The Dolomites
A Too familiar picture by Macwhirter has given even the masses an idea of an Alpine country which they knew as the Austrian Tyrol ; Meredith too had loved it, and visions of its rosy pears and illumined vapour arise in his letters, and add exhilaration to the picture of Carinthia in " The Amazing Marriage."
The Dolomites is a region marked by lovely valley and meadows over which piers of porphyry, which turn to violet and rose in the sunset, rise in jagged clusters. In the morning, the glowing crystals of high rock glitter through the blue veil of intervening air. Carved with good motoring roads, it 'Is still especially a land for walkers and for climbers, and the Deutsch Osterreicher -Alpenverein have mapped it excellently and planted shelters with beds, food and wine among its less accessible heights. The pass of Molignon at 11,000 feet in the heart of the Rosengarten is but a tracked walk between these excellent shelters, the largest of which on the summit of the Schlern enjoys the finest view of the whole region and is at a height of 8,000 feet, with rooms for climbers. Such a track lures one through the heart of rocky mountains out of sight of anything but jagged stone. The valleys are lovelier. The traveller begins his journey while the dew still shines and the mountains are vague through the blue air ; he climbs into the heights to breathe its rareness ; he leaves the fields of yellow pansies, of blue forget-me-nots and salvia, the moors glistening tawny and silver, between the gold of buttercups. He passes the saxifrage and the scabious, the yellow globes of the ranunculus, the tiger lily, until at last beneath the smaller pines he finds himself with edelweiss and the high Alpine flowers. The blue gentians and the poppy may still be above him. At such a height at Ciampedie, on the Seiser Alp over the Rolle pass between Paneveggio and San Martino di Castrozza, up at Falsarego, at Corvara di Badia, or on Pordoi,. he well may wait for the transfiguring hour when Europe's best scenery is best, changing from glow to gloom with a succession of the richest hues which lead the twilights in and out. From the shadowy valley to the rosy heights, from the pass and upland pastures with the tinkle of the cowbells, over depth and height, and from illumined cloud to flowery mead, the traveller gazes enraptured. But bracing too are the joys of the full morning ; when climbing he looks with a more intimate exactness at the stains of red upon the stony sides of the mountain ; and the masses of vapour that gently move over the jagged crystals of the mountains, and the blue heights of air that rise over the feathery branches of the larches beneath the shining sky. Sparkling and light are the waters of its springs which are grateful. For it is a land of exercise and thirst. Names were never, lovelier than in this land of pears and flowers. Its centres are Bolzano and Cortina d'Ampezzo, and it is reached from Venice, the city of shimmering summer, in a few hours by train or road. Fiera di Primiero is the secret glory of its valleys, unspoilt yet by the wealth and cosmopolitanism of the English-speaking peoples, but mighty hotels arise at the Karersee, where an emerald lake mirrors the porphyry crags, at Canazei, at Cortina d'Ampezzo. To the Pragser Wildsee, to Schlfiderbach beneath the Tre Cime di Lavaredo, to the Val Cordevole the crowd has not yet come madding, and from Pieve di Livinalongo up to the Col di Lana, or following the leaping stream down towards Caprite and Civetta and Pelmo, beauty, though accessible still, has the distinction of remoteness, even where the inns cluster round the limpid Lago d'Alleghe, among mountains not only mag- nificent but magical, first among them Marmolata, Pelmo and Civetta. Such are the beauties of the Val Cordevole be- tween Arabba and Agordo. But more unspoilt is the valley which leads from the Cimone della Pala, rising to one vast and awful fang, like the Matterhorn from Saasfee, down past Paneveggio and Bellamonte to the Val ai Fassa at Predazzo.
By Innsbriick, or Verona, or the Engadine, these Elysian meadows of the Eastern Alps may be reached direct from Britain. The better approach is, as we have, suggested, from the splendours of Venice, after a week of bathing at the Lido or Alberoni. A day and night in the train will take one either to the Middle Rhine or to the MiddleDanube, to Coblenz
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