On the first day of my first visit to Mesocco in 1879, I had gone on to S. Bernardino, and just before getting there, looking down over the great stretches of pasture land above S. Giacomo, could see that there was a storm raging lower down in the valley about where Mesocco should be; I never saw such inky blackness in clouds before, and the conductor of the diligence said that he had seen nothing like it. Next morning we learnt that a water-spout had burst on the mountain above Anzone, a hamlet of Mesocco, and that the water had done a great deal of damage to the convent at Mesocco. Returning a few days later, I saw where the torrent had flowed by the mud upon the grass, but could not have believed such a stream of water (running with the velocity with which it must have run) to have been possible under any circumstances in that place unless I had actually seen its traces. It carried great rocks of several cubic yards as though they had been small stones, and among other mischief it had knocked down the garden wall of the convent of S. Rocco and covered the garden with débris. As I looked at it I remembered what Signor Bullo had told me at Faido about the inundations of 1868, “It was not the great rivers,” he said, “which did the damage: it was the ruscelli” or small streams. So in revolutions it is not the heretofore great people, but small ones swollen under unusual circumstances who are most conspicuous and do most damage. Padre Bernardino, of the convent of S. Rocco, asked me to make him a sketch of the effect of the inundation, which I was delighted to do. It was not, however, exactly what he wanted, and, moreover, it got spoiled in the mounting, so I did another and he returned me the first with an inscription upon it which I reproduce below.
First came the words—
Then came my sketch; and then—
The English of which is as follows:—“View of the church, garden, and hospice of S. Rocco, after the visitation inflicted upon them by the sad torrent of Anzone, on the unhallowed evening of the 4th of August 1879.” I regret that the “no” of Padre Bernardino’s name, through being written in faint ink, was not reproduced in my facsimile. I doubt whether Padre Bernardino would have got the second sketch out of me, if I had not liked the inscription he had written on the first so much that I wanted to be possessed of it. Besides, he wrote me a note addressed “all’ egregio pittore S. Butler.” To be called an egregious painter was too much for me, so I did the sketch. I was once addressed as “L’esimio pittore.” I think this is one degree better even than “egregio.”
The damage which torrents can do must be seen to be believed. There is not a streamlet, however innocent looking, which is not liable occasionally to be turned into a furious destructive agent, carrying ruin over the pastures which at ordinary times it irrigates. Perhaps in old times people deified and worshipped streams because they were afraid of them. Every year each one of the great Alpine roads will be interrupted at some point or another by the tons of stones and gravel that are swept over it perhaps for a hundred yards together. I have seen the St. Gothard road more than once soon after these interruptions and could not have believed such damage possible; in 1869 people would still shudder when they spoke of the inundations of 1868. It is curious to note how they will now say that rocks which have evidently been in their present place for hundreds of years, were brought there in 1868; as for the torrent that damaged S. Rocco when I was in the valley of Mesocco, it shaved off the strong parapet of the bridge on either side clean and sharp, but the arch was left standing, the flood going right over the top. Many scars are visible on the mountain tops which are clearly the work of similar water-spouts, and altogether the amount of solid matter which gets taken down each year into the valleys is much greater than we generally think. Let any one watch the Ticino flowing into the Lago Maggiore after a few days’ heavy rain, and consider how many tons of mud per day it must carry into and leave in the lake, and he will wonder that the gradual filling-up process is not more noticeable from age to age than it is.
Anzone, whence the sad torrent derives its name, is an exquisitely lovely little hamlet close to Mesocco. Another no less beautiful village is Doera, on the other side of the Moesa, and half a mile lower down than Mesocco. Doera overlooks the castle, the original hexagonal form of which can be made out from this point. It must have been much of the same plan as the castle at Eynsford in Kent—of which, by the way, I was once assured that the oldest inhabitant could not say “what it come from.” While I was copying the fresco outside the chapel at Doera, some charming people came round me. I said the fresco was very beautiful. “Son persuaso,” said the spokesman solemnly. Then he said there were some more pictures inside and we had better see them; so the keys were brought. We said that they too were very beautiful. “Siam persuasi,” was the reply in chorus. Then they said that perhaps we should like to buy them and take them away with us. This was a more serious matter, so we explained that they were very beautiful, but that these things had a charm upon the spot which they would lose if removed elsewhere. The nice people at once replied, “Siam persuasi,” and so they left us. It was like a fragment from one of Messrs. Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic operas.
For the rest, Mesocco is beautifully situated and surrounded by waterfalls. There is a man there who takes the cows and goats out in the morning for their several owners in the village, and brings them home in the evening. He announces his departure and his return by blowing a twisted shell, like those that Tritons blow on fountains or in pictures; it yields a softer sound than a horn; when his shell is heard people go to the cow-house and let the cows out; they need not drive them to join the others, they need only open the door; and so in the evening, they only want the sound of the shell to tell them that they must open the stable-door, for the cows or goats when turned from the rest of the mob make straight to their own abode.
There are two great avalanches which descend every spring; one of them when I was there last was not quite gone until September; these avalanches push the air before them and compress it, so that a terrific wind descends to the bottom of the valley and mounts up on to the village of Mesocco. One year this wind snapped a whole grove of full-grown walnuts across the middle of their trunks, and carried stones and bits of wood up against the houses at some distance off; it tore off part of the covering from the cupola of the church, and twisted the weathercock awry in the fashion in which it may still be seen, unless it has been mended since I left.