The First Night I Was Ever In Piora There Was A Brilliant Moon, And
The Unruffled Surface Of The Lake Took The Reflection Of The
Mountains.
I could see the cattle a mile off, and hear the
tinkling of their bells which danced multitudinously before the ear
as fireflies come and go before the eyes; for all through a fine
summer's night the cattle will feed as though it were day.
A
little above the lake I came upon a man in a cave before a furnace,
burning lime, and he sat looking into the fire with his back to the
moonlight. He was a quiet moody man, and I am afraid I bored him,
for I could get hardly anything out of him but "Oh altro" - polite
but not communicative. So after a while I left him with his face
burnished as with gold from the fire, and his back silver with the
moonbeams; behind him were the pastures and the reflections in the
lake and the mountains; and the distant cowbells were ringing.
Then I wandered on till I came to the chapel of S. Carlo; and in a
few minutes found myself on the Lago di Cadagno. Here I heard that
there were people, and the people were not so much asleep as the
simple peasantry of these upland valleys are expected to be by nine
o'clock in the evening. For now was the time when they had moved
up from Ronco, Altanca, and other villages in some numbers to cut
the hay, and were living for a fortnight or three weeks in the
chalets upon the Lago di Cadagno. As I have said, there is a
chapel, but I doubt whether it is attended during this season with
the regularity with which the parish churches of Ronco, Altanca,
&c., are attended during the rest of the year. The young people, I
am sure, like these annual visits to the high places, and will be
hardly weaned from them. Happily the hay will be always there, and
will have to be cut by some one, and the old people will send the
young ones.
As I was thinking of these things, I found myself going off into a
doze, and thought the burnished man from the furnace came up and
sat beside me, and laid his hand upon my shoulder. Then I saw the
green slopes that rise all round the lake were much higher than I
had thought; they went up thousands of feet, and there were pine
forests upon them, while two large glaciers came down in streams
that ended in a precipice of ice, falling sheer into the lake. The
edges of the mountains against the sky were rugged and full of
clefts, through which I saw thick clouds of dust being blown by the
wind as though from the other side of the mountains.
And as I looked, I saw that this was not dust, but people coming in
crowds from the other side, but so small as to be visible at first
only as dust. And the people became musicians, and the mountainous
amphitheatre a huge orchestra, and the glaciers were two noble
armies of women-singers in white robes, ranged tier above tier
behind each other, and the pines became orchestral players, while
the thick dust-like cloud of chorus-singers kept pouring in through
the clefts in the precipices in inconceivable numbers. When I
turned my telescope upon them I saw they were crowded up to the
extreme edge of the mountains, so that I could see underneath the
soles of their boots as their legs dangled in the air. In the
midst of all, a precipice that rose from out of the glaciers shaped
itself suddenly into an organ, and there was one whose face I well
knew sitting at the keyboard, smiling and pluming himself like a
bird as he thundered forth a giant fugue by way of overture. I
heard the great pedal notes in the bass stalk majestically up and
down, like the rays of the Aurora that go about upon the face of
the heavens off the coast of Labrador. Then presently the people
rose and sang the chorus "Venus laughing from the skies;" but ere
the sound had well died away, I awoke, and all was changed; a light
fleecy cloud had filled the whole basin, but I still thought I
heard a sound of music, and a scampering-off of great crowds from
the part where the precipices should be. The music went thus:-
{10}
[At this point in the book a music score is given]
By and by the cantering, galloping movement became a trotting one,
thus:-
[At this point in the book a music score is given]
After that I heard no more but a little singing from the chalets,
and turned homewards. When I got to the chapel of S. Carlo, I was
in the moonlight again, and when near the hotel, I passed the man
at the mouth of the furnace with the moon still gleaming upon his
back, and the fire upon his face, and he was very grave and quiet.
Next morning I went along the lake till I came to a good-sized
streamlet on the north side. If this is followed for half-an-hour
or so - and the walk is a very good one - Lake Tom is reached, about
7500 feet above the sea. The lake is not large, and there are not
so many chalets as at Cadagno; still there are some. The view of
the mountain tops on the other side the Ticino valley, as seen from
across the lake, is very fine. I tried to sketch, but was fairly
driven back by a cloud of black gnats. The ridges immediately at
the back of the lake, and no great height above it, are the main
dividing line of the watershed; so are those that rise from the
Lago di Cadagno; in fact, about 600 feet above this lake is the top
of a pass which goes through the Piano dei Porci, and leads down to
S. Maria Maggiore, on the German side of the Lukmanier.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 17 of 74
Words from 16345 to 17378
of 75076
