One of the ruined spaces we had already traversed, a German gentleman with his lady, and a guide leading her mule, had attempted to pass on the 18th, a day before ourselves. The animal slipped on the verge, and the guide, in his effort to save the lady, was dragged over also. Her body, for she was killed on the spot, was recovered and carried to Isella, that of the unfortunate man was swept away. This was a warning; we proposed to ford the torrent, thus circling round the base of the mountain where it was shallow, but the men, whose aid we demanded, treated the idea as madness, and refused positively, we therefore paid the cantonnier en chef for his trouble, and turned our horses’ heads towards the Simplon inn; for, discouraging as it was to seek again obstacles once surmounted, to do so seemed the one thing possible. As we turned, disconsolately thinking of the wearisome valley of the Rhone, and the long detour we must make by Geneva, a young officer of carabinieri, with whom we had been in conversation before, and a priest, came up to accost us. There was a way, he said, which might be just passable, over the Trasquiera, he had gone it once in search of deserters; but a guide to lead Fanny was indispensable, and none was to be had. Chance served us well, for as we were looking about with but faint hope of seeing one, (all the cantonniers being gone to their work a mile away, and no one walking there for pleasure,) came up a young man, to whom the kind priest immediately applied, asking him for what recompense he would accompany us across the mountain, and to Domo d’Ossola: he said seven francs, but that he did not know the way; and our embarrassments would have recommenced, but that the Paroco summoned his young brother, a pretty slight boy of twelve, who knew all the paths and precipices within five miles round. The Trasquiera almost hangs over Isella, and the zigzag path up its side commences from the broken road we had crossed after leaving the village that morning. Over this our poor horses were led again, and bidding good bye to the priest and officer, we commenced our ascent, the boy leading the way, Fanny climbing like a goat and pulling up the guide, who, having never touched a horse’s rein before, rather hung by it than was of service; D—— supporting Grizzle, who was very frightened and awkward, and I bringing up the rear, and though they were obliged to pause every ten steps for breath, often at a distance; as the weight of my habit encumbered me, and this path is not even used by mules, and by the country people rarely to drive their cattle to the pastures, as there is a better on the other side the mountain. For the first five minutes we went on trusting it would improve; after the first quarter of hour, because to turn became almost impossible, the track being at no part more than two feet broad, and winding in zigzags along the extreme verge above a torrent, which, though neither so broad nor deep as the Doveria, would, as Mercutio said, “serve,” and besides formed like an irregular stair of steps of stone two and three feet high, small and pointed, broad and smooth. I often used hands as well as feet, catching at rocks and roots. Poor Grizzle went sorely against her will; only the boy and Fanny, who were far a-head, seemed to enjoy it.
As the road grew steeper and I found I must have both hands free, I took off the skirt of my habit and laid it over the latter’s saddle, thinking at the time I never saw a prettier object than her little thorough bred form in the guise of a packhorse, but stepping on with a demeanour as dignified as if she had been at a review in the Champ de Mars. The path now became absolutely vertical, and the more difficult from its being over smooth loose ground. As we had dined lightly the day before and not breakfasted this, even on a cup of water, I have perhaps an excuse for the giddiness and fear produced by exhaustion, which took momentary possession of me, and certainly brought with them my only real danger, for worn out by the scorching heat and harassing walk, I felt unable to climb higher, too giddy to look back, and unable to sit down, as the ground from its excessive slope afforded no support, and I was afraid of slipping in a minute from the height I had passed three hours in attaining. I believe I was going to scream, but I thought better of it, and seized a pine branch and arrived at the stones and safer ground before D——, who had therefore left Grizzle to her fate, could arrive to help me. Here was the first chalet, but it was locked, left by its owners, who were gone to the high pastures, and we were disappointed in our hoped for draught of water. There was a spring, the boy said, half an hour’s walk farther, so we rested a few minutes and then went on patiently, though it was twelve o’clock and we were parched with thirst, and mountain air, renovating as it is, will not supply the place of all things. We were now in a tract of pine forest, and at its steepest part found our way barred by half a-dozen Italian woodcutters, who were felling the trees, one of which lay across our path. D—— said afterwards he expected a worse adventure here, for we had a large sum in gold about us, and the odds were in their favour, besides that the ground was of such nature, that a push would have been sufficient to settle matters without trouble. The Italians were, however, better than their countenances; they opened their dark eyes wider in wonder at the apparition of English horses there, but dragged aside the pine; and when I, who had struck my foot against some roots and could get no farther, called to them to give me “la mano,” good naturedly pulled me up, each consigning me to the broad black hand of his comrade, so that I arrived at the summit of the mound with more ease than accompanied my climbings heretofore. After this followed a few steps of what the guide denominated plain. The direction of our road had changed, and now too high above the unseen Doveria to hear its roar, we looked through vistas of pines to those of the mountains on its opposite bank, seeming a continuation of these forests without a symptom of the abyss between. We toiled on some time longer, D—— casting back at me looks of pity, and I trying to smile, though I should have been puzzled to say for what. We found too juniper berries and hips and haws, and shared them after the manner of the babes in the wood, but the delight was the spring, at which we arrived at last, trickling from a rock. D—— bent the top of his hat into a hollow, and out of this cup we drank, I do not know how many draughts, but certainly the best in our lives; for my own part the relief it afforded seemed to dispel all fatigue, and we went on merrily, though our path lay across the bed of a torrent, which, though hardly flowing, had still sufficient water to make slippery its smooth shelving stones, polished like marble by its passage.
The ascent continued, but it was no longer rapid, and half an hour brought us on the mountain pastures at the summit, and among the chalets. We saw nobody; the priest’s brother said it was not the hour for finding milk, so there was nothing to be done but to lie down on the short fine grass, irrigated by a hundred rills, and let the horses drink from them, and drink ourselves out of the palm of our hands. The guide murmured for the fiftieth time “paese del Diavolo,” and the boy laughed at me. Though he had knocked at one of these habitations and found no one, he was fortunately wrong as to the absence of all, and the wondrous sight we indeed constituted there, attracted some of the half wild mountain women, good looking and picturesquely attired with bright kerchiefs on their heads, and cloth leggings instead of stockings on their feet, coarse brown jackets and blue cloth petticoats with a deep crimson border.
The first who issued from the dwelling seeing the perseverance with which I drank out of my hand from the mountain stream, came smiling to offer a long ladle, which was an admirable substitute. An old woman seeing, I suppose, that I looked pale and faint, plunged her hand into a long pocket and drew forth two apples. We accepted them with great gratitude, and asked if we could get some milk; it really was not the hour, but several of the good natured creatures set forth different ways in search, and our first benefactress, who had left us for a moment, returned, this time her apron quite full of the small sweet apples, and with her half a dozen companions came close to watch us eat them, and say “povero” and “poverina” every minute. They asked the guide and the boy fifty questions without obtaining satisfactory answers, for they spoke a patois, which neither clearly comprehended. For my own part, Giuseppe’s Swiss Italian was bad enough; the boy spoke purely, for he was from the shores of the Lago Maggiore, but of this not a word in ten was intelligible to me. I understood, however, that the horses were even more than ourselves the objects of their curiosity. Their admiration was unwearied; they walked round them and clapped their hands, and laughed to see them eat and drink, repeating some of the few Italian words they knew, “Oh la bella bestia, la bella bestia,” and that they had never seen a horse before. How far this is possible to people, who, though on a mountain, are but three hours removed from the most frequented road in Europe, I leave you to decide. The guide confirmed it; the women, he said, were employed all the summer on the pastures and in making cheese, which the men carried for sale below, and in the season when the snows fell, which at this height happens early, they spun their own wool and lived inclosed in their mountain village. Certainly the men were less primitive in their manners than the women, and also less prepossessing in appearance. Several, when the females gone in search of milk returned, came in their company inspecting us with less merriment but more attention. We began to think it would be unwise to be benighted on the mountain, and paying the good women for our breakfast in a way they thought splendid, I mounted Fanny for the five minutes during which the plain lasted, and was hardly on her back, when she thought proper to leap a stream, through which I should have preferred her walking quietly. Whether or no the mountain women had ever seen a horse before, I doubt they will ever see one leap that rivulet again. At the next we reached, for they are innumerable, Grizzle, whom D—— was still leading, following her comrade’s example, but as usual in the wrong place, jumped it with great energy, knocking her master down.
A bad path and steep ascent led hence to another meadow, where Grizzle was in jeopardy, for her saddle, valise, and all, turning, she was so frightened as to start away from D——, who had quitted her bridle to arrange them, and towards the bushes on the verge, where she would have rolled over, for the meadow was a mere platform, with precipices all round it. We saved her by an appeal to her greediness: she stopped short to eat the clover I gathered for the purpose. Met here an old man, who asked the guide whence we came, and said, in reply, “Non scenderanno mai,” which was encouraging. Continuing to ascend, we were on the summit in half an hour more, in presence of the miserable village and desert inn. No one is there save on fête days, the boy said. We sate under the shed which is its appurtenance, on the stone seat which surrounds the stone table. A few steps further, on the mountain’s very verge, is the small church, painted and ornamented, and here the priest’s brother left us, delighted with his fee, as the descent began at this spot, whence the mule-path winds to the valley. For a few minutes it appeared more promising, but for a few minutes only, for though cut in broader zigzags and its precipices less appalling, it was still but four feet wide, and its steep steps of loose stone made Grizzle groan with fear as she slipped down them, her head in the air, and her feet thrown forward most helplessly. It would have been impossible to lead her, but that Fanny was first, hurrying gaily forward, and picking her steps like a mule,—the guide said, “Va d’incanto.” The rain had commenced falling as we passed the church, a circumstance we were too busy to notice: it was at all events preferable to the overpowering sun, whose heat we had suffered. Arrived at the bottom, under the shelter of some noble chestnut trees, an improvement after brushwood and barrenness, there is a hamlet under the wall of rock, and before it and us, the Querasca, which joined the Doveria a stone’s throw further. Our guide had sought this spot for the sake of its wooden bridge, left unharmed when the storm swept away that of stone.
Arrived at the torrent’s edge, and looking about in vain, he asked a peasant girl to conduct him thither, but it had disappeared also, carried down the current the day after its comrade. Giuseppe never despaired—we had done so during this expedition twenty times over,—but all he said was “Adesso vedremo;” and now, the wooden bridge being wholly invisible, we went on to the high road opposite the ruin of the other and the avalanche of stones occupying the place of a farm which had been carried away, and stood under the pouring rain on the brink of the torrent, which this time had changed its course in its fury, leaving the one arch which remained standing an island. Giuseppe said the same thing. With the calm blue eye of a northern, he was in all things a contrast to the Italians we had met hitherto; for his courage was always quiet and ready, and he never tried to enhance his services, and in the most difficult moments looked round with an encouraging smile on his good-natured face. If ever I pass through Crevola again, I will look for Giuseppe Sala. On our side the gulf, and on the commencement of the vanished bridge, were standing about a dozen Italians, not at work, but in contemplation; and Giuseppe, brave fellow as he was, after looking a moment at the turbid water, intimated his intention of fording it. We desired him to employ one or two of these to assist him in crossing. The ill-looking idlers came crowding round in consequence, talking fast and loud; “they did increase the storm,” but insisted on it, that if one were hired all must be, and Giuseppe gently said, “Io solo,” and walked into the water with Fanny. The torrent was broad, and, though not more than four feet deep, fearfully rapid, and only by clinging to her he got safe over, though not without extremely alarming us, for in its very centre, where it rushed most furiously among the masses of stone, she stopped to drink, and we almost expected to see both swept away. As they turned the opposite point of land, we lost sight of them, but were soon reassured by Fanny’s violent screamings for her comrade, and the sight of Giuseppe, very wet and triumphant, running back to us along the pine trunk flung from the high ground to the shore. He had less trouble with Grizzle, for it had become impossible to hold her, and in her impatience to join her comrade, she rushed through rocks and water, dragging him along without any effort of his own. Our turn was now come, and we were to cross the pine trunk, which, considered an easy comfortable bridge in the mountains, made me giddy to look at. I believe we both would have preferred the water, but necessity makes the head steady, and shame prevented our hesitation, for an old woman crossed it before us, composedly, as if it had been a meadow, with a pile of faggots on her back for ballast, and her bare feet clinging to the asperities of the bark, wherein she had an advantage over us. I called to her from the other side to hold out her hand, but the poor soul returned the whole length and then walked it backwards, leading and nodding to me, with the stream flowing ten feet below, and when I wanted to pay her, ran away and over it once more. D—— arrived, marshalled by a boy, and we found the horses waiting: Fanny held by a youth, who complained of having lost in the water, which he had not entered, shoes never made for him. The rain had fallen during two hours without interruption, and now gave place to scorching sun once more. Ere we rode on, we looked up at the little church on the summit of the Trasquiera, in wonder that our horses had been there, but our hour of tranquillity was not yet come, and a very short distance brought us to an obstacle impassable as at Isella, and resembling it closely, for there was picturesque confusion in place of the road, of which no vestige remained, and a tongue of high land, round which foamed the Doveria. Here, however, Giuseppe knew his road, and led among vineyards, by ways we should have thought steep and bad at other times, to a picturesque village—it must have been Dovedro—and thence across the dry bed of a stream, and under long arcades of the trellised vine. Giuseppe gathered grapes for us, for which (in poetical justice) we paid a woman carrying a sickly child, to whom they did not belong.
Further on our way, for we made a round of a mile, Giuseppe and the horses fording another tributary torrent, and ourselves passing it partly on a plank, partly by wading through, we arrived at and kept the high road, crossing breaks innumerable—none so important as to force us aside, though elsewhere I would have ridden twenty miles to avoid one of them.
The last gallery was that of Crevola, cut for the length of one hundred and seventy feet, in a straight line, through the solid rock. The scenery had lost its naked horror, and grown beautiful as well as grand; trees fringing, far below the road, the banks of the deep torrent; and, as we ascended the hill, we passed on our right hand, prostrate on our way, and expressive in its silence, a broken column, once on its road to be a monument of Napoleon’s glory. From the summit of this hill we had a noble view of the high bridge of Crevola, over which we were to pass, and to which the road descends gradually; its two arches rest on a pillar one hundred feet high, and beneath them the Doveria utters its dying roar, and spends its last fury in its encounter with the Tosa.
Having crossed this bridge, we were out of the Val Doveria and in that of the Tosa, trellised vineyards covering the slopes to the right, the broad river flowing along its centre, and on the left, gentler mountains, with green woods dotted with villas, and the high white campanile rising each above its village. Still, after the descriptions I have read of this valley, its aspect disappointed me. It was a relief from contrast certainly, to ride along a level, and unaccompanied by the roar of the torrent, and our previous fatigue might perhaps indispose us to admire what beauty it really possesses, or it might be saddened by the mists of that dull evening. To me it had a look of desolation, for the Tosa, which had swollen and now shrunk again, had left a broad track of sand and stone through the ravaged meadows; and a short distance from Domo we found a sign and token of its power, for the fine stone bridge was carried away, and, for the convenience of foot-passengers, a plank, sloping considerably, had been laid from the high remnant, on the one side, to the ground, where there was no vestige, on the other. On the right of this ci-devant bridge, the ravaged space extended wide and far, the river still flowing in its centre. Giuseppe said, “Adesso vedremo,” and ran down to seek a fitting place for crossing with the horses, for it seemed, to the left of the bridge, so deep and broad as to give little hope of finding a ford. An Italian lady and gentleman had, however, driven from Crevola before us, I suppose to see the state of the route, and good-naturedly recalled our guide, saying, the only possible place was there. The sun had long been set, and the brief twilight was fading also, so that we had no time to lose. Giuseppe went in without hesitation, this time above the waist. I watched him in fear, for though there were now no rocks in his way, the strength of the current was such as, but for clinging to the horses, he could not have mastered. This was our last impediment, and we arrived at dark at Domo d’Ossola; it was well for our vanity that we made our entry then, D——’s hat, which had served, as I told you, for tea-cup, and my tattered boots and muddy habit, looking unlike the garb of conquerors such as we considered ourselves to be. Giuseppe took leave of us in the yard of la Posta. I had asked him to conduct us to the best hotel, to which he said, “Son tutti ladri, ma è questo un buon ladro.” He had not thought of increasing his demand, and looked surprised at receiving gold and a supper. The horses had a good stable and wondrous appetite, Fanny rolling ever and anon, and recommencing with fresh energy.
A knock at the door of our apartment announced our amiable American friends (whose carriage had been carried over), come to congratulate us on our safety. Our dinner was served about ten, and very acceptable as the first meal during the day. We shall remain a day or two, for the inn is comfortable and, as the hand-book observes, clean as Italian hotels usually are. I should prefer bright rubbed floors to the matting which covers these, and seems seldom or never swept, but the cabin at Isella is a good foil for all that may follow.