The Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1868-1895, 1886-01-20

which not a hundred years aeo had echoed
with the clashing OF arms and the tramp of
Napoleon; the quick rife shot of the TyroI-
csc from their hiding places in the noun
tains and the crashing of stones upon the
dense ranks of Napoleon's Frenchmen be-
low. Nearly every narrow defile of this road
had been the scene of some dreadful encoun-
ter with the French, in which
ANDREAs HoFER
and his followers almost invariably won the
day by their mountainous mode of warfare
which always brought confusion into the
ranks Of the best trained soldiers.
As we walked on and on new objects of
interest, new scenery, with all
the variations. from lovely, pic
turesque, dreamland views, to the
gloomy, savage grandeur of high mountains
and rushing streams, made us unconscious
of tired limbs. Castles in ruins, castles in all
their original completeness. still crown many
lofty height. In fact, during the middle
ages these castles constituted a chain of
castellated forts which stood on the sites oc-
cupied by the hill forts of the Romans. They
We're so situated as TO be visible from one
another, or were provided with isolated
watch towers, from which foreign invasion
could be quickly signalled by means of fire
at night or smoke by day from one end of
the great valleys TO the other. What de-
light to be able TO gaze up at these old hills
OF romance and tragedy, with their walls
and towers now broken and overgrown, their
many hidden passages filled with debris,
or their secret chambers and cells exposed to
the light, which had never penetrated them
until ruin came.
The peculiar custom, which is also relic
of the Middle Ages, and in perfect keeping
with the time when these old castles were
peopled with fanatic and superstitious
FOIL 10 r
solution of sin. Not few OF these devoted
peasants did we meet on the road. singing,
praying, sometimes begging, on their way to
some distant church or chapel, where was a
woodworking relic or picture, or whose
pilgrimage led over a steep roadway, which
represented the Mount of Calvary, the rev.
erent ascent of which insured an uneouiyo-
cal answer to prayer. Men, women and
children perform these voluntary penances
through the blistering sun, foot sore and
weary, in pain and distress, leaving dear
sick one at home, perhaps, from whom the
death angel will be warded off through their
own sacrifices, or is undertaken for them
selves, in the sincere hope of obtaining that
peace which passeth all understanding.
THE BEAUTY SPREAD OUT BEFORE Us,
and heaped up beside us, made us glad that
we had been born. Glad, though, that we
had been born in the nineteenth century,
and could be secure in our enjoyment; that
it had not been our lot to have lived in
those days where danger and treachery
threatened on every hand; when an EN-
peror one of the greatest and one of the
cruelest Germany has ever known, sick and
racked with pain, hurried from his bed
in the middle Of the night, had
traversed this same road, pursued by his own
subjects, fleeing in the midst of a frightful
storm, whose lightning flashes alone revealed
the plunging and dashing of horses spurred
to the utmost, stumbling and falling in the
pitchv darkness, but ey er on and on, up the
Bremen, down again, never haltiug until the
boundaries of Italy had teen reached.
On Thursday noon we reached the sum-
NIT of the Bremen, and Friday evening we
came 10 the picturesque town of Klause2,
having walked a distance of twenty-six
miles thas day, the last five miles by moon
light. Klausen is a very old and a very
queer town, squeezed in between the river
and the mountains with a single street,
which affords room for only one carriage to
pass. On projecting rock, 700
feet high, overhanging the town as
as it were, stands a very old nunnery, with
two churches on the site of a temple of Isis,
as is said. Here tragedy was enacted, in
that a nun, during the struggle between the
Tyrolese and the French, to escape the bru-
talities of the latter, precipitated herself to
the rocks below. Luxuriant vineyards now
clothe the mountain sides until they grad
ually grow nearer together and more pTecip-
itous, ending in gloomy pass, whose mass
i've rocks lift themselves perpendicularly
from the very roadside, fairly oppressive in
their grandeur. 1t was with a feeling of
relief that we saw them begin to separate
again and the beautiful valley of the Odige
spreading out before US. Botgen lay in the
center of this valley, with several castles
looking down from their heights
above. The peculiar sharp peaks of the
Dolomite Mountains. rosy in the glow of the
setting sun, lowered far up behind the nearer
Alps in the background of this lovely picture.
II was the last day of our walk, as the sun
was shedding his last rays over the mountains,
that we entered this charming town, where
flourish the orange, fig and pomegranite, not
less jubilant over the success of our under
taking than over the delights of our journey.
Sunday was day of rest in the fullest sense
of the word, but Monday found us thor.
oughly refreshed, only regretting that our
foot tour could not be extended, and full oil
antipathy against the conventional railway
| travel on which we now were dependent fol
transportation to Schwaz. i. r.