On the morning of the day succeeding our ascent of the Pizzo della Mare, we found ourselves at a tolerably early hour at the little village of Dimaro, a cluster of prosperous-looking farmhouses standing some distance off the high road, amongst quiet meadows, fields of tall maize and walnut-trees. Here the mule-path over the Ginevrie Pass leaves Val di Sole, and we had to abandon our car and look for a quadruped of some sort to help us over the hill. The only available mule had just come in from a hard morning's work, drawing down granite boulders to embank the bed of the torrent, and required some rest; its master also demurred on his own account to starting in the heat of the day. These hindrances, joined to the probable length of the journey, and the unanimous voices raised in favour of the hospice of Campiglio, made us reconsider our previous plan of pushing on to Pinzolo, and agree to trust to the hospitality of the 'ricco signor,' who had always meat in his house, and whose best room was as beautiful as any at Cles, or even Trento.
The inn at Dimaro is a very clean-looking little house evidently owned by tidy people. Some of us spent the midday hours in a siesta in a cool bedroom, with a row of bright flower-pots across the window, through which there came in to us glimpses of an atmosphere quivering with light, mingled with fresh sounds of rustling branches and running waters. The sunshine of the mountains is always full of life and freshness; it is only down in the stagnant plains that the midday heat burns like a dull furnace, drying up the energies alike of plants and men.
Meanwhile the agriculturist of the party found interest in watching the threshing in the barn below, where a dozen peasants—men, women, and girls—disposed in a circle, were wielding their short flails with incessant industry. At length the mule was rested. Its master did not at first seem likely to prove a pleasant addition to our number, for he declined to help the guides by carrying a knapsack, resented strongly the suggestion that he should go to his animal's head, and discoursed gloomily on the difficulties and fatigues of the road. This strange conduct on the part of a Tyrolese peasant was accounted for by our companion's informing us that he had spent a year in Paris.
A mile of dusty cart-road leads to a bridge at the foot of the wooded rock which juts out from the dolomite range and blocks up the lower part of Val Selva. Steep zigzags carried us up through a picturesque tangle of trees and crags to where the road turns the northern corner of the huge promontory. A fair landscape of the romantic school now opened suddenly before our eyes. In front, and slightly beneath us, lay a wide green basin, through which the stream wandered peacefully towards our feet. Above its further end rose a sheer cliff, limestone or dolomite, fringed with dark pines. Beyond this valley-gate the eye wandered into the quivering Italian sky, imagining, if it did not see, further distances and a limitless extent of waving hills and wooded plains. On our right the ground rose in wave above wave of forest, in the recesses of which, the right track once lost, one might wander for hours without seeing any snowy landmark by which to steer a course.
The path traversed the stream, and then mounted gently along the western side of the valley, through glades where wild strawberries and bilberries flourished in rare profusion. After the foot of the cliff had been passed, higher mountains towered on the south, and glimpses of the strange red pinnacles and white waterless gullies of the Sasso Rosso were caught from time to time through the floating vapours that wreathed them. A boundary stone marked the limit of the districts of Cles and Tione. As yet there was no sign of a watershed. In fact there appeared no reason why we need come to one at all. The ground rose sufficiently to hinder our seeing for any distance in advance, but still so gently that it might have gone on rising almost for ever. Deep boggy holes, which we crossed on causeways of decaying logs, while the ingenious mule picked his own way through the mud, interrupted the path. These were the difficulties of which our Parisian had warned us. Meantime the eastern range retreated further from us, and a stream flowed out from a broad valley at its base. At last the hillside sensibly steepened, and the forest grew less thickly. We overtopped the brow of the ascent and found ourselves on the edge of a vast undulating pasture. Barns and stables, too large to be called châlets, were sprinkled here and there. Frequent fences and gates suggested an English homestead. Sleek cows reposed contentedly on the grass, careless young heifers quarrelled and made it up again, while a couple of fussy donkeys raised a bray of welcome and galloped up to greet their half-brother in our train.
The highest point of the tableland of the Ginevrie Alp was our pass; from it the path dipped suddenly into a waterless dell. A few paces further brought us to the verge of the short steep descent whence we looked down on the meadows of Val Nambino and the tower of La Madonna di Campiglio. The path made a circuit to reach it, but we preferred a short cut, despite the warning of a priest who shouted after us that it was 'piu pericoloso.'
Before we went to bed it was decided that the mountaineers should set off next morning with Henri Devouassoud, a brother of the more celebrated François, in search of a route up the still maiden Cima di Brenta. Owing to various delays it was past five when we started. Our ideas as to the direction to be at first taken were rather crude, and had been rendered more so by the assurances of a German traveller we met overnight that there was no valley between the Val di Brenta and Monte Spinale.
Close to a second inn, a peasants' drinking-house, we left the road to Pinzolo for a terrace-path skirting the lower slopes of Monte Spinale. As we gradually turned the most projecting spur of the mountain, the lower portion of Val Nambino opened beneath us. The morning clouds were rapidly dispersing under the warm influence of the sun. High up in air, severed from the solid earth by a grey belt of yet undissolved mist, the great snow-plains of the Carè Alto shone in a golden glory such as that in which Mont Blanc veils himself when seen from a hundred miles' distance.[61] Thin vapours still clung round the dolomites of the Bocca di Brenta, making their strange forms appear still more fantastic. Thus far our path had been gradually descending. Now a valley opened exactly where we looked for it at the south-eastern base of Monte Spinale. A timber-slide, which, if in good repair, forms the most luxurious of mountain-paths, avoiding all inequalities of ground, bridging chasms and mounting by an almost uniform gradient, led us up the glen which is known as the Vallesinella. Through breaks in the forest the glacier-crowned crags of the Cima di Brenta were now seen for the first time, followed on the north by an array of slender obelisks, beaks, and crooked horns, the strangeness of which would, but for a long experience in dolomite vagaries, have made us doubt our eyes. In the foreground a romantic waterfall, framed amongst woods of birch, beech, ash, and pine, dashed over the rocks. We could not but feel the contrast between such mountain scenery, where Nature seems to revel in the indulgence of her most poetical mood, and the dull formality of much we had lately been living amongst in eastern Switzerland. To me the Upper Engadine, with its long perspective of brown barren mountains leading to an ignoble termination, suggests irresistibly the last Haussman boulevard. Yet while the choicest spots of the Italian Tyrol remain deserted, fashion crowds the bleak shores of St. Moritz, and finds a charm even in the swamps of Samaden.
On a knoll above the waterfall stands a group of châlets. We were attacked in passing them by a gigantic dog, armed with a collar bristling with iron spikes. But for our ice-axes our expedition might have been brought to an untimely end. As it was, we stole a flank march on the foe, while Henri occupied his attention with a blow on the nose which indisposed him to follow up our retreat. The timber-slide we had lately followed comes down from the furthest corner of the recess at the back of Monte Spinale, whence an easy pass leads into the Val Teresenga, a lateral glen of Val di Sole, parallel to Val Selva.
Under the châlets a bridge crosses the stream, and a path mounts steeply the opposite hillside. We, by keeping too long beside the water, missed the track. While forcing our way back to it over the slowly decaying trunks, and amongst the rich ferns and weeds, we were tempted for a moment to fancy ourselves in a wilder land. Alas! the woodcutter's axe is already busy on these slopes, and they will not long retain their robes of primeval forest.