A little inn, supplying drinkable wine, stands on the further side of the ridge. For the next two hours the path leads through scenery of a large and noble aspect. Deep below lies a valley, narrowing to a savage gorge before it releases its stream to flow out into the sunny meadows of Val di Mel. Above its head a broad-shouldered isolated mountain, known by the simple name of Il Piz, towers high into the air.
The first village in Venetia, conspicuous by a large new church, offers itself for a midday halt. A grassy slope leads thence to the crests of the wooded ridges which divide the glens sloping towards Agordo. Numerous paths wander about their tops, and unless the first left-hand track is taken it is easy to miss the way amongst them. This leads down into Val Sarzana, a long but pleasant glen, supporting several villages, and opening nearly opposite the little town of Agordo.
So much for those of the main tracks, of which I can speak from experience. The road down the valley to Feltre is still incomplete; other paths can be learnt of from the 'Alpine Guide.' I must turn to the higher passages across the great horseshoe, which, if not absolutely unknown, were in any case known only to a few goatherds and hunters before the expeditions here described.
On the morning of May 30, 1864, a strange arrival disturbed the quiet of the little mountain town of Agordo, and collected what might pass for a crowd on the piazza, which in England we should call a green. Soon after nine A.M. the strangers who were the cause of this unusual stir issued from the inn door in an armed procession—four Englishmen headed by a Swiss and a Savoyard, the two latter girt with rope. Each individual brandished a formidable axe. The native mind was by no means satisfied with the explanations offered by the strangers, and (as our guides afterwards told us) rushed to the conclusion that we were a party of diggers wandering over the mountains to seek spots favourable for mines, and that our strange-looking implements must be for breaking rocks in search of gold. At the village of Taibon, some half-an-hour above Agordo, a path crosses the river and turns into a side-glen—the Valle di San Lucano. After-experience has confirmed our first impressions of this valley. It is one of the most imposing spots in this romantic region. The level bottom is dotted with pines and watered by one of those sparkling streams too rare in the Western Alps, which, content with their own station in life, do not seek notoriety by doing harm to their neighbours. On one hand the Palle di San Lucano rises in stupendous cliffs, in many places smooth and perpendicular as a newly-built wall, and capped by three massive towers. On the other is Monte Agnaro, a more broken and slightly less precipitous dolomite, its rugged face furrowed by numerous clefts filled at this early season by beds of snow, the remains of spring avalanches. At the châlets of Col, an hour's walk from the high-road, the glen split into two branches, the one short and steep running up to the Forcella Gesurette, a grassy gap leading to Gares, the other a deep trench (sometimes called the Val d'Angoraz) penetrating deeply into the corner of the Primiero horseshoe and ending in a wild precipice-closed amphitheatre. A herdsman assured us that by following a path on the western slopes of Val d'Angoraz we might find a passage across the mountains, occasionally used by shepherds, but, as he added, over snow and superlatively 'cattivo.' The savage and uninviting character of the cliffs at the extreme head of the valley made us quite ready to follow his advice.
Our first start that morning had been from Belluno, and it was now approaching noon. Just torn from the languid luxury of Venetian gondolas and under the scorching influence of a midday sun we crept upwards but slowly, and the only eagerness displayed amongst us was in finding from time to time some plausible excuse for a halt.
Underwood slowly gave place to pines, and these in turn yielded to Alpine rhododendrons, amongst which our path came to an end. Several hours, however, had passed before we gained the limit of vegetation, and sat down on the rocks to consider our line of march over the snow-slopes which still separated us from the wished-for ridge. The wild cliffs of the Sasso di Campo, here and there nursing infant glaciers in their rough recesses, rose opposite. On the north stretched a wide elevated pasture, lying on the back of the Palle di San Lucano and the slopes of the Cima di Pape.
Once on the snow all our fatigue vanished before the delicious air, and our spirits shared the exhilaration. It was fortunate they did so, for the scouts of the party, who had pressed on to the apparent pass, found on the further side wide-spreading snow-fields, barred at a great distance by a rocky ridge. After studying the military map of Venetia (in which, as we afterwards found, all this region is laid down in the vaguest and most misleading manner), we determined to retrace our steps and make for a higher gap in the ridge on our right. This was a mistake, for had we gone straight on we should have found ourselves, with hardly any further ascent, on the edge of Val di Canale,[65] near the spot we afterwards reached by a most circuitous route.
On gaining this second depression we saw more slopes between us and the ridge which now seemed to be the watershed. The third pass in its turn proved only a gap in one of the numerous low spurs running across the great tableland which lies at the back of the rim of peaks seen from the valley of the Cismone.
We were now in the very heart of this huge stony wilderness. In every direction stretched an undulating expanse of whitish-grey rock, brittle in substance and pockmarked by weather. Strange snow-filled pits here and there broke the monotony of the weird waste, which, but for these and its greater unevenness, resembled a rocky shore between low and high water-mark. But the impression of barrenness and desolation far exceeded what such a comparison will suggest; snow instead of water filled the crannies, and the life of sea-weeds and sea-creatures was altogether wanting in this middle realm of utter nakedness. There was too much sunshine for the glacier, too much frost for the flowers which began to find root scarcely 500 feet lower wherever the sun shone on a patch of disintegrated rock. Here there was nothing even for a chamois to nibble.
On the south the tableland was bounded by a line of snowy eminences, on the west by a fantastic cockscomb of lofty crags, perhaps part of the spur of the Palle di San Martino. But the wide horizon to the north and east bore witness to the height on which we stood. Nothing impeded our view over the central dolomite region, and beyond it we recognised against the horizon the pale snowy line of the distant Tauern.