VAL D'ESINO—THE GRIGNA—INTROBBIO—FORCELLA DI CEDRINO—VAL TORTA—AN OLD TRAVELLER—VAL BREMBANA—BRANZI—PASSO DI GORNIGO—GROMO—VAL SERIANA—BONDIONE—MONTE GLENO—VAL BELVISO.
The sharpest form of pain has in all ages been imagined under the figure of a man with the object of his most eager desire ever dangling before his eyes but out of reach. If—may the omen be void!—any of the Alpine Club should in another world ever realise the punishment of Tantalus or Dives, they will probably be placed opposite a peak cut off from them by some impassable gulf.
Such threatened to be our fate as, with the natural gloominess of three o'clock in the morning, we strapped up our humble bags in the marble halls of the Hotel Vittoria at Menaggio under the indignant and contemptuous survey of an awakened porter.
When we issued into the night the luminous Italian stars flamed out of a perfect vault, blotted only at the edges by the dim shapes of the mountains. The keen northern breeze which intruded on the languid scent-laden air of the lake was the best promise of a day of unclouded sunshine. Yet this breeze was the cause of all our fears; under its influence the lake was stirred into waves which broke noisily against the terraced shore. Our goal was the Grigna, and between us and Varenna lay three miles of dancing water. There was no steamer for hours; and it is no rare thing for the passage to be impossible for small boats. Doubtful and depressed, we hurried round to the little port.
It was a happy moment when a cry answered our shouts, and the boat, ordered overnight, shot up with its four rowers through the darkness. We were soon on board and out of sight of François, left to search for a missing portmanteau in the custom-house of Como.[29]
The shelter of the land was soon left, and our broad-bottomed boat, keeping her head to the wind, as if making for Colico, began to do battle with the waves, which knocked her from side to side like an unwieldy cork. We were anxious as to the behaviour of our rowers. The boatmen of the lake are not all to be trusted. The year before I had seen a Colico crew give way to the most abject terror at the mere approach of a storm-cloud which turned out to be quite empty of wind. For ten minutes before the rain burst on us they did nothing but alternately catch crabs, and curse and kick the crab-catcher. The Menaggio men showed themselves, however, of very different metal. They rowed hard and talked little, and the stern-oar, standing up to his work like the rest, gondolier-fashion, steered with so much skill in avoiding the wave-crests that, knocked about as we were, we only shipped one sea during the passage.
The mountain-forms were growing less ghostly, and the first pale gleams across the sky were reflected still more faintly on the surface of the lake as we ran ashore on the beach at Varenna. The little town was still asleep under its cypresses, but a light gleamed from the windows of a waterside inn, which soon furnished us with coffee and an omelette.
A few hundred yards north of Varenna the glen of Esino, through which lies the way to the Grigna, opens on the lake, The 'Alpine Guide' describes a path leading past the castle and along the (true) left bank of the stream. But the more frequented track, a steep pavé between vineyards and villages, starts from the bridge of the Stelvio road and mounts the further hillside.
In the old visitors' book at the Montanvert Inn was to be read a characteristic entry, 'found the path up, like that to heaven, steep and stony.' Mr. Spurgeon would find Esino much more difficult to get to than heaven. The path is laid with large smooth rounded stones, placed at such a high angle as to render back-sliding inevitable. Fortunately there was abundant consolation in the exquisite glimpses which met us at every corner, and boots and tempers held out pretty well, until both were rewarded by a smooth terrace-path circling round the hollows of the upper hills.