The Alps

by Sir William Martin Conway

Climbers who have spent a season or two in each of these five groups may think that they know the Alps, but they will be greatly mistaken. Most of them, indeed, will admit that they cannot afford to neglect the Dolomites, and will at least intend to spend a season amongst them. From a scrambling point of view, if they are rock-climbers, they will be well rewarded, for Dolomite rock-climbing is a thing apart. Dolomite scenery is even more truly unique. Less grand than that of the great mountain groups, it has a distinction all its own. There is nothing forbidding about the precipitance of its cliffs and summits. Their relative lightness of tint and the warm suffusion of the sun-pervaded atmosphere that so frequently envelops them, makes their elevated parts seem almost to float in the sky. The visible traces of the horizontal bedding of the rocks that compose them render the effect of even their slenderest pinnacles less aspiring than that of the flaked and tilted slaty-crystalline spires of older and more rugged formations. Some of the sentiment of Italy hangs about the Dolomites. The airs that are drifted over them seem steeped in Italian colour, even as their names re-echo the music of the Italian tongue. The valleys between them soon dip into the level of chestnut and vine ere yet they forsake the mountains. The chalets are pregnant with suggestions of Italy, and the inhabitants possess more of Italian grace than of Swiss ruggedness. It is, however, colour, and especially atmospheric colour, that the mention of the Dolomites first calls to the mind of the votaries of those hills and valleys. Who that has beheld dawn or sunset on Cristallo or Rosengarten can forget the glorious display of rosy lights and purple shadows? The mountain forms are sometimes fine, oftener picturesque (as Titian knew). They have the rare merit of seeming to group into the happiest of combinations and contrasts as though by exceptional good luck; but the luck is of such frequent recurrence that instead of being an exception it must be counted the rule. In the presence of Mont Blanc or the Matterhorn it is natural to adore. The Dolomites men love.

Such, then, are the six main groups of Alps that the ordinary run of tourists know. They include the most majestic scenery, but are far from including all the finest. There yet remain a bewildering multitude of minor groups and areas, each rich in its own charm. Such are the Maritime Alps, the Cottians around Monte Viso, the Graians led by Grand Paradis and Grivola, the limestone Alps of Savoy, the green hills of north Switzerland and Bavaria, the Lepontine Alps, the hills of the Italian Lakes, the Tödi, the Rhætikon, the Adamello, Ortler, Oetzthal, Stubaithal, and Zillerthal snowy masses, the Hohe Tauern, the Carnic and Julian Alps, and various other mountain groups of Styria, Carinthia, and Carniola. How many of us know a tithe of all these? It is impossible here to do more than refer briefly to a few of them.

Amongst the fairest of them all, the Maritimes should assuredly be reckoned, little visited though they be except by Italians. Their eastern and northern valleys, which alone are known to me, must be counted lovely, even judged by the high standard of loveliness that the Italian Alpine valleys set. Any one of them, transported to the midst of a Swiss group of mountains, would be the pearl of the district. What more enchanting resort can be imagined than the Baths of Valdieri, planted amidst umbrageous copses and beside laughing waters? Here all the elements of picturesque landscape group themselves together in the most perfect natural harmony. Nowhere in the opening season are the flowers more rich, the hillsides more verdant, the foliage of the trees more varied. Nowhere do woods climb slopes in more graceful procession. Nowhere are the rocks and lofty snow-peaks set in more fascinating frames of unexpected foreground. It is a valley of endless surprises and delights. Moreover, its waters are clear and glancing. They burst from the hillsides, tumble in crystalline brilliance over clifflets, dance through the meadows, and race-along beneath the shadow of beeches and chestnuts. No ogres, we may be sure, lurk in the fastnesses of these hills, but only the most delicate fairies, glittering with dew. And then the views from the peaks—how memorable they are, how unlike those of the Central Alps! For from these summits you behold always the sea, far stretching, and ever apparently calm. It looks indeed like any other sea, but you know that it is the Mediterranean with all Africa beyond it, away there in the sunny south. On the other side, far, far off to the north, is the great Alpine wall, and at your feet the sea-like Lombard plain. Those sweeps of flatness on either hand, how they tell in the midst of a mountain view! They bring into it a sense of repose. There Nature has finished her work of pulling down, and man can rest upon the fertile soil in peace. Sweet indeed is Valdieri, but it is no sweeter than its neighbouring glens. He that loves mountains in less savage mood than the great giants are wont to bear, let him fly to the Maritimes and he will not be disappointed.

LOCARNO FROM THE BANKS OF THE LAKE

Madonna del Sasso on the slope above.

Proceeding northward, the Cottians and the Tarentaise and Graians present loftier peaks and valleys beautiful, though lacking the richness and luxuriance of the Maritimes. In fact these groups stand between the Pennines and the Maritimes alike in position and in character. From the Pennines the fertile valleys are so far removed as scarcely to enter into the normal scenery of the region. In the Maritimes the chestnut woods are at the very foot of the peaks. They are further away in the Cottians, but not absolutely removed from the Alpine area. You may sleep near a vineyard one night and yet be on the snows next day. The great glory of the Cottians is the fine pyramid of Monte Viso, which so many climbers in the Swiss Alps know from afar off. It stands splendidly alone and commands one of the most superb panoramas in the Alps, wide ranging as Mont Blanc's, but seen as from the top of a tower instead of a slowly curving dome with a large white foreground that hides the depth beneath. From the Viso the sight plunges down and then flies away and yet away over the Lombard plain to peaks so remote as practically to defy identification by unaided skill of recognition.

We cannot linger in the west, for our space is limited and more than half of it is spent. Flying eastward, then, we come next to the Italian valleys of the Monte Rosa group, to which indeed they belong, though I purposely omitted reference to them when writing of that, for in style of scenery they are widely different and frequented by travellers of another sort. Here are mountain centres indeed—Breuil, Gressoney, Alagna, and so forth—whence great climbs may be made. It is not in these centres, however, that the beauty of the valleys culminates, but further down. There are in fact three zones in each valley: the upper, which is purely Alpine though lacking the grandeur of the northern slope; the middle, where on either hand are found peaks that just reach the snow level and rise from luxuriantly afforested bases: and the lower, which in summer time is too hot and fly-infested to be an agreeable resort. The middle zone is the region of fine scenery, of beautiful low passes, and of superb points of view, whence the whole Pennine range to the north is gloriously beheld.

At the lower limit of this zone stands Varallo, in the Sesia valley, a most beautiful resort for one jaded with the austere scenery of the snow and ice world. Here art and nature together claim the traveller's attention. The remarkable lifelike sculptures of the Sacro Monte and the frescoes of Gaudenzio Ferrari well deserve their wide repute, whilst the walk over the Col della Colma to the lake of Orta is one of the most charming known to me the wide world over. Once I beheld from the crest of the pass a cloudless sunrise on Monte Rosa, when the rosy glow of the snows was not more beautiful than the rich and rare violets and purples of the lower foreground hills.