Gromo and the 'Strada Provinciale' were now below us, and in five minutes more we passed under the church tower and the one unfallen feudal keep which still overshadows the village, and found ourselves at the doorway of the inn. This time there was no disappointment. We entered a large, handsome house, with a kitchen and a store-room, such as the painters of Bassano so often chose for subjects, dark and cool, yet lit with the reflected gleams of copper and the bright hues of southern fruit and vegetables.
Food here was as ready and good as it had been lately hard to obtain and indifferent; and but for the distance from the head of the valley and our next mountain we should have gladly stayed the night. Forewarned, but we felt also forearmed, against the kitchen of Bondione, we mounted the carriage which had been without difficulty procured for us.
Val Seriana, at any rate in its upper portion, is wider and straighter than Val Brembana, and the mountains, although lofty, do not make up in sublimity for what they lose in variety. As far as Fiumenero the drive is in fact a trifle monotonous. At this point the river turns round a sharp corner, and its last reach, backed by the horseshoe cliffs closing the valley, comes into view.
The Monte Redorta (9,975 feet), the highest summit between Lago di Como and the Aprica Pass, rises in rough tiers of precipice on the left. Near Bondione large iron mines are worked, and the leading industry gives the place the air of hopeless grime peculiar to underground pursuits. Dirt nowhere looks so dirty as on the pure mountains, and the village is the last place one would care to make a stay in. Moreover nothing can be less tempting than the inn, although a neighbouring house provides the unexpected luxury of two decent bedrooms and clean beds.
The houses are built among the huge ruins of a fallen buttress of the Redorta; and the natural cavities under the boulders, which are rather bigger than the houses, serve the inhabitants for store-rooms, cellars, and other purposes. The population of Bondione seem to hold firmly to the theory expounded to Peter Simple that a second cannon-ball never comes through the hole made by the first, and to look on these, to strangers somewhat unpleasantly suggestive neighbours, as among the 'amenities' of their situation.
Next morning we crossed the river by a bridge, beyond which was an 'osteria' with a rhyming sign, suggesting to the wayfarer bound for the Barbellino the need of refreshing himself first with the 'buon vino' of the host. Leaving on the right a glen through which an easy track crosses to the remote villages of Val di Scalve, a steady ascent through beech copses led us to a narrow platform at the foot of a great rock wall, like that which bars the Schachenthal in Canton Uri. It is difficult to see where the path will find passage; at the left-hand corner the Serio flings itself off the brow, crashing on the rocks, and throwing itself out again with fresh energy into space. As we mounted the steep zigzags of the path the first arrows of sunlight, shooting over the hills and striking obliquely across the rock-face, caught the most outward-flung part of the fall, leaving the crags behind still in shadow. Seldom had we witnessed so fantastic and fairylike a play of the elements as that now exhibited before our eyes. The water-rockets, thrown out in regular succession from the first rude contact of stream and rock, leapt forth masses of pure cold white. In a moment, as they entered the illumined space, they were transfigured in a glory of reflected light. The comparison to a bursting firework is inevitable but unworthy. At first they shone with the colours of the rainbow, then with a hundred other indescribably delicate and unexpected shades, from a brilliant green-blue to a rich purple. A minute or two later and the cloud of foam below caught the illumination, and the whole cascade was one mass of radiant colour thrown out against a dark background.
When the coat of many colours was stripped from it the fall, though a fine one, did not seem full enough to rank in the very first class of Alpine cascades. But its comparative merits can hardly be decided without a nearer approach than we made.
A slight gap in the rocky crest lets the path through to the Barbellino Alp, a flat meadow, hemmed in by rugged slopes. Near the huts we halted for breakfast and to decide on our future course. We were bound to Val Camonica, and time not allowing us to explore Val di Scalve, had determined to cross the ridge separating the head of Val Seriana from Val Belviso, a side-glen of the Val Tellina, by which the Aprica posthouse could be gained without a preliminary plunge into the great valley. The straightest and easiest course was doubtless to strike the ridge due east of Lago Barbellino, where, although no track is shown on the map, it is certainly easy to pass. But the day was fine enough for a peak, and Monte Gleno lying at the angle of the chain where it turns northward round the sources of the Serio, seemed capable of being combined with a pass into Val Belviso.
Seen from the Barbellino Alp, the Pizzo di Cocca and its neighbours are a bold group of rock-peaks, but they do not show any ice. My friends did not fail to point out this unfortunate deficiency, and to remind me that I had only a few hours left within which to produce the promised glacier which was to justify the intrusion of rope and ice-axes into Bergamasque valleys.
My own confidence in my assertions, never very strong, was now at its lowest ebb, and I could only repeat them with renewed vigour. Fortunately, unexpected assistance was afforded me by the stream which joins the Serio at the upper end of the level pasturage. Its waters were milky white, a strong indication that it was iceborn.