PIZ KESCH FROM THE SERTIG PASS.
The first village is Zernez, spread on a flat green widening of the valley, the slender spire and frescoed walls of its church standing on a little eminence beside it. The church and a few picturesque old houses are all that escaped a fire that destroyed the rest of the village in 1872.
A beautiful railway route runs hence by the Fuorn Pass, the Val Mustair, and the Stelvio road under the dazzling snows of the Ortler, to Trafoi in Austria. Soon after passing the frontier is the defile of Calven, where on Easter Monday, 1499, eight thousand hastily mustered men of the lately formed Leagues attacked and routed a strongly entrenched and well equipped Imperial army of nearly double their number, a brilliant feat of arms that laid the foundation of Rhaetian independence.* For about four miles of its course the railway passes through the National Park; a clause in the agreement between the Confederation and the commune of Zernez permits quarrying and wood-cutting for its construction and upkeep in the sequestrated region.
* I have described this remarkable little war at greater length in 'The Upper Engadine,' pp. 9-20.
For a couple of miles road and river thread a pine-clad gorge in which the normally longitudinal valley of the Inn becomes transverse; before us towers the huge Piz Linard, posted in front of and dominating the vast Silvretta maze of fell and glacier. Then another widening of the valley gives standing ground for the picturesque village of Susch; an ancient tower rises by the quaint minaret of its church; on a wooded hill beside it is one of the many 'chiefless castles breathing stern farewell' that add a note of historical romance to the scenery of the Engadine.
In the Lower Engadine the valley of the Inn seldom widens into a flat floor as at Zernez. On the right it for the most part rises precipitously, giving little footing for building and cultivation. Thus habitation has always been mainly on the sunny slopes and terraces that look south on the left. At Lavin, two miles below Susch, walkers can take the old road that runs on this side, high above the new, by the shells and towers of old castles, and commanding lovely views. Lavin, Guarda, and Ardez are known as the Etruscan villages; I believe they have not an even colourable claim to the appellation, which, however, is of old date, and has given rise to much ingenious diversion in providing etymologies for place-names in the neighbourhood. The villages, however, have an idyllic charm from their quaint old houses and lovely situation that has no need to borrow interest from factitious history or philology. Guarda, on an open terrace at the entrance to Val Tuoi, is perhaps the most frequented as a summer resort. Its neighbourhood affords rambles to suit all tastes, from mountaineering to dawdling, with special attractions in Val Tuoi for the botanic dawdler.
At Ftan, delightfully placed on an undulating terrace some 1,500 feet above the Inn, we enter a region impregnated with mineral waters and gases of singular potency, where thousands of sufferers from various ills that flesh is heir to are yearly gathered. It is claimed that no other district in Europe is so rich in therapeutic waters.
The springs, which issue with a temperature a little over 60° F., are all strongly acidulated, and though varying a good deal in their constituents and in the proportions in which they are mixed, fall broadly into two classes: Glauber's salts (sulphate, carbonate, and chloride of sodium) and chalybeate or iron. They are good for both drinking and bathing; the large proportion of carbonic acid gas with which they are charged is said to render them peculiarly efficacious in baths. An interesting evidence of the plutonic character of the neighbourhood are the mofette, vents in the earth from which carbonic acid gas issues in considerable quantity. One in a field near Scuol, in which unwary birds, lizards, and insects are frequently done to death, has been estimated to discharge eleven million litres a day.
The centres of the little invalid world are the Kurhaus and Trinkhalle, emparadised in beautiful gardens on the left and right banks of the Inn respectively, and connected by a roofed bridge. Both sides of the valley bristle with hotels for the accommodation of patients: Scuol on an open terrace on the left with magnificent views, and Vulpera ensconced among woods and meadows on the right.