As from our tower we watched the lower world, a small cumulus cloud here and there grew into being, some 7,000 feet beneath us, and cast a blue shadow on the distant plain. These cloud-ships would from time to time join company, and, under the favouring influence of some local breeze, set sail for the distant Alps. A few stranded on the lower slopes of Val Sesia, others floated as in a landlocked bay above the deep basin of Macugnaga. A whole fleet sailed away, across the lakes, beyond the village-sprinkled slopes of Val Vigezzo and the crest of Monte Generoso, to find a port in the recesses of a distant range, the first in the east where 'Alp met heaven in snow.'
Where and what, we asked, are these 'silver spearheads?' The answer given has both before and since satisfied and deluded many enquirers—the Orteler Spitze. But to have named these peaks might, in 1864, have puzzled a better geographer than a Zermatt guide.
Mountains are not born with names; most of them live for ages without them. It is at last often a mere matter of chance and the caprice of an engineer, to what syllables, soft or hideous, they are finally linked. The herdsmen who feed their flocks on the highest pasturages are the authorities to whom the officer in charge of the Ordnance survey most frequently appeals. These worthy peasants seldom speak anything but a patois scarcely intelligible to their educated fellow-countrymen. Very often, as in the Italian provinces of Austria, they are of a totally different race and speech to their questioners, and confusion of tongues and national antipathy are joined to the fixed notion of every peasant, that all enquiries are connected with taxes, as obstacles to any clear understanding between the parties.
Moreover, the herdsmen have often never thought before of what lies beyond their utmost goat-track. Sometimes driven to despair by cross-questions, they invent, on the spur of the moment, a name drawn from the most obvious characteristic of the peak; hence the crowd and confusion of Corno Rossos and Corno Neros, of Weisshörner and Schwarzhörner. Or they say nothing at all, and leave the map-maker to exercise his own ingenuity.
Again, every mountain has at least two sides, and it is open to the arbitrary discretion of the engineers to prefer the name given on one or the other, which is seldom, if ever, found to be the same.
Until quite recently the two highest peaks of the Lombard Alps were unnamed, and their names are still unknown to many of the people who live beneath them. Two parish priests of Val Camonica, from which the crest of the Adamello is seen for miles closing the distance, had in 1865 never heard of such a mountain. All that they knew was that there was a 'vedretta' somewhere above the summer alps. To them it was quite as remote and inaccessible as any other white cloud, and they had never thought of naming, far less of approaching, it. The word 'Adamello' is doubtless a creation of the Ordnance survey, derived from Val d'Adame, one of the glens which penetrate nearest to the base of the mountain. The people of Val di Sole called the whole mass of snow and ice—the unattainable ground—on their south, 'Vedretta Presanella.' Strangers are now teaching them to confine the title to the highest peak, and foreign custom is leading to the gradual disuse of the name Cima di Nardis, by which the peak was alone known a few years ago in Val Rendena. The kingship of the Lombard Alps was in 1864 still unconferred between these two rival claimants, the Adamello and Presanella.
On August 23, four weeks after our day on Monte Rosa, we left the Baths of Santa Catarina for the Gavia Pass. The unsettled weather coupled with the reaction after an ascent of the Königsspitze, stolen in a gleam of sunshine on the previous day, would probably in any case have made us ready to take this easy road in place of trying our fortunes over one of the snowy gaps behind the Tresero. But we had a better reason for our want of venturesomeness. It was necessary for us to ascertain the exact position and means of approach to our mountain. For this purpose our maps helped us little, if at all. We had in fact nothing to trust to but the little sheet in the 'Alpine Guide,' compiled on inaccurate authorities, and hiding ignorance under a specious, but to travellers very inconvenient, vagueness.
We knew, it is true, that the Presanella lay on the ridge south of the Tonale Pass, the carriage-road crossing the deep gap which severs the Orteler and Adamello Alps. But whether the path to it opened from the top of that pass or from some point in the upper Val di Sole we had no means to decide. To cross the Tonale with our eyes open seemed, therefore, the only prudent course.
The Gavia is but a gloomy portal to the beauties of Santa Catarina. The summit is a wild desolate plain, not cheerful even in fine weather, and deadly enough in winter snowstorms. Three rude crosses under a rock mark the spot where as many peasants overtaken by storm sought shelter in vain, and where their bodies were found and buried. Further on the path becomes a street of tombs—a 'Via Appia' of the mountains. Cross succeeds cross, each carved with rude initials and date, varied here and there by a stone pyramid, in the recesses of which, in the place of the usual picture of a virgin or saint, you find a skull and a collection of bones, open to the air and bleached by long exposure. For riders this is the only escape south-eastwards from Santa Catarina; but moderate walkers—ladies even, who do not mind snow—may find a better and brighter path by turning away to the left over the broad shoulders of the Pizzo della Mare, and descending through Val del Monte, and past the dirty bath-houses of Pejo to the upper Val di Sole.[40]
Ponte di Legno is a shabby village, and in 1864 its inn was in character. Since then, however, there has been an improvement, and a very fair country inn now offers a convenient starting-point for travellers who wish to cross the Pisgana Pass, the easiest of those leading to the head of Val di Genova and Pinzolo. During our meal—a banquet of hot water flavoured by pepper, followed by sodden veal,—we were disturbed by the entrance of a venerable personage who seemed anxious to render us assistance. As he spoke a patois Italian, and was as deaf as he was talkative, his attentions soon became embarrassing. Having listened to a long harangue on the excellence of the road and the inns between us and Trent, we ventured mildly to hint a dislike for roads and to enquire with solicitude about the Presanella. But our protest and enquiries were put aside with equal indifference. Even on the only topic of immediate interest to us, what sort of a place was the inn near the top of the Tonale, we could get no certain information. If age despised the innovating spirit of youth, youth, I am afraid, grew impatient of the resolve 'stare super antiquas vias' of age. When we found that we might as well enquire about the mountains of the moon as the Presanella, we also became deaf, and turned to our veal with such affectation of enthusiasm as that immature viand can command.