but only
those features of the landscape which happen to be of some continual
importance. Of which note, first, that the little three-windowed
building on the left is the remnant of a gallery built to protect the
road, which once went on that side, from the avalanches and stones that
come down the "couloir"[9] in the rock above. It is only a ruin, the
greater part having been by said avalanches swept away, and the old
road, of which a remnant is also seen on the extreme left, abandoned,
and carried now along the hillside on the right, partly sustained on
rough stone arches, and winding down, as seen in the sketch, to a weak
wooden bridge, which enables it to recover its old track past the
gallery. It seems formerly (but since the destruction of the gallery) to
have gone about a mile farther down the river on the right bank, and
then to have been carried across by a longer wooden bridge, of which
only the two abutments are seen in the sketch, the rest having been
swept away by the Ticino, and the new bridge erected near the spectator.

Sec. 10. There is nothing in this scene, taken by itself, particularly
interesting or impressive. The mountains are not elevated, nor
particularly fine in form, and the heaps of stones which encumber the
Ticino present nothing notable to the ordinary eye. But, in reality, the
place is approached through one of the narrowest and most sublime
ravines in the Alps, and after the traveller during the early part of
the day has been familiarized with the aspect of the highest peaks of
the Mont St. Gothard. Hence it speaks quite another language to him
from that in which it would address itself to an unprepared
spectator: the confused stones, which by themselves would be almost
without any claim upon his thoughts, become exponents of the fury of the
river by which he has journeyed all day long; the defile beyond, not in
itself narrow or terrible, is regarded nevertheless with awe, because it
is imagined to resemble the gorge that has just been traversed above;
and, although no very elevated mountains immediately overhang it, the
scene is felt to belong to, and arise in its essential characters out
of, the strength of those mightier mountains in the unseen north.

[Illustration: 20. Pass of Faido. (1st. Simple Topography.)]

Sec. 11. Any topographical delineation of the facts, therefore, must be
wholly incapable of arousing in the mind of the beholder those
sensations which would be caused by th