When we come to study the range more generally, what incomparable variety of beauty! On the west lies a green, open Alpine valley. The Lago di Molveno reflects in its blue mirror the eastern crags. The southern slopes are a rich tangle of vines and chestnuts; the beeches push up and dispute with the pines the inner glens; the cyclamens and gentians gird with successive belts of brightness the mountain form.
The traveller, when he penetrates this fantastic chain, finds himself at first in narrow glens watered by clear streams, now smooth-flowing over lawns of the softest turf, now dancing through beechwoods, now plunging deep into some miniature ravine hung with mosses and bright-berried ashes. He forgets, in the charm of what is near at hand, what he came to see. Then suddenly through the tree-tops an incredible yellow flame, set for ever between the green and blue, recalls the presence of the dolomites, and urges him to further exertion. He climbs a steep barrier, and the pinnacles range themselves as portions of a vast amphitheatre of rock. He advances a few hundred yards further along the level and the scene is changed. One solitary tower overclimbs the clouds and mixes with the sky. A second ascent brings another shift. Rocks, grey, gold, red, brown and black, cluster round his bewildered eyes, and he begins to doubt whether the scene is a solid reality or some Alastor-inspired Vision of Solitude.
Then, after wandering all the morning between red rocks and over two or three hours of ice, he may find himself in the evening amongst figs, olives and lemon-groves. For the Brenta group is planted not in the midst of a mountain maze, but on the edge of the deepest cleft in the Alps. From the white crown of the highest peak to Alle Sarche is a descent of 10,500 feet.
It is a disappointment to find that, for the moment, we must turn our backs on all this beauty, and that our resting-place lies out of sight of it, a mile further on.
The builders of the hospice of 'La Madonna di Campiglio' were more anxious for safety in winter than for a fair prospect in summer. They naturally preferred a meadow secure from avalanches, yet sufficiently protected from the north by low banks, to the steeper and more broken hillsides of the lower Val Nambino. After turning a corner beyond which the wooded spurs of Monte Spinale cut off the view of the Brenta chain, the road crosses the stream and enters a broad, smooth hay-field, surrounded by slopes the summits of which lie too far back to give dignity to the landscape. In the centre of this plain, far away from any village, stands the hospice and pilgrimage church of Campiglio.
The existence of so large a building on a route now so little frequented must strike everyone as curious and unexpected. But in fact these remote valleys were once the highways of traffic. Not only, as has been shown in an earlier chapter, did emperors lead their hosts through the recesses of the Lombard Alps, but the merchandise of Venice also sought these roundabout paths.
In olden times the gorge of the Adige was narrow and perilous for an invader, crowded with feudal castles, each claiming its toll from commerce. Princes and merchants seem to have frequently turned westwards from Botzen across the Tonale, or southwards through Pinzolo and Val Buona to Brescia. Then Campiglio was built, it is said by the Templars, to lodge the frequent passers-by and break the long stage between the inhabited valleys.
Similar hospices are found elsewhere in the Eastern Alps: at San Martino, Paneveggio, and Auf der Plecken. But Campiglio is the largest establishment of its kind. The buildings are ranged in the form of a quadrangle, of which the hospice occupies three sides. Long galleries lead from wing to wing and give access to the rooms, which all face outwards and are cheerful and well lighted. The church, at the building of which, according to local legend, angels assisted, occupies part of the fourth side of the quadrangle. It contains a fresco, not without merit, of the early part of the sixteenth century.
After some centuries traffic turned into other channels, and the monks who had hitherto fulfilled the duties of hospitality departed, leaving their place scantily filled by a peasant farmer, who kept one or two rooms ready for strangers. On my first visit the old hospice was in this phase of its existence. The fare was rough but good, and the milk, cream, and butter delicious. The cows indeed seemed the mistresses of the place, and all the other living creatures their attendants. For their accommodation a new and spacious stable had been lately raised. The front was decorated with carving; the interior formed a sort of hall of columns, each column an unsmoothed fir-trunk. Down the centre ran a spacious passage, on either side of which thirty-five cows were ranged before their mangers.
Lately, however, the herd has been disturbed in its sole possession, and Campiglio has started on a new path to fame. The farmer who owns all the surrounding alps and woods, and whose wealth is locally looked on as boundless, conceived an idea. Why should not the big house be made use of? Rabbi, across the Val di Sole, was crowded with the fashion of the Trentino. Campiglio also should become a 'Stabilimento Alpino,' a 'Kurort' for Brescia and Botzen. He secured a coadjutor in the owner of a large inn at Arco, a young man with international views and desirous for more than a local success. In a Florence newspaper, addressed to tourists of all nations, appeared, in the spring of 1874, a large announcement of the opening of a 'magnifico stabilimento,' with polyglot attendance, a resident physician, and the usual advantages.