A Stranger Visiting These
Out-Of-The-Way Villages Is Almost Certain To Be Mistaken For A
Doctor.
What business, they say to themselves, can any one else
have there, and who in his senses would dream of visiting them for
pleasure?
This old lady had rushed to the usual conclusion, and
had been trying to get a little advice gratis.
Above Dalpe there is a path through the upper valley of the
Piumogna, which leads to the glacier whence the river comes. The
highest peak above this upper valley just turns the 10,000 feet,
but I was never able to find out that it has a name, nor is there a
name marked in the Ordnance map of the Canton Ticino. The valley
promises well, but I have not been to its head, where at about 7400
feet there is a small lake. Great quantities of crystals are found
in the mountains above Dalpe. Some people make a living by
collecting these from the higher parts of the ranges where none but
born mountaineers and chamois can venture; many, again, emigrate to
Paris, London, America, or elsewhere, and return either for a month
or two, or sometimes for a permanency, having become rich. In
Cornone there is one large white new house belonging to a man who
has made his fortune near Como, and in all these villages there are
similar houses. From the Val Leventina and the Val Blenio, but
more especially from this last, very large numbers come to London,
while hardly fewer go to America. Signor Gatti, the great ice
merchant, came from the Val Blenio.
I once found the words, "Tommy, make room for your uncle," on a
chapel outside the walls of one very quiet little upland hamlet.
The writing was in a child's scrawl, and in like fashion with all
else that was written on the same wall. I should have been much
surprised, if I had not already found out how many families return
to these parts with children to whom English is the native
language. Many as are the villages in the Canton Ticino in which I
have sat sketching for hours together, I have rarely done so
without being accosted sooner or later by some one who could speak
English, either with an American accent or without it. It is
curious at some out-of-the-way place high up among the mountains,
to see a lot of children at play, and to hear one of them shout
out, "Marietta, if you do that again, I'll go and tell mother."
One English word has become universally adopted by the Ticinesi
themselves. They say "waitee" just as we should say "wait," to
stop some one from going away. It is abhorrent to them to end a
word with a consonant, so they have added "ee," but there can be no
doubt about the origin of the word. {5}
When we bear in mind the tendency of any language, if it once
attains a certain predominance, to supplant all others, and when we
look at the map of the world and see the extent now in the hands of
the two English-speaking nations, I think it may be prophesied that
the language in which this book is written will one day be almost
as familiar to the greater number of Ticinesi as their own.
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