I Took A Trap From Faido To Ambri, And Thence Walked Over To
Quinto; Here The Path Begins To Ascend, And After An Hour Ronco Is
Reached.
There is a house at Ronco where refreshments and
excellent Faido beer can be had.
The old lady who keeps the house
would make a perfect Fate; I saw her sitting at her window
spinning, and looking down over the Ticino valley as though it were
the world and she were spinning its destiny. She had a somewhat
stern expression, thin lips, iron-grey eyes, and an aquiline nose;
her scanty locks straggled from under the handkerchief which she
wore round her head. Her employment and the wistful far-away look
she cast upon the expanse below made a very fine ensemble. "She
would have afforded," as Sir Walter Scott says, "a study for a
Rembrandt, had that celebrated painter existed at the period," {9}
but she must have been a smart-looking handsome girl once.
She brightened up in conversation. I talked about Piora, which I
already knew, and the Lago Tom, the highest of the three lakes.
She said she knew the Lago Tom. I said laughingly, "Oh, I have no
doubt you do. We've had many a good day at the Lago Tom, I know."
She looked down at once.
In spite of her nearly eighty years she was active as a woman of
forty, and altogether she was a very grand old lady. Her house is
scrupulously clean. While I watched her spinning, I thought of
what must so often occur to summer visitors. I mean what sort of a
look-out the old woman must have in winter, when the wind roars and
whistles, and the snow drives down the valley with a fury of which
we in England can have little conception. What a place to see a
snowstorm from! and what a place from which to survey the landscape
next morning after the storm is over and the air is calm and
brilliant. There are such mornings: I saw one once, but I was at
the bottom of the valley and not high up, as at Ronco. Ronco would
take a little sun even in midwinter, but at the bottom of the
valley there is no sun for weeks and weeks together; all is in deep
shadow below, though the upper hillsides may be seen to have the
sun upon them. I walked once on a frosty winter's morning from
Airolo to Giornico, and can call to mind nothing in its way more
beautiful: everything was locked in frost - there was not a
waterwheel but was sheeted and coated with ice: the road was hard
as granite - all was quiet and seen as through a dark but incredibly
transparent medium. Near Piotta I met the whole village dragging a
large tree; there were many men and women dragging at it, but they
had to pull hard and they were silent; as I passed them I thought
what comely, well-begotten people they were. Then, looking up,
there was a sky, cloudless and of the deepest blue, against which
the snow-clad mountains stood out splendidly. No one will regret a
walk in these valleys during the depth of winter. But I should
have liked to have looked down from the sun into the sunlessness,
as the old Fate woman at Ronco can do when she sits in winter at
her window; or again, I should like to see how things would look
from this same window on a leaden morning in midwinter after snow
has fallen heavily and the sky is murky and much darker than the
earth. When the storm is at its height, the snow must search and
search and search even through the double windows with which the
houses are protected. It must rest upon the frames of the pictures
of saints, and of the sister's "grab," and of the last hours of
Count Ugolino, which adorn the walls of the parlour. No wonder
there is a S. Maria della Neve - a "St. Mary of the Snow"; but I do
wonder that she has not been painted.
From Ronco the path keeps level and then descends a little so as to
cross the stream that comes down from Piora. This is near the
village of Altanca, the church of which looks remarkably well from
here. Then there is an hour and a half's rapid ascent, and at last
all on a sudden one finds one's self on the Lago Ritom, close to
the hotel.
The lake is about a mile, or a mile and a half, long, and half a
mile broad. It is 6000 feet above the sea, very deep at the lower
end, and does not freeze where the stream issues from it, so that
the magnificent trout in the, lake can get air and live through the
winter. In many other lakes, as for example the Lago di Tremorgio,
they cannot do this, and hence perish, though the lakes have been
repeatedly stocked. The trout in the Lago Ritom are said to be the
finest in the world, and certainly I know none so fine myself.
They grow to be as large as moderate-sized salmon, and have a deep
red flesh, very firm and full of flavour. I had two cutlets off
one for breakfast and should have said they were salmon unless I
had known otherwise. In winter, when the lake is frozen over, the
people bring their hay from the farther Lake of Cadagno in sledges
across the Lake Ritom. Here, again, winter must be worth seeing,
but on a rough snowy day Piora must be an awful place. There are a
few stunted pines near the hotel, but the hillsides are for the
most part bare and green. Piora in fact is a fine breezy open
upland valley of singular beauty, and with a sweet atmosphere of
cow about it; it is rich in rhododendrons, and all manner of Alpine
flowers, just a trifle bleak, but as bracing as the Engadine
itself.
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