ight has come and gone at Muehlen. The
stream still leads us up, diminishing in volume as we rise, up through
the fleecy mists that roll asunder for the sun, disclosing far-off snowy
ridges and blocks of granite mountains. The lifeless, soundless waste of
rock, where only thin winds whistle out of silence and fade suddenly
into still air, is passed. Then comes the descent, with its forests of
larch and cembra, golden and dark green upon a ground of grey, and in
front the serried shafts of the Bernina, and here and there a glimpse of
emerald lake at turnings of the road. Autumn is the season for this
landscape. Through the fading of innumerable leaflets, the yellowing of
larches, and something vaporous in the low sun, it gains a colour not
unlike that of the lands we seek. By the side of the lake at Silvaplana
the light was strong and warm, but mellow. Pearly clouds hung over the
Maloja, and floating overhead cast shadows on the opaque water, which
may literally be compared to chrysoprase. The breadth of golden, brown,
and russet tints upon the valley at this moment adds softness to its
lines of level strength. Devotees of the Engadine contend that it
possesses an austere charm beyond the common beauty of Swiss landscape;
but this charm is only perfected in autumn. The fresh snow on the
heights that guard it helps. And then there are the forests of dark
pines upon those many knolls and undulating mountain-flanks beside the
lakes. Sitting and dreaming there in noonday sun, I kept repeating to
myself _Italiam petimus!_

A hurricane blew upward from the pass as we left Silvaplana, ruffling
the lake with gusts of the Italian wind. By Silz Maria we came in sight
of a dozen Italian workmen, arm linked in arm in two rows, tramping in
rhythmic stride, and singing as they went. Two of them were such
nobly-built young men, that for a moment the beauty of the landscape
faded from my sight, and I was saddened. They moved to their singing,
like some of Mason's or Frederick Walker's figures, with the free grace
of living statues, and laughed as we drove by. And yet, with all their
beauty, industry, sobriety, intelligence, these Italians of the northern
valleys serve the sterner people of the Grisons like negroes, doing
their roughest work at scanty wages.

So we came to the vast Alpine wall, and stood on a bare granite slab,
and looked over into Italy, as men might lean from the battlements of a
fortress. Behind lies the Alpine valle