I 



MISCELLANEOUS COMMUNICATIONS. 159 



of the range of the Orteler Spits with its snowy glaciers seen from the highest 

 point of the pass, and the glaciers on the Tyrolese side which the traveller, 

 rolling along in his carriage, first looks down upon, and approaches near 

 enough to throw a stone upon them — a prospect which no other Alpine car- 

 riage-road presents in any other part of the world. — Idem. 



Alpine Forests The magnitude and number of the Tyrolese and Sty- 



rian forests forms one of the distinguishing features of those countries, when 

 compared with Switzerland. They cover the middle regions of the Alps, and 

 encroach more than the latter upon the verge of the cultivated fields, which 

 occupy the lower part of the valleys. The character of the forests of the 

 Austrian Alps has been drawn by the masterly pen of the author of Valhek. 

 " There seemed no end to these forests, except where little irregular spots of 

 herbage, grazed by cattle, intervened. Whenever we gained an eminence it 

 was only to discover more ranges of dark wood, variegated with meadows and 

 glittering streams. White Clover and a profusion of sweet-scented flowers 

 clothe their banks ; above waves the Mountain Ash, glowing with scarlet 

 berries ; beyond rise hills, and rocks, and mountains, piled upon one another, 

 and fringed with Fir to their topmost acclivities. Perhaps the Norwegian 

 forests alone equal these m grandeur and extent. Those which cover the 

 Swiss Highlands rarely convey such vast ideas. There the woods climb only 

 half-way up their ascents, which then are circumscribed by snows; here no 

 boundaries are set to their progress, and from their bases to their summits 

 the mountains display rich unbroken masses of vegetation." At first it 

 might appear that these vast store-houses of timber, from their extreme re. 

 moteness and the difficulty of access, would hardly be of an}' value to man, 

 and that the trees would be allowed to ripen and rot, undisturbed by the axe, 

 on the spot where Nature sowed them. This is by no means the case. 

 There are many remote districts of the Austrian Alps where timber is the 

 sole produce, where the people draw their subsistence entirely from the fo- 

 rests ; and human ingenuity has contrived means by which the stately stem 

 of the Tyrolese Larch, which has grown to maturity close to the glaciers of 

 the Orteler Spitz, is transported to the arsenal of Venice or the port of 

 Trieste, while that which has flourished near the fountain-head of the Salza, 

 may be found, in the course of a few months from the time when it has quit- 

 ted its native forests, serving as a mast to some vessel of war or merchandise 

 on the Black Sea. There can be no difficulty in the transport of timber 

 growing on the borders of a navigable river; but it is a different thing when 

 it grows at the distance of many miles from any stream capable of floating a 

 log, or where the streams flow in a direction opposite to that in which the 

 wood is to be carried. The first of these obstacles is overcome by means of 

 slides (called riesenj, which are semicircular troughs formed of six or eight 

 Fir-trees placed side by side, and smoothed by stripping off the bark, and ex- 

 tending sometimes a length of many miles. They are constructed so as to 

 preserve a gradual descent, are not always straight, but made to curve round 

 the shoulders of the mountains, being carried in tunnels through projecting 

 rocks, or conducted over ravines and depressions on the tops of tall stems like 

 the piers of a bridge, until they terminate on the borders of some stream ca- 

 jjable of carrying them onwards. The great slide of Aljjnach was construct- 

 ed in the same manner ; it was, however, a first attempt, and did not sue. 

 ct'e<l. The Austrian forests are every where traversed by these contrivances. 



