OLD ALPINE JOTTINGS. 465 



with nothing which affected me so deeply as this 

 morning scene on the Lago Maggiore. 



From Baveno "we crossed the lake to Luino and 

 went thence to Lugano. At Belaggio, which stands 

 at the junction of the two branches of the Lake of 

 Como, we halted a couple of days. Como itself we 

 reached in a small sailing-boat — the sail being supple- 

 mented by oars. There we saw the statue of Volta— 

 a prophet justly honoured in his own country. From 

 Como we went to Milan. The object of greatest interest 

 there is, of course, the cathedral. A climber could not 

 forego the pleasure of getting up among the statues 

 which crowd its roof, and of looking thence towards 

 Monte Rosa. The distribution of the statues magnified 

 the apparent vastness of the pile ; still, the impression 

 made on me by this great edifice was one of disappoint- 

 ment. Its front seemed to illustrate an attempt to 

 cover meagreness of conception by profusion of adorn- 

 ment. The interior, however, notwithstanding the 

 cheat of the ceiling, is exceedingly grand. 



From Milan we went to Orta, where we had a plunge 

 into the lake. We crossed it subsequently and walked 

 on to Varallo : thence by Fobello over a country of noble 

 beauty to Ponte Grande in the Val Ansa sea. Thence 

 again by Macugnaga over the deep snow of the Monte 

 Moro, reaching Matt mark in drenching rain. The temper 

 of the northern slopes did not appear to have improved 

 during our absence. We returned to the Bel Alp, fit- 

 ful triumphs of the sun causing us to hope that we 

 might still have fairplay upon the Aletschhorn. But 

 the day after our arrival snow fell so heavily as to cover 

 the pastures for 2,000 feet below the hotel, introducing 

 a partial famine among the herds. They had eventually 

 to be driven below the snow-line. Avalanches were 

 not unfrequent on slopes which a day or two previously 



