The bottom of the valley and mounts up
on to the village of Mesocco. One year this wind snapped a whole
grove of full-grown walnuts across the middle of their trunks, and
carried stones and bits of wood up against the houses at some
distance off; it tore off part of the covering from the cupola of
the church, and twisted the weathercock awry in the fashion in
which it may still be seen, unless it has been mended since I left.
The judges at Mesocco get four francs a day when they are wanted,
but unless actually sitting they get nothing. No wonder the people
are so nice to one another and quarrel so seldom.
The walk from Mesocco to S. Bernardino is delightful; it should
take about three hours. For grassy slopes and flowers I do not
know a better, more especially from S. Giacomo onward. In the
woods above S. Giacomo there are some bears, or were last year.
Five were known - a father, mother, and three young ones - but two
were killed. They do a good deal of damage, and the Canton offers
a reward for their destruction. The Grisons is the only Swiss
Canton in which there are bears still remaining.
San Bernardino, 5500 feet above the sea, pleased me less than
Mesocco, but there are some nice bits in it. The Hotel Brocco is
the best to go to. The village is about two hours below the top of
the pass; the walk to this is a pleasant one. The old Roman road
can still be seen in many places, and is in parts in an excellent
state even now. San Bernardino is a fashionable watering-place and
has a chalybeate spring. In the summer it often has as many as two
or three thousand visitors, chiefly from the neighbourhood of the
Lago Maggiore and even from Milan. It is not so good a sketching
ground - at least so I thought - as some others of a similar
character that I have seen. It is not comparable, for example, to
Fusio. It is little visited by the English.
On our way down to Bellinzona again we determined to take S. Maria
in Calanca, and accordingly were dropped by the diligence near
Gabbiolo, whence there is a path across the meadows and under the
chestnuts which leads to Verdabbio. There are some good bits near
the church of this village, and some quaint modern frescoes on a
public-house a little off the main footpath, but there is no
accommodation. From this village the path ascends rapidly for an
hour or more, till just as one has made almost sure that one must
have gone wrong and have got too high, or be on the track to an
alpe only, one finds one's self on a wide beaten path with walls on
either side.
