Their teeth to the polished block.
R. Browning.
PASSO DI REDORTA—VAL VERZASCA—A BROKEN ROAD—LOCARNO—VAL CANOBBINA—VAL VIGEZZO.
Val Maggia is not the only unknown valley which opens on the famous lake. Close beside it, and hemmed in between its mountains and those on the west of Val Leventina, lies a still narrower and more obscure recess, Val Verzasca. In olden days the natives of this glen bore a bad name. In 1490 a writer speaks of them as 'homines sylvestres sparsim ferarum ritu degentes;'[9] and the reputation for wildness so early acquired still sticks to them. Knives are said to be more frequently drawn among them, and with worse consequences, than in any other district of Ticino. But there is no record of a stranger ever having suffered from this tendency to blood-letting, and the ill-repute of the valley can hardly be held accountable for its neglect by travellers.
So great has been this neglect that the Federal map was to us the chief and almost the only source of information. Thus studied, the peculiarities of Val Verzasca are seen to be the shortness of the side glens which branch off the main stem, and the uniformly great elevation of the surrounding ridges. From Bignasco a tolerably direct path leads over to Brione by Val d'Ossola, and from what we saw I recommend the next visitor to try this way in preference to the longer circuit which we were induced to take by a conscientious desire to see the head of the main Val Verzasca and an unfounded fancy that a carriage road implied vehicles of some sort.
From San Carlo in Val di Prato a track leaving the path to Piz Campo Tencca circles round the westward-facing hillside, and, above a waterfall, traverses beside the torrent a narrow glen. Beyond some châlets we penetrated a sombre funnel, choked with avalanches. It expanded at its upper end into a basin floored with snow and hemmed in by cliffs picturesquely broken and green with underwood. The stream which poured down them was received at the bottom under a snow-arch, bold in its span as an old Italian bridge. A few yards east of the water-channel a goat track, sometimes difficult to follow, climbs the steep slope and the rocks above it, where the easiest course is only marked by the goats' droppings. Hands as well as feet are useful, but there is no difficulty for anyone accustomed to mountains.
Above the cliff we found a wide sloping meadow covered with cows. At first sight their presence seemed only to be accounted for by magic or a medium-like faculty in the herd for self-elevation. But I believe due enquiry would have established the existence of a rationalistic explanation in the shape of a roundabout staircase not beyond the powers of an Italian heifer.
The lowest saddle in the high ridge before us was the Passo di Redorta. Despite the beauty of the day there was little distant view and no peak near enough at hand to tempt to further exertion. Val Maggia itself was almost hidden by the vertical lines of a bold, many-headed buttress, and the eye ranged over the wilderness of its mountain-ridges, a savage expanse of ruined gneiss naked of snow and void of prominent peaks or bristling ridges. The rock cannot, like the firmer granites of Val Masino or the Adamello, offer any stubborn resistance to the action of the atmosphere. Hence the mountain-tops are one mass of comparatively level ruin. Those who have looked down from some Syrian hilltop on an ancient city, of which the ponderous materials cumber the ground, while not a column is left standing, may exactly picture to themselves the scene of desolation now offered on a vastly larger scale to our eyes by the ranges of Val Maggia. In contrast the head of Val Verzasca, lying as it were at our feet, was green, bright, and inviting.
We were joined on the pass by a young Verzascan, returning from a visit to relatives at Peccia, laden with a store of simple delicacies, such as white bread, honey and cheese. The pains he was at to transport such a burden suggested comparative poverty in the land we were entering. We descended together, but there was no need of any guide, as the valley lay always straight before us, and the ground, though excessively steep, was not precipitous. Near the foot of the descent a pretty fall tumbles off the right-hand hillside.