Some time since a nineteenth-century Arthur, an enemy of shams moral or mountainous and a President of the Alpine Club, wandering beyond his usual bounds, found himself suddenly in the presence of a bevy of formidable giants. Accustomed though he was to such encounters, the prodigious stature of these monsters, their impenetrable armour, and perhaps more than all the weird cruelty of their appearance, as with flame-tipped crests they stood up in a mighty line against the sunset, made such an impression on his mind that on his return, instead of calling on his Round Table—the Alpine Club—to overthrow the untamed brood, he solemnly warned them as they valued their lives to let it alone.
The warning was of course ineffectual. One of the youngest knights rushed to the spot, went straight at the very tallest and most repulsive of the giant family, and returned victorious after an encounter, brief it is true, but of the most deadly character. Their prestige thus rudely shaken, others of the giants fell tamely enough, and but two or three still remain, owing perhaps their prolonged escape as much to their remoteness as to their individual terrors.
So far as I am concerned I have no such thrilling tale to tell as that recorded by Mr. Whitwell in the 'Alpine Journal'[63] of the ascent of the Cimon della Pala. On the only two occasions when I have come near the giants of Primiero circumstances have hindered me from doing much more than seek to detect the weak points in their harness; to abandon a somewhat strained metaphor, to make passes. For although I have been successful in reaching the second in height of these summits, this was, as it proved, little of a mountaineering feat compared to the passage of the gap beside it.
Passes have, however, for the general tourist more practical if less poetical interest than peaks. I shall not scruple therefore to devote some pages to the tracks which lead either round or across this singular group.
The mountain-knot which raises its wellnigh perpendicular masses behind Primiero may be compared to a horseshoe from which protrude spikes of irregular length. The easiest paths, the only ones practicable for beasts of burden, wind round the base of the protuberances; the higher passes, fit for shepherds or foot-travellers, penetrate the recesses between the lofty spurs and cross the horseshoe itself. The former are not the least fascinating.
For this country owes its wonderful beauty in great part to the constantly recurring contrast between the tall bare cliffs of the great rock islands and the soft forms of the green hills which like a sea roll their verdurous waves between them. Round the peaks of Primiero lies a region of wide-spreading downs, scarcely divided from each other by low grassy ridges; of forest-clad vales where the rich soil nurtures a dense undergrowth of ferns and moisture-loving plants. The huge crests of the Sass Maor or the Cimon della Pala never look so wonderful as when, seen from among the rhododendrons and between the dark spires of pine, their 'rosy heights come out above the lawns.'
It may perhaps be thought that I might well have passed over as described by former travellers the two main lines of traffic by which the people of the country communicate with their neighbours of Val Fassa and Agordo. But the account given of these passes by Messrs. Gilbert and Churchill seems to me to have been damped by the bad weather which those energetic explorers met with in this neighbourhood; and the pages of subsequent travellers have added but little to their report. Moreover, the times marching on, even at Primiero, have made many changes and smoothed away many obstacles, and thus rendered more or less obsolete the tales of even a few years ago.
The greatest of these changes is the new carriage-road which has lately been constructed from Primiero to Predazzo, in Val Fassa. From Primiero to the top of the pass it is finished in 'the well-known style' of an Austrian military highway; the descent through the forest to Paneveggio is not as yet equally solidly constructed,[64] but the whole road is perfectly safe and easy for spring-carriages.
The inns along the way (there are now three in the space of an eight hours' drive) have shared the fortunes of the road. At San Martino di Castrozza an hotel to contain twenty bedrooms has just been built, and will be opened next summer. The situation, 5,000 feet above the sea, amidst luxuriant meadows but at the very base of the greatest peaks of the country, is, so far as I know, unequalled amongst the dolomites. A new inn of more modest capacity has been erected on the very crest of the Pass. Paneveggio, once the rudest of peasants' houses of call, now furnishes ample if homely fare, and boasts at least one comfortable bedroom.
Val Fassa ends, and the country under the spell of the Primiero peaks begins, where the new road, having toiled up a green hillside to the little chapel and hamlet of La Madonna della Neve, bends at a level round the base of a flat-topped block of rock and pines which lies across the valley and cuts off the 'Forest of Paneveggio' from the outer world.