THE VENETIAN TYROL—VAL DI ZOLDO—PASSO D'ALLEGHE—SAN NICOLÒ—CAMPO DI RUTORTO—ON THE PELMO—A LADY'S ASCENT—THE PEOPLE OF VAL DI ZOLDO.
Even in the Venetian Tyrol the tendency of tourists to choose the colder pine-clad north in place of the more tender and varied grace of the south has become observable. Cortina, Caprile, and the Val Fassa are even now on the, in everything but prices, downward path of corruption. But away to the south and outside the 'regular round' there are still many quiet nooks known as yet only to those who
—— Love to enter pleasure by a postern,
Not the broad populous gate which gulps the mob.
It is across the Italian frontier, and not amongst the stern peaks and solemn pines of Cortina, or in the savage gorge of Landro, that we find the nature which Titian so often sketched and painted. In the foregrounds of the northern dolomite country there is a commonplace stiffness and want of variety, which even the weird crags of the Drei Zinnen or Coll' Agnello cannot render romantic; it lacks the noble spaciousness, the soft and changeful beauties, of the southern region. Its character is German in the place of Italian, it reminds us rather of Dürer than of Titian. It excites and interests the appetite for the wonderful rather than soothes and satisfies our longing for complete and harmonious beauty.
Landscapes composed of blue surging waves of mountains, broken by sharp fins and tusks of rock, of deep skies peopled with luminous masses of white cloud, are familiar to the eyes of thousands who have never seen Italy nor heard of a dolomite. Side by side with the wide sunny spaces, the soft hills and unclouded heaven of the early schools of Perugia and Tuscany, they remain to us as types of what Italian art found most beautiful and sympathetic in nature. The hill-villages of Val di Zoldo claim our interest as the frequent haunts of Titian. While wandering between them, we are amongst the influences which impressed his boyhood and were afterwards the sources of his inspiration. The Pelmo may on good ground assert itself as Titian's own mountain. Mr. Gilbert, in his 'Cadore,' has shown it to us as it stands over against the painter's native town; and it is impossible to turn over the facsimiles of the master's drawings contained in that charming volume without being persuaded that he drew the mountain from life more than once, and his recollection of it very frequently.
Val di Zoldo resembles many of the Venetian valleys in being shaped like a long-necked bottle. In its lower portion a narrow gorge hemmed in by beetling crags, it expands at its head into what, seen from any vantage-ground, shows as a broad sunny basin, divided by green ridges into a labyrinth of fertile glens. The outlines of these ridges are symmetrical in themselves, and they are grouped together in a constantly shifting but harmonious complexity. Away to the south the horizon is fringed by splintered edges of dolomite, black as the receding night when cut clear against the first orange of dawn, or pale gold in the palpable haze of an Italian noon, or crimson with the reflected rays of sunset. As the paths cross the crests from glen to glen, the snowy boss of the Antelao or the painted cliffs of the Sorapis tower loftily over the low intervening ridge which divides Zoppé from the Val d'Ampezzo. But (to accept the hypothesis of Von Richthofen) the great glory of Val di Zoldo lies in the chance which led the coral insects to select the broad downs lying behind the hamlets of Pecol and Brusadaz for pedestals on which to plant their two noblest efforts, the huge wall of the Civetta and the tower of the Pelmo. Elsewhere in the dolomite country edifices may be seen covering a wider space of ground, or decorated with more fantastic pinnacles, the Westminster Palaces and Milan Cathedrals of their order. But these two works belong to the best style or period of insect art; their builders have shown that simplicity of intention and subordination of detail to a central controlling purpose which mark the highest of the comparatively puny efforts of their human competitors.
To travellers the Civetta is best known by its north-western face, to which the little lake of Alleghe lends a picturesque charm sure to catch the fancy of every passer-by. The structure of the mountain as seen from Val di Zoldo appears less intricate; and if the cliffs are not so perpendicular, the prevailing angle from base to cope is steeper. Its crags, glittering with rain or sprinkled with recent snow, shine out at an incredible height athwart the slant rays of a setting sun; in the cloudless morning hours they become ordinary rocks up which the experienced cragsman detects a path, safe enough when the spring is over and the upper ledges have 'voided their rheum.'
To the mind of the climber who wanders beneath its cliffs I know not what incongruous fancies the Pelmo may not suggest. From Val Fiorentina and Santa Lucia its broad shoulders and massive head resemble an Egyptian sphynx; as we move southwards one of the shoulders becomes detached, and the mountain is transformed into a colossal antediluvian cub crouching beside its parent. When clouds part to show the vast glittering crest which overlooks Val di Zoldo we seem to realise 'the great and high wall' of the city coming down from heaven of Apocalyptic vision. If we ever have a 'Practical Tyrol,' the likeness of the solid mass seen from the Ampezzo road to the Round Tower of Windsor will probably be remarked on,—and there will be a certain amount of vulgar truth in the observation.