Douglas William Freshfield

Past those jagged spires, where yet

Foot of man was never set;

Past a castle yawning wide,

With a great breach in its side,

To a nest-like valley.—J. Ingelow.

THE LOWER PASSES—PANEVEGGIO—SAN MARTINO DI CASTROZZA—THE PATHS TO AGORDO—VAL DI SAN LUCANO—PASSO DI CANALE—PASSO DELLE CORNELLE—PASSO DI TRAVIGNOLO—CIMA DI VEZZANA.

Some time since a nineteenth-century Arthur, an enemy of shams moral or mountainous and a President of the Alpine Club, wandering beyond his usual bounds, found himself suddenly in the presence of a bevy of formidable giants. Accustomed though he was to such encounters, the prodigious stature of these monsters, their impenetrable armour, and perhaps more than all the weird cruelty of their appearance, as with flame-tipped crests they stood up in a mighty line against the sunset, made such an impression on his mind that on his return, instead of calling on his Round Table—the Alpine Club—to overthrow the untamed brood, he solemnly warned them as they valued their lives to let it alone.

The warning was of course ineffectual. One of the youngest knights rushed to the spot, went straight at the very tallest and most repulsive of the giant family, and returned victorious after an encounter, brief it is true, but of the most deadly character. Their prestige thus rudely shaken, others of the giants fell tamely enough, and but two or three still remain, owing perhaps their prolonged escape as much to their remoteness as to their individual terrors.

So far as I am concerned I have no such thrilling tale to tell as that recorded by Mr. Whitwell in the 'Alpine Journal'[63] of the ascent of the Cimon della Pala. On the only two occasions when I have come near the giants of Primiero circumstances have hindered me from doing much more than seek to detect the weak points in their harness; to abandon a somewhat strained metaphor, to make passes. For although I have been successful in reaching the second in height of these summits, this was, as it proved, little of a mountaineering feat compared to the passage of the gap beside it.

Passes have, however, for the general tourist more practical if less poetical interest than peaks. I shall not scruple therefore to devote some pages to the tracks which lead either round or across this singular group.

The mountain-knot which raises its wellnigh perpendicular masses behind Primiero may be compared to a horseshoe from which protrude spikes of irregular length. The easiest paths, the only ones practicable for beasts of burden, wind round the base of the protuberances; the higher passes, fit for shepherds or foot-travellers, penetrate the recesses between the lofty spurs and cross the horseshoe itself. The former are not the least fascinating.

For this country owes its wonderful beauty in great part to the constantly recurring contrast between the tall bare cliffs of the great rock islands and the soft forms of the green hills which like a sea roll their verdurous waves between them. Round the peaks of Primiero lies a region of wide-spreading downs, scarcely divided from each other by low grassy ridges; of forest-clad vales where the rich soil nurtures a dense undergrowth of ferns and moisture-loving plants. The huge crests of the Sass Maor or the Cimon della Pala never look so wonderful as when, seen from among the rhododendrons and between the dark spires of pine, their 'rosy heights come out above the lawns.'

It may perhaps be thought that I might well have passed over as described by former travellers the two main lines of traffic by which the people of the country communicate with their neighbours of Val Fassa and Agordo. But the account given of these passes by Messrs. Gilbert and Churchill seems to me to have been damped by the bad weather which those energetic explorers met with in this neighbourhood; and the pages of subsequent travellers have added but little to their report. Moreover, the times marching on, even at Primiero, have made many changes and smoothed away many obstacles, and thus rendered more or less obsolete the tales of even a few years ago.

The greatest of these changes is the new carriage-road which has lately been constructed from Primiero to Predazzo, in Val Fassa. From Primiero to the top of the pass it is finished in 'the well-known style' of an Austrian military highway; the descent through the forest to Paneveggio is not as yet equally solidly constructed,[64] but the whole road is perfectly safe and easy for spring-carriages.

The inns along the way (there are now three in the space of an eight hours' drive) have shared the fortunes of the road. At San Martino di Castrozza an hotel to contain twenty bedrooms has just been built, and will be opened next summer. The situation, 5,000 feet above the sea, amidst luxuriant meadows but at the very base of the greatest peaks of the country, is, so far as I know, unequalled amongst the dolomites. A new inn of more modest capacity has been erected on the very crest of the Pass. Paneveggio, once the rudest of peasants' houses of call, now furnishes ample if homely fare, and boasts at least one comfortable bedroom.

Val Fassa ends, and the country under the spell of the Primiero peaks begins, where the new road, having toiled up a green hillside to the little chapel and hamlet of La Madonna della Neve, bends at a level round the base of a flat-topped block of rock and pines which lies across the valley and cuts off the 'Forest of Paneveggio' from the outer world.

Those who have seen mountain forests in their virgin splendour amongst ranges moistened by more abundant rains and heated by stronger suns must ever after feel that, beautiful, nay incomparable, as the Alps are in many respects, in this one they distinctly fail. Even setting aside the ravages of man, Alpine forests can hardly have equalled in richness and variety those of the more southern ranges, such as the Himalayas, and Caucasus, which seem the paradise of the vegetation of the temperate zone. But the axe, in the hands of Swiss and Italian peasants, has been used with equal stupidity and effect. The barrier interposed by nature between the valley and the impending avalanches has been destroyed, the foliage which caught and distributed the rain-storms has been hacked away. For the sake of an immediate gain, the ignorant villagers have left their homes open to the rushing snows of spring; their saturated hillsides and meadows to be torn up by the autumn rains.

The 'Forest of Paneveggio' is interesting as an almost solitary specimen of a district where sensible forest laws have been for some time in force, and where in consequence the pine-woods are, for general luxuriance and for the size attained by single trees, amongst the finest in the Alps. The trees are periodically thinned, and wherever a patch has been cleared young pines are at once planted, and the space enclosed so as to protect the tender tops against cattle. Let us hope that the exertions of many intelligent men both in Switzerland and Italy may induce the peasantry in other districts to follow the wise example set by these southern Tyrolese.

The hospice of Paneveggio stands on a sloping meadow on the right bank of the Travignolo. It is a plain massive building, one of those raised in bygone years as resting-places and refuges for the people of the country on the long roads through the wildernesses separating their scattered hamlets. Across the stream rise the steep, green sides of Monte Castellazzo. Guiribello, a model 'casera' or mountain-farm, the property of an Austrian archduke, lies high on one of its upper shelves. On either side of this promontory flow the sources of the Travignolo, one gathering itself in a wide basin under the passes to San Martino and the Laghi di Colbricon, the other flowing out of a deep dell at the immediate base of the Pala and Vezzana, both peaks of 11,000 feet, and, next to the Marmolata, the highest summits of the dolomite country.

The high-road, soon crossing the latter stream, winds in long, shady zigzags through the forest, and then reaches broad, sweet-scented pastures lying on the shoulder of Monte Castellazzo, and overhung by the thin wedge of the Cimon della Pala.

The Costonzella Pass is a mere grassy bank, from which a gradual descent over open alps leads to San Martino. The great peaks are almost too near for picturesque effect, unless when clouds partially veil them, filling the place of foreground. Then the spectacle of the top of the Cimon breaking through a mist might be enough to frighten a nervous traveller, who may naturally expect it the next moment to topple over on his head.

Pedestrians who are not afraid of distance, especially those going towards Primiero, will do well to abandon the high-road. From the hospice of Paneveggio a track mounts along the main branch of the Travignolo, and passing in succession before the precipices of the Fuocobono, the Vezzana, and the Pala, and leaving on the left the glacier which descends between the two latter peaks, crosses the back of Monte Castellazzo near the foot of the Pala, and rejoins the high-road. Lovers of Alpine tarns should cross it at right angles and take a track which, starting from the highest chalet on the northern side of the carriage-pass, leads over the broken slopes of Monte Cavallazzo to the Laghi di Colbricon, two blue lakes framed by green fir-clad mounds, over which peer the crests not only of the great Pala but of the more distant Rosengarten and Marmolata. The upper lake lies on the lowest pass between the headwaters of the Cismone and the Travignolo. The descent towards San Martino is at first steep; the mule-track lies some distance to the right, but a footpath a few yards to the left of the lake leads down at once into a picturesque glen. At the foot of the second descent is a 'casera' standing on a green lawn. Seen from this point the great turret-crowned wall is like a vivid but impossible dream of mountain splendour. The sweeping outlines of dark forest form a foreground out of which its rigid flame-coloured ramparts rise like some phantom castle against the Italian blue.

A short walk over hay meadows leads to San Martino di Castrozza, a chapel standing near a substantial building formerly used as a hospice and frontier station, but lately converted into an Alpine 'pension.' It stands on a level meadow near the point where the stream, hitherto tranquil, makes a sudden plunge southwards. Immediately behind the house rises the giant row of Primiero peaks. From the Pala to the Cima Cimedo the whole line is in sight from top to bottom, and the only fault of the view, if it can be called one, is that we are too near the mountains. At Campiglio we long to approach the peaks; here we draw back on to the opposite hillsides, where we may break their outline and see but one or two at a time between the nearer brows.

But a more delightful halting-place I cannot imagine, whether for climbers or idlers. At hand are many easy and shady strolls, and two or three hours places you on the top of the great wall free to climb its crests and explore all the mysteries of the weird tableland which lies behind it. To the south the Sass Maor and Palle di San Martino raise their unconquered, but probably conquerable, peaks. The former at any rate may best be attacked from this side. The road to Primiero sinks in a long descent, terraced along the right-hand hills, and commanding superb and constantly shifting views of the opposite chain.

The path from Agordo, still the most frequented, though no longer since the construction of the carriage-road to Predazzo the easiest, approach to Primiero, has often had injustice done to it in many ways. It has been described on the one hand as shorter than it really is, on the other as a difficult and rugged track; and little justice has been done in any quarter to its great and varied beauty.

Average walkers must allow for the pass seven hours of very 'actual walking,' excluding all those 'petites haltes' which Toppfer justly counted amongst the happiest moments of life, the five or ten minutes' rest in the shade to admire a view or drink a cup of cold water. But for the whole way there is a good mule-path, although, as on almost all mule-paths, there are pieces which no one with the free use of his limbs would by preference ride down. One of the most tiresome of these rough places is the steep hill under the castle of La Pietra. But this the foot-traveller may easily avoid, and at the same time gain some superb views. On leaving La Fiera he will have to cross the river, and pass through the village of Transacqua, one of the cluster which form Primiero, then to climb a very steep little track up the hill immediately behind until he reaches a terrace-path running nearly at a level along the mountain-side. From the first corner one looks back for the last time on the lake-like valley, with its islands of villages and waves of Indian corn. The path then bends along a shelf of meadows, with the whole chain of the dolomites in full view opposite. Further the shelf broadens to a crescent-like plain dotted with chÂlets lying immediately above the castle of La Pietra, and looking over Count Welsberg's park and away into the heart of Val Pravitale and Val di Canale. Hence a short descent leads back into the regular road above the stoniest part of the ascent, and about halfway between the castle and the pass.

A little inn, supplying drinkable wine, stands on the further side of the ridge. For the next two hours the path leads through scenery of a large and noble aspect. Deep below lies a valley, narrowing to a savage gorge before it releases its stream to flow out into the sunny meadows of Val di Mel. Above its head a broad-shouldered isolated mountain, known by the simple name of Il Piz, towers high into the air.

The first village in Venetia, conspicuous by a large new church, offers itself for a midday halt. A grassy slope leads thence to the crests of the wooded ridges which divide the glens sloping towards Agordo. Numerous paths wander about their tops, and unless the first left-hand track is taken it is easy to miss the way amongst them. This leads down into Val Sarzana, a long but pleasant glen, supporting several villages, and opening nearly opposite the little town of Agordo.

So much for those of the main tracks, of which I can speak from experience. The road down the valley to Feltre is still incomplete; other paths can be learnt of from the 'Alpine Guide.' I must turn to the higher passages across the great horseshoe, which, if not absolutely unknown, were in any case known only to a few goatherds and hunters before the expeditions here described.

On the morning of May 30, 1864, a strange arrival disturbed the quiet of the little mountain town of Agordo, and collected what might pass for a crowd on the piazza, which in England we should call a green. Soon after nine A.M. the strangers who were the cause of this unusual stir issued from the inn door in an armed procession—four Englishmen headed by a Swiss and a Savoyard, the two latter girt with rope. Each individual brandished a formidable axe. The native mind was by no means satisfied with the explanations offered by the strangers, and (as our guides afterwards told us) rushed to the conclusion that we were a party of diggers wandering over the mountains to seek spots favourable for mines, and that our strange-looking implements must be for breaking rocks in search of gold. At the village of Taibon, some half-an-hour above Agordo, a path crosses the river and turns into a side-glen—the Valle di San Lucano. After-experience has confirmed our first impressions of this valley. It is one of the most imposing spots in this romantic region. The level bottom is dotted with pines and watered by one of those sparkling streams too rare in the Western Alps, which, content with their own station in life, do not seek notoriety by doing harm to their neighbours. On one hand the Palle di San Lucano rises in stupendous cliffs, in many places smooth and perpendicular as a newly-built wall, and capped by three massive towers. On the other is Monte Agnaro, a more broken and slightly less precipitous dolomite, its rugged face furrowed by numerous clefts filled at this early season by beds of snow, the remains of spring avalanches. At the chÂlets of Col, an hour's walk from the high-road, the glen split into two branches, the one short and steep running up to the Forcella Gesurette, a grassy gap leading to Gares, the other a deep trench (sometimes called the Val d'Angoraz) penetrating deeply into the corner of the Primiero horseshoe and ending in a wild precipice-closed amphitheatre. A herdsman assured us that by following a path on the western slopes of Val d'Angoraz we might find a passage across the mountains, occasionally used by shepherds, but, as he added, over snow and superlatively 'cattivo.' The savage and uninviting character of the cliffs at the extreme head of the valley made us quite ready to follow his advice.

Our first start that morning had been from Belluno, and it was now approaching noon. Just torn from the languid luxury of Venetian gondolas and under the scorching influence of a midday sun we crept upwards but slowly, and the only eagerness displayed amongst us was in finding from time to time some plausible excuse for a halt.

Underwood slowly gave place to pines, and these in turn yielded to Alpine rhododendrons, amongst which our path came to an end. Several hours, however, had passed before we gained the limit of vegetation, and sat down on the rocks to consider our line of march over the snow-slopes which still separated us from the wished-for ridge. The wild cliffs of the Sasso di Campo, here and there nursing infant glaciers in their rough recesses, rose opposite. On the north stretched a wide elevated pasture, lying on the back of the Palle di San Lucano and the slopes of the Cima di Pape.

Once on the snow all our fatigue vanished before the delicious air, and our spirits shared the exhilaration. It was fortunate they did so, for the scouts of the party, who had pressed on to the apparent pass, found on the further side wide-spreading snow-fields, barred at a great distance by a rocky ridge. After studying the military map of Venetia (in which, as we afterwards found, all this region is laid down in the vaguest and most misleading manner), we determined to retrace our steps and make for a higher gap in the ridge on our right. This was a mistake, for had we gone straight on we should have found ourselves, with hardly any further ascent, on the edge of Val di Canale,[65] near the spot we afterwards reached by a most circuitous route.

On gaining this second depression we saw more slopes between us and the ridge which now seemed to be the watershed. The third pass in its turn proved only a gap in one of the numerous low spurs running across the great tableland which lies at the back of the rim of peaks seen from the valley of the Cismone.

We were now in the very heart of this huge stony wilderness. In every direction stretched an undulating expanse of whitish-grey rock, brittle in substance and pockmarked by weather. Strange snow-filled pits here and there broke the monotony of the weird waste, which, but for these and its greater unevenness, resembled a rocky shore between low and high water-mark. But the impression of barrenness and desolation far exceeded what such a comparison will suggest; snow instead of water filled the crannies, and the life of sea-weeds and sea-creatures was altogether wanting in this middle realm of utter nakedness. There was too much sunshine for the glacier, too much frost for the flowers which began to find root scarcely 500 feet lower wherever the sun shone on a patch of disintegrated rock. Here there was nothing even for a chamois to nibble.

On the south the tableland was bounded by a line of snowy eminences, on the west by a fantastic cockscomb of lofty crags, perhaps part of the spur of the Palle di San Martino. But the wide horizon to the north and east bore witness to the height on which we stood. Nothing impeded our view over the central dolomite region, and beyond it we recognised against the horizon the pale snowy line of the distant Tauern.

But the beautiful evening shadows already creeping over the view gave us cause for as much uneasiness as delight. We had started late from Agordo; time had flown by and it was within an hour of sunset, while we were yet far on the wrong side of the Pass. Not a moment was to be lost if we wished to sleep in the valley of Primiero. We wandered incessantly on over shoulders, down gullies, across wide basins of soft snow, until about sunset we stood at last on the edge of steep rocks falling away into a southern valley, the far-sought Val di Canale. A succession of snow-filled gullies rendered the descent easy, and enabled us to slide swiftly downwards for some 2,000 feet. When we reached the bottom of the glen daylight had already left us, and the young moon, which threw romantic lights upon the huge pinnacles of the Sasso di Campo and Sasso Ortiga, disdained the humbler office of serving as a lantern to our path.

It was now so dark that we had to keep close together to avoid losing ourselves. After reaching a brow we too hastily began to swing ourselves down steep slopes by the tough branches of the creeping pines. There was a cliff at the bottom, and it was necessary to remount. Anyone who knows the difference between working upwards and downwards through such a thicket, even when fresh and by daylight, will sympathise with our despair. Yet despite slips, tumbles into holes, slaps in the face from swinging branches, we scrambled somehow up again. At the next attempt we got down with less difficulty.

In time we came to the bed of a torrent, here dry, as the water preferred a subterranean course; for half-an-hour more we stumbled along amongst the white boulders, every minute adding to our bruises. Then we fancied we had found a path, and got into thick woods on the left side of the glen. Soon the track, if it was one, was lost sight of, and we wandered off into deeper darkness than ever. At last we were brought to a dead halt. A steep step broke the valley, and cliffs, from the base of which the river sent up far distant murmurs, barred our progress. Whilst we were all engaged in beating about for any traces of a path, a shout was raised. We eagerly enquired the cause. 'I have got a native here, but I can't make him understand,' was the reply. We rushed to our friend's assistance, and found his native to be our German guide, whom in the darkness he had taken for a shepherd, and was now cross-examining in his best Italian.

After this disappointment we resigned ourselves to the prospect of a night in the forest. A fire was soon lighted in the nearest sheltered hollow, and sufficient fir-branches cut down to form a bed. We should have been happy had any water been at hand, but two oranges divided between four were but poor relief to parched throats. As it was, we were disposed to reflect that the same moonlight which lit our sky was falling softly on the Piazza di San Marco, and to look back with fond regret on the ices and lemonade of Florian's. After a long absence FranÇois reappeared with the indiarubber bag, which usually held our wine, full of water. Then our cravings were satisfied, and we soon gave up watching the stars sparkling between the pine-branches and fell fast asleep.

Daylight, as usual, revealed an easy escape from the perplexities of the night, and we speedily found ourselves in the exquisite meadows surrounding Count Welsberg's shooting-box, and an hour later filed down the high street of La Fiera.

In 1864 'Alpinisti Inglesi' were unheard-of novelties at Primiero, and our procession filled every doorway with large wondering eyes, and roused conjectures wilder even than those of the Agordans. Some words of French spoken to FranÇois were caught by eager listeners, and it was currently reported in the little town that we were a party of French officers engaged in a surreptitious survey of the mountains. For the simple mountaineers could not believe that Napoleon's word would not yet be kept, and at least an effort made to complete the work of 1859 and free Italy from the Alps to the Adriatic.

No one, however, interfered with our siesta, or prevented us from leaving early in the afternoon for San Martino. Here, however, we found some officious person had given warning to the douaniers, and had not Tuckett's German been fluent and our passports in order, we should have no doubt had difficulty. As it was, we spent a very pleasant evening with the officials, who were glad enough of a little company, and invited us to join them in the circular chimney-corner which is the best, if not the only, invention which has come out of Tyrol.

The old hospice was as rough quarters as could well be found, and our beds did not interfere with early rising. Our object was to discover a pass leading directly to Gares and so to Cencenighe and Caprile. We had found it impossible to obtain any information overnight, but, as we were starting, a peasant on his way to Val Fassa offered to set us in the right path. We soon found, however, that he was leading us too far north, towards a far-away mule-track on the other side of Paneveggio. Much to our friend's surprise, therefore, we turned our backs on him and our faces towards the great wall of cliffs which rises immediately to the east of San Martino. A long climb through a fir-wood brought us to the bare crags. The only difficulty, if it can be called one, lies in hitting off the easiest point at which to pass a low cliff. Above this the way lies over steep slopes covered with loose rubbish. Three hours after leaving San Martino we stood on the crest close to the base of the Cima della Rosetta. The view to the west was very wide and beautiful. We looked over a foreground composed of mountains pasture-clothed to their summits, beyond which the snows of the Orteler and Œtzthaler groups, the towers of the Brenta, and the sharp peak of the Presanella shone in the distance. We were now on the further edge of the great waste we had wandered over two days previously, and in the centre of the rocky peaks which dominate it. Several of them appeared accessible. One, the Rosetta, is in fact only half-an-hour's easy scramble, and well rewards the trouble of an ascent by a delicious glimpse of the fertile fields of Primiero as well as a more extensive panorama.

At our feet was a deep hollow lying under the back of the Cimon della Pala. We descended into it, and found it the first of a series of basins connected by steep troughs, at this early season snow-filled, but later in the year, when the rocks are bare, steep enough to require some scrambling.

We were threading a defile among the mountain-tops. Sheer walls of cliff impended on one hand; on the other the rocks of the Cima di Vezzana towered aloft in forms of the utmost daring, yet too massive and sublime to suggest the epithet 'grotesque.' Here was rock scenery seen in its purest simplicity, with no variety or relief from its sternness except what it could itself afford in the shapes and colouring of the crags. It was a Val Travernanzes destitute of its only elements of life—verdure and water. In one of the lower troughs a slender stream took the place of snow as a covering for the rock-surfaces, and we were forced to get down as best we could by the side of and sometimes through the cascade. At the end of the last basin the stream entered a narrow gorge. There was still no trace of path, and sometimes only just sufficient footing beside the water. We began to fear lest we might be trapped, when notched logs of wood placed as rough ladders against the rocks showed that some passage existed. Presently the opening of the gorge came in sight, and the opposing rock-walls gave space for an exquisite picture—the green slopes and rugged summit of the Cima di Pape bathed in a flood of sunshine. After plundering a bed of lilies of the valley (a rare flower in the Alps), we came to the brink of the cliff above the Gares valley. A log had been thrown across the water on the very edge of a waterfall. This rustic bridge was not substantial to look at, and too narrow for anything but Blondin or a monkey to walk over. We crossed it singly astride, and found on the other side a path which led us by a wide sweep round the rock-wall. This track recrosses the stream, still a mass of foam, beneath a fall which is perhaps the prettiest in the dolomite country. It then zigzags down rhododendron-covered slopes to the floor of the valley.

The village of Gares is perched on a knoll in the centre of a fertile basin and in full view of the green slopes of the Gesurette. Rugged cliffs form a complete barrier on the west, and the tiny gap from which we had emerged looked now the most unlikely entrance possible to a pass.

A haymaker of whom we enquired for an 'osteria' took possession of us and led the way to his cottage, where, having first hunted out benches and stools from all sorts of corners, he entertained us on milk, cheese, and butter. He knew of the existence of the pass we had crossed, but spoke of it as only used by chamois-hunters, and was unable to give it a name. Our host was most unwilling to receive even a trifle for his hospitality. Beyond Gares the valley is open and less wild and savage than most of the neighbouring glens. It runs at first in a north-easterly direction along the base of the Cima di Pape, until at an hour's distance from Gares the Val di Valles, through which runs the mule-track of the Valles Pass to Paneveggio, opens on the left and the united streams bend due east to join Val d'Agordo. At the corner stands Forno dei Canali, the bakehouse of the valleys, a long straggling village which uses the only path for a drain, and sadly needs sanitary reform. We had to creep under the walls and jump from stone to stone to avoid the sea of filth. Just beyond the last houses Monte Civetta, more tower-like in form than usual, closes the view. A picturesque defile—where the river, which flows beside the road, was almost choked by logs on their voyage from the upper forest to the saw-mills—led down to Cencenighe, a short two hours below the lake of Alleghe and somewhat less from Agordo.

We have now twice crossed the great horseshoe. There remains a third passage, the only one unknown to the people of the country, across the deep narrow gap between the Cimon della Pala and the Cima di Vezzana. This pass—which, in virtue of the privilege of discoverers, I venture to call the Passo di Travignolo—leads from Paneveggio to Gares.

On a clear starlight evening in September 1872 our carriage, hired at an exorbitant rate from the inn-master at Vigo, drew up before the shining windows of the hospice of Paneveggio. My friend and I were unprovided with guides, not purposely or because no peasants fit to undertake such service were to be found in the Venetian Alps, but from a combination of personal accidents. In the Alps only for a fortnight I had not thought it worth while to summon FranÇois Devouassoud from his far-off home. My friend, who had counted on the services of Santo Siorpaes of Cortina, had found him already engaged to a lady who had taken the first cragsman in Tyrol to lead her mule.

But the assurances we had received before leaving England that the untrodden crest of the Cima di Vezzana was likely to be attainable without serious difficulty encouraged us to persevere in our intentions against that mountain; and at the first opportunity we applied to the people of the inn to procure for us the best chamois-hunter of the neighbourhood to carry our provisions and to serve as a third on the rope. A peasant of stalwart size and manly bearing was soon produced who, by his professions of readiness to go anywhere, created a favourable first impression, weakened it is true, in my mind, by some slight suspicion that his 'anywhere' might be different to ours, and possibly mean anywhere he had been before. But for this doubt I had no foundation except the stubborn disbelief shown by our proposed companion in Mr. Whitwell's ascent of the Cimon della Pala. In such a discussion it is difficult to know how to act. To tamely leave a fellow-countryman's credit to take care of itself, with the precarious assistance of any stonemen he may have left behind him, is opposed to one's impulse. Yet the statement that an Englishman's word is above question loses its impressiveness when delivered with a consciousness that your assertions are at that very moment accepted as the strongest evidence to the contrary.

Shortly after five A.M. we were on the path which follows the eastern branch of the Travignolo. After some time the hills opened, the stream bent suddenly to the south, and wide grassy spaces extended along its banks. High against the sky the pale heads of the dolomites rose in a bare gigantic row. Above the end of the glen towered the gaunt form of the Cimon della Pala girt about his loins by a glacier, the only ice-stream in this group which makes a determined effort to descend into the valley. A grass-slope and a stone-slope led us to the ice, which rose in a steep and slippery bank. Higher up its more level surface was split by a few incipient crevasses, the largest of a size to engulf the heel of a boot or a torpid butterfly. Unluckily they did not escape the keen eyes of our hunter, and he proceeded to probe one of them with his staff. When he had done so his face assumed an air of singular resolution, and to our utter astonishment he informed us that the ice was hollow and that it would be madness to proceed. We of course pointed to the rope he carried on his shoulders. In vain; our philosopher briefly remarked that 'life was more than gulden,' and prepared to descend.

From our standpoint the whole upper glacier was in sight, a semicircular hollow open to the north-west, hemmed in elsewhere by the cliffs of the Vezzana and the steep broken face of the Pala. Between them lay a natural pass, approached on this side by a long bank of snow, between which and us the crevasses were evidently easy of circumvention. The day was cloudless. The path to a maiden peak was open. Should we follow the craven-hearted hunter? The suggestion, if made, was not for a moment entertained. We roped ourselves together and turned our faces to the mountain.

I feel it well here to guard myself from the risk of being reckoned amongst those who would set up an example of 'mountaineering without guides.' We were in fact neither of us disposed to disregard the verdict of the Alpine Club. That verdict may be thus summarised—'Do not dispense with a guide except when and where you are capable of taking his place.'

An heretical but excellent climber, driven into revolt, perhaps, by some of the excesses of Grindelwald or Chamonix orthodoxy, once endeavoured to incite Englishmen to begin climbing by themselves. I quite agree with Mr. Girdlestone in disliking the passive position of the man who, having linked himself between two first-rate guides, leans on them entirely for support, moral and physical, under every circumstance.

This situation may be appropriate and even acceptable to the 'homo unius montis' who wishes once for all to do, or rather have done, his Wetterhorn or Mont Blanc. But for my own part I can never feel in it any of the pride of a mountaineer, or resist from comparing myself to the bale of calico which abandons itself to the force of a pulley in order to reach the top storey of the warehouse.

But in order to avoid this position it is surely not necessary, as Mr. Girdlestone would have us, to rush into the opposite extreme and do without guides altogether. Employing guides need not involve self-effacement. A guide may be looked to as a teacher instead of as a mere steam-tug; he may be followed intelligently instead of mechanically.

Although we may feel very far from, and may despair of attaining, the ideal of a mountain athlete embodied in an Almer, there is no reason why we should not endeavour to make some humble approach to it.

Let the traveller accustom himself to choosing his own line of march, practise his skill by steering through an easy bit of an ice-fall, cutting steps down a snow-bank, or taking the lead along a rock-ridge such as that of Monte Rosa. In this way he will, without much additional risk, test and improve his own skill, and may become in time capable of undertaking, without other company than that of similarly qualified friends, any expedition of moderate difficulty. Let it never be forgotten, however, that in sports as well as in trades an apprenticeship must be served. Forgetfulness of this fact has led to the worst of Alpine disasters, and it is by its tendency to ignore it that the doctrine of 'mountaineering without guides' is most dangerous.

In the present case we considered ourselves qualified to undertake the work before us; that is to say, we saw nothing to lead us to suppose that we were about to enter on ground where we could not tread safely, or on which a chance slip, should one occur, would not be remediable by such skill as we might have previously acquired.

The ice-chasms, some of them of formidable breadth, of the upper glacier were easily turned, and in a time which seemed short we came to the last of them, the great moat which ran round the base of the mountain. It was furnished with two bridges, one immediately under the centre of the snow-wall, over which any bodies falling from above would probably pass; the second, over which we crossed, somewhat nearer the Pala. This steep bank, for most snow-walls are little more, may have been at a rough guess 800 feet high.

The snow, though in a very trustworthy condition, was a little too hard for speed, and my friend, who is an excellent step-cutter, found plenty of occupation for his axe. Some hour and a half had slipped by and we were still 150 to 200 feet below the crest, when a low bank of rock, parallel to the slope and lying along the base of the cliffs on our left, offered us an alternative path. We swerved towards them, not however without exchanging a reminder of the need of caution in crossing from snow to rock. An unusually capacious last step had been cut, and my friend had already attached to the crag all his limbs with the exception of one leg, when his whole body suddenly became subject to a struggle between the laws of gravity and the will of the climber. He had grasped a portion of the living rock which came away in his hand, for the first time, as if it had been the least stable of loose boulders. I had hardly time to close my axe in a tighter grip before my companion flew past me at a velocity of I cannot say how many feet to the second.

My foothold was too slight to resist any severe shock; the power of resistance lay in arms and axe. In a moment the rope tightened, rather, however, with a strong increasing pull than with a sharp jerk. I felt myself moving downwards, but in my old position, erect, my face to the slope and my axe-head buried as deeply as ever in the snow, and dragging heavily like an anchor through its hard surface. Two or three seconds more and I felt the impulse less, my power of tension increasing. In another moment I had stopped altogether. My companion's fall, checked at the first by my resistance, and still more afterwards by his own exertions with his axe, of which he had with the impulse of an old climber retained his hold, had come to an end, and the moment the downward strain was taken off I stopped also.

I have no mental sensations to record during the time of the slide. The mind has, or seems to have, at times an extraordinary power while the body is flying down a snow-slope of, as it were, anticipating its separation from its old companion, and standing apart to watch its fate, in what a writer in 'Fraser' has happily called 'colourless expectation.' The phrase may suggest of itself an explanation of this curious indifference. In such situations the brain is called upon to register so many sensations at the same moment that as in a well-spun top the various hues are mingled into one, and the pale complexion of terror has not time to predominate. But in order to experience this frame of mind the slip must be irremediable by any present exertion; our moments of descent had their practical impulses, and these were quite sufficient to occupy them.

We now found ourselves respectively some sixty and twenty-five feet lower than we had been before, and with our positions reversed, but otherwise none the worse for our accident. So at least I thought for the first moment; but a red patch on the snow immediately drew my attention, and I found that my knuckles, skinned by the friction against the frozen surface, were bleeding freely. My friend, who had fallen further, had suffered more, and the backs of his hands were indeed in a pitiable condition.

Such a temporary inconvenience was not likely, however, to render us melancholy. Confident that no worse thing could happen to us, and that despite foul play we had proved our ability to cope with the Cima di Vezzana, we looked for the best means of gaining the crest and a convenient halting-place. An upright corniched wall, representing the thickness of the snow-field lying across the top of the pass, barred the head of the gully. With the rocks on our left we naturally declined to have any further dealings; those on the right did not look much more inviting. But, though loose and very steep, they proved with care to be quite manageable; and ten minutes' careful climbing brought us in safety to a spur of rock some fifty feet above the lowest gap.

The way to our maiden peak was still blind. It presented to us a massive shoulder of crag and snow-beds, masking the real summit which lay somewhere out of sight. We bore well to the right along the Gares side of the mountain, and over the shoulder, until we found a gully which took us back towards the crest. A short scramble placed us on it, and by a few steps more along a shattered ridge the summit was conquered.

Our perch was a narrow one, and when our future champion, the indispensable stoneman, had taken his place between us, there would have been little room for a fourth. Still we soon made ourselves comfortable enough to enjoy to the utmost the glory spread out around us. The Cimon della Pala, a great unstable wedge of a mountain, shot up opposite us, its highest rocks overtopping ours by little more than the height of Mr. Whitwell's cairn. The white houses of Primiero showed over the huge shoulder of the Pala. The lake of Alleghe lay peacefully in its hollow. Beyond it rose the central dolomites, the Pelmo, the Civetta, and the Tofana, looming largely through the glistening air, like Preadamite monsters couched on the green hills and sunning themselves in the noontide blaze. On one side we looked down on the white stony desolation of the great wilderness which fills the hoof of the shoe, on one of the nails of which we stood, on the other on the forest of Paneveggio and a green stretch of lakelet studded pastures. Far away to the west spread the rolling hill-waves of the Trentino, a vast expanse of broken country stretching out towards the Brenta and the Orteler.

In this region the common rule is reversed. While the troughs of the streams are narrow and rugged, the summits are wooded downs covered with villages. Seen from any moderate eminence, such as the Caressa Pass, the hill-tops compose instead of confining the landscape, they spread out their broad backs to the sunshine in place of cutting it off. Instead of striking against one opposite range the eye sweeps across twenty surging ridges, and wanders in and out of a hundred hollows, distinct or veiled, according as the sunlight falls on them, until it meets on the horizon the snows of the distant range extending from the Adamello to the Weisskugel.

So far as I know, no great painter has chosen a subject from the basin of the Adige. Yet here, even more than in Titian's country and the Val di Mel, all the breadth and romance of Italian landscape is united to Alpine grandeur and nobleness of form.

The full blaze of an unclouded heaven was just tempered into the most delicious warmth by a gentle breath of air. We could have lingered for many happy hours, and the moment for parting came but too soon.

The return to the gap was only a matter of minutes. There we left our old tracks, and, turning in the opposite direction, slid quickly down snow-slopes filling a recess between the wildest cliffs. The brow on which we halted to tie up the rope was green with grass and gay with the brightest flowers, a tiny garden in the desert, where the seeds wind-borne from far-off pastures are caught by the earth and nursed into being by the kindly rays of the sun streaming full on the southward-facing slope.

We were now immediately above the ravine descending from the Cornelle Pass. Once in this glen we were on old ground, and might easily have descended to Gares.[66] Anxious, however, to regain Paneveggio before dark, we turned our faces to a steep ascent. The way across the level ground on the crest of the ridge had been newly marked out by stonemen. We rested for a few minutes to gaze again over the broad field of the blue and green Trentino, and then plunged beneath the breeze and into an atmosphere of sunbeams. The rays came down on our heads, reflected themselves from the white cliffs, and fastened on us with a steady persecution, from which there was no great rock to flee unto. I need not enter into any details as to our exact route, which was so contrived as to cut into the carriage-road between Paneveggio and San Martino as nearly as possible at its summit-level. If anybody ever chances to aim at the same end he cannot do better than bear to the chÂlets which he will see below him on the right, and there hire a cow-boy to guide him through the ups and downs of the forests and across the great stony scars which mar the mountain side. Anyhow he must make up his mind to reascend the final zigzags to the Costonzella Pass.

After the pathless thirsty hillside and the burning heat, our walk in the luminous deep-hued evening shadows down a smooth road, varied by a milk-giving chÂlet or a mossy short cut, was most enjoyable.

As the air grew chill and the golden radiance of the sunbeams died out of it the mountain forms exchanged their flaming splendours for a cool grey-blue tint. In some strange way this bloom in the air seemed to thicken until it became no longer transparent. A thin shadowy film grew into being, and the huge spectral dolomites faded away into it like genii of the 'Arabian Nights.'

Their battle was over; they had done their worst; and the Pala and Vezzana, knowing themselves vanquished, might well be imagined, like respectable Afreets, to have retired into the bottles with which their conquerors had, after the custom of climbers, provided them. But the Alpine Club has no seal of Solomon with which to bind its captives. The Primiero giants have doubtless by this time come forth again, and are ready for fresh encounters with human foes.