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.
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.
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