Chapter XI: A Song after Sundown (4)

We must try for another before we go back. Again fortune favours us, and at eleven o'clock we pole up the river to the camp with two good salmon in the canoe. Hardly have we laid them away in the ice-box, when Favonius comes dropping down from Patapedia with three fish, one of them a twenty-four pounder. And so the morning's work is done.

In the evening, after dinner, it was our custom to sit out on the deck, watching the moonlight as it fell softly over the black hills and changed the river into a pale flood of rolling gold. The fragrant wreaths of smoke floated lazily away on the faint breeze of night. There was no sound save the rushing of the water and the crackling of the camp-fire on the shore. We talked of many things in the heavens above, and the earth beneath, and the waters under the earth; touching lightly here and there as the spirit of vagrant converse led us. Favonius has the good sense to talk about himself occasionally and tell his own experience. The man who will not do that must always be a dull companion. Modest egoism is the salt of conversation: you do not want too much of it; but if it is altogether omitted, everything tastes flat. I remember well the evening when he told me the story of the Sheep of the Wilderness.

"I was ill that summer," said he, "and the doctor had ordered me to go into the woods, but on no account to go without plenty of fresh meat, which was essential to my recovery. So we set out into the wild country north of Georgian Bay, taking a live sheep with us in order to be sure that the doctor's prescription might be faithfully followed. It was a young and innocent little beast, curling itself up at my feet in the canoe, and following me about on shore like a dog. I gathered grass every day to feed it, and carried it in my arms over the rough portages. It ate out of my hand and rubbed its woolly head against my leggings. To my dismay, I found that I was beginning to love it for its own sake and without any ulterior motives. The thought of killing and eating it became more and more painful to me, until at length the fatal fascination was complete, and my trip became practically an exercise of devotion to that sheep. I carried it everywhere and ministered fondly to its wants. Not for the world would I have alluded to mutton in its presence. And when we returned to civilisation I parted from the creature with sincere regret and the consciousness that I had humoured my affections at the expense of my digestion. The sheep did not give me so much as a look of farewell, but fell to feeding on the grass beside the farm-house with an air of placid triumph."

After hearing this touching tale, I was glad that no great intimacy had sprung up between Favonius and the chickens which we carried in a coop on the forecastle head, for there is no telling what restrictions his tender-heartedness might have laid upon our larder. But perhaps a chicken would not have given such an opening for misplaced affection as a sheep. There is a great difference in animals in this respect. I certainly never heard of any one falling in love with a salmon in such a way as to regard it as a fond companion. And this may be one reason why no sensible person who has tried fishing has ever been able to see any cruelty in it.

Suppose the fish is not caught by an angler, what is his alternative fate? He will either perish miserably in the struggles of the crowded net, or die of old age and starvation like the long, lean stragglers which are sometimes found in the shallow pools, or be devoured by a larger fish, or torn to pieces by a seal or an otter. Compared with any of these miserable deaths, the fate of a salmon who is hooked in a clear stream and after a glorious fight receives the happy despatch at the moment when he touches the shore, is a sort of euthanasia. And, since the fish was made to be man's food, the angler who brings him to the table of destiny in the cleanest, quickest, kindest way is, in fact, his benefactor.

There were some days, however, when our benevolent intentions toward the salmon were frustrated; mornings when they refused to rise, and evenings when they escaped even the skilful endeavours of Favonius. In vain did he try every fly in his book, from the smallest "Silver Doctor" to the largest "Golden Eagle." The "Black Dose" would not move them. The "Durham Ranger" covered the pool in vain. On days like this, if a stray fish rose, it was hard to land him, for he was usually but slightly hooked.

I remember one of these shy creatures which led me a pretty dance at the mouth of Patapedia. He came to the fly just at dusk, rising very softly and quietly, as if he did not really care for it but only wanted to see what it was like. He went down at once into deep water, and began the most dangerous and exasperating of all salmon-tactics, moving around in slow circles and shaking his head from side to side, with sullen pertinacity. This is called "jigging," and unless it can be stopped, the result is fatal.

I could not stop it. That salmon was determined to jig. He knew more than I did.

The canoe followed him down the pool. He jigged away past all three of the inlets of the Patapedia, and at last, in the still, deep water below, after we had laboured with him for half an hour, and brought him near enough to see that he was immense, he calmly opened his mouth and the fly came back to me void. That was a sad evening, in which all the consolations of philosophy were needed.

Sunday was a very peaceful day in our camp. In the Dominion of Canada, the question "to fish or not to fish" on the first day of the week is not left to the frailty of the individual conscience. The law on the subject is quite explicit, and says that between six o'clock on Saturday evening and six o'clock on Monday morning all nets shall be taken up and no one shall wet a line. The Ristigouche Salmon Club has its guardians stationed all along the river, and they are quite as inflexible in seeing that their employers keep this law as the famous sentinel was in refusing to let Napoleon pass without the countersign. But I do not think that these keen sportsmen regard it as a hardship; they are quite willing that the fish should have "an off day" in every week, and only grumble because some of the net-owners down at the mouth of the river have brought political influence to bear in their favour and obtained exemption from the rule. For our part, we were nothing loath to hang up our rods, and make the day different from other days.

In the morning we had a service in the cabin of the boat, gathering a little congregation of guardians and boatmen, and people from a solitary farm-house by the river. They came in pirogues--long, narrow boats hollowed from the trunk of a tree; the black-eyed, brown-faced girls sitting back to back in the middle of the boat, and the men standing up bending to their poles. It seemed a picturesque way of travelling, although none too safe.

In the afternoon we sat on deck and looked at the water. What a charm there is in watching a swift stream! The eye never wearies of following its curls and eddies, the shadow of the waves dancing over the stones, the strange, crinkling lines of sunlight in the shallows. There is a sort of fascination in it, lulling and soothing the mind into a quietude which is even pleasanter than sleep, and making it almost possible to do that of which we so often speak, but which we never quite accomplish--"think about nothing." Out on the edge of the pool, we could see five or six huge salmon, moving slowly from side to side, or lying motionless like gray shadows. There was nothing to break the silence except the thin clear whistle of the white-throated sparrow far back in the woods. This is almost the only bird-song that one hears on the river, unless you count the metallic "chr-r-r-r" of the kingfisher as a song.

Every now and then one of the salmon in the pool would lazily roll out of water, or spring high into the air and fall back with a heavy splash. What is it that makes salmon leap? Is it pain or pleasure? Do they do it to escape the attack of another fish, or to shake off a parasite that clings to them, or to practise jumping so that they can ascend the falls when they reach them, or simply and solely out of exuberant gladness and joy of living? Any one of these reasons would be enough to account for it on week-days. On Sunday I am quite sure they do it for the trial of the fisherman's faith.

But how should I tell all the little incidents which made that lazy voyage so delightful? Favonius was the ideal host, for on water, as well as on land, he knows how to provide for the liberty as well as for the wants of his guests. He understands also the fine art of conversation, which consists of silence as well as speech. And when it comes to angling, Izaak Walton himself could not have been a more profitable teacher by precept or example. Indeed, it is a curious thought, and one full of sadness to a well-constituted mind, that on the Ristigouche "I. W." would have been at sea, for the beloved father of all fishermen passed through this world without ever catching a salmon. So ill does fortune match with merit here below.

At last the days of idleness were ended. We could not

"Fold our tents like the Arabs,
and as silently steal away;"

but we took down the long rods, put away the heavy reels, made the canoes fast to the side of the house, embarked the three horses on the front deck, and then dropped down with the current, swinging along through the rapids, and drifting slowly through the still places, now grounding on a hidden rock, and now sweeping around a sharp curve, until at length we saw the roofs of Metapedia and the ugly bridge of the railway spanning the river. There we left our floating house, awkward and helpless, like some strange relic of the flood, stranded on the shore. And as we climbed the bank we looked back and wondered whether Noah was sorry when he said good-bye to his ark.

1888.

ALPENROSEN AND GOAT'S MILK

"Nay, let me tell you, there be many that have forty times our estates, that would give the greatest part of it to be healthful and cheerful like us; who, with the expense of a little money, have ate, and drank, and laughed, and angled, and sung, and slept securely; and rose next day, and cast away care, and sung, and laughed, and angled again; which are blessings rich men cannot purchase with all their money."--IZAAK WALTON: The Complete Angler.

A great deal of the pleasure of life lies in bringing together things which have no connection. That is the secret of humour--at least so we are told by the philosophers who explain the jests that other men have made--and in regard to travel, I am quite sure that it must be illogical in order to be entertaining. The more contrasts it contains, the better.

Perhaps it was some philosophical reflection of this kind that brought me to the resolution, on a certain summer day, to make a little journey, as straight as possible, from the sea-level streets of Venice to the lonely, lofty summit of a Tyrolese mountain, called, for no earthly reason that I can discover, the Gross-Venediger.

But apart from the philosophy of the matter, which I must confess to passing over very superficially at the time, there were other and more cogent reasons for wanting to go from Venice to the Big Venetian. It was the first of July, and the city on the sea was becoming tepid. A slumbrous haze brooded over canals and palaces and churches. It was difficult to keep one's conscience awake to Baedeker and a sense of moral obligation; Ruskin was impossible, and a picture-gallery was a penance. We floated lazily from one place to another, and decided that, after all, it was too warm to go in. The cries of the gondoliers, at the canal corners, grew more and more monotonous and dreamy. There was danger of our falling fast asleep and having to pay by the hour for a day's repose in a gondola. If it grew much warmer, we might be compelled to stay until the following winter in order to recover energy enough to get away. All the signs of the times pointed northward, to the mountains, where we should see glaciers and snow-fields, and pick Alpenrosen, and drink goat's milk fresh from the real goat.

I.

The first stage on the journey thither was by rail to Belluno--about four or five hours. It is a sufficient commentary on railway travel that the most important thing about it is to tell how many hours it takes to get from one place to another.

We arrived in Belluno at night, and when we awoke the next morning we found ourselves in a picturesque little city of Venetian aspect, with a piazza and a campanile and a Palladian cathedral, surrounded on all sides by lofty hills. We were at the end of the railway and at the beginning of the Dolomites.

Although I have a constitutional aversion to scientific information given by unscientific persons, such as clergymen and men of letters, I must go in that direction far enough to make it clear that the word Dolomite does not describe a kind of fossil, nor a sect of heretics, but a formation of mountains lying between the Alps and the Adriatic. Draw a diamond on the map, with Brixen at the northwest corner, Lienz at the northeast, Belluno at the southeast, and Trent at the southwest, and you will have included the region of the Dolomites, a country so picturesque, so interesting, so full of sublime and beautiful scenery, that it is equally a wonder and a blessing that it has not been long since completely overrun by tourists and ruined with railways. It is true, the glaciers and snowfields are limited; the waterfalls are comparatively few and slender, and the rivers small; the loftiest peaks are little more than ten thousand feet high. But, on the other hand, the mountains are always near, and therefore always imposing. Bold, steep, fantastic masses of naked rock, they rise suddenly from the green and flowery valleys in amazing and endless contrast; they mirror themselves in the tiny mountain lakes like pictures in a dream.

I believe the guide-book says that they are formed of carbonate of lime and carbonate of magnesia in chemical composition; but even if this be true, it need not prejudice any candid observer against them. For the simple and fortunate fact is that they are built of such stone that wind and weather, keen frost and melting snow and rushing water have worn and cut and carved them into a thousand shapes of wonder and beauty. It needs but little fancy to see in them walls and towers, cathedrals and campaniles, fortresses and cities, tinged with many hues from pale gray to deep red, and shining in an air so soft, so pure, so cool, so fragrant, under a sky so deep and blue and a sunshine so genial, that it seems like the happy union of Switzerland and Italy.

The great highway through this region from south to north is the Ampezzo road, which was constructed in 1830, along the valleys of the Piave, the Boite, and the Rienz--the ancient line of travel and commerce between Venice and Innsbruck. The road is superbly built, smooth and level. Our carriage rolled along so easily that we forgot and forgave its venerable appearance and its lack of accommodation for trunks. We had been persuaded to take four horses, as our luggage seemed too formidable for a single pair. But in effect our concession to apparent necessity turned out to be a mere display of superfluous luxury, for the two white leaders did little more than show their feeble paces, leaving the gray wheelers to do the work. We had the elevating sense of traveling four-in-hand, however--a satisfaction to which I do not believe any human being is altogether insensible.

At Longarone we breakfasted for the second time, and entered the narrow gorge of the Piave. The road was cut out of the face of the rock. Below us the long lumber-rafts went shooting down the swift river. Above, on the right, were the jagged crests of Monte Furlon and Premaggiore, which seemed to us very wonderful, because we had not yet learned how jagged the Dolomites can be. At Perarolo, where the Boite joins the Piave, there is a lump of a mountain in the angle between the rivers, and around this we crawled in long curves until we had risen a thousand feet, and arrived at the same Hotel Venezia, where we were to dine.

While dinner was preparing, the Deacon and I walked up to Pieve di Cadore, the birthplace of Titian. The house in which the great painter first saw the colours of the world is still standing, and tradition points out the very room in which he began to paint. I am not one of those who would inquire too closely into such a legend as this. The cottage may have been rebuilt a dozen times since Titian's day; not a scrap of the original stone or plaster may remain; but beyond a doubt the view that we saw from the window is the same that Titian saw. Now, for the first time, I could understand and appreciate the landscape-backgrounds of his pictures. The compact masses of mountains, the bold, sharp forms, the hanging rocks of cold gray emerging from green slopes, the intense blue aerial distances--these all had seemed to be unreal and imaginary--compositions of the studio. But now I knew that, whether Titian painted out-of-doors, like our modern impressionists, or not, he certainly painted what he had seen, and painted it as it is.

The graceful brown-eyed boy who showed us the house seemed also to belong to one of Titian's pictures. As we were going away, the Deacon, for lack of copper, rewarded him with a little silver piece, a half-lira, in value about ten cents. A celestial rapture of surprise spread over the child's face, and I know not what blessings he invoked upon us. He called his companions to rejoice with him, and we left them clapping their hands and dancing.

Driving after one has dined has always a peculiar charm. The motion seems pleasanter, the landscape finer than in the morning hours. The road from Cadore ran on a high level, through sloping pastures, white villages, and bits of larch forest. In its narrow bed, far below, the river Boite roared as gently as Bottom's lion. The afternoon sunlight touched the snow-capped pinnacle of Antelao and the massive pink wall of Sorapis on the right; on the left, across the valley, Monte Pelmo's vast head and the wild crests of La Rochetta and Formin rose dark against the glowing sky. The peasants lifted their hats as we passed, and gave us a pleasant evening greeting. And so, almost without knowing it, we slipped out of Italy into Austria, and drew up before a bare, square stone building with the double black eagle, like a strange fowl split for broiling, staring at us from the wall, and an inscription to the effect that this was the Royal and Imperial Austrian Custom-house.

The officer saluted us so politely that we felt quite sorry that his duty required him to disturb our luggage. "The law obliged him to open one trunk; courtesy forbade him to open more." It was quickly done; and, without having to make any contribution to the income of His Royal and Imperial Majesty, Francis Joseph, we rolled on our way, through the hamlets of Acqua Bona and Zuel, into the Ampezzan metropolis of Cortina, at sundown.

The modest inn called "The Star of Gold" stood facing the public square, just below the church, and the landlady stood facing us in the doorway, with an enthusiastic welcome--altogether a most friendly and entertaining landlady, whose one desire in life seemed to be that we should never regret having chosen her house instead of "The White Cross," or "The Black Eagle."

"O ja!" she had our telegram received; and would we look at the rooms? Outlooking on the piazza, with a balcony from which we could observe the Festa of to-morrow. She hoped they would please us. "Only come in; accommodate yourselves."

It was all as she promised; three little bedrooms, and a little salon opening on a little balcony; queer old oil-paintings and framed embroideries and tiles hanging on the walls; spotless curtains, and board floors so white that it would have been a shame to eat off them without spreading a cloth to keep them from being soiled.

"These are the rooms of the Baron Rothschild when he comes here always in the summer--with nine horses and nine servants--the Baron Rothschild of Vienna."

I assured her that we did not know the Baron, but that should make no difference. We would not ask her to reduce the price on account of a little thing like that.

She did not quite grasp this idea, but hoped that we would not find the pension too dear at a dollar and fifty-seven and a half cents a day each, with a little extra for the salon and the balcony. "The English people all please themselves here--there comes many every summer--English Bishops and their families."

I inquired whether there were many Bishops in the house at that moment.

"No, just at present--she was very sorry--none."

"Well, then," I said, "it is all right. We will take the rooms."

Good Signora Barbaria, you did not speak the American language, nor understand those curious perversions of thought which pass among the Americans for humour; but you understood how to make a little inn cheerful and home-like; yours was a very simple and agreeable art of keeping a hotel. As we sat in the balcony after supper, listening to the capital playing of the village orchestra, and the Tyrolese songs with which they varied their music, we thought within ourselves that we were fortunate to have fallen upon the Star of Gold.

II.

Cortina lies in its valley like a white shell that has rolled down into a broad vase of malachite. It has about a hundred houses and seven hundred inhabitants, a large church and two small ones, a fine stone campanile with excellent bells, and seven or eight little inns. But it is more important than its size would signify, for it is the capital of the district whose lawful title is Magnifica Comunita di Ampezzo--a name conferred long ago by the Republic of Venice. In the fifteenth century it was Venetian territory; but in 1516, under Maximilian I., it was joined to Austria; and it is now one of the richest and most prosperous communes of the Tyrol. It embraces about thirty-five hundred people, scattered in hamlets and clusters of houses through the green basin with its four entrances, lying between the peaks of Tofana, Cristallo, Sorapis, and Nuvolau. The well-cultivated grain fields and meadows, the smooth alps filled with fine cattle, the well-built houses with their white stone basements and balconies of dark brown wood and broad overhanging roofs, all speak of industry and thrift. But there is more than mere agricultural prosperity in this valley. There is a fine race of men and women--intelligent, vigorous, and with a strong sense of beauty. The outer walls of the annex of the Hotel Aquila Nera are covered with frescoes of marked power and originality, painted by the son of the innkeeper. The art schools of Cortina are famous for their beautiful work in gold and silver filigree, and wood-inlaying. There are nearly two hundred pupils in these schools, all peasants' children, and they produce results, especially in intarsia, which are admirable. The village orchestra, of which I spoke a moment ago, is trained and led by a peasant's son, who has never had a thorough musical education. It must have at least twenty-five members, and as we heard them at the Festa they seemed to play with extraordinary accuracy and expression.

This Festa gave us a fine chance to see the people of the Ampezzo all together. It was the annual jubilation of the district; and from all the outlying hamlets and remote side valleys, even from the neighbouring vales of Agordo and Auronzo, across the mountains, and from Cadore, the peasants, men and women and children, had come in to the Sagro at Cortina. The piazza--which is really nothing more than a broadening of the road behind the church--was quite thronged. There must have been between two and three thousand people.

The ceremonies of the day began with general church-going. The people here are honestly and naturally religious. I have seen so many examples of what can only be called "sincere and unaffected piety," that I cannot doubt it. The church, on Cortina's feast-day, was crowded to the doors with worshippers, who gave every evidence of taking part not only with the voice, but also with the heart, in the worship.

Then followed the public unveiling of a tablet, on the wall of the little Inn of the Anchor, to the memory of Giammaria Ghedini, the founder of the art-schools of Cortina. There was music by the band; and an oration by a native Demosthenes (who spoke in Italian so fluent that it ran through one's senses like water through a sluice, leaving nothing behind), and an original Canto sung by the village choir, with a general chorus, in which they called upon the various mountains to "re-echo the name of the beloved master John-Mary as a model of modesty and true merit," and wound up with--

"Hurrah for John-Mary! Hurrah for his art!
Hurrah for all teachers as skilful as he!
Hurrah for us all, who have now taken part
In singing together in do . . re . . mi."

It was very primitive, and I do not suppose that the celebration was even mentioned in the newspapers of the great world; but, after all, has not the man who wins such a triumph as this in the hearts of his own people, for whom he has made labour beautiful with the charm of art, deserved better of fame than many a crowned monarch or conquering warrior? We should be wiser if we gave less glory to the men who have been successful in forcing their fellow-men to die, and more glory to the men who have been successful in teaching their fellow-men how to live.

But the Festa of Cortina did not remain all day on this high moral plane. In the afternoon came what our landlady called "allerlei Dummheiten." There was a grand lottery for the benefit of the Volunteer Fire Department. The high officials sat up in a green wooden booth in the middle of the square, and called out the numbers and distributed the prizes. Then there was a greased pole with various articles of an attractive character tied to a large hoop at the top--silk aprons, and a green jacket, and bottles of wine, and half a smoked pig, and a coil of rope, and a purse. The gallant firemen voluntarily climbed up the pole as far as they could, one after another, and then involuntarily slid down again exhausted, each one wiping off a little more of the grease, until at last the lucky one came who profited by his forerunners' labours, and struggled to the top to snatch the smoked pig. After that it was easy.

Such is success in this unequal world; the man who wipes off the grease seldom gets the prize.

Then followed various games, with tubs of water; and coins fastened to the bottom of a huge black frying-pan, to be plucked off with the lips; and pots of flour to be broken with sticks; so that the young lads of the village were ducked and blackened and powdered to an unlimited extent, amid the hilarious applause of the spectators. In the evening there was more music, and the peasants danced in the square, the women quietly and rather heavily, but the men with amazing agility, slapping the soles of their shoes with their hands, or turning cartwheels in front of their partners. At dark the festivities closed with a display of fireworks; there were rockets and bombs and pin-wheels; and the boys had tiny red and blue lights which they held until their fingers were burned, just as boys do in America; and there was a general hush of wonder as a particularly brilliant rocket swished into the dark sky; and when it burst into a rain of serpents, the crowd breathed out its delight in a long-drawn "Ah-h-h-h!" just as the crowd does everywhere. We might easily have imagined ourselves at a Fourth of July celebration in Vermont, if it had not been for the costumes.

The men of the Ampezzo Valley have kept but little that is peculiar in their dress. Men are naturally more progressive than women, and therefore less picturesque. The tide of fashion has swept them into the international monotony of coat and vest and trousers--pretty much the same, and equally ugly, all over the world. Now and then you may see a short jacket with silver buttons, or a pair of knee-breeches; and almost all the youths wear a bunch of feathers or a tuft of chamois' hair in their soft green hats. But the women of the Ampezzo--strong, comely, with golden brown complexions, and often noble faces--are not ashamed to dress as their grandmothers did. They wear a little round black felt hat with rolled rim and two long ribbons hanging down at the back. Their hair is carefully braided and coiled, and stuck through and through with great silver pins. A black bodice, fastened with silver clasps, is covered in front with the ends of a brilliant silk kerchief, laid in many folds around the shoulders. The white shirt-sleeves are very full and fastened up above the elbow with coloured ribbon. If the weather is cool, the women wear a short black jacket, with satin yoke and high puffed sleeves. But, whatever the weather may be, they make no change in the large, full dark skirts, almost completely covered with immense silk aprons, by preference light blue. It is not a remarkably brilliant dress, compared with that which one may still see in some districts of Norway or Sweden, but upon the whole it suits the women of the Ampezzo wonderfully.

For my part, I think that when a woman has found a dress that becomes her, it is a waste of time to send to Paris for a fashion-plate.

III.

When the excitement of the Festa had subsided, we were free to abandon ourselves to the excursions in which the neighbourhood of Cortina abounds, and to which the guide-book earnestly calls every right-minded traveller. A walk through the light-green shadows of the larch-woods to the tiny lake of Ghedina, where we could see all the four dozen trout swimming about in the clear water and catching flies; a drive to the Belvedere, where there are superficial refreshments above and profound grottos below; these were trifles, though we enjoyed them. But the great mountains encircling us on every side, standing out in clear view with that distinctness and completeness of vision which is one charm of the Dolomites, seemed to summon us to more arduous enterprises. Accordingly, the Deacon and I selected the easiest one, engaged a guide, and prepared for the ascent.

Monte Nuvolau is not a perilous mountain. I am quite sure that at my present time of life I should be unwilling to ascend a perilous mountain unless there were something extraordinarily desirable at the top, or remarkably disagreeable at the bottom. Mere risk has lost the attractions which it once had. As the father of a family I felt bound to abstain from going for amusement into any place which a Christian lady might not visit with propriety and safety. Our preparation for Nuvolau, therefore, did not consist of ropes, ice-irons, and axes, but simply of a lunch and two long sticks.

Our way led us, in the early morning, through the clustering houses of Lacedel, up the broad, green slope that faces Cortina on the west, to the beautiful Alp Pocol. Nothing could exceed the pleasure of such a walk in the cool of the day, while the dew still lies on the short, rich grass, and the myriads of flowers are at their brightest and sweetest. The infinite variety and abundance of the blossoms is a continual wonder. They are sown more thickly than the stars in heaven, and the rainbow itself does not show so many tints. Here they are mingled like the threads of some strange embroidery; and there again nature has massed her colours; so that one spot will be all pale blue with innumerable forget-me-nots, or dark blue with gentians; another will blush with the delicate pink of the Santa Lucia or the deeper red of the clover; and another will shine yellow as cloth of gold. Over all this opulence of bloom the larks were soaring and singing. I never heard so many as in the meadows about Cortina. There was always a sweet spray of music sprinkling down out of the sky, where the singers poised unseen. It was like walking through a shower of melody.

From the Alp Pocol, which is simply a fair, lofty pasture, we had our first full view of Nuvolau, rising bare and strong, like a huge bastion, from the dark fir-woods. Through these our way led onward now for seven miles, with but a slight ascent. Then turning off to the left we began to climb sharply through the forest. There we found abundance of the lovely Alpenrosen, which do not bloom on the lower ground. Their colour is a deep, glowing pink, and when a Tyrolese girl gives you one of these flowers to stick in the band of your hat, you may know that you have found favour in her eyes.

Through the wood the cuckoo was calling--the bird which reverses the law of good children, and insists on being heard, but not seen.

When the forest was at an end we found ourselves at the foot of an alp which sloped steeply up to the Five Towers of Averau. The effect of these enormous masses of rock, standing out in lonely grandeur, like the ruins of some forsaken habitation of giants, was tremendous. Seen from far below in the valley their form was picturesque and striking; but as we sat beside the clear, cold spring which gushes out at the foot of the largest tower, the Titanic rocks seemed to hang in the air above us as if they would overawe us into a sense of their majesty. We felt it to the full; yet none the less, but rather the more, could we feel at the same time the delicate and ethereal beauty of the fringed gentianella and the pale Alpine lilies scattered on the short turf beside us.

We had now been on foot about three hours and a half. The half hour that remained was the hardest. Up over loose, broken stones that rolled beneath our feet, up over great slopes of rough rock, up across little fields of snow where we paused to celebrate the Fourth of July with a brief snowball fight, up along a narrowing ridge with a precipice on either hand, and so at last to the summit, 8600 feet above the sea.

It is not a great height, but it is a noble situation. For Nuvolau is fortunately placed in the very centre of the Dolomites, and so commands a finer view than many a higher mountain. Indeed, it is not from the highest peaks, according to my experience, that one gets the grandest prospects, but rather from those of middle height, which are so isolated as to give a wide circle of vision, and from which one can see both the valleys and the summits. Monte Rosa itself gives a less imposing view than the Gorner Grat.

It is possible, in this world, to climb too high for pleasure.

But what a panorama Nuvolau gave us on that clear, radiant summer morning--a perfect circle of splendid sight! On one side we looked down upon the Five Towers; on the other, a thousand feet below, the Alps, dotted with the huts of the herdsmen, sloped down into the deep-cut vale of Agordo. Opposite to us was the enormous mass of Tofana, a pile of gray and pink and saffron rock. When we turned the other way, we faced a group of mountains as ragged as the crests of a line of fir-trees, and behind them loomed the solemn head of Pelmo. Across the broad vale of the Boite, Antelao stood beside Sorapis, like a campanile beside a cathedral, and Cristallo towered above the green pass of the Three Crosses. Through that opening we could see the bristling peaks of the Sextenthal. Sweeping around in a wider circle from that point, we saw, beyond the Durrenstein, the snow-covered pile of the Gross-Glockner; the crimson bastions of the Rothwand appeared to the north, behind Tofana; then the white slopes that hang far away above the Zillerthal; and, nearer, the Geislerspitze, like five fingers thrust into the air; behind that, the distant Oetzthaler Mountain, and just a single white glimpse of the highest peak of the Ortler by the Engadine; nearer still we saw the vast fortress of the Sella group and the red combs of the Rosengarten; Monte Marmolata, the Queen of the Dolomites, stood before us revealed from base to peak in a bridal dress of snow; and southward we looked into the dark rugged face of La Civetta, rising sheer out of the vale of Agordo, where the Lake of Alleghe slept unseen. It was a sea of mountains, tossed around us into a myriad of motionless waves, and with a rainbow of colours spread among their hollows and across their crests. The cliffs of rose and orange and silver gray, the valleys of deepest green, the distant shadows of purple and melting blue, and the dazzling white of the scattered snow-fields seemed to shift and vary like the hues on the inside of a shell. And over all, from peak to peak, the light, feathery clouds went drifting lazily and slowly, as if they could not leave a scene so fair.

There is barely room on the top of Nuvolau for the stone shelter-hut which a grateful Saxon baron has built there as a sort of votive offering for the recovery of his health among the mountains. As we sat within and ate our frugal lunch, we were glad that he had recovered his health, and glad that he had built the hut, and glad that we had come to it. In fact, we could almost sympathise in our cold, matter-of-fact American way with the sentimental German inscription which we read on the wall:--

Von Nuvolau's hohen Wolkenstufen
Lass mich, Natur, durch deine Himmel rufen--
An deiner Brust gesunde, wer da krank!
So wird zum Volkerdank mein Sachsendank.

We refrained, however, from shouting anything through Nature's heaven, but went lightly down, in about three hours, to supper in the Star of Gold.

IV.

When a stern necessity forces one to leave Cortina, there are several ways of departure. We selected the main highway for our trunks, but for ourselves the Pass of the Three Crosses; the Deacon and the Deaconess in a mountain waggon, and I on foot. It should be written as an axiom in the philosophy of travel that the easiest way is best for your luggage, and the hardest way is best for yourself.

All along the rough road up to the Pass, we had a glorious outlook backward over the Val d' Ampezzo, and when we came to the top, we looked deep down into the narrow Val Buona behind Sorapis. I do not know just when we passed the Austrian border, but when we came to Lake Misurina we found ourselves in Italy again. My friends went on down the valley to Landro, but I in my weakness, having eaten of the trout of the lake for dinner, could not resist the temptation of staying over-night to catch one for breakfast.

It was a pleasant failure. The lake was beautiful, lying on top of the mountain like a bit of blue sky, surrounded by the peaks of Cristallo, Cadino, and the Drei Zinnen. It was a happiness to float on such celestial waters and cast the hopeful fly. The trout were there; they were large; I saw them; they also saw me; but, alas! I could not raise them. Misurina is, in fact, what the Scotch call "a dour loch," one of those places which are outwardly beautiful, but inwardly so demoralised that the trout will not rise.

When we came ashore in the evening, the boatman consoled me with the story of a French count who had spent two weeks there fishing, and only caught one fish. I had some thoughts of staying thirteen days longer, to rival the count, but concluded to go on the next morning, over Monte Pian and the Cat's Ladder to Landro.

The view from Monte Pian is far less extensive than that from Nuvolau; but it has the advantage of being very near the wild jumble of the Sexten Dolomites. The Three Shoemakers and a lot more of sharp and ragged fellows are close by, on the east; on the west, Cristallo shows its fine little glacier, and Rothwand its crimson cliffs; and southward Misurina gives to the view a glimpse of water, without which, indeed, no view is complete. Moreover, the mountain has the merit of being, as its name implies, quite gentle. I met the Deacon and the Deaconess at the top, they having walked up from Landro. And so we crossed the boundary line together again, seven thousand feet above the sea, from Italy into Austria. There was no custom-house.

The way down, by the Cat's Ladder, I travelled alone. The path was very steep and little worn, but even on the mountain-side there was no danger of losing it, for it had been blazed here and there, on trees and stones, with a dash of blue paint. This is the work of the invaluable DOAV--which is, being interpreted, the German-Austrian Alpine Club. The more one travels in the mountains, the more one learns to venerate this beneficent society, for the shelter-huts and guide-posts it has erected, and the paths it has made and marked distinctly with various colours. The Germans have a genius for thoroughness. My little brown guide-book, for example, not only informed me through whose back yard I must go to get into a certain path, but it told me that in such and such a spot I should find quite a good deal (ziemlichviel) of Edelweiss, and in another a small echo; it advised me in one valley to take provisions and dispense with a guide, and in another to take a guide and dispense with provisions, adding varied information in regard to beer, which in my case was useless, for I could not touch it. To go astray under such auspices would be worse than inexcusable.

Landro we found a very different place from Cortina. Instead of having a large church and a number of small hotels, it consists entirely of one large hotel and a very tiny church. It does not lie in a broad, open basin, but in a narrow valley, shut in closely by the mountains. The hotel, in spite of its size, is excellent, and a few steps up the valley is one of the finest views in the Dolomites. To the east opens a deep, wild gorge, at the head of which the pinnacles of the Drei Zinnen are seen; to the south the Durrensee fills the valley from edge to edge, and reflects in its pale waters the huge bulk of Monte Cristallo. It is such a complete picture, so finished, so compact, so balanced, that one might think a painter had composed it in a moment of inspiration. But no painter ever laid such colours on his canvas as those which are seen here when the cool evening shadows have settled upon the valley, all gray and green, while the mountains shine above in rosy Alpenglow, as if transfigured with inward fire.

There is another lake, about three miles north of Landro, called the Toblacher See, and there I repaired the defeat of Misurina. The trout at the outlet, by the bridge, were very small, and while the old fisherman was endeavouring to catch some of them in his new net, which would not work, I pushed my boat up to the head of the lake, where the stream came in. The green water was amazingly clear, but the current kept the fish with their heads up stream; so that one could come up behind them near enough for a long cast, without being seen. As my fly lighted above them and came gently down with the ripple, I saw the first fish turn and rise and take it. A motion of the wrist hooked him, and he played just as gamely as a trout in my favourite Long Island pond. How different the colour, though, as he came out of the water. This fellow was all silvery, with light pink spots on his sides. I took seven of his companions, in weight some four pounds, and then stopped because the evening light was failing.

How pleasant it is to fish in such a place and at such an hour! The novelty of the scene, the grandeur of the landscape, lend a strange charm to the sport. But the sport itself is so familiar that one feels at home--the motion of the rod, the feathery swish of the line, the sight of the rising fish--it all brings back a hundred woodland memories, and thoughts of good fishing comrades, some far away across the sea, and, perhaps, even now sitting around the forest camp-fire in Maine or Canada, and some with whom we shall keep company no more until we cross the greater ocean into that happy country whither they have preceded us.

V.

Instead of going straight down the valley by the high road, a drive of an hour, to the railway in the Pusterthal, I walked up over the mountains to the east, across the Platzwiesen, and so down through the Pragserthal. In one arm of the deep fir-clad vale are the Baths of Alt-Prags, famous for having cured the Countess of Gorz of a violent rheumatism in the fifteenth century. It is an antiquated establishment, and the guests, who were walking about in the fields or drinking their coffee in the balcony, had a fifteenth century look about them--venerable but slightly ruinous. But perhaps that was merely a rheumatic result.

All the waggons in the place were engaged. It is strange what an aggravating effect this state of affairs has upon a pedestrian who is bent upon riding. I did not recover my delight in the scenery until I had walked about five miles farther, and sat down on the grass, beside a beautiful spring, to eat my lunch.

What is there in a little physical rest that has such magic to restore the sense of pleasure? A few moments ago nothing pleased you--the bloom was gone from the peach; but now it has come back again--you wonder and admire. Thus cheerful and contented I trudged up the right arm of the valley to the Baths of Neu-Prags, less venerable, but apparently more popular than Alt-Prags, and on beyond them, through the woods, to the superb Pragser-Wildsee, a lake whose still waters, now blue as sapphire under the clear sky, and now green as emerald under gray clouds, sleep encircled by mighty precipices. Could anything be a greater contrast with Venice? There the canals alive with gondolas, and the open harbour bright with many-coloured sails; here, the hidden lake, silent and lifeless, save when

"A leaping fish
Sends through the tarn a lonely cheer."

Tired, and a little foot-sore, after nine hours' walking, I came into the big railway hotel at Toblach that night. There I met my friends again, and parted from them and the Dolomites the next day, with regret. For they were "stepping westward;" but in order to get to the Gross-Venediger I must make a detour to the east, through the Pusterthal, and come up through the valley of the Isel to the great chain of mountains called the Hohe Tauern.

At the junction of the Isel and the Drau lies the quaint little city of Lienz, with its two castles--the square, double-towered one in the town, now transformed into the offices of the municipality, and the huge mediaeval one on a hill outside, now used as a damp restaurant and dismal beer-cellar. I lingered at Lienz for a couple of days, in the ancient hostelry of the Post. The hallways were vaulted like a cloister, the walls were three feet thick, the kitchen was in the middle of the house on the second floor, so that I looked into it every time I came from my room, and ordered dinner direct from the cook. But, so far from being displeased with these peculiarities, I rather liked the flavour of them; and then, in addition, the landlady's daughter, who was managing the house, was a person of most engaging manners, and there was trout and grayling fishing in a stream near by, and the neighbouring church of Dolsach contained the beautiful picture of the Holy Family, which Franz Defregger painted for his native village.

The peasant women of Lienz have one very striking feature in their dress--a black felt hat with a broad, stiff brim and a high crown, smaller at the top than at the base. It looks a little like the traditional head-gear of the Pilgrim Fathers, exaggerated. There is a solemnity about it which is fatal to feminine beauty.

I went by the post-waggon, with two slow horses and ten passengers, fifteen miles up the Iselthal, to Windisch-Matrei, a village whose early history is lost in the mist of antiquity, and whose streets are pervaded with odours which must have originated at the same time with the village. One wishes that they also might have shared the fate of its early history. But it is not fair to expect too much of a small place, and Windisch-Matrei has certainly a beautiful situation and a good inn. There I took my guide--a wiry and companionable little man, whose occupation in the lower world was that of a maker and merchant of hats--and set out for the Pragerhutte, a shelter on the side of the Gross-Venediger.

The path led under the walls of the old Castle of Weissenstein, and then in steep curves up the cliff which blocks the head of the valley, and along a cut in the face of the rock, into the steep, narrow Tauernthal, which divides the Glockner group from the Venediger. How entirely different it was from the region of the Dolomites! There the variety of colour was endless and the change incessant; here it was all green grass and trees and black rocks, with glimpses of snow. There the highest mountains were in sight constantly; here they could only be seen from certain points in the valley. There the streams played but a small part in the landscape; here they were prominent, the main river raging and foaming through the gorge below, while a score of waterfalls leaped from the cliffs on either side and dashed down to join it.

The peasants, men, women and children, were cutting the grass in the perpendicular fields; the woodmen were trimming and felling the trees in the fir-forests; the cattle-tenders were driving their cows along the stony path, or herding them far up on the hillsides. It was a lonely scene, and yet a busy one; and all along the road was written the history of the perils and hardships of the life which now seemed so peaceful and picturesque under the summer sunlight.