From the Lakes of Killarney to the Golden Horn

by Henry M. Field

But the night was not promising; the rain fell in torrents, and the morning was dark and lowering; but "he that regardeth the clouds shall not reap," so with faith we set out, and our faith was rewarded, for soon the clouds broke away, and though they lingered in scattered masses, sufficient to shade us from the oppressive heat of the sun, they did not obscure the sight of the mountains and the valleys. The rains had laid the dust and cooled the air, and all day long we were floating through a succession of the most varied scenes, in which there was a mingled wildness and beauty that would have delighted our landscape artists.

The villages are less picturesque than the country. They are generally built very compact, apparently as a security against the winter, when storms rage through these valleys, and there is a feeling of safety in being thus "huddled" together. The houses are of stone, with arched passage-ways for the horses to be driven into a central yard. They look very solid, but they are not tasteful. There are not good accommodations for travellers. There are as yet none of those magnificent hotels which the flood of English tourists has caused to be built at every noted point in Switzerland; in the Tyrol one has to depend on the inns of the country, and these, with a few exceptions, are poor. Looking through the one long, narrow street of a Tyrolean village, one sees little that is attractive, but much to the contrary. Great heaps of manure lie exposed by the roadside, and often not only before the barns, but before the houses. These seem to be regarded as the agricultural riches of the cultivators of the soil, and are displayed with as much pride as a shepherd would take in showing his flocks and herds. These features of a hamlet in the Tyrol a traveller regards with disgust, and we used often to think of the contrast presented to one of our New England villages, the paradise of neatness and comfort.

Such things seem to show an utter absence of taste; and yet this people are very fond of flowers. Almost every house has a little patch of ground for their cultivation, and the contrast is most strange between the filth on one side and the beauty and bloom on the other.

Another feature which strikes one, is the universal reverence and devotion. The Tyrolese, like the peasants of Bavaria, are a very religious people. One can hardly travel a mile without coming to a cross or a shrine by the wayside, with an image of Christ and the Virgin. Often on the highest points of the mountains, where only the shepherd builds his hut, that he may watch his flocks in the summer as they feed on those elevated pastures, may be seen a little chapel, whose white spire, gleaming in the sunset, seems as strange and lonely as would a rude chapel built by a company of miners on some solitary peak of the Rocky Mountains.

These summer pastures are a feature of the Tyrol. High up on the sides of the mountains one may descry here and there, amid the masses of rock, or the pine forest, a little oasis of green (called an Alp), where a few rods of more level ground permit of cultivation. It would seem as if these heights were almost inaccessible, as if only the chamois could clamber up such rocks, or find a footing where only stunted pines can grow. Yet so industrious are these simple Tyroleans, and so hard-pressing is the necessity which compels them to use every foot of the soil, that they follow in the path of the chamois, and turn even the tops of the mountains into greenness, and plant their little patches almost on the edge of the snows. Wherever the grass can grow, the cattle and goats find sustenance on the scanty herbage. To these mountain pastures they are driven, so soon as the snows have melted off from the heights, and the tender grass begins to appear, and there they are kept till the return of cold compels them to descend. We used often to look through our spyglass at the little clusters of huts on the very tops of the mountains, where the shepherds, by coming together, try to lighten a little the loneliness of their lot, banished for the time from all other human habitations. But what a solitary existence—the only sound that greets their ears the tinkling of the cow-bells, or the winding of the shepherd's horn, or the chime of some chapel bell, which, perched on a neighboring height, sends its sweet tones across the valley. Amid such scenes, we rode through a dozen villages, past hills crowned with old castles, and often looked down from the mountain sides into deep hollows glistening with lakes. As we came into the valley of the Inn, we remembered that this was all historic ground. The bridges over which we passed have often been the scene of bloody conflicts, and in these narrow gorges the Tyrolese have rolled down rocks and trees on the heads of their invaders.

We slept that night at Landeck, in a very decent, comfortable inn, kept by a good motherly hostess. The next morning we exchanged our private carriage for the stellwaggen, a small diligence which runs to Mals. Our journey was now made still more pleasant by falling in with a party of three clergymen of the Church of England—all rectors of important churches in or near London, who had been, like ourselves, to Ober-Ammergau, and were returning through the Tyrol. They had been also to the Old Catholic Conference at Bonn, where they met our friend Dr. Schaff. They had much to say of the addresses of Dr. Döllinger, and of the Old Catholic movement, of which they had not very high expectations, although they thought its influence, as far as it went, was good. We travelled together for three days. I found them (as I have always found clergymen of the Church of England) men of culture and education, as well as gentlemen in their manners. They proved most agreeable travelling companions, and their pleasant conversation, as we rode together, or walked up the steep ascents of the mountains, gave an additional enjoyment to this most delightful journey.

This second day's ride led us over the Finstermünz Pass in which all the features of Tyrolean scenery of the day before were repeated with increasing grandeur. For many miles the line of the Tyrol is close to that of Switzerland; across a deep gorge, through which flows a rapid river, lies the Engadine, which of late years has been a favorite resort of Swiss tourists, and where our friend Prof. Hitchcock with his family has been spending the summer at St. Moritz.

Towards the close of the day we descried in the distance a range of snowy summits, and were told that this was the chain that we were to cross on the morrow.

But all the experiences of those two days—in which we thought our superlatives were exhausted—were surpassed on the third as we crossed the Pass of the Stelvio. This is the highest pass in Europe, and on this day it seemed as if we were scaling heaven itself. Having a party of five, we procured a diligence to ourselves. We set out from Mals at six o'clock in the morning, and crossing the rushing, foaming Adige, began the ascent. Soon the mountains close in upon us, the Pass grows narrower and steeper; the horses have to pull harder; we get out and walk, partly to relieve the hard-breathing animals, but more to see at every turn the savage wildness of the scenery. How the road turns and twists in every way to get a foothold, doubling on itself a hundred times in its ascent of a few miles. And look, how the grandeur grows as we mount into this higher air! The snow-peaks are all around us, and the snow melting in the fiery sun, feeds many streams which pour down the rocky sides of the mountains to unite in the valley below, and which filled the solitudes with a perpetual roar.

After such steady climbing for seven hours, at one o'clock we reached a resting place for dinner (where we halted an hour), a shelf between the mountains, from which, as we were now above the line of trees, and no forests intercepted the view, we could see our way to the very summit. The road winds in a succession of zigzags up the side of the mountain. The distance in an air line is not perhaps more than two miles, though it is six and a half by the road, and it took us just two hours to reach the top. At length at four o'clock we reached the point, over nine thousand feet above the level of the sea, where a stone monument marks at once the summit of the Pass and the dividing line between the Tyrol and Lombardy. All leaped from the carriage in delight, to look around on the wilderness of mountains. To the left was the great range of the Ortler Alps, with the Ortler Spitze rising like a white dome above them all. At last we were among the snows. We were above the line of vegetation, where not a tree grows, nor a blade of grass—where all is barrenness and desolation.