'We remained on the summit from 11.30 to 1 P.M., and then returned by exactly the same route, traversing the same ledge, but this time, of course, with our right shoulders to the rock. After a halt at our camp of the preceding night, we made the best of our way down to San Vito, which we reached at 7, and drove thence in our carriage to Cortina the same evening. The mountain of course may be done quicker, but I give the times, if any other lady should like to try the ascent.'
After crossing a gentle elevation, we found ourselves on the verge of the hollow of Brusadaz, and turned along a sledge-track leading down the crest between it and the western branch of Val di Zoldo, beyond which the crest of the Civetta stood forth high above the belts of vapour. The hamlet of Coi, seated as it were astride the narrow ridge, looks down at once on Brusadaz and San Nicolò; a steep corkscrew path led us in twenty minutes to the latter village, where we found our return not even begun to be expected.[70]
The Pelmo and Civetta naturally engross the attention of the traveller on his first visit to Val di Zoldo; but the splendid walls of dolomite which fence in the valley on the south-east and south-west invite a second visit and further exploration. Passes may be found through the western range to Agordo; through the eastern, presided over by the strange block of the Sasso di Bosco Nero, the 'unknown mountains' of Miss Edwards, to the valley of the Piave. They have been already traversed by Mr. M. Holzmann, one of the most indefatigable explorers of this region.[71]
I cannot bring myself to conclude this imperfect notice without paying a tribute to the Italians of the southern dolomites, rendered, as it seems to me, the more due and necessary by the frequent praise which the Bœotian simplicity of their German-speaking neighbours has received from English writers. A mountaineer may well have a good word for the population of Val di Zoldo. Where else in the Alps will he find a valley the natives of which, alone and unincited by foreign gold, have found their way to the tops of the highest peaks? And let it not be thought that this success was an easy one. The Civetta, from whatever side it is seen, is of formidable steepness, and, as I have said before, the Pelmo is to the eye of a mountaineer one of the most perplexing peaks in the Alps. Yet the men of Val di Zoldo, by following their game day after day, and learning that the ledge which offered the chamois a means of escape was also for the hunter a means of pursuit, found out at last the secret of the circuitous access to the upper rocks, which had been for centuries a true 'Gemsen-Freiheit.'
I do not doubt that Mr. Ball was the first man to stand on the highest crest of the Pelmo. Its attainment was probably not an object of sufficient value to the hunters to induce them to cross the upper glacier and brave the peril of being swallowed up alive by some hidden chasm, a risk which weighs heavily on the mind of the peasant who has yet to learn the saving grace of a rope. But the real difficulty lies below, and amateur climbers with foreign guides might have sought long and vainly for the passage which the spirit of the neighbouring villagers had found ready for them.
But it is not alone on the narrow ground of venturesomeness that the people of Val di Zoldo recommend themselves to an English traveller. They possess in a high degree the intelligence and quick courtesy we are accustomed to meet with in Northern Italy. No peasant will pass the stranger as he sits to rest or sketch beside the path without a few bright words of greeting and enquiry, showing often a feeling for natural beauty and a quickness of apprehension rare amongst a secluded population. The slowness alike of mind and of action, the refusal to grasp anything outside their own daily experiences, so common among the peasantry of the Pusterthal, is here unknown. To quote a shrewd observer, 'the men are such gentlemen and the women such ladies, that every chance meeting becomes an interchange of courtesies;' and the traveller, turning northwards, will often have occasion to join in Dickens's regret for what he has left behind, 'the beautiful Italian manners, the sweet language, the quick recognition of a pleasant look or cheerful word, the captivating expression of a desire to oblige in everything.'
CHAPTER XIV.
MEN AND MOUNTAINS.
What, I pray you, is more pleasant, more delectable and more acceptable unto a man than to behold the height of hills as if they were the very Atlantes themselves of heaven?
Art thou in nature, and yet hast not known nature?