It Is Always A Pleasure To Me To Feel That I Have Known The Val Leventina Intimately Before The Great Change In It Which The Railway Will Effect, And That I May Hope To See It After The Present Turmoil Is Over.

Our descendants a hundred years hence will not think of the incessant noise as though of cannonading with which we were so familiar.

From nowhere was it more striking than from Calonico, the Monte Piottino having no sooner become silent than the Biaschina would open fire, and sometimes both would be firing at once. Posterity may care to know that another and less agreeable feature of the present time was the quantity of stones that would come flying about in places which one would have thought were out of range. All along the road, for example, between Giornico and Lavorgo, there was incessant blasting going on, and it was surprising to see the height to which stones were sometimes carried. The dwellers in houses near the blasting would cover their roofs with boughs and leaves to soften the fall of the stones. A few people were hurt, but much less damage was done than might have been expected. I may mention for the benefit of English readers that the tunnels through Monte Piottino and the Biaschina are marvels of engineering skill, being both of them spiral; the road describes a complete circle, and descends rapidly all the while, so that the point of egress as one goes from Airolo towards Faido is at a much lower level than that of ingress.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 37 of 279
Words from 9719 to 9981 of 75076