Above some saw-mills a good cattle-path mounted steadily along the left bank of a very slender stream. At the first bend in the narrow valley we had a good view of the barrier to be crossed. The gap we must aim at was clearly the second on the south-west of the mass of the Cima Tosa. We could recognise the very spot where François had halted that day ten years on the brink of the precipice. A hundred yards further south a fan-shaped snow-bed lay against the base of the abrupt crags. This snow must have fallen through some breach; and closer inspection showed a shadow on the face of the cliff—good proof that it was not so smooth as it looked, and that a hidden gully might be found at our need.
A long and steep ascent, like that of Val di Brenta, closes the lower glen.
Halfway up the barrier the path splits, and the traveller must either continue to climb steeply and afterwards traverse at a level the higher slopes, or recross the stream and remain in the valley. The upper basin is hemmed in by wooded cliffs, on the top of which lies a ring of pasturages, the base of the dolomite peaks which extend in a complete semicircle round the head of the glen. The sky-line of the range does not equal in boldness or eccentricity of form that of Val di Brenta; but, except where a high but obvious pass leads over towards Molveno, it presents to the eye a most formidable barrier.
As we approached the rock-wall clouds swept rapidly over it. François suggested dolefully that history was apt to repeat itself. But we knew enough already to be tolerably independent of weather. There were two bays in the cliffs before us, one to our right filled by a small glacier with which we had nothing to do, the other containing the fan-shaped snow-slope seen from below. A rough ascent over the last grass, snow and boulders led to the latter.
The steep snow-slope was hard-frozen and slippery, and altogether too much for our porter's powers. Like the schoolboy he went two steps back for each forward, and, as even turning his back to the slope proved ineffectual, we were constrained to shoulder his burden and let him go. Had it not been for his ludicrous incapacity to follow we should have had a long financial discussion; as it was, his murmurs at pay for which a Swiss porter would have been thankful, soon grew faint with distance. At the head of the snow-bed we were met by an almost vertical rock; but a sharp scramble of fifty feet gave us the key of the pass. On our right, slanting parallel to the cliff like a staircase to a castle-wall, and completely masked up to the present moment by a buttress, was a steep narrow snow-filled gully. While François was converting the hard snow into a convenient ladder, we watched with wonder and admiration the great red towers which broke out of the neighbouring mists. 'Pour moi je préfére votre maison de Parlement,' said our guide when we called his attention to the mountain architecture.
We gained the watershed a few yards to the south of the spot we had reached from the other side. The pass has two crests, one of rock, one of snow, with a bowl between them. The distant view was veiled; but the Presanella, rising through clouds opposite, proved that the chain was really crossed. Either side of the Bocca dei Camozzi was now open to us. We preferred to pass through the gap and follow the glacier of Val di Brenta, by which, descending at our leisure, we reached in good time the 'Stabilimento Alpino' of Campiglio.
Our first glimpse, in the summer of 1872, of the peaks of the Trentino was from the gap at the western foot of the Pizzo della Mare. As our heads rose above the ridge of pure snow which had hitherto formed our horizon, and we walked up against the hard blue sky, a well-known pinnacle shot up before us, and out of the great sea of cotton-wool cloud spread over the Italian hills and valleys rose the shining cliffs of the Presanella. Further from us the serrated outline of the dolomite range cut sharply against the clear upper heaven. Familiarity never renders commonplace this marvellous chain. Seen from the Orteler group it is a gigantic wall crowned by square towers and riven in places to its base by mighty clefts. The breaches, despite their depth, are cut so narrow and so clean that fancy suggests that the elements must have borrowed some magic power with which to work such fantastic ruin.
It was partly the intention of scaling the Cima di Brenta, one of the loftiest towers of the dolomites, which was taking us for the third time to Pinzolo. So the mountaineers among us pulled out field-glasses and began at once to dissect the peak; to decide that this 'couloir' was snow and available, that 'arête' broken and useless; in short, to converse in that Alpine jargon which marks the race which Mr. Ruskin once thought capable of treating the Alps only as greased poles.
On the same afternoon we descended into the head of the great valley, which was the home of the 'Nauni feroces' of Horace's times, the highway to Italy of Charlemagne and Barbarossa. It now bears two names. The upper portion, where it is comparatively narrow, is called the Val di Sole, probably from its direction admitting both the sun's morning and evening rays; the lower, where the hills drop into broad-backed downs, preserves the memory of the ancient tribe in the titles Val di Non or Nonsberg. It is as a whole a wide sunny valley, rich in fields of maize and vines, and crowded with prosperous villages overlooked by the ruins of mediæval fortresses. Two of its side-glens, Val di Pejo and Val di Rabbi, penetrate deeply into the Orteler range, and the bath-houses they contain have a local fashion amongst the people of the hotter parts of the Trentino; but the accommodation is not such as will tempt foreign visitors. To catalogue the bath-houses of the Orteler as Thackeray has inns, if Santa Catarina is the 'cochon d'or,' Rabbi is the silver, and Pejo the black animal, and I scarcely know where to find a blacker. Besides, the scenery accessible to any but very good walkers is not of a high order; the heads of the glens are wild and savage rather than beautiful, and their lower portions, though delightful to drive down for a mountaineer coming from the glaciers, would scarcely repay a separate visit. From Santa Catarina, Rabbi can only be reached by a long but most glorious march over the Monte Cevedale and Pizzo della Venezia;[60] Pejo, over the Pizzo della Mare, is a comparatively short journey, and the traveller will do well to escape from its slovenliness and discomfort by driving on to the junction of Val dei Monti and the main valley and the clean country inn at Fosine.
The walls of its chief room were some years ago adorned with a remarkable series of Bible pictures. One plate illustrated an unusual subject, the early life of Mary Magdalene, who was represented receiving the attentions of a moustache-twirling young officer in full Austrian uniform. It seemed doubtful whether a reflection was intended on military men in general, or whether the Milanese artist had taken this indirect means to insinuate the peculiar profligacy of his then rulers.