Stanford's Geogl Estabt, 55 Charing Cross
London: Longmans & Co.
There is much to be said at the present day for this mood. The long line of evolution so slightly alluded to in the Book of Genesis between the mud and the man has been nearly made out. Why should we waste more time over the lower developments of matter than is necessary to ascertain our own family history? The human intelligence, philosophers tell us, is the crowning flower of the universe. Let us then no longer worship stocks and stones, or invisible and inconceivable abstractions, but reserve all our attention for the highest thing we know, and concentrate ourselves on our fellow creatures. Thus perhaps we shall best urge on that true golden age, when mankind, grown less material, will burn with a purer jet of intellect, when Mr. Wallace will talk with spirits who can talk sense and Mr. Galton and artificial selection will have replaced Cupid with his random darts.
Yet we can never wholly separate ourselves from the system of which we form a part. 'Homo sum nihil humani' requires such extension as will include the universe. Positivist congregations are, I believe, in the habit of expressing their grateful acknowledgments to interplanetary space. Even advanced thinkers therefore may pardon a sentiment for such much nearer relations as the crystalline rocks.
Those, however, who deliberately prefer at all times the study of human emotion to the inarticulate voice of nature must not—unless indeed they are prepared to live, as few travellers can, amongst the people of the country—come to the Lombard Alps. Their field of observation is on the terrace at St. Moritz or on the summit of Piz Languard; and they will do well to picnic in company amongst Swiss pines rather than to wander alone under Italian beeches.
The road which links the Adamello country to the Stelvio highway, and through it to the Bernina Pass and Upper Engadine, leaves the Val Tellina midway between Tirano and Sondrio, and only a few hours' drive from Le Prese. For many miles it climbs in one enormous zigzag through the chestnut forests, until from the last brow overlooking the Val Tellina it gains a view which, of its kind, has few rivals. I have seen it twice under very different circumstances.
First in early morning, half-an-hour after a June sunrise, the air ringing with the song of birds and bells, the high crest of the Disgrazia golden in light, the long shadows of the Bergamasque mountains falling across their lower slopes, the white villages caught here and there by sunbeams, the broad valley throwing off a light cover of soft mist. Beneath us Italy, around the Alps; and when these two meet lovingly, what can nature do more?
Again on a late autumn afternoon, in dumb sultry heat, the sunlight veiled for the most part in yellow mists, but breaking forth from time to time with vivid force, and answered by lightning from the thick impenetrable pall lying over the Disgrazia, and the masses of storm-cloud gathering on the lower ranges. The valley silent and mournful, all peace and harmony gone, the mountains glaring savagely from their obscurity, as if their wild nature had broken loose from the shrinking loveliness at its feet, and was preparing for it outrage and ruin.
From the inn known as 'The Belvedere' it is still half-an-hour's ascent to the smooth meadows which form the watershed between the Val Camonica and the Val Tellina, the well-named Aprica Pass.