1826.] A True Adventure. 277 



my ta!t?. We have often compared notes and feelings in our different 

 journeys through some of the finest scenery in Europe. You were 

 always as enthusiastic for the Pyrenees as I was for the Abruzzi, or the 

 wild sea range of the Garganus. Fortunately there is a variety of beauty 

 in this eldest-born mountain majesty of nature, sufficient to satisfy the 

 tastes, the caprices, or the peculiar bent of individual enthusiasm. The 

 tract of country I am now writing of was certainly eminent in romantic 

 interest, and wonderfully calculated to engender emotions of sublimity 

 and rapturous thought. We had been gradually trending to the north- 

 west, and leaving the higher range of the Engadine, when suddenly our 

 path struck into a narrow rocky defile, at the bottom of which thun- 

 dered the Inn, in deafening echoes, as it bounded over successive falls 

 in pursuit of its regular channel. The continuity of this pass, and the 

 nature of it, if it lessened the general interest of the landscape, con- 

 centrated in itself a depth of scenery, which was of a character to 

 engross the entire soul. Tlie soft blue mountains of Italy were no 

 longer discernible. We had exchanged the green velvet sward of the 

 Engadine for the rocky, toilsome passage of a defile, which as we ad- 

 vanced, seemed to perplex us, in its aspect, its windings, and fearful 

 phantasms. It would seem that we were shut up, as it were, with 

 nature in one of the strong-holds of her birthright, and under the 

 spell of one of her wildest moods. The sun had passed the meridian, 

 and we could only attest his influence in the dim light and swarthy 

 shadow of the perspective before us. The double chain of rocks that 

 form this unique tableau appear never-ending — a perpetuity of deso- 

 lation : abrupt angles succeeding rapidly one the other, and ravine upon 

 ravine, exercising the patience of the traveller, until the restlessness 

 and variety of the scene communicated their feverish impulses to his mind. 

 These guardian boundaries of this glen are of a prodigous height, and 

 in some parts their sides ■so wonderfully smooth and precipitate, that it 

 would seem the polish of human ingenuity, did not their colossal propor- 

 tions at once convince you of how little avail would be the efforts of man, 

 in such a chaos of sublimity. Sometimes rearing their bare points in all 

 the naked majesty of independence ; sometimes studded with the droop- 

 ing larch, imploring mercy of their ruggedness, they impend over the 

 passing pilgrim in a threatening manner, while their peaks almost meet 

 in gigantic fellowship. As we traversed from one side to the other, we 

 crossed bridges, thrown as it were by some magic power over the con- 

 founding and incalculable depth below, where rushed and roared rapidly 

 the dark and stormy Ina, in faint and mournful echo to the astonished 

 ear. It was close to one of these alpine bridges, under which two 

 successive falls swept along to their destination, and at its further ex- 

 tremity where an abrupt elbow of this perplexing labyrinth opened to view 

 the vales of the Grisons, and the distant mountain of the Selvieta, that 

 I observed a rude stone, upon which a short but fearful legend had beea 

 inscribed, but now half effaced. 



" A turban carved in coarsest stone, 

 A pillar with rank weeds o'ergrown — 

 Whereon can now be scarcely read 

 The koran verse that mourns the dead — 

 Point out the spot where Hassan fell, 

 A victim in that lonely dell." 



Giaour. — Lord Bt/ron. 



The confiding victim in this instance, it seems, had been hurled off 



