The road crosses the stream of the Medissimo, at the very verge of the precipice, where the little river takes a sheer plunge, of nearly 800 feet high, down into the vale of the Lira, making one of the most truly magnificent cascades in all Switzerland. But you should see it when the stream is well swollen with rains. You command the whole fall from above; you have also the most admirable points of view sideways and half in front, as you wind your way beyond the river down into the Vale, by the rocky zigzags turning and returning upon the scene. It is indescribably beautiful.

If the day itself did not begin to be cloudy and severe, you would have, even thus far up the mountains, a taste of the sweet air of Italy, as well as an experience of its bitter, desolate and dirty inns. Its golden delicious names begin to winnow the air like winged words upon your ear at every step, and from the village of Splugen, with its clattering consonants, and its comfortable, excellent hôtel, you pass to the village of Campo Dolcino, a paradisaical name, a dirty hamlet, and an execrable inn. This was the Post inn, and here we had been promised a new carriage and horses, not being able, on any condition, to persuade our obstinate or faint-hearted young driver from Splugen to carry us in to Chiavenna. The governors of the stable at Campo Dolcino either could not or would not provide us a voiture, whereupon, as we would have ridden a rail rather than stay in this dram-drinking, oath-swearing place over the Sabbath (and it was now Saturday evening) a peasant's hay cart, that stood in a melancholy out-house, was harnessed, the postilions and horses of two carriages that had just arrived on the way to Splugen were appended, and in this sumptuous style we set out for Chiavenna. We came into Italy in the fog and rain, and into Chiavenna upon the vertebræ of a cart, drawn by two horses, with six more fastened behind, and three yellow and red-coated postilions on the seat in front of us, with their brazen music-breaking horns of office slung over their shoulders.

The pass down the valley is the very sublimity of desolation, a chaos of huge blocks of rocks from the surrounding mountains, thrown and piled disorderly from age to age, in squares

and parallelograms, and now covered partially, and richly vailed, with mosses and verdure. The rock is of a kind that reddens in the air after long exposure, so that the colour of the scene is dark and rich, and the many magnificent chestnut trees, with their thick, luxuriant foliage, amidst the precipices, along which the road winds downwards, make the landscape most impressive for its solemnity and beauty. Two or three miles before arriving at Chiavenna, this narrow vale of Lira opens out into an expansive combination of the lovely luxuriance of Italy with the grandeur of Switzerland; glorious mountains broken into picturesque red crags, embosomed in foliage, so that the sun, shining on them with the slant golden light of setting day, turns them into jasper; green vineyards purpled with the luscious ripe grapes; overshadowing chestnuts, leafy figs, pomegranates, mulberries, almonds, and everywhere the record of an inexhaustible life and fertility, in the richest, most consummate vegetation. Here lies, romantically situated, on the river Maira, at the mouth of the Val Bregaglia, under the overawing mountains, the Italian town of Chiavenna.

You drive up to the Inn Conradi, if you come genteelly and properly into the town; but we had to walk as if we had dropped from the clouds, for our roguish postilions were afraid their owners should see them with the peasant's hay-cart, and kindness to them, as well as respect for ourselves, prevented us from insisting that they should parade our queer establishment in the great square, so we got out at a proper distance and threaded our way to the Hôtel, leaving them to follow with our luggage. Hard by the Inn rises a most romantic ruined old castle, on the summit of a grottoed cliff, and a few steps from it are the antique ecclesiastical structures of the town, among which the most singular are a couple of human skeleton-houses, with grated doors, through which you see piled innumerable skulls and cross-bones grinning at you; an order of architecture more antique and solemn than any other in the world. priests are busy with their processions, the bells are ringing, the world is singing, and the whole population, especially of women, seem to be church choristers. The two guardian genii of Italy are perpetually at work around you, Music and Superstition.

The

THE BURIED CITY.

349

CHAPTER LXVII.

THE BURIED TOWN OF PLEURS.

THERE are in Chiavenna about three thousand people. The great interest of the surrounding region is in the beauty of the Valley of Bregaglia, above the town towards the pass of the Maloggia, most grand and beautiful. About an hour's walk brings you to a spot, which was to me one of the most interesting in all my rambles, the spot where the village of Pleurs, with about twenty-five hundred inhabitants, was overwhelmed in the year 1618, by the falling of a mountain. This terrific avalanche

took place in the night, and was so sudden, complete, and overwhelming, that not only every soul perished, but no trace whatever of the village or of any of the remains of the inhabitants could afterwards be discovered. The mountain must have buried the town to the depth of several hundred feet. Though the all-vailing gentleness of nature has covered both the mountain that stood, and that which fell, with luxuriant vegetation, and even a forest of chestnuts has grown amidst the wilderness of the rocks, yet the vastness and the wreck of the avalanche are clearly distinguishable. Enormous angular blocks of rocks are strewn and piled in the wildest confusion possible, some of them being at least sixty feet high. The soil has so accumulated in the space of two hundred years, that on the surface of these ruins there are smooth, grassy fields at intervals, and the chestnuts grow everywhere. A few clusters of miserable hamlets, like Indians' or gipsies' wigwams, are also scattered over the grave of the former village, and there is a forlorn looking chapel that might serve as a convent for banditti. The mountains rise on either side to a great height in most picturesque peaks and outlines, and the valley is filled up with a snowy range at the north.

On this spot I read with great pleasure the Benedicite in the Book of Common Prayer, which my friend lent me. 0 ye mountains and all hills, praise the Lord! There is but one verse

in it inconsistent with the sublimity of the whole, and that is the appeal to Ananias, Azarias, and Misael, which is as if the

bellows of an organ had burst in the middle of an anthem; he that can tell me what it means will have more knowledge than any man I have yet encountered. My friend, though an English Clergyman, could not solve the problem. O Ananias, Azarias, and Misael, praise ye the Lord! Who are, or were, these people, or are they saints or angels, or how came their names in the Benedicite ? The Romish Missal, from which it was doubtless copied, may perhaps tell.

There

On the other side of the Maira, one of the most beautiful cascades in the world was falling from the mountains. are four falls, close upon the foam of one another, two higher up, and two lower down. Seen against the setting sun, nothing could be more beautiful. Always falling, always falling, only beautiful by falling and being lost! Yet not lost, for all streams reach the sea, and so it is an emblem of those acts of faith and self-sacrifice, in which men lose their lives and find them, making as it were a perillous loss, for the kingdom of heaven, which is admired of the world and rewarded in God for ever.

It was a solemn thing to stand upon the tomb of twenty-five hundred beings, all sepulchred alive. No efforts have ever discovered a trace of the inhabitants, not a bone, not a vestige. The mountain that covers them shall be thrown off at the resurrection, but never before. It was the Mount Conto that fell; the half that was left behind still rises abrupt and perpendicular over the mighty grave. It is singular enough that the town was situated itself on the tomb of another village, which had previously been overwhelmed by a similar catastrophe. For that reason it was named Pleurs, The Town of Tears. From the times of old, as often as in Italy one city has been buried, another has been built upon the very same spot, except indeed in the case of Pompeii, so that it is no uncommon thing for the same earth to be leased to the dead and the living.

The Town of Tears was one of the gayest, richest, laughing, pleasure-loving, joyous little cities in the kingdom. It might have been named Tears because it laughed till it cried. It had palaces and villas of rich gentlemen and nobles; for its lovely, romantic situation, and pleasant air, attracted the wealthy fam

retreat.

ilies to spend especially the summer months in so delightful a I wonder that no poet or romance-writer has made this scene the subject of a thrilling story. The day before the lid of their vast sepulchre fell, the people were as happy and secure as those of Pompeii, the night of the Vesuvian eruption and much more innocent. There had been great rains. Vast masses of gravel were loosened from the mountains, and overwhelmed some rich vineyards. The herdsmen came hurrying in to give notice that strange movements had been taking place, with alarming symptoms of some great convulsion; that there were great fissures and rents forming in the mountain, and masses of rock falling, just as the cornice of a building might topple down in fragments, before the whole wall tumbles. The cattle were seized with terror, and probably perceiving the trembling of the ground beneath their feet, fled bellowing from the region.

Nevertheless, there was no dream of what was to follow. The storm cleared brightly away, the sun rose and set on the fourth of September, as a bridegroom; the people lay down securely to rest, or pursued their accustomed festivities into the bosom of the night, with the plans for to-morrrow; but that night the mountain fell and destroyed them all. At midnight a great roar was heard far over the country, and a shock felt as of an earthquake, and then a solemn stillness followed; in the morning a cloud of dust and vapour hung over the valley, and the bed of the Maira was dry. The river had been stopped by the falling of the mountain across its channel, and the town of Pleurs with the village of Celano had disappeared for ever. All the excavations of all the labourers that could be collected, failed to discover a single vestige of the inhabitants or of their dwelling-places. The miners could not reach the cathedral for its gold and jewels, and there they lie at rest, churches and palaces, villas and hovels, priests, peasants, and nobles, where neither gold, nor love, nor superstition, nor piety, can raise them from their graves, or have any power over them.

How many a tale this green and rocky mound doth tell of expectations blasted, of plans suddenly broken, of domestic