y, grim, declining slowly
northward, with wind-lashed lakes and glaciers sprawling from
storm-broken pyramids of gneiss. Below spread the unfathomable depths
that lead to Lombardy, flooded with sunlight, filled with swirling
vapour, but never wholly hidden from our sight. For the blast kept
shifting the cloud-masses, and the sun streamed through in spears and
bands of sheeny rays. Over the parapet our horses dropped, down through
sable spruce and amber larch, down between tangles of rowan and autumnal
underwood. Ever as we sank, the mountains rose--those sharp embattled
precipices, toppling spires, impendent chasms blurred with mist, that
make the entrance into Italy sublime. Nowhere do the Alps exhibit their
full stature, their commanding puissance, with such majesty as in the
gates of Italy; and of all those gates I think there is none to compare
with Maloja, none certainly to rival it in abruptness of initiation into
the Italian secret. Below Vico Soprano we pass already into the violets
and blues of Titian's landscape. Then come the purple boulders among
chestnut trees; then the double dolomite-like peak of Pitz Badin and
Promontogno.

It is sad that words can do even less than painting could to bring this
window-scene at Promontogno before another eye. The casement just frames
it. In the foreground are meadow slopes, thinly, capriciously planted
with chestnut trees and walnuts, each standing with its shadow cast upon
the sward. A little farther falls the torrent, foaming down between
black jaws of rain-stained granite, with the wooden buildings of a
rustic mill set on a ledge of rock. Suddenly above this landscape soars
the valley, clothing its steep sides on either hand with pines; and
there are emerald isles of pasture on the wooded flanks; and then
cliffs, where the red-stemmed larches glow; and at the summit, shooting
into ether with a swathe of mist around their basement, soar the double
peaks, the one a pyramid, the other a bold broken crystal not unlike the
Finsteraarhorn seen from Furka. These are connected by a snowy saddle,
and snow is lying on their inaccessible crags in powdery drifts.
Sunlight pours between them into the ravine. The green and golden
forests now join from either side, and now recede, according as the
sinuous valley brings their lines together or disparts them. There is a
sound of cow-bells on the meadows; and the roar of the stream is dulled
or quickened as the gusts of this October win