After A While A Gate Is Reached, And An Open Upland Valley Is Entered Upon - Evidently An Old Lake Filled Up, And Neither Very Broad Nor Very Long, But Grassed All Over, And With The River Winding Through It Like An English Brook.

This is the valley of Sambucco.

There are two collections of stalle for the cattle, or monti - one at the nearer end and the other at the farther.

The floor of the valley can hardly be less than 5000 feet above the sea. I shall never forget the pleasure with which I first came upon it. I had long wanted an ideal upland valley; as a general rule high valleys are too narrow, and have little or no level ground. If they have any at all there often is too much as with the one where Andermatt and Hospenthal are - which would in some respects do very well - and too much cultivated, and do not show their height. An upland valley should first of all be in an Italian-speaking country; then it should have a smooth, grassy, perfectly level floor of say neither much more nor less than a hundred and fifty yards in breadth and half-a-mile in length. A small river should go babbling through it with occasional smooth parts, so as to take the reflections of the surrounding mountains. It should have three or four fine larches or pines scattered about it here and there, but not more. It should be completely land- locked, and there should be nothing in the way of human handiwork save a few chalets, or a small chapel and a bridge, but no tilled land whatever.

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