But our attention is soon riveted on the new mountain range which rises beyond the valley. High amongst the clouds soar its red towers and pinnacles; the bold ridges which support them sweep down upon us in majestic curves. Three glens, green with beech copses, push up boldly into the heart of the mountain. The one opposite is Val di Brenta, rising towards its Bocca, the gap on the north of the most stupendous castle; the furthest, the Vallesinella, leads by another strange gateway to Molveno, the nearest is Val Agola, also with passes for mountaineers or paths for ramblers.
Fulmini di Brenta. Bocca di Brenta. Cima Tosa.
J. Gilbert delt.
VAL DI BRENTA.
From the Road to Campiglio.
We have already seen from a distance, or skirted the sides of, the Brenta group. From the crests of the Adamello chain or from the depths of Val di Genova a mysterious range utterly unlike anything in the central Alps[56] has been frequently before our eyes. At Pinzolo, or on the Pra Fiori, we have had glimpses of strange red peaks. But we seem now to have come for the first time into their immediate presence.
The spectator standing on the western slopes of Val Nambino sees high above everything else against the eastern sky two huge square fortresses built up of horizontal courses of masonry. The ground-colour of their walls is a yellowish grey, streaked with red and black, and broken here and there by lines of shining white, where a steep glacier-stair scales the precipice. The massiveness of these blocks adds by contrast to the effect of the surrounding pinnacles. Before the traveller's eyes rise towers, horns, cupolas, columns, spires, crowded together in endless variety. Here he fancies must be the workshop of Nature, and these are her store of models. Or he is reminded of some architectural drawing, a collection of the great buildings of the world, or the spires of Sir Christopher Wren.
These peaks are the advance-guard of the Tyrolese dolomites, boldly thrown across the valley of the Adige, as if to challenge on their own ground the snowy ranks of the Orteler and Adamello. They are separated from the granite by no wide depression such as divides the Venetian Alps and the Tauern, but only by a single valley. The boulder which rolls from the flanks of the Presanella will scarcely halt before it rests on dolomitic soil.
The Eastern Alps could scarcely have put forward a nobler champion than the range before us. Primiero and Auronzo may perhaps equal the marvellous skyline; but they offer nothing to rival the symmetry of the whole mass of the Brenta as it rises above Val Nambino. Consider the lower stories of the huge edifice. The slope is not monotonous in uniformity, yet the platforms which break it are too narrow to diminish by foreshortening the apparent height of the summits. From our feet rise powerful spurs, below dark with pines, above bare and white; their form is simple and severe, but every shifting light brings out fresh details in the fretwork which time has carved deeply into their sides. Like the flying buttresses of some vast cathedral they lead the eye up to the straight perpendicular lines of the crowning towers.