Reviews — Edwards' Untrodden Peaks and Valleys. 365 



I. — Untrodben Peaks and Unfrequented Valleys : A Mid- 

 summer Eamble in the Dolomites. By Amelia B. Edwards. 

 8vo. pp. 385. (London : Longmans, Green & Co. 1873.) 



IT is nearly ten years since we drew attention in these pages 

 to this romantic and primitive mountain region of the Tyrol, ^ 

 still, to a great extent, untrodden and unfrequented by the tourist, 

 and where Cook's Excursions are as yet unknown. It is pleasant to 

 find that, in these days of luxurious ease and comfort, ladies can be 

 found equal to the task of roughing it for weeks in a district where 

 there is but one good road, where the inns are not only few and far 

 between, but are often of the humblest kind, where it is impossible 

 to travel in the heart of the country save on foot, or on mule-back ; 

 where telegraphic communication is unknown, and where letters 

 travel slowly and are delivered irregularly. But as a set-off against 

 these discomforts, the author writes: "It is difficult to speak of 

 the people, of the climate, of the scenery, without risk of being 

 thought too partial or too enthusiastic. To say that the arts of ex- 

 tortion are here unknown, — that the old patriarchal notion of hospi- 

 tality still survives, miraculously, in the minds of the inn-keepers, — 

 that it is as natural to the natives of these hills and valleys to be 

 kind, and helpful, and disinterested, as it is natural to the Swiss to 

 be rapacious, — that here one escapes from hackneyed sights, from 

 overcrowded hotels, from the dreary routine of table d'hotes, from 

 the flood of Cook's tourists, — is, after all, but to say that life in the 

 South-eastern Tyrol is yet free from all the discomforts that have of 

 late years made Switzerland unendurable ; and that for those who 

 love sketching and botany, mountain-climbing and mountain air, and 

 who desire when they travel to leave London and Paris behind them, 

 the Dolomites offer a ' playground ' far more attractive than the 

 Alps." 



Till within the last six or eight years — that is to say, till the 

 publication of Ball's Guide to the Eastern Alps in 1868, and the 

 appearance of Messrs. Gilbert and Churchill's joint volume in 1864 — 

 the Dolomite district was scarcely known even by name to any but 

 scientific travellers. Messrs. Sedgwick and Murchison described 

 the Eastern Alps so long ago as 1835,^ and a geologically coloured 

 map and sections have since appeared (1860, 4to.), by the Baron von 

 Eichthofen. Later still the country has been surveyed by the Austrian 

 Geological Survey. 



The district included in Miss Edwards's itinerary occupies that 

 part of the south-eastern Tyrol which lies between Botzen, Bruueck, 



1 See the Geol. Mag., Vol. I., 1864, p. 38. Reviews :-" The Dolomite Moun- 

 tains. Excursions through Tyrol, Carinthia, Carniola, and Friuli in 1861-3." By 

 Josiah Gilbert and G. C. Churchill, F.G.S. 8vo. pp. 576. (London: Longmans, 

 Green & Co. 1864.) 



* " On the Structure of the Eastern Alps, with sections through the Newer Forma- 

 tions on the Northern Flanks of the Chain, and through tlie Tertiary deposits of 

 Styria, etc." Trans. Geol. Soc., 2nd series, vol iii., p. 301, read 1829-30. 



