The Innocents Abroad

Chapter 20

We left Milan by rail. The Cathedral six or seven miles behind us; vast,

dreamy, bluish, snow-clad mountains twenty miles in front of us,--these

were the accented points in the scenery. The more immediate scenery

consisted of fields and farm-houses outside the car and a monster-headed

dwarf and a moustached woman inside it. These latter were not

show-people. Alas, deformity and female beards are too common in Italy

to attract attention.

We passed through a range of wild, picturesque hills, steep, wooded,

cone-shaped, with rugged crags projecting here and there, and with

dwellings and ruinous castles perched away up toward the drifting clouds.

We lunched at the curious old town of Como, at the foot of the lake, and

then took the small steamer and had an afternoon's pleasure excursion to

this place,--Bellaggio.

When we walked ashore, a party of policemen (people whose c****d hats and

showy uniforms would shame the finest uniform in the military service of

the United States,) put us into a little stone cell and locked us in. We

had the whole passenger list for company, but their room would have been

preferable, for there was no light, there were no windows, no

ventilation. It was close and hot. We were much crowded. It was the

Black Hole of Calcutta on a small scale. Presently a smoke rose about

our feet--a smoke that smelled of all the dead things of earth, of all

the putrefaction and corruption imaginable.

We were there five minutes, and when we got out it was hard to tell which

of us carried the vilest fragrance.

These miserable outcasts called that "fumigating" us, and the term was a

tame one indeed. They fumigated us to guard themselves against the

cholera, though we hailed from no infected port. We had left the cholera

far behind us all the time. However, they must keep epidemics away

somehow or other, and fumigation is cheaper than soap. They must either

wash themselves or fumigate other people. Some of the lower classes had

rather die than wash, but the fumigation of strangers causes them no

pangs. They need no fumigation themselves. Their habits make it

unnecessary. They carry their preventive with them; they sweat and

fumigate all the day long. I trust I am a humble and a consistent

Christian. I try to do what is right. I know it is my duty to "pray for

them that despitefully use me;" and therefore, hard as it is, I shall

still try to pray for these fumigating, maccaroni-stuffing

organ-grinders.

Our hotel sits at the water's edge--at least its front garden does--and

we walk among the shrubbery and smoke at twilight; we look afar off at

Switzerland and the Alps, and feel an indolent willingness to look no

closer; we go down the steps and swim in the lake; we take a shapely

little boat and sail abroad among the reflections of the stars; lie on

the thwarts and listen to the distant laughter, the singing, the soft

melody of flutes and guitars that comes floating across the water from

pleasuring gondolas; we close the evening with exasperating billiards on

one of those same old execrable tables. A midnight luncheon in our ample

bed-chamber; a final smoke in its contracted veranda facing the water,

the gardens, and the mountains; a summing up of the day's events. Then

to bed, with drowsy brains harassed with a mad panorama that mixes up

pictures of France, of Italy, of the ship, of the ocean, of home, in

grotesque and bewildering disorder. Then a melting away of familiar

faces, of cities, and of tossing waves, into a great calm of

forgetfulness and peace.

After which, the nightmare.

Breakfast in the morning, and then the lake.

I did not like it yesterday. I thought Lake Tahoe was much finer.

I have to confess now, however, that my judgment erred somewhat, though

not extravagantly. I always had an idea that Como was a vast basin of

water, like Tahoe, shut in by great mountains. Well, the border of huge

mountains is here, but the lake itself is not a basin. It is as crooked

as any brook, and only from one-quarter to two-thirds as wide as the

Mississippi. There is not a yard of low ground on either side of it

--nothing but endless chains of mountains that spring abruptly from the

water's edge and tower to altitudes varying from a thousand to two

thousand feet. Their craggy sides are clothed with vegetation, and white

specks of houses peep out from the luxuriant foliage everywhere; they are

even perched upon jutting and picturesque pinnacles a thousand feet above

your head.

Again, for miles along the shores, handsome country seats, surrounded by

gardens and groves, sit fairly in the water, sometimes in nooks carved by

Nature out of the vine-hung precipices, and with no ingress or egress

save by boats. Some have great broad stone staircases leading down to

the water, with heavy stone balustrades ornamented with statuary and

fancifully adorned with creeping vines and bright-colored flowers--for

all the world like a drop curtain in a theatre, and lacking nothing but

long-waisted, high-heeled women and plumed gallants in silken tights

coming down to go serenading in the splendid gondola in waiting.

A great feature of Como's attractiveness is the multitude of pretty

houses and gardens that cluster upon its shores and on its mountain

sides. They look so snug and so homelike, and at eventide when every

thing seems to slumber, and the music of the vesper bells comes stealing

over the water, one almost believes that nowhere else than on the lake of

Como can there be found such a paradise of tranquil repose.

From my window here in Bellaggio, I have a view of the other side of the

lake now, which is as beautiful as a picture. A scarred and wrinkled

precipice rises to a height of eighteen hundred feet; on a tiny bench

half way up its vast wall, sits a little snowflake of a church, no bigger

than a martin-box, apparently; skirting the base of the cliff are a

hundred orange groves and gardens, flecked with glimpses of the white

dwellings that are buried in them; in front, three or four gondolas lie

idle upon the water--and in the burnished mirror of the lake, mountain,

chapel, houses, groves and boats are counterfeited so brightly and so

clearly that one scarce knows where the reality leaves off and the

reflection begins!

The surroundings of this picture are fine. A mile away, a grove-plumed

promontory juts far into the lake and glasses its palace in the blue

depths; in midstream a boat is cutting the shining surface and leaving a

long track behind, like a ray of light; the mountains beyond are veiled

in a dreamy purple haze; far in the opposite direction a tumbled mass of

domes and verdant slopes and valleys bars the lake, and here indeed does

distance lend enchantment to the view--for on this broad canvas, sun and

clouds and the richest of atmospheres have blended a thousand tints

together, and over its surface the filmy lights and shadows drift, hour

after hour, and glorify it with a beauty that seems reflected out of

Heaven itself. Beyond all question, this is the most voluptuous scene we

have yet looked upon.

Last night the scenery was striking and picturesque. On the other side

crags and trees and snowy houses were reflected in the lake with a

wonderful distinctness, and streams of light from many a distant window

shot far abroad over the still waters. On this side, near at hand, great

mansions, white with moonlight, glared out from the midst of masses of

foliage that lay black and shapeless in the shadows that fell from the

cliff above--and down in the margin of the lake every feature of the

weird vision was faithfully repeated.

Today we have idled through a wonder of a garden attached to a ducal

estate--but enough of description is enough, I judge.

I suspect that this was the same place the gardener's son deceived the

Lady of Lyons with, but I do not know. You may have heard of the passage

somewhere:

"A deep vale,

Shut out by Alpine hills from the rude world,

Near a clear lake margined by fruits of gold

And whispering myrtles:

Glassing softest skies, cloudless,

Save with rare and roseate shadows;

A palace, lifting to eternal heaven its marbled walls,

From out a glossy bower of coolest foliage musical with birds."

That is all very well, except the "clear" part of the lake. It certainly

is clearer than a great many lakes, but how dull its waters are compared

with the wonderful transparence of Lake Tahoe! I speak of the north

shore of Tahoe, where one can count the scales on a trout at a depth of a

hundred and eighty feet. I have tried to get this statement off at par

here, but with no success; so I have been obliged to negotiate it at

fifty percent discount. At this rate I find some takers; perhaps the

reader will receive it on the same terms--ninety feet instead of one

hundred and eighty. But let it be remembered that those are forced

terms--Sheriff's sale prices. As far as I am privately concerned, I

abate not a jot of the original assertion that in those strangely

magnifying waters one may count the scales on a trout (a trout of the

large kind,) at a depth of a hundred and eighty feet--may see every

pebble on the bottom--might even count a paper of dray-pins. People talk

of the transparent waters of the Mexican Bay of Acapulco, but in my own

experience I know they cannot compare with those I am speaking of. I

have fished for trout, in Tahoe, and at a measured depth of eighty-four

feet I have seen them put their noses to the bait and I could see their

gills open and shut. I could hardly have seen the trout themselves at

that distance in the open air.

As I go back in spirit and recall that noble sea, reposing among the

snow-peaks six thousand feet above the ocean, the conviction comes strong

upon me again that Como would only seem a bedizened little courtier in

that august presence.

Sorrow and misfortune overtake the legislature that still from year to

year permits Tahoe to retain its unmusical cognomen! Tahoe! It suggests

no crystal waters, no picturesque shores, no sublimity. Tahoe for a sea

in the clouds: a sea that has character and asserts it in solemn calms at

times, at times in savage storms; a sea whose royal seclusion is guarded

by a cordon of sentinel peaks that lift their frosty fronts nine thousand

feet above the level world; a sea whose every aspect is impressive, whose

belongings are all beautiful, whose lonely majesty types the Deity!

Tahoe means grasshoppers. It means grasshopper soup. It is Indian, and

suggestive of Indians. They say it is Pi-ute--possibly it is Digger.

I am satisfied it was named by the Diggers--those degraded savages who

roast their dead relatives, then mix the human grease and ashes of bones

with tar, and "gaum" it thick all over their heads and foreheads and

ears, and go caterwauling about the hills and call it mourning. These

are the gentry that named the Lake.

People say that Tahoe means "Silver Lake"--"Limpid Water"--"Falling

Leaf." Bosh. It means grasshopper soup, the favorite dish of the Digger

tribe,--and of the Pi-utes as well. It isn't worth while, in these

practical times, for people to talk about Indian poetry--there never was

any in them--except in the Fenimore Cooper Indians. But they are an

extinct tribe that never existed. I know the Noble Red Man. I have

camped with the Indians; I have been on the warpath with them, taken part

in the chase with them--for grasshoppers; helped them steal cattle; I

have roamed with them, scalped them, had them for breakfast. I would

gladly eat the whole race if I had a chance.

But I am growing unreliable. I will return to my comparison of the

lakes. Como is a little deeper than Tahoe, if people here tell the

truth. They say it is eighteen hundred feet deep at this point, but it

does not look a dead enough blue for that. Tahoe is one thousand five

hundred and twenty-five feet deep in the centre, by the state geologist's

measurement. They say the great peak opposite this town is five thousand

feet high: but I feel sure that three thousand feet of that statement is

a good honest lie. The lake is a mile wide, here, and maintains about

that width from this point to its northern extremity--which is distant

sixteen miles: from here to its southern extremity--say fifteen miles--it

is not over half a mile wide in any place, I should think. Its snow-clad

mountains one hears so much about are only seen occasionally, and then in

the distance, the Alps. Tahoe is from ten to eighteen miles wide, and

its mountains shut it in like a wall. Their summits are never free from

snow the year round. One thing about it is very strange: it never has

even a skim of ice upon its surface, although lakes in the same range of

mountains, lying in a lower and warmer temperature, freeze over in

winter.

It is cheerful to meet a shipmate in these out-of-the-way places and

compare notes with him. We have found one of ours here--an old soldier

of the war, who is seeking bloodless adventures and rest from his

campaigns in these sunny lands.--[Colonel J. HERON FOSTER, editor of a

Pittsburgh journal, and a most estimable gentleman. As these sheets are

being prepared for the press I am pained to learn of his decease shortly

after his return home--M.T.]