Maiden Voyages (8 page)

This new government road, carried boldly up and through a steep hill-side of pine-forest, is considered—and no doubt with justice—to be an excellent piece of work; but old Holborn Hill with all the paving stones up would have been easy driving compared with it. As yet, indeed, it is not a road, but a rough clearing some twenty feet in width, full of stones and rubble and slags of knotted root, with the lately-felled pine-trunks lying prostrate at each side, like the ranks of slain upon a battlefield. No vehicle, it seems, has yet been brought this way, and though we all alight instantly, it seems doubtful whether the carriage can ever be got up. The horses, half maddened by clouds of gadflies, struggle up the rugged slope, stopping every now and then to plunge and kick furiously. The landau rocks and rolls like a ship at sea. Every moment the road becomes worse, and the blaze of noonday heat more intolerable. Presently we come upon a gang of road-makers some two hundred in number, women and children as well as men, swarming over the banks like ants, clearing, levelling, and stone-breaking. They pause in their work, and stare at us as if we were creatures from another world.

“You are the first travellers who have come up this way,” says the overseer, as we pass by. “You must be Inglese!”

At length we reach a point where the road ceases altogether; its future course being marked off with stakes across a broad plateau of smooth turf. This plateau—a kind of natural arena in the midst of an upper world of pine-forest—is hemmed closely in by trees on three sides, but sinks away on the left into a wooded dell down which a clear stream leaps and sparkles. We look round, seeing no outlet, save by the way we have come, and wondering what next can be done with the carriage. To our amazement, the driver coolly takes the leader by the head and makes straight for the steep pitch dipping down to the torrent.

“You will not attempt to take the carriage down into that hole!” exclaims the writer.

“Con rispetta, Signora, there is no other way,” replies the driver, deferentially.

“But the horses will break their legs, and the carriage will be dashed to pieces!”

“Come lei piace, Signora,” says the driver, dimly recognising the truth of this statement.

We are standing now on the brink of the hollow, the broken bank shelving down to a depth of about thirty feet; the torrent tumbling and splashing at the bottom; and the opposite bank rising almost as abruptly beyond.

“Are we bound to get it across here?” I ask.

“Con rispetta, yes, Signora. That is to say, it can be sent back to Cortina all the way round by Auronzo and Pieve di Cadore. It is as the Signora pleases.”

Now it pleases neither of the Signoras to send the carriage back by a round of something like forty-five miles; so, after a hurried consultation, we decide to have the horses taken out, and the carriage hauled across by men. Giuseppe is thereupon despatched for a reinforcement of navvies; and thus, by the help of some three or four stalwart fellows, the landau is lifted bodily over; the horses are led across and reharnessed; and, after a little more pushing and pulling, a rough cart-track on the other side of this Rubicon is gained in safety.

Yet a few yards farther, and we emerge upon another space of grassy Alp—a green, smooth, sloping amphitheatre of perhaps some eighty acres in extent—to the East all woods; to the West all mountains; with one lonely little white house nestling against the verge of the forest about a quarter of a mile away. This amphitheatre is the Val Buona; that little white house is the cottage of Bastian the wood-ranger; yonder pale gigantic pinnacles towering in solitary splendour above the tree-tops to the rear of the cottage, are the crests of the Cristallo. But above all else, it is the view to the Westward that we have come here to see—the famous “cirque” of the Croda Malcora. And in truth, although we have already beheld much that is wild and wonderful in the world of Dolomite, we have as yet seen nothing that may compare with this.

The green sward slopes away from before our feet and vanishes in a chasm of wooded valley of unknown depth and distance; while beyond and above this valley, reaching away far out of sight to right and left; piled up precipice above precipice, peak above peak; seamed with horizontal bars of snow-drift; upholding here a fold of glittering glacier;
dropping there a thread of misty waterfall; cutting the sky-line with all unimaginable forms of jagged ridge and battlement, and reaching as it seems midway from earth to heaven, runs a vast unbroken chain of giant mountains. But what mountains? Familiar as we have become by this time with the Ampezzo Dolomites, there is not here one outline that either can recognise. Where, then, are we? And what should we see if we could climb yonder mighty barrier?

It takes some minutes’ consideration and the help of the map, to solve these questions. Then, suddenly, all becomes clear. We are behind the Croda Malcora; directly behind Sorapis; and looking straight across in the direction of the Pelmo, which, however, is hidden by intervening mountains. The Antelao should be visible to the left, but is blocked out by the long and lofty range of the Marmarole. Somewhere away to the right, in the gap that separates this great panorama from the nearer masses of the Cristallo, lies the Tre Croce pass leading to Cortina. The main feature of the view, however, is the Croda Malcora; and we are looking at it from the back. Seen on this side, it shows as a sheer wall of impending precipice, too steep and straight to afford any resting places for the snow, save here and there upon a narrow ledge or shelf, scarce wide enough for a chamois. On the Ampezzo side, however, it flings out huge piers of rock, so that the Westward and Eastward faces of it are as unlike as though they belonged to two separate mountains. This form, as I by and by discover, is of frequent occurrence in Dolomite structure; the Civita affording, perhaps, the most remarkable case in point.

Having looked awhile at this wonderful view, we are glad once more to escape out of the blinding sunshine into the shade of the pine-woods. Here, by the help of rugs and cloaks, we make a tent in which to rest for a couple of hours during the great heat of the day; and so, taking luncheon, studying our books and maps, listening to the bees among the wild-flowers and to the thrushes in the rustling boughs overhead, we fancy ourselves in Arcadia, or the Forest of Arden. Meanwhile, the woodman’s axe is busy among the firs on the hillside, and now and then we hear the crash of a falling tree.

The forester who lives in the white cottage yonder comes by and by
to pay his respects to the Signore. His name is Bastian, and he turns out to be a brother of Santo Siorpaes. He also has been a soldier, and is glad now and then, when opportunity offers, to act as guide. He lives in this lost corner of the world the whole year round. It is “molto tristo,” he says; especially in winter. When autumn wanes, he provisions his little house as if for a long siege, laying in store of flour, cheese, sausage, coffee and the like. Then the snow comes, and for months no living soul ventures up from the valleys. All is white and silent, like death. The snow is as high as himself—sometimes higher; and he has to dig a trench about the house, that the light may not be blocked out of the lower windows. There was one winter, he says, not many years ago, when the falls were so sudden and so heavy, that he never went to bed at night without wondering whether he should be buried alive in his cottage before morning.

While he is yet speaking, a band of road-makers comes trooping by, whistling, and laughing, and humming scraps of songs. They are going back to work, having just eaten their mid-day mess of polenta; and their hearts are glad with wine—the rough red wine that Bastian sells at the cottage for about three kreutzers the litro, and which we at luncheon found quite undrinkable.

“The place is full of life now, at all events,” says L., consolingly.

He looks after them, and shakes his head.

“Yes, Signora,” he replies; “but their work here will soon be done, and then it will seem more solitary than ever.”

The man is very like Santo, but has nothing of Santo’s animation. The lonely life seems to have taken all that brightness out of him. His manner is sad and subdued; and when he is not speaking, he has just that sort of lost look that one sees in the faces of prisoners who have been a long time in confinement.

At two o’clock, we break up our camp, and prepare to start again. The polite driver, mindful of a possible buono-mano, comes to take leave, and is succeeded by the lad Giovanni, who has journeyed up from Cortina to meet us with the promised saddle-horses. And now our old friend the tall chesnut appears upon the scene with the Pezzé sidesaddle on his back, followed by an equally big black horse with the
Ghedina saddle; whereupon, having Giuseppe and Giovanni in attendance, we mount and ride away—not without certain shrewd suspicions that our gallant steeds are carrying ladies for the first time. Big as they are, they climb, however, like cats, clambering in a wonderful way up the steep and stony slope of fir-forest that rises behind Bastian’s cottage and leads to the Misurina Alp beyond.

(ca. 1830–1860)

From
THROUGH ALGERIA

A PLEA FOR LADY TOURISTS

In every progressing nation, manners and opinions must necessarily, in the course of years, undergo considerable change. But, no matter how reasonable that change may be, society, in the first instance, denounces it vehemently. History presents a record of follies and errors fondly cherished, and reluctantly abandoned. Still, in any country where mental activity prevails, reason is sure at length to overcome the
vis inertæ
of custom. There, whatever is really rational and right is
certain, in the course of years, to be stamped as such by the fiat of society. In lands where the will of the many exercises despotic sway, humanity remains in a state of stagnation—a dull Dead Sea, without waves or tide. There, the mind, weighted and fettered by the power of prescription, continues from age to age inane, powerless, scarce showing a trace of its Divine origin.

Happily for England, however society may endeavour to maintain its prescriptive laws and traditional opinions, it is obliged to yield in time to the force of that individuality which forms a marked feature of the English character, and to which the nation owes its proud position at the present day. The eccentricity of which the English are accused abroad is, in truth, the mainspring of our national progress. However absurd the form which occasionally it may assume, it is yet an element of character eminently productive, on the whole, of good. Without a high degree of originality, which is but another name for eccentricity—a departure from ordinary rule—no man ever accomplished anything great. Watt, Arkwright, Jenner, Stephenson, were essentially eccentric men.

But whilst it may be freely admitted that masculine eccentricity or originality of character is to be admired, very few will allow that any departure from ordinary rule is approvable, or even justifiable, in a woman. We can applaud our grandmothers for overstepping the conventional proprieties of their day, or we can recognise the right of Chinese and Turkish ladies to go about with uncrippled feet and unveiled faces. But, clearly as we can see the follies of our ancestors, or those of contemporary nations, we cling with unreasoning reverence to every restriction on feminine liberty of action imposed by that society amidst which we live. The actual, taken generally not only as the right, but possible, in every sphere of human action, is more especially so, in all that refers to woman. For her, the dogma, “whatever is, is right,” is held universally as an undeniable axiom; and, acting on this creed, English society at this present day is bringing all its keen weapons of ridicule and sarcasm to bear upon the many rebels to one of its prescriptive laws, which the facilities of modern travel have produced. In bygone days, the rule that no lady should travel without a gentleman by her side, was doubtless rational; but in a period of easy locomotion,
and with abundant evidence to prove that ladies can travel by themselves in foreign countries with perfect safety, the maintenance of that rule certainly savours of injustice. For unquestionable as it is that woman’s sphere, as wife and mother, lies at home, it is surely unreasonable to doom many hundred English ladies, of independent means and without domestic ties, to crush every natural aspiration to see nature in its grandest forms, art in its finest works, and human life in its most interesting phases; such being the practical result of a social law which refuses them the right of travel, save on conditions often wholly unattainable. Under these circumstances, and in a land where unmarried women are free from the degrading vassalage in which they are held in France and in other neighbouring countries, it is no wonder that an unnecessary and onerous restriction should be practically set aside, and that the “unprotected” English lady traveller should have become a familiar sight upon the European continent and in Northern Africa. And if the exploring of foreign lands is not the highest end or the most useful occupation of feminine existence, it is at least more improving, as well as more amusing, than the crochet-work or embroidery with which, at home, so many ladies seek to beguile the tedium of their unoccupied days. Single—for the most part, not from choice but from necessity—the unmarried women of this country are surely entitled to claim the abrogation of a rule, which causelessly forbids their indulgence in not only a harmless, but instructive amusement. Impotent to restrain, it is yet not impotent to wound; and the thought of being exposed to the keen shafts of sarcasm is a rankling thorn in the enjoyment of even the most fearless lady tourist. To convert a now contraband into a legal pleasure, is a boon, which they may reasonably ask, and society as reasonably confer.