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LVIII.

1809.

tered vale of the Inn. The inhabitants, like all those of Germanic descent, are brave, impetuous, and honest; tenacious of custom, fearless of danger, addicted to intemperance. But to the south of the range, these rigid features insensibly melt away under the increasing warmth of a more genial climate; maize and wheat are reared with assiduous care in the few level spots which are interspersed among the rocks; walnut and cherry trees next give token of the approach of a milder atmosphere; beech and sweet chestnut succeed to the sable pine in the woody region above; the vine and the mulberry are found in the sheltered bosoms of the valleys; and at length the olive and the pomegranate nestle in the sunny nooks, where, on the margin of the Lake of Guarda, the blasts of winter are averted by a leafy screen of almost perpetual verdure. But if the gifts of nature improve as the traveller descends to the plains of Lombardy, the character of man declines: with the sweet accents of the Italian tongue, the vices of civilisation, the craft of the south, have sensibly spread. The cities are more opulent, the churches more costly, the edifices more sumptuous; but the native virtues of the German population are no longer conspicuous: the love of freedom, the obligation of truth, the sanctity of an oath, are more faintly discerned; iron bars on the windows of the poor, tell but too clearly that the fearless security of general virtue is no longer felt; and the multiplication of criminals and Observation. police, bespeaks at once the vices and necessities of a corrupted society.1*

1 Inglis's Tyrol, ii. 240, 290. Personal

4.

valleys and

Switzerland contains some spacious and fertile plains, and extensive lakes diversify the generally rugged aspect Description of nature; but the Tyrol is a country of mountains, inof the great tersected only by a few long and spacious valleys. Of these, those of the Inn, the Eisach, the Adige, and the Pusterthal, are the most considerable. The first is formed by the river Inn, commencing on the eastern slope of the mountains of Grisons: it extends nearly a hundred miles almost in a straight line in a north-easterly direction,

rivers of the

Tyrol.

*Out of eighty prisoners in Innspruck jail in 1832, fifty-five were from the Italian Tyrol, though its population is only one hundred and sixty-three thousand, while that of the German portion is five hundred and ninety-eight thousand. INGLIS's Tyrol, i. 185; and MALTE BRUN, vii. 550.

CHAP. LVIII.

1809.

and under the successive names of the Engadine, the Upper and the Lower Innthal, extends from Finstermunz on the frontiers of Switzerland, to Kufstein at the opening of the Bavarian plains. It is at first a cold and desolate pastoral glen, gradually opening into a cultivated vale, shut in by pine-clad hills, of savage character; and for the last fifty miles expands into a spacious valley, varying from two to six miles in breadth, whose fertile bottom, perfectly flat, shut in on either side by precipitous mountains seven or eight thousand feet in height, is adorned with numerous villages, churches, and towns, and maintains a dense and industrious population. The valley of the Eisach, formed by the confluence, at Brixen, of the torrents which descend from the snowy summits of the Brenner and the Gross Terner on the one side, and the mountains of the Pusterthal on the other, descends beside an impetuous stream, through the narrow passes and chestnut-clad steeps between Brixen and Bolsano. It is at length lost, at the latter place, in the larger valley of the Adige, which, stretching out to the south in a wide expanse between piles of fir-clad mountains to Brun, vii. Trent and Roveredo, gradually warms under the Italian 511. Persun, till, after passing the frightful gorge of the Italian vation. Chiusa, it opens into the smiling hills and vine-clad slopes of Verona.1*

1 Malte

sonal Obser

rapid.

The valley of the Etch, or Adige, descending from the cold and shivering Alps of Glarus, widens into the 5. Passeyrthal, the original seat of the Counts of Tyrol, still Valley of the containing their venerable castle, and which has been im- Adige and its mortalised as containing the birthplace of Hofer. It is distinguished by an awful rapid, which, more nearly than any thing in Europe, resembles those of the great American rivers, equalling even the fall of Schaffhausen * This noble scene, one of the most striking gorges in the Alps, has been immortalised in the lines of Dante:

"Era lo loco ove a scender la riva,

Venimmo Alpestro, e per quel ch' ivi er' anco
Tal ch'ogni vista ne sarebbe schiva.
Qual è quella ruina che nel fianco
Di qua da Trento, l' Adice percosse
O per tremuoto o per sostegno manco,
Che da cima del monte onde se mosse
Al piano è si la roccia discoscesa,
Ch'alcuna via darebbe a chi su fosse."

DANTE, Inferno, Canto xii. 1-9.

CHAP.

LVIIL

1809.

in sublimity and terror;* after descending this foaming declivity, and forcing its way through stupendous rocks, the Adige joins the vale of the Eisach at Bolsano. These are the principal valleys of Tyrol, but the upper parts of several others belong to the same country; in particular, those of the Drave, the Salza, and the Brenta. The two first, descending from opposite sides of the Gross Glockner, find their way into the open country, through long defiles of matchless beauty: the former, after washing the battlements of Klagenfurth, to the Hungarian plains; the latter, Observation, beneath the towers of Salzburg, to the waters of the Tyrol, i. 289, Danube: while the Brenta, after struggling through the 290. Malte narrow clefts, and romantic peaks of the Val Sugana, emerges in still serenity into the Italian fields under the mouldering walls of Bassano.1

1 Personal

Inglis's

Brun, vii.

511.

6.

With the exception of the Grisons, Switzerland contains few ruined castles. The moral earthquake which Castles of the five centuries ago overthrew the feudal power of Austria Tyrol in the Forest Cantons, cast down in its subsequent shocks the authority of the barons in their simple valleys. But the case is otherwise in the Tyrol. Though enjoying, practically speaking, popular privileges of the most extensive kind, and yielding in no respect to the descendants of Tell in the ardent love of freedom, the Tyrolese have never gone so far as to expel the great proprietors; and though few of them are still resident in the country, the remains of their immense castles constitute one of its most peculiar and characteristic features. In every valley they are to be seen, rising in imposing majesty on wooded heights, perched on crags overhanging the floods, or resting on cliffs to all appearance inaccessible to human approach. The effect of these venerable and mouldering remains, surmounting the beautiful woods, and throwing an air of

*This remarkable rapid, the only one which conveys to a European traveller an idea of this striking feature of Transatlantic scenery, is thus described with graphic power and perfect fidelity by a distinguished traveller now unfortunately no more:-" At this spot the river Adige presents one of the most magnificent spectacles that are to be met with in Europe-a rapid, almost a cataract, nearly a mile in length-one continued sheet of foam, rushing with a deafening noise and resistless force between green pastoral banks more resembling the shores of a gentle lake than of a cataract. There is no fall of water in Switzerland that will bear a comparison with this: it is not, indeed, strictly a cataract, but a waterfall of the most stupendous and imposing kind, more striking, even, than the celebrated falls of Schaffhausen."-INGLIS'S Tyrol, ii. 240. On a miniature scale, the falls of Kilmorag, beyond Inverness, somewhat resemble these sublime rapids.-Personal Observation.

CHAP.
LVIII.

1809.

Gothic interest over the wildest ranges of the mountains, is inexpressibly charming. They go far to compensate the comparative absence of lakes, which alone are wanting to render the scenery of this country the most enchanting in Europe. Almost all these castles have their legends or romantic incidents, many of them connected with the Holy Wars, which are fondly dwelt on by the inhabitants: in several, the weapons and armour of the heroes of the crusades are still preserved; and the traveller, in treading their long-deserted halls, feels himself suddenly transported to the age of Godfrey of Bouillon, or Richard Observation. of England, and all the pomp and interest of chivalrous exploits.1*

1 Personal

7.

Tyrol Proper has few lakes, though the adjoining countries of Styria, Salzburg, and Bavaria, have several. Two most beautiful ones, the Kochel See and Walchen Its lakes. See, adjoin the great road from Munich to Innspruck, and give token to the enraptured traveller of his approach to the mountain region. The first, which much resembles, though on a grander and more perfect scale, Loch Katrine in Scotland, is described by an author who has transferred into romance the hues and colouring of nature:-" From the lake up to the very sky, on three sides stretched the mountains, like Titan steps whereby to scale the heavens, but divided at different angles by intervening valleys, up which was seen the long blue perspective of interminable hills beyond. The first step of that mountain throne, carpeted as if with green velvet by pastures still unembrowned and rich, was covered with sheep and cattle feeding in peace. Beyond that appeared a range clothed with glowing woods of oak, elm, and beech, filled with the more timid and gentle inhabitants of the sylvan world; while above, tenanted by the wolf, the fox, and other beasts of prey, stretched wide the region of the pine and fir; and towering over all, gray, cold, and awful,

The

* Eight-and-twenty colossal bronze statues of princes and paladins of the dark ages, in armour, stand around the tomb of Maximilian I. in the church of Holycross in Innspruck, and the effect of the group is extremely impressive; though hardly equal to that of the simple tomb of Hofer, which it also contains, whose remains were brought there from his grave at Mantua in 1823. castle of Ambras, near Innspruck, formerly contained an unique collection of ancient armour, which, when the author visited it in 1816, was one of the most interesting spectacles in Europe; but the greater part of these precious remains have since been removed to the Imperial museum at Vienna.-See INGLIS'S Tyrol, i. 200, 219; and EUSTACE's Italy, i. 91.

CHAP.
LVIII.

1809.

1 James's Attila, ii.

141.

of the

8.

country.

rose the peaks of primeval granite, with nothing but the proud eagle soaring between them and heaven. Below, the lake, unruffled by a breeze, lay calm and still, offering a mirror to the beauty of the scene, where every line of picturesque loveliness was reflected without a change, and all the varied colouring around, from the rich brown of the autumnal woods to the purple of the distant mountains, and the floods of amber and of rose that evening was pouring along the glowing sky.”1

ניי

In every part of the world, mountainous regions have been the nursery of superstitious feeling. The greatest Superstitions works of man there appear as nothing compared to the magnificence of nature, and the individual is left in solitude, to receive the impressions which the sublime scenery in which he is placed is fitted to produce. Upon minds so circumstanced, the changes of external nature come to be considered as the immediate work of some invisible power. The shadows that fall on the lakes at sunrise are interpreted as the approach of hostile bands; the howl of the wind through the forests is thought to be the lamentations of the dead who are expiating their sins, and the mists that fit over the summit of the mountains seem to be the distant skirts of vast armies, borne on the whirlwind and treading on the storm. The influence of these feelings is strongly felt in the Tyrol; and the savage mountains or ruined castles with which it abounds have become peopled with the phantoms of a romantic superstition. Lights are said to have been often observed at night in towers which have been uninhabited for centuries, and bloody figures distinctly seen to flit through their deserted halls. The armour which still hangs on the walls in many of the greater castles, has been observed to move, and the plumes to wave, when the Tyrolese arms were victorious in war. Groans, they affirm, are still heard in the neighbourhood of the dungeons, where the victims of feudal tyranny were formerly sacrificed; and the cruel baron, who persecuted his people in his savage passion for the chase, is often heard to shriek in the forests of the Unterberg,* and to howl as he flies from the dogs whom he had trained to the scent of human blood.2

2 Barth. Krieg von 1809.

Per

sonal Infor

mation. Gesch. And.

Hofer, 32, 36.

* A romantic mountain, six miles from Salzburg, at the entrance of the beautiful valley of Berchtesgaden.

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