Past and present are delightfully merged in Signur Badrutt's Hôtel Margna on the right of the hamlet, an admirable example of an hotel in the traditional architecture of the region, and in harmony with the scenery around it. Nichol Hartmann was given a free hand with a characteristically massive and picturesque old Engadine house, which he restored, enlarged, and fitted with every modern comfort and convenience, but with unfailing antiquarian feeling; old features have been piously preserved, and their spirit carried into the new construction, with infinite ingenuity and down to the smallest detail.
About half an hour farther from the high-road, Sils Maria nestles cosily in a recess of the valley behind a rocky hill, which rises as an island from the flat meadows that have supplanted the lake.
Val Fex, which stretches up some five miles to the south-east, is perhaps the most beautiful of the side-valleys of the Engadine. From the sunny breakfast-cloisters of the Hôtel Margna we see its widespread glacier sagging between the Capütschin and Piz Led, as it were a great white sheet let down from heaven. This forms the background of Plate IV., with the picturesque little chapel that stands on the steep meadow slope between the first and second reaches of the valley in the foreground. On either side of the glacier interesting passes lead to Chiesa in the beautiful Val Malenco, and thence down to Sondrio, the capital of the Valtelline; in a few hours we exchange ice-bound heights, sombre pines, and cautious, close-growing Alpine flora for umbrageous groves, trellised vines, and the luxurious breezes of the south.
Various points in the great rocky down that separates the Fex and Fedoz valleys afford fine views. We look down the whole chain of the lakes, seeming masses of turquoise in an emerald setting; on the right the Val Fex mounts to its glacier with crowded peaks beyond; on the left is the wild ravine of the Fedoz, the billowy ice-field at its head descending in a crumpled and crevassed glacier, beyond which a host of rocky peaks ring round the abyss of blue haze that covers the steep descent into Italy.
On the opposite side of the Val Fex is Marmorè, another fine point of view. An interesting continuation of this walk leads to the savage amphitheatre round the little Lej Sgrischus, 'the shuddering lake.' This lonely tarn, 8,695 feet above the sea, frozen for nine months of the year, abounds in trout, a striking instance of the hardiness of these redoubtable little fish. How they came there is a problem; if introduced by human enterprise it must have been centuries ago as the renting of the fish-take is of ancient date.
A delightful place in which to pass a lazy hour or so is the narrow promontory of Chastè, which stretches half a mile into the lake in front of Sils Baselgia. Couched in springy undergrowth amid larch-clad rocks and patches of beflowered meadow, we are filled with a great content; the eye is satisfied with seeing and the ear with hearing; the ripples lap against the craggy shore, streams hum in the great mountain that rises like a wall beyond the streak of water, birds twitter amid the whispering leaves, the earth seems flooded with a vast, satisfying murmur that
Overtakes
Far thought with music that it makes.
A rock at the end is inscribed to Friedrich Nietzsche, the apostle of unbridled individualism, himself so helpless in the cruel grip of idiosyncrasy, who frequently sought to cool life's fitful fever in this lovely spot.
The charming path runs along the right shore of the lake past the picturesque hamlet of Isola, slumbering on its green promontory by the rush and roar of the tumultuous Fedoz. As the path approaches it along the cliff its lichen-gilt stone roofs, nestling close together, form a delightful mass of rich colour. These slices of mica-schist that render roofs such a pleasing feature in the Engadine are mostly quarried in the neighbouring Val Fex. Behind Isola the Fedoz descends in a fine fall, bringing material for the delta that bids fair one day to cut the lake in two. In the village is an interesting old tavern, formerly a country seat of the Vertimati; the fittings and furniture are quite a study in woodwork.
A little farther on is a block of breccia inscribed to the memory of Thomas Henry Huxley, who spent many summers at Maloja. Then, at the head of the lake, we pass some fine ice-smoothed rocks and ice-borne boulders, and arrive at the pleasant space between the lake and the descent towards Italy that goes by the name of Maloja, a name that strictly belongs to its western edge, the nearest approach to a terminal pass that the truncated valley of the Inn presents.