Italian Alps1875 - 385 pages |
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Common terms and phrases
Adamello Agordo Alpine Club Alpine Guide Alps amongst ascent bank basin beauty Bernina Bignasco Bocca boulders Brenta group Campiglio Carè Alto châlets chestnut Cima Tosa cliffs climb climbers colour crags crest crossed deep descend Disgrazia dolomite easy Engadine feet foot forest Forno François glacier glen gorge granite green head of Val high-road highest hills hillside Italian Lago lake landscape leads Livigno looked lower Maggia meadows miles Molveno Monte mountain Orteler Paneveggio pass Passo pasturages path peak Pelmo pines Pinzolo Ponte di Legno Presanella Primiero range reached ridge road rocks round route San Martino Sarca Sasso scarcely scenery seemed seen side slopes snow steep stream summit Swiss torrent towers track traveller upper Val Brembana Val Camonica Val di Genova Val di Sole Val di Zoldo Val Maggia Val Masino Val Rendena Val Tellina valley village woods zigzags Zoldo
Popular passages
Page 1 - HAPPY is England ! I could be content To see no other verdure than its own : To feel no other breezes than are blown Through its tall woods with high romances blent ; Yet do I sometimes feel a languishment For skies Italian, and an inward groan To sit upon an Alp as on a throne, And half forget what world or worldling meant.
Page 240 - The mighty pyramids of stone That wedge-like cleave the desert airs, When nearer seen, and better known, Are but gigantic flights of stairs.
Page 133 - Crudities. Hastily gobled up in five Moneths travells in France, Savoy, Italy, Rhetia, commonly called the Grisons country, Helvetia, alias Switzerland, some parts of high Germany, and the Netherlands ; Newly digested in the hungry aire of Odcombe in the County of Somerset, and now dispersed to the nourishment of the travelling Members of this Kingdome &c.
Page 312 - ... feet. Thus, if the water of the ocean could be suddenly drained away, we should see the atolls rising from the sea-bed like vast truncated cones, and resembling so many volcanic craters, except that their sides would be steeper than those of an ordinary volcano. In the case of the encircling reefs, the cone, with the enclosed island, would look like Vesuvius with Monte Nuovo within the old crater of Somma; while, finally, the island with a fringing reef would have the appearance of an ordinary...
Page 59 - Round their golden houses, girdled with the gleaming world : Where they smile in secret, looking over wasted lands, Blight and famine, plague and earthquake, roaring deeps and fiery sands...
Page 8 - The strength of granite is clothed in the grace of southern foliage, in a rich man tle of chestnuts and beeches, fringed with maize and vines, and embroidered about the skirts with delicate traceries of ferns and cyclamen. Nature seems here to have hit the mark she so often misses — to speak boldly but truly — in her higher efforts...
Page 12 - The beds are clean, fish and fowl the neighbourhood supplies, and a few hours' notice will collect ample provisions for the carnivorous climber. But it is time for us to leave Bignasco and follow the road up the main valley. For four or five miles we mount through a picturesque ravine, where the mountains rise in rugged walls tier above tier overhead. Yet every cranny is filled with glossy foliage, and the intervening ledges are no monstrous deformities, only fit to be ' left to slope,' but each...
Page 10 - ... sensible to the charms of the spot where the waters of Val Bavona and the main valley meet. The cottages which contain the greater part of the population of Bignasco are, indeed, clustered closely under the southern hillside. But on the promontory between the Maggia and the Bavona, each crossed just above the junction by a bold arch, stands a suburb of what would be described by an auctioneer as ' detached villas,' houses gay with painted shutters and arched loggias, where grapes cluster and...
Page 7 - Little tracks wandering in alternate ' forthrights and meanders' .from one haybarn to another, lead at last to a white chapel placed on a conspicuous brow. By its side stands an older and humbler edifice. The gates of both are bolted, but the bolt is only held fast by a withered nosegay, and it is easy to make an entrance into the smaller chapel and examine its frescoes. They have been atrociously daubed over ; but the pattern of the child's dress in the central picture, and a certain strength in...
Page 6 - I cannot refrain, useless as the effort may be, from at least cataloguing some of tho details which make part of this noble landscape. The waters at our feet are transparent depths of a colour, half sapphire and half emerald, indescribable, and the moment the eye is taken away inconceivable, so that every glance becomes a fresh surprise. In the foreground on either bank of the stream are frescoed walls and mossy house-roofs ; beyond is a well with two pillars, and a heavily laden peach orchard lit...