Thenceforth the path is charming. Descending at once to the clear slender stream it threads a tortuous defile, where at every corner the landscape changes. On the right rise the spurs of the many-crested Monte Aralalta, clad almost to their tops in wood. Above the broken glens the limestone plays a hundred freaks, here cutting the sky with twisted spires and perforated towers, there throwing down a knife-edge buttress between the greenery. Opposite a broad opening on the left the stream is reinforced by three great fountains gushing directly out of the living rock.
A mile or two further, at Cassiglio, the glen opens and a carriage-road begins. Several of the old houses here are frescoed, one with a whimsical selection of old-world figures, another with a Dance of Death. In this 'Earthly Paradise,' as it appears to the northern wanderer, the mystery of death seems, as in Mr. Morris's poem, to be constantly present. The great reaper with his sickle is painted on the walls of dwelling-houses as well as churches. 'Morituro satis' writes the wealthy farmer over his threshold, the bones of his ancestors—nay, sometimes even their ghastly withered mummies—stare out at him through the iron grating of the deadhouse as he goes out to his work in the fields. And for the true son of the Church there is no such peace in prospect as for his foregoers, no 'Nox perpetua una dormienda,' or shadowy Hades. His future is put before him in the most positive manner, by the care of priests and painters, on every wayside chapel. Whatever his life, he must when he dies take his place amongst that wretched throng of sufferers packed as closely as cattle in a truck, and plunged to a point perhaps determined by prudery in tongues of flame. His deliverance from this hideous place will, he is told, depend in great part on the importunity with which his surviving relatives address the saints on his behalf, and the sums they can afford to pay for masses to the priest. Roman Christianity for the peasantry represents the rule of the universe as a malevolent despotism tempered by influence and bribery. Fortunately, whatever they may profess, men seldom at heart accept a creed which makes the universe subject to Beings or a Being of worse passions than themselves.
Cassiglio stands above a watersmeet where a new face of the beautiful Monte Aralalta shuts in a wooded glen, through which a tempting path leads to the hamlets of Taleggio. All the hill-country between Val Brembana and the Bergamo-Lecco railway gives promise of the richest and most romantic scenery, and I can imagine nothing more delightful than to wander through its recesses in the long May days. My fancy seems, however, to be singular, for, so far as I know, not one out of the number of our countrymen who haunt Lago di Como in spring has taken advantage of his opportunity.
Below Cassiglio, Val Torta for the first time expands into a wide basin full of maize and walnuts. Presently it contracts again into a narrow funnel, which on a dull day, when the higher crests are in cloud, might be fancied a Devonshire combe. At the junction of a considerable side-valley clusters of houses brighten the hillsides, and, where two roads meet, a clean country inn, with a terraced bowling-ground above the stream, invites to a halt.
The second road leads towards the Passo di San Marco, the lowest and easiest track from Bergamo to the Val Tellina.
Here, perhaps for the only time in these valleys, we come upon a track already described by an English traveller. The title of his volume at least is sufficiently attractive. I quote it in full:—
'Coryats Crudities Hastily gobbled up in five moneths travells in France Savoy Italy Rhetia commonly called the Grisions country Helvetia alias Switzerland some parts of High Germany and the Netherlands: Newly digested in the hungry aire of Odcombe in ye county of Somerset and now dispersed to the nourishment of the travelling members of this kingdom.' London, 1611.
Readers, sated for the moment with the solid information to be gathered from our modern books of travel, may spend a refreshing half-hour in the company of this old traveller, who assumed in his public the same taste he had so strongly in himself, and was content to display undisguised a boyish delight in novelties, wonders, and adventure. He has, moreover, a special title to the respect of the modern Alpine traveller, for 'footmanship' was his great boast, and he delighted to be celebrated by his familiars as the 'Odcombian Legge-stretcher.' I shall not apologise therefore for pausing for a moment—
—— To catechise
My picked man of countries