Brick and Marble in the Middle Ages: Notes of Tours in the North of Italy

by George Edmund Street

We spent an amusing evening, having for companions a Frenchman with his wife and two daughters, all very lively and exceedingly loquacious: the walls of the modest salle à manger rang with hearty laughter until after the time at which early travellers generally go to bed, and so we paved the way doubtless for a hearty night’s rest.

The first thing to be done in the morning, after the discussion of the excellent trout and honey put before us, was to take a stroll up to the old castle which lends so much picturesque character to the village. The weather was glorious; the perfectly blue sky overhead, the bright green of the valley, the luxuriance of the lower slopes of the mountains, and the view up the pass of the Furca closed in with a white line of snow, combined together to make us all regret our determination to push on rapidly for Luzern; and no sooner was the regret felt than—like idle school-children enjoying themselves while they may—we made up our minds to ascend the Furca, sleep on the summit of the pass, and return early the next morning. No sooner said than done; our horses were taken out of the carriage, and in half an hour, with a guide and horses for the ladies, we were on our way for a mountain excursion, full of that elastic feeling which the treading of a Swiss mountain-path always gives, and bent upon enjoying ourselves to the full.

The contrast with the flat dusty roads and the sultry weather to which you are so often forced to submit in Italy made the walk especially pleasant; and though, compared to many other mountain excursions, it was of slight interest, under the circumstances it presented more than common attraction to us. The path was one of those pleasant ways so common in Switzerland—a paved narrow road between banks of fields or low walls, gradually rising and falling, now crossing the dry bed of some glacier torrent, and now bridging the stream which descends the valley to feed the Reuss. The fields were rich in colour, and bright with various and lovely flowers, and the lower slopes of the mountain were tinted a rich purple with the bloom of herbs, cropped gratefully here and there by small and melancholy looking sheep.

The small village of Realp is soon reached, and then the ascent begins; this is rather stiff, and it has taken us, when we reach the summit, just four hours and a half of hard walking from Hospenthal. We found dinner going on at the little hostelry at the top, and, after partaking of it, started again to ascend the Furca-Horn, a mountain rising above the summit of the pass, and, as we had been told, quite worth the trouble of the ascent. There was no kind of path, and in places the mountain-side was so steep that I began to think it was no place for ladies to scramble up; however, they thought otherwise, and after divers tumbles in the snow, and surmounting rather formidable-looking obstacles, we reached the summit at last, and, sitting down on the edge of a great rock, spent a long time in enjoying the glorious view.

Just under us was the vast glacier of the Rhone, and then beyond it we looked down the long valley of the same river until its shape was obscured by mist, and traced the path by which we had walked in a previous journey up the steep Meyenwand to the Grimsel. Immediately in front of us were the vast peaked mass of the Schreckhorn, the whole course of the glaciers of the Aar, and the peaks of the Finster-Aarhorn, the Jungfrau, and the Mönch; above our heads rose the Galenstock, and opposite us the Mutthorn and Monte Fiudo; whilst the summit of Monte Rosa, discerned with difficulty among a marvellous array of distant peaks, completed one of the finest views of snow-covered mountains which it has ever been my good fortune to behold.

Long time did we keep our elevated seats, scanning again and again the glorious panorama, and at last, most unwillingly, commenced the descent; this was more difficult, though much more speedy, than the ascent, as the side of the mountain was both steep and slippery. We reached the summit of the pass, itself about eight thousand three hundred feet above the sea, in little more than an hour, the ascent to the Horn having occupied about two hours and a half; and here we found our French friends of the previous evening, who had in vain endeavoured to follow us in our ascent, but had been one and all obliged to give up the attempt.

Late at night we all went out again to look at the most glorious moonlight effect it is possible to imagine; the peaks of the mountains and the vast fields of snow or glacier lighted up by the bright light of the moon had a charm about them peculiarly fascinating.

Very early the next morning we started again on our way back to Hospenthal, and got down to the inn in good time, had breakfast, and then, mounting our carriage, we were soon off again down the valley of the Reuss. The Devil’s Bridge was ere long reached, and the glorious scenery with which it is surrounded amply redeemed the expectations I had always formed of its extreme beauty; indeed for grandeur, combined with luxuriant cultivation of the lower slopes of the mountains, and for the wild beauty of the course of the river itself, nothing even in Switzerland surpasses the narrow valley through which the turbulent Reuss finds its way from Andermatt to Amsteg.

Here the valley widens considerably, and orchards full of fruit-trees, covered with bright-looking apples, spread half over the valley, on each side of which the mountains are very grand in their outline. Before long Altdorf is reached, and all the scenes so dear to Swiss freemen are rapidly passed, until at last our carriage sets us down on the very edge of the lovely Lake of Luzern, where the half-hour which we have to wait for the departure of the steamer is spent in attempting a sketch of the rocks which descend so precipitously into the deep recesses of the lake.

Much harm is done by overpraising beautiful scenery, and even the Lake of the Four Cantons suffers from this; for so much has been said and written about its unmatched loveliness and grandeur, that the result is perhaps a slight disappointment with the reality. One great beauty, no doubt, is the succession of entirely distinct views which different portions of the lake afford, though at the same time the irregular outline of the water very much diminishes its apparent scale; I doubt, too, whether there is any one view so grand as that at the head of Lake Como, though otherwise I know no lake which can be preferred to it.