hese Alps from Marius, and that they
had dwelt for a long time in the hollows and caves of the mountains,
living and burying their dead in the same secret places. At what time
they had been converted to Christianity he could not tell; they
had, up to the beginning of the present century, had little or no
intercourse with the Italian population by which they were surrounded
on all sides. Formerly, they did not intermarry with that race, and it
was seldom that any Cimbrian knew its language. But now intermarriage
is very frequent; both Italian and Cimbrian are spoken in nearly all
the families, and the Cimbrian is gradually falling into disuse. They
still, however, have books of religious instruction in their ancient
dialect, and until very lately the services of their church were
performed in Cimbrian.

I begged the Capo to show us some of their books and he brought us
two,--one a catechism for children, entitled "Dar Kloane Catechism
vor z' Beloseland vortraghet in z' gaprecht von siben Komuenen, un vier
Halghe Gasang. 1842. Padova." The other book it grieved me to see, for
it proved that I was not the only one tempted in recent times to
visit these ancient people, ambitious to bear to them the relation of
discoverer, as it were. A High-Dutch Columbus, from Vienna, had been
before me, and I could only come in for Amerigo Vespucci's tempered
glory. This German savant had dwelt a week in these lonely places,
patiently compiling a dictionary of their tongue, which, when it was
printed, he had sent to the Capo. I am magnanimous enough to give
the name of his book, that the curious may buy it if they like. It
is called "Johann Andreas Schweller's Cimbrisches Woerterbuch. Joseph
Bergman. Vienna, 1855."

Concerning the present Cimbri, the Capo said that in his community
they were chiefly hunters, wood-cutters, and charcoal-burners, and
that they practiced their primitive crafts in those gloomier and
wilder heights we saw to the northward, and descended to the towns
of the plain to make sale of their fagots, charcoal, and wild-beast
skins. In Asiago and the larger communities they were farmers and
tradesmen like the Italians; and the Capo believed that the Cimbri, in
all their villages, numbered near ten thousand. He could tell me of
no particular customs or usages, and believed they did not differ from
the Italians now except in race and language. [The English traveller
Rose, who (to my further discomfiture, I find) visited