Kitabı oku: «Italian Alps», sayfa 18

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.⁶⁵ 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.

CHAPTER XIII.
THE PELMO AND VAL DI ZOLDO

 
Lacs de moire, coteaux bleus,
Ciel où le nuage passe,
Large espace,
Monts aux rochers anguleux. – Théophile Gautier.
 

THE VENETIAN TYROL – VAL DI ZOLDO – PASSO D'ALLEGHE – SAN NICOLÒ – CAMPO DI RUTORTO – ON THE PELMO – A LADY'S ASCENT – THE PEOPLE OF VAL DI ZOLDO

Even in the Venetian Tyrol the tendency of tourists to choose the colder pine-clad north in place of the more tender and varied grace of the south has become observable. Cortina, Caprile, and the Val Fassa are even now on the, in everything but prices, downward path of corruption. But away to the south and outside the 'regular round' there are still many quiet nooks known as yet only to those who

 
– Love to enter pleasure by a postern,
Not the broad populous gate which gulps the mob.
 

It is across the Italian frontier, and not amongst the stern peaks and solemn pines of Cortina, or in the savage gorge of Landro, that we find the nature which Titian so often sketched and painted. In the foregrounds of the northern dolomite country there is a commonplace stiffness and want of variety, which even the weird crags of the Drei Zinnen or Coll' Agnello cannot render romantic; it lacks the noble spaciousness, the soft and changeful beauties, of the southern region. Its character is German in the place of Italian, it reminds us rather of Dürer than of Titian. It excites and interests the appetite for the wonderful rather than soothes and satisfies our longing for complete and harmonious beauty.

Landscapes composed of blue surging waves of mountains, broken by sharp fins and tusks of rock, of deep skies peopled with luminous masses of white cloud, are familiar to the eyes of thousands who have never seen Italy nor heard of a dolomite. Side by side with the wide sunny spaces, the soft hills and unclouded heaven of the early schools of Perugia and Tuscany, they remain to us as types of what Italian art found most beautiful and sympathetic in nature. The hill-villages of Val di Zoldo claim our interest as the frequent haunts of Titian. While wandering between them, we are amongst the influences which impressed his boyhood and were afterwards the sources of his inspiration. The Pelmo may on good ground assert itself as Titian's own mountain. Mr. Gilbert, in his 'Cadore,' has shown it to us as it stands over against the painter's native town; and it is impossible to turn over the facsimiles of the master's drawings contained in that charming volume without being persuaded that he drew the mountain from life more than once, and his recollection of it very frequently.

Val di Zoldo resembles many of the Venetian valleys in being shaped like a long-necked bottle. In its lower portion a narrow gorge hemmed in by beetling crags, it expands at its head into what, seen from any vantage-ground, shows as a broad sunny basin, divided by green ridges into a labyrinth of fertile glens. The outlines of these ridges are symmetrical in themselves, and they are grouped together in a constantly shifting but harmonious complexity. Away to the south the horizon is fringed by splintered edges of dolomite, black as the receding night when cut clear against the first orange of dawn, or pale gold in the palpable haze of an Italian noon, or crimson with the reflected rays of sunset. As the paths cross the crests from glen to glen, the snowy boss of the Antelao or the painted cliffs of the Sorapis tower loftily over the low intervening ridge which divides Zoppé from the Val d'Ampezzo. But (to accept the hypothesis of Von Richthofen) the great glory of Val di Zoldo lies in the chance which led the coral insects to select the broad downs lying behind the hamlets of Pecol and Brusadaz for pedestals on which to plant their two noblest efforts, the huge wall of the Civetta and the tower of the Pelmo. Elsewhere in the dolomite country edifices may be seen covering a wider space of ground, or decorated with more fantastic pinnacles, the Westminster Palaces and Milan Cathedrals of their order. But these two works belong to the best style or period of insect art; their builders have shown that simplicity of intention and subordination of detail to a central controlling purpose which mark the highest of the comparatively puny efforts of their human competitors.

To travellers the Civetta is best known by its north-western face, to which the little lake of Alleghe lends a picturesque charm sure to catch the fancy of every passer-by. The structure of the mountain as seen from Val di Zoldo appears less intricate; and if the cliffs are not so perpendicular, the prevailing angle from base to cope is steeper. Its crags, glittering with rain or sprinkled with recent snow, shine out at an incredible height athwart the slant rays of a setting sun; in the cloudless morning hours they become ordinary rocks up which the experienced cragsman detects a path, safe enough when the spring is over and the upper ledges have 'voided their rheum.'

To the mind of the climber who wanders beneath its cliffs I know not what incongruous fancies the Pelmo may not suggest. From Val Fiorentina and Santa Lucia its broad shoulders and massive head resemble an Egyptian sphynx; as we move southwards one of the shoulders becomes detached, and the mountain is transformed into a colossal antediluvian cub crouching beside its parent. When clouds part to show the vast glittering crest which overlooks Val di Zoldo we seem to realise 'the great and high wall' of the city coming down from heaven of Apocalyptic vision. If we ever have a 'Practical Tyrol,' the likeness of the solid mass seen from the Ampezzo road to the Round Tower of Windsor will probably be remarked on, – and there will be a certain amount of vulgar truth in the observation.

One of the easiest paths to Val di Zoldo starts from Alleghe, and has been described by Messrs. Gilbert and Churchill. From Caprile, the more usual point of departure, there is a direct track which first attacks the mountain with the headstrong energy of a novice, and then takes a long breathing-space along the level. After passing several bunches of farm-houses, clinging to the steep sides of Monte Fernazza like flies to a window-pane, it again climbs up through woods to the hamlet of Coi.⁶⁶ The needful height is then won, and a green terrace, overhanging Alleghe and looking into the heart of the Civetta, leads to the great rolling down which spreads out towards the Pelmo.

Heavy clouds, charged with electricity and rain, had swept about from peak to peak during our walk from Caprile, and the greyness of evening was deepened by heavy showers as we splashed down the wet path from Pecol. Near the river, and nestling under a steep bank crowned by a far-seen church and spire, we came upon the inn of San Nicolò. It stands a little back from the path behind a courtyard, a tall three-storied house, hanging out no vulgar sign of entertainment for man and beast. At the top of the three stories are two bedrooms, clean and spotless, hung with engravings, and furnished with the air of conscious wealth of a farmhouse best-parlour. Their windows give an exquisite glimpse down the deep glen which falls towards Forno di Zoldo, and across to a high ridge capped by a most fantastic fence of dolomite splinters. But if the upstairs rooms are bright and comfortable, they have not the homely charm of the great ground-floor kitchen. It is a wide room, ranged round with rows of lustrous brass pans, alternating with generous, full-bodied, wide-mouthed jugs, which could never give a drop less than the measure painted across them. At one end is the fireplace, of the sort common in southern Tyrol, a deep semicircular bow forming a projection in the outer wall of the house; the floor is slightly raised, and a bench runs round it, leaving the centre to be used for the hearth, – an arrangement which seems to solve the problem of the greatest happiness of the greatest number better even than our old English chimney-corners.

The structure which supports – not the fire, for that lies on the hearthstone, but the pots and pans which may be cooking upon it – is a piece of smith's work, enriched with wrought-out conventional foliage, chains and two noble brass griffins. All the character of the workman has been stamped into the metal, and comes out even in the irregularities of detail which Birmingham might call defects, – a modern and native product, however, as our host with pardonable pride assured us, and the best that the neighbouring forges of Forno di Zoldo can send out.

The master of the house proved to be a man of wealth and position in his native valley. He knew Venice well, and something of the more distant world. 'What can one do?' he said, in answer to our compliments on his house; 'in the mountains there are no cafés, no theatres; one must build a fine house, and get what novelty one can from strangers; but,' he added with a sigh, 'there are not so many.'

In the gloom of a wet evening the conquest of the Pelmo on the morrow seemed little more than a slender hope. Still, in the Alps successes are chiefly won by being always prepared for the best, and we were resolved not to lose a chance. In the matter of guides, however, we found a difficulty. We were ourselves, owing to the causes mentioned in the last chapter, but poorly provided. The Vezzana had not proved beyond our unaided powers. But we had no ambition to dispense with native assistance any further, or to go up the Pelmo by any but the easiest route. The native of Caprile who had carried our wraps over the Passo d'Alleghe was a pleasant fellow, but he had never been on the Pelmo, where, if anywhere, local knowledge is indispensable. It was with some dismay, therefore, that we first learnt that no hunter who knew the mountain could be found nearer than Brusadaz, a hamlet an hour off. However, Brusadaz turned out to be on the way to the Pelmo, and in the early morning we could reckon on finding the inhabitants at home.

As at five A.M. we took the path which wound round the hill rising above the church of San Nicolò, the saw-blade of Monte Piacedel cut a clear sky to the southwards. Brusadaz was soon discovered lying in the centre of a natural theatre, which opens into the main valley very near its fork at Forno di Zoldo, and is directly overlooked on the north by the Pelmo, a square block of smooth, solid and apparently inaccessible precipice. The hunter Agosto di Marco, to whom we bore an introduction, was quickly forthcoming, and, with unusual but welcome readiness, in five minutes prepared to lead us to the mountain. Our luck seemed altogether good, for the stonemen on the Pelmo were clear of mist, and we promised ourselves a day of more than usual enjoyment.

A steep grassy bank severs the quiet hollow of Brusadaz from the Zoppé branch of the valley. We reached the crest at some distance from the base of the Pelmo, and had to follow an up-and-down track in order to gain the lower end of the Campo di Rutorto, a broad level pasturage, lying at the eastern foot of the mountain. The cliffs, up which a way was to be made, were now before us; but we found, to our surprise, that their appearance – partially veiled, it is true, by floating mists – was almost as discouraging as that of the southern face.

There is scarcely any summit in the Alps which from every point of view presents so formidable an appearance as the Pelmo. Time and the various forces of nature, almost invariably create a breach in the defences of great mountains. Here, however, their work has been left unfinished. The upper cliffs are, it is true, broken on the east by a long slope, where, after a fresh fall, snow lies in such quantities as to show that it is easy of ascent. But this snow, when, as in spring, it has accumulated to a sufficient mass, falls from the bottom of the slope over a perpendicular cliff of at least 1,000 feet in height. It is only at what may be called the northern cape of the bay formed by the whole S.E. or Zoppé face of the mountain, that the ridge dividing the Campo di Rutorto from Val Ruton runs up, buttress-like, against the cliffs to a point not perhaps more than 400 or 500 feet lower than the bottom of the upper breach, but fully half a mile distant from it; and the cliffs along this half-mile are quite hopeless in appearance.

It was consequently with some surprise that we found ourselves climbing the buttress in question, and, as far as we could see, about to run our heads against the wall-like rocks on which it rested. Before setting foot on the crags the rope was uncoiled and brought into use. We at once found sufficient employment for our muscles in making long steps, or rather lifts of the body, from ledge to ledge of a rock-face, the angle of which (disregarding our footholds) appeared to approximate very closely on 90. The transverse shelves, however, afforded excellent support, and made our progress a matter of perfect security.

Above the first 150 feet a narrow gully disclosed itself, which led us to higher and more broken rocks. Then, again, the wall looked perfectly smooth, upright, and unassailable. On the last place where it could have found room to rest was a low pile of stones. Standing beside it, we began for the first time to comprehend the key to our dilemma; we were now to turn altogether to the left, and to attempt the formidable task of traversing the face of the Pelmo. Our pathway was before us, a horizontal ledge or groove, at present a few feet broad, shortly narrowing so as to afford only sufficient standing-ground, threatening before long not to do even this. The cliffs around us bent into deep recesses, and each time a projecting angle was reached, the side of the bay seen opposite appeared wholly smooth and impassable.