PALLANZA—EVENING
South end of Lago Maggiore. Campanile of the Church of St. Leonardo, mountains of Saas in the background.
By this pass we may well enter the Italian Lake districts, whose fame is known to all. He would be a niggard indeed who should refuse to reckon as Alpine this gem of scenery. Many of us regard, and rightly, a drop down into the land of the lakes as a necessary part of a full Alpine holiday, the contrast between their luxuriance and high Alpine asceticism serving best to display the charms of each. It is indeed the distant prospects of the snowy range that give a finishing touch of utter perfection to the scenery of the lakes, the finest view-point of all for comprehension and perfect composition being, perhaps, the terrace of Santa Catarina del Sasso. The climber, however, will not really learn to know the lakes if he remains, as most do, idly on their shores. Here, if anywhere, he should ascend. Down below, save for the water, the scenery may be matched all round the Italian plain and in many a valley, but up aloft on Monte Mottarone, Monte Nudo, Monte Generoso, and hills of that size, you are in the presence of panoramas nowhere else to be matched. The Rigi, the Niesen, and their fellows offer corresponding but not equal prospects north of the main range; for though lakes and snows and wide stretches of landscape are visible from them, they lack vision of the Lombard plain and the magic opalescence of the Italian atmosphere. The mountaineer who has no experience, or if experienced, no joy in the grass-crowned foot-hills that flank the great ranges is no true mountain-lover. For such persons this book is not written. They have their own kinds of pleasure and reward, pleasures which are not low and rewards well worth the winning, but they are not those that I have sought after or can rightly estimate.
THE MADONNA DEL SASSO, LOCARNO
A Pilgrimage Church, picturesquely situated on a wooded rocky cliff high above the town and Lago Maggiore.
Some of the fair qualities of Italian lake scenery mingle with the bolder forms of the mountains of Ticino, and something of the softness of Maggiore's air tempers the fresh breezes falling from Ticino snows. Here lies the peerless Val Maggia, whose orchard-bearing floor sweeps up between mile after mile of noble cliffs. Here every village church and almost every cottage seems to have been designed and planted for picturesque effect. It is a valley of many gardens, trimly kept, of much emigrant-won prosperity, a home of the vine and the fig-tree, also of trout-streams and other bright-glancing waters. Comfortably habitable and home-suggesting is it; a place to fall in love with, which every visitor hopes to see again, and every native promises himself that he will return to for the evening of his days. Such as it is, such also are its neighbours. Its upper reaches are more splendid than I can suggest. There is a grace in their many waterfalls, a majesty in their great steps and verdant levels, a relative wealth in their vegetation, and a charm about their villages, that must be seen to be understood. Even the Maritimes can boast no more beautiful valley scenery.
The Bergamasque Alps are, I believe, not dissimilar in character, but I know only the mere outskirts of them. What I have seen does not equal Ticino. These carry us by a natural transition to the Adamello group, which yields a remarkable long traverse over high-planted snows commanding a stupendous depth and comprehensiveness of outlook, which culminates in the extraordinary panorama visible from the highest point.
We are thus brought back again to the dominantly snowy groups, whereof a number remain yet uncharacterised. First among these secondary masses the Ortler and its fellows call for mention—a group far better known by our German and Italian colleagues than by ourselves. The chief peaks, though built on a smaller scale, have much of the apparent bulk and grandeur of the greater masses of the Central Alps. Their ice-walls and their glacier scenery in general are of the grand type. Like the great peaks, too, they are withdrawn from southern luxury. When all is said, however, they remain second-rate, nor can I recall any special note of beauty by which this district is distinguished.
The Oetzthal, Stubaithal, and Zillerthal groups, which follow one another to the eastward, are, I think, in better case; though they have lost in charm by the rapid shrinkage of their glaciers since I first knew them almost thirty years ago. The average height of the peaks is small when the large area of glacier they support is considered. Formerly the glaciers were much larger. Several that I knew have utterly vanished, and the largest are greatly reduced. The snow-fields, however, still retain their wide expanse. In consequence of the smallness of the peaks, a greater number of them exist in a given area than elsewhere in the snowy Alpine regions. This makes the foregrounds in the summit views more complex. As the scale does not obtrude itself, the eye magnifies it, and the result is an imposing effect. A similar effect of complexity struck me in Spitsbergen, where the peaks are very much smaller still, and group themselves so closely together that they seem to form a spiny tangle at once puzzling to the topographer and pleasing to the lover of mountain varieties. Owing to the smallness of scale of the Stubai peaks, for instance, you can climb two or three of them in a single day from a high-planted hut, and thus behold in the afternoon a peak you climbed in the morning. Such wandering about at high levels is a new and agreeable experience to mountaineers accustomed to the long scrambles that the greater ranges afford.