CHAPTER II. 



THE GERMAN ALPS. 

 (Tyrol and Voraklbeug, Salzburg, Carinthia, and Styria.) 



HE German Alps do not yield in beauty to those of Switzerland, and 

 the mountain masses are little inferior in height and majesty 

 to those of the Oberland or of Monte Eosa. Beyond the High 

 Tauern, however, which rises on the boundary between the Tyrol 

 and Salzburg, none pierce the zone of perennial snow, and the valleys 

 are not filled with rivers of ice. The Great Glockner rises like a bleached citadel 

 at the extremity of the Great Alps. Beyond it the character of the mountains 

 undergoes a striking change. They no longer rise in separate masses, but form 

 divergent chains separated by deep valleys. Like a fan, these ramifications 

 extend toward the plains of Austria and Hungary, and into the Balkan penin- 

 sula. But in proportion as the mountain system increases in width, so do its 

 summits decrease in height, until all semblance to the domes and pyramids of 

 Switzerland disappears. 



The highest masses of the Austrian Alps are separated by enormous gaps, a 

 very rare feature in the orographical structure of a continent. One of these gaps 

 connects the valley of the Inn with that of the Adige. The small Reschen Lake, 

 which gives birth to the latter river, occupies the watershed. The slope of the 

 valley of the Adige is very inconsiderable, and when crossing the Malser Heide 

 (" heath " above the village of Mais, where the people fought their battle of 

 Morgarten in 1499) we might almost fancy ourselves in a plain, if it were not for 

 the snowy summits rising on either side of us. 



Another gap joins the valleys of the two rivers farther to the east, and 

 through it runs the route of the Brenner, the lowest of all the passes which cross 

 the Great Alps. This depression, or gap, is joined on the east by another even 

 more considerable, which connects the Rienz, a tributary of the Adige, with the 

 Sau, or Save, a tributary of the Danube. The watershed between these two 

 rivers is so feebly indicated that their upper valleys are designated by one name 

 as the Pusterthal. These two great gaps, viz. those formed by the Brenner and 

 the Pusterthal, are of vital importance, as facihtating communications in the 

 Austrian Alps. 



