therefore, as within the house.
The middle course of night was run, when men
Wake from their first sleep; and the good housewife,
Whose distaff is her slender livelihood,
Gets her from bed, and stirs th’ ash-buried fire,
Robbing sweet rest for work; and at first dawn
Rouses her women to their long-tasked day:
For ’twere not life to her to live, if drawn
To shame her husband’s bed, or should in vain
Her little darlings crave their daily bread.[1]
Morality is the soul of poetry, because we are still conscious—though theology and the pulpit have done much to deaden our consciousness of this—that it is the life of life. It inspires the poet, and hallows his pictures. This was of old ‘the piety of the poets, who spoke words worthy of Phœbus.’ At all events there were in that old world good wives, the charm of whose goodness was felt; and so there must have been good husbands, too, whose goodness was honoured. I believe then, as the Mantuan would have believed, that my opposite neighbour of this morning was good in heart as well as in deed; and, for her sake, I hope her husband was good. If not, she was by so much the better in heart and in deed.
The road to Lugano begins on a rich and well-cultivated level. The broad, highly varnished leaf of the maize, and the more sober green of the vine, are side by side everywhere. Some country houses are passed. After five miles of this rich cultivation, grass becoming more common, and country houses less so, at Cadenazzo, you leave the valley, and begin the ascent of the Monte Cenere, by which you cross the range that separates the valley of the Ticino from the basin of Lugano. We had been for some little time slowly toiling up the zigzags; and I was at the moment noting the heath in flower, and the stunted russet brake (for there had been a long spell of dry weather) with rock everywhere protruding; and all beneath the old gnarled chesnuts; when, on coming to a masonry-supported angle of the road, projected on the mountain side, almost as if for a look out, there burst on my sight, beyond and below, at perhaps a distance of two miles, the head of Lago Maggiore, and the town, on its margin, of Locarno. I was not expecting anything of the kind; and was indeed, at the moment, intent on the heath and brake, when they abruptly vanished, and this glorious prospect took their place.
At my feet, for the foreground, was the broad, richly cultivated valley, partitioned into innumerable bright green prairies, and grain fields yellow for harvest; all full of fruit trees. Beyond were mountains of very varied outline and colour, scarred with rocky ravines of varying size, which the melting snow, and the storm torrents of ages, had cut from their naked summits down along their forest-clad sides. Snow still, here and there, spotted their summits, in consequence of the cold late spring of this year. Along the margin of the glass-smooth, green-blue lake were the white houses of the long straggling town. Above the town, scattered in woods, at wider intervals up the mountain, and for some distance from the town along the margin of the lake, were innumerable white villas. It being early morning the bright sun was full on the town, and mountains, bringing out clearly every white wall, every dark roof, every green field, every patch of wood, almost every individual tree, and every dark gray rock. It was a scene of surprising variety, interest, and beauty, that had come suddenly before me without any preparation. I was reminded that I had felt, when staying at Jerusalem, some years back, just the same kind of surprise. I had been riding up Mount Scopas, and had been occupied, as I ascended the crest, in looking at the broken pieces of red pottery which strewed the ground, and thinking that they might have been left there by the army of Titus, who, during the siege of Jerusalem, had held this summit, for it commanded a complete view of every house in the Holy City; when, on lifting my eyes from the ground, they were filled with the sight of the twenty miles of white sandy desert, in which had once been Jericho, and on the further side of this white desert was the black line of the Jordan, leading straight to the light blue of the Dead Sea; and beyond all this, the long, wall-like line, ablaze with purple, for it was verging towards evening, of the mountains of Moab, closing the scene, like a barrier of ruby and amethyst, to give promise of some brighter world beyond. The suddenness of the change, and the gloriousness of the new scene, in both cases affected the nerves of the mind with a sensation which can never be forgotten. But, however, in one case it was absolute desolation; not a tree, not a human dwelling-place in sight; all rock and sand; and the complete absence of man from a scene where of old he had often been busy: in the other case it was the complete present subjection and subserviency of the scene to man, and his busy presence everywhere, which were, respectively, the predominant elements of interest. In both scenes nature was grand; but in one grand in desolation, and in the other grand in combination with widely expanded and well-requited human effort.
As you pass on to Lugano, though you are still on high ground, there is something that tells you that you are on the south side of the mountains. It may be hard to say precisely what this something is, but it is in the vegetation, in the people, in the air. There is more of the chesnut, and less of the fir tribe. The oak is more spreading. The undergrowth in the copses, and the plants by the roadside, are more varied. The people are gayer, and more light-hearted. The air is more stimulative of life. At Lugano, as might be expected from its contiguity to the lake, the aspect of things is very different from what it is at Bellinzona. Many appear to be in easy circumstances, and at ease in their minds. This they show by the care they bestow on the exterior of their houses, and on the ground around them.
As to the lake. As far as I saw of it, its distinguishing feature appears to be the abruptness with which the environing mountains descend into the water. In many places they dip into it without any preparation at all, with no final talus. The deep water breaks on the clean upright rock. Still the mountains are pretty well clothed with wood. The trees, however, are much detached, and very scrubby, as if on these dry, sunburnt, rocky mountain sides, they needed a century, as probably they do, to grow into scrub. Still wherever on the margin of the lake, and a little higher up, soil could be collected for a few vines, or for a little garden, there you will see the few vines, or the little garden. One is astonished at the number of small towns on the margin. They are very conspicuous from the walls of all the houses being white. I suppose they are built of rough stone, which is then plastered, and lime-washed. An American on board the steamer, and who was acquainted only with the large way in which things are done in his own country, and with the large rewards of industry there, told me he had been fairly beaten by the puzzle, how the people in these towns could live. There was no land to cultivate. There were no factories to work in. No business. Nothing to trade with. Nothing to get a living out of.
Somewhere between Lugano and the eastern extremity of the lake, we were boarded by a custom house officer, and entered the kingdom of Italy. At the eastern extremity—the place is called Porlezza—we took the diligence for Menaggio, on the lake of Como. The road lies along a depression in the ridge that separates the two lakes. From its being much lower than the ground which separates the head of Lago Maggiore from Lugano, it presents a much more advanced stage of the idea of Italy, and of the sense of being in Italy. There is cultivation all the way. Maize, mulberries, vines everywhere. La petite culture only. In a little more than an hour we were going down the zigzags to Menaggio. The long expanse of Como was at our feet, backed by lofty mountains, on which snow still lingered. Everywhere on the terraced slopes, in which not a square foot of ground was anywhere lost, were not only maize, and mulberries, and vines, but also figs, almonds, and olives; and oleanders, myrtles, and magnolias. Another world with a richer life was around us; a brighter sun, and a bluer vault were above us—a glorious bit of quick-pulsed Italy! It is good for a man that his mind can be moved in response to such a scene.
At Menaggio I took a boat to cross the lake to Bellaggio—the fac-simile of the boat in which I had gone from Sacheln to Sarnen. It was propelled also in the same fashion by two men, who stood up to their work. Of course they demanded at first twice as much for their services as they were glad to accept eventually. As we got afloat the sun was shining brightly, as it had been since we left Bellinzona in the early morning; and there was just enough air to be pleasantly perceptible. At the head of the lake, however, far away to the north, we saw that a storm was raging. There all was black, and distant thunder was at times heard. When we had got about half-way across the lake, the surface being still unruffled where we were, we descried a line of broken water reaching across the lake, rapidly advancing upon us from the north. Our boatmen made all the haste they could, and succeeded not quite, but almost, in escaping the squall: for it struck us when we were but little more than 200 yards from the beach.
We had to wait at Bellaggio about an hour for as it was to go to Como I suppose I must say, the up steamer. If I had remained at Menaggio I should have gone on by the same boat, but I was glad that I had not done so, not merely because crossing in the boat was an additional small incident in the day’s work, but also because it enabled me to see the finest, I might say perhaps the grandest, display of flowers I have ever looked upon. In going down to the new pier, to the left of the road, or rather of the street, for it was still in the town, there is a long wall about 10 or 12 feet high; evidently the boundary of the grounds of a house situated somewhere behind it. I infer from the lay of the land that the grounds, immediately behind the wall, must be 6 or 7 feet higher than the roadway. Over the top of this wall, rising several feet above it, and bending down 4 or 5 feet from the top, was one thick, bushy, unbroken line of oleanders, every spray of which ended in a large truss of freshly expanded rose-red blossoms. I paced the wall, and, if I remember rightly, its length was 62 yards. The stems of the plants were invisible, being behind the wall. Crowning then this lofty gray stone wall, and hanging down over its side was a long, broad, even, unbroken line of bright blazing colour. The eye fed upon it, and was more than satisfied with the feast.
The streets of Bellaggio were sheltered from the squall. In crossing the lake to Cadenabbia it was on our starboard beam. The little wet it made on deck was sufficient to drive pretty nearly all the native below. A little further down, on rounding the point, which opens the long reach, at the bottom of which stands Como, there was no more wind: either the interposing mountain acted as a screen to keep it off; or, as is common in mountain lakes and valleys, it was a local affair along a single reach. As we neared Como, at about 6 P.M., we saw that a heavy storm was gathering at that end of the lake, and just as we were leaving the boat for the pier, the rain came down in earnest; and lasted for two hours, accompanied with much thunder and lightning.
On seeing, this evening, in the reading-room of the Volta, a file of the ‘Times’ down to the 6th, I was amused at recalling that for some days I had been suffering under a complete deprivation of this necessary of English life, without having once given the loss a thought.
August 10.—At 7. A.M. attended mass at the Cathedral. The service reminded me of a question, which some years ago occurred to me in the Cathedral of Montreal—What is there in this service which can lead any one to suppose that it is edifying to man, or pleasing to the Almighty? The men of Como, we may infer, are of opinion that it is not edifying, or they have some reason for refusing to be edified by it, for certainly there were not half-a-dozen of them in the Cathedral. The women, too, of whom almost exclusively the congregation was formed, were, again almost exclusively, from the lower classes. I was on this occasion horrified (for I offer to the reader everything at all worthy of notice, but this incident very unwillingly) at seeing the officiating priest, in the midst of the service, expectorate on the floor, and a few minutes afterwards repeat the offensive act. The assistant priest took the contagion, and followed his example. As, however, in matters of this kind, practice and feeling are conventional, I, probably, was the only person present whom the act shocked.
After the storm of last night the day was bright and fresh. I was due at Andermatt to-morrow; and, as we have so often heard with respect to political questions, there were three courses open to me. I might return to Bellinzona by Lago Maggiore, which would so far have been new ground. This, however, I rejected, because I wished to see Lago Maggiore in a more leisurely manner. Or I might, by way of the Splugen, reach Andermatt late on Monday night. This also I rejected, because the Splugen appeared to belong to a district I wished to reserve intact for another day. Or, finally, I might, throughout, retrace my steps: and this was what I did. Nor was I dissatisfied with my decision; for I found that a second sight of the lake of Como, and of its lovely shores, was almost as pleasing and interesting as the first had been, though the two were separated by the interval but of a single night. It is a sight of which you feel that you can hardly have enough. The surprising number of towns that embroider the margin, and which are almost everywhere, all along, connected by villas, is in itself a pleasing sight. They show how near you are to Milan, and to many other wealthy cities, the dwellers in which are glad to exchange for a time the dust and dirt, the heat, the moil and toil, of city life for some months of quiet in a scene where Nature has done all she could to make quiet soothing, and remedial for damages and overstrains of either body or mind. It is a sanitarium, provided by kindly and provident Nature, for the exhausted and injured powers of the mental workers of Europe. Here is space enough for all; and all the space good, for the direction of the lake is mainly from north to south; every part, therefore, of each shore gets daily enough light and warmth, and not too much; one side being cool in the morning, and the other in the evening. The lake, too, being 30 miles in length, has, with the addition of the branch to Lecco, more than a hundred miles of shore: a hundred miles of its embroidered border of towns and villas; and of gardens, terraces, and pleasure grounds. The water, also, being only between one and two miles across, your opposite neighbours are within visiting distance by row-boat. And, now, steam has brought within visiting distance the inhabitants of all the towns, and of all the villas, throughout the whole hundred miles. And, then, this blue highway, and its charming margin, are set in a frame of most varied and picturesque mountains, with the purest and freshest air for you to breathe; with the richest vegetation to delight your eyes; and all canopied by the clearest and brightest azure. And this within an hour of Milan; and no city of northern Italy, if distance be measured by time, far off; and, when the tunnel under St. Gothard shall be completed, northern Europe brought close: and the sojourner, though on the shore of Como, yet, all the while, by the aid of the telegraph, at home.
As I descended Monte Cenere I was on the look out for the glimpse I had had, yesterday morning, of the head of Maggiore. But in these matters there is often a wide difference between evening and morning. The sun was now to the west of the mountains, behind Locarno. The lake was no longer blue, but hazy. The same haze shrouded Locarno, and its environs. Everything that had given life and interest to the scene then, was veiled from sight now. Its present aspect was too dull and dead even for imagination to work upon. The disappointment was just that so common in human lives, when, where we look for a garden of roses, we find desolation.