FROM BAVENO TO THE RHONE GLACIER 23 



when the colder northern valleys are overhung with 

 impenetrable mist. In four hours you can pass now from 

 the Lake of Geneva through the hot Simplon Tunnel to 

 the Lago Maggiore. So, hungering for sunshine, we 

 packed, and ran in the ever-ready train through to 

 Baveno. Thirty years ago we should have had to drive 

 over the Simplon — a beautiful drive, it is true — but we 

 should have taken sixteen hours in actually travelling 

 from Montreux, and have had to pass a night en route at 

 Brieg I A treacherous gleam of sunshine lasting half an 

 hour welcomed us on emerging from the Simplon tunnel, 

 and then for eight days the same leaden aspect of sky, 

 mountain, and lake as that which we had left in 

 Switzerland was maintained. Even this could not spoil 

 altogether the beauty and interest of the fine old garden 

 of the Borromeo family on the Isola Bella. Really big 

 cypress trees, magnificent specimens of the Weymouth 

 pine — the white pine of the United States, Pinus strobus, 

 first brought from the St. Lawrence in 1705, and planted 

 in Wiltshire by Lord Weymouth — a splendid camphor 

 tree, strange varieties of the hydrangea, and many other 

 old-fashioned shrubs adorn the quaint and well-designed 

 terraces of that seat of ancient peace. The granite 

 quarries close behind Baveno, and the cutting and 

 chiselling of the granite by a population of some 2000 

 quarrymen and stonemasons, were not deprived of their 

 human interest by rain and skies more grey than the 

 granite itself. But, at last, we gave up Italy in despair, 

 retreated through the tunnel one morning, and an hour 

 after mid-day were careering in a carriage along the- 

 Rhone Valley — with jingling of bells and much cracking 

 of a harmless whip — upwards on a drive of seven hours 

 to the Rhone glacier, to the hotel called " Gletsch," staking 

 all on the last chance of a change in the weather. 



We passed the enclosed meadow near Brieg, whence 



