A-propos——Let me not forget the Churches! In a chapel of the Franciscan Church, there is an image of the Virgin Mary as big as the life, of solid silver, with many other images of Saints of the same metal. If some of those silver Deities were transferred to Paris, I fear their divinity would not save them from the hands of the sacrilegious Convention. One thing, however, is well worth the attention of travellers, particularly those who wish to wipe away the sins of a deceased friend, and get them a direct passport to happiness——This Franciscan Church is held to be one of the most sacred and venerable in the world, on account of the indulgences granted to it by several Popes; so that one single Mass said in it, is declared to be sufficient to deliver a soul from the pains of purgatory. When we consider the great and important extent of their power in that respect, we cannot wonder if they had all the Saints in the Calendar, and the Virgin Mary to boot, in solid silver, even of the size of the Colossus at Rhodes.
Hall, the second city in Tyrol, lies one league from Innspruck: it is famous for its salt-works, and for a mint and silver mines, in which seven thousand men, women, and children, are constantly employed.
At a royal palace and castle called Ombras, lying at equal distance from Innspruck and Hall, there is an arsenal, famous for a prodigious collection of curiosities, such as medals, precious stones, suits of armour, and statues of several Princes on horseback, in their old rich fighting accoutrements; besides great variety of military spoils and trophies taken by the House of Austria; in particular, a statue of Francis the First and his horse, just as they were taken at the battle of Pavia, and two others of Turkish Bashaws, with the costly habits and appointments with which they were taken, embellished with gold, silver, and precious stones. But, above all their curiosities, the most extraordinary is an oak inclosing the body of a deer: this last, however unaccountable, is fact; and equals, I think, any of the wonders in the metamorphoses of Ovid.
Leaving Innspruck, I proceeded on my journey, and soon entered into the mountains, which are there of a terrible height——I was the best part of a day ascending them: as I got near the top, I was, shewn, by my driver, the spot where Ferdinand, King of Hungary, and the Emperor Charles the Fifth, met, when he returned from Africa, in the year 1520. It is marked with an inscription to that effect, and has grown into a little village, which, from that circumstance, bears the name of the Salutation.
Although this mountain, called Bremenberg (or Burning-hill), is covered with snow for nine months in the year, it is inhabited to the very top, and produces corn and hay in abundance: at the highest part there is a post-house, a tavern, and a chapel, where the traveller is accommodated with fresh horses, provisions, and, if he chooses, a mouthful of prayers——I availed myself of the two first; but the latter being not altogether in my way, I declined it, for which I could perceive that I was, by every mouth and eye in the place, consigned to perdition as a Heretic.
Just at this spot there is a spring of water which falls upon a rock, and divides into two currents, which, at a very small distance, assume the appearance, and, in fact, the magnitude too, of very large rivers. The mountain is sometimes difficult to pass, sometimes absolutely impracticable——I was fortunate, however, in this respect; for I got over it without any very extraordinary delay, and on my way was regaled with the most delicious venison that I have ever tasted in my life; it was said to be the flesh of a kind of goat.
Although it is but thirty-five miles from Innspruck to Brisen, It[It] was late when I reached the latter; and as it contained nothing worth either the trouble or delay attending the search of, I set out the next morning, and, travelling with high mountains on one side, and a river all along upon the other, arrived at a town called Bolsano, in the Bishopric of Trent. The country all along was thickly inhabited, and the mountains perfectly cultivated and manured even to their highest tops. On entering the valley of Bolsano, I found the air becoming obviously sweet, delightful and temperate; the vineyards, and all the trees and shrubs, olives, mulberries, willows and roses, &c. all of the most lively green, and every thing marking the most luxuriant vegetation.
Bolsano is a small, but extremely neat and pleasant town——but nothing I saw about it pleased me so much as their vineyards, which are planted in long terraces along the sides of the hills, and are formed into the most beautiful arbours, one row above another.
From Bolsano to Trent, is fifty-one miles, a good day’s journey: almost the whole of it lies through the valley of Bolsano, a most fruitful and pleasant——indeed, delightful road, which made the day’s journey appear to me much shorter than it really was.
Perhaps no part of the habitable globe is, within the same comparatively small compass of earth, so wonderfully diversified by the hand of Nature in all her extremes, as that through which I have just carried you. There, under almost the same glance of the eye, were to be seen the stupendous, the rugged, the savage, and the inaccessible——the mild, the fruitful and the cultivated. Here, the mountain capped with perpetual snow, gradually falling in blended gradations of shade, far beyond the reach of the artist’s pencil, into the green luxuriant valley; and there, the vineyard, the olivary, and the rich corn-field, bursting at once from rugged rocks and inaccessible fastnesses: the churlish aspect of the tyrant Winter for ever prowling on the mountain’s head above——perpetual spring smiling with all her fascinating charms in the plains below. Such scenes as these would baffle all efforts of the poet’s pen or painter’s pencil: to be conceived, they must be seen. I shall therefore close my account of them with a strong recommendation to you, that whenever you travel for improvement, you go through the County of Tyrol, and there learn the great and marvellous working of Nature.