From Landro We Descended Gradually Into The Beautiful Valleys Of The
Tyrol, Leaving The Snow Behind, Though The White Peaks Of The Mountains
Were Continually In Sight.
At Bruneck, in an inn resplendent with
neatness - so at least it seemed to our eyes accustomed to the negligence
and dirt of Italian housekeeping - we had the first specimen of a German
bed.
It is narrow and short, and made so high at the head, by a number of
huge square bolsters and pillows, that you rather sit than lie. The
principal covering is a bag of down, very properly denominated the upper
bed, and between this and the feather-bed below, the traveller is expected
to pass the night. An asthmatic patient on a cold winter night might
perhaps find such a couch tolerably comfortable, if he could prevent the
narrow covering from slipping off on one side or the other. The next day
we were afforded an opportunity of observing more closely the inhabitants
of this singular region, by a festival, or holiday of some sort, which
brought them into the roads in great numbers, arrayed in their best
dresses - the men in short jackets and small-clothes, with broad
gay-colored suspenders over their waistcoats, and leathern belts
ornamented with gold or silver leaf - the women in short petticoats
composed of horizontal bands of different colors - and both sexes, for the
most part, wearing broad-brimmed hats with hemispherical crowns, though
there was a sugar-loaf variety much affected by the men, adorned with a
band of lace and sometimes a knot of flowers. They are a robust,
healthy-looking race, though they have an awkward stoop in the shoulders.
But what struck me most forcibly was the devotional habits of the people.
The Tyrolese might be cited as an illustration of the remark, that
mountaineers are more habitually and profoundly religious than others.
Persons of all sexes, young and old, whom we meet in the road, were
repeating their prayers audibly. We passed a troop of old women, all in
broad-brimmed hats and short gray petticoats, carrying long staves, one of
whom held a bead-roll and gave out the prayers, to which the others made
the responses in chorus. They looked at us so solemnly from under their
broad brims, and marched along with so grave and deliberate a pace, that I
could hardly help fancying that the wicked Austrians had caught a dozen
elders of the respectable society of Friends, and put them in petticoats
to punish them for their heresy. We afterward saw persons going to the
labors of the day, or returning, telling their rosaries and saying their
prayers as they went, as if their devotions had been their favorite
amusement. At regular intervals of about half a mile, we saw wooden
crucifixes erected by the way-side, covered from the weather with little
sheds, bearing the image of the Saviour, crowned with thorns and
frightfully dashed with streaks and drops of red paint, to represent the
blood that flowed from his wounds. The outer walls of the better kind of
houses were ornamented with paintings in fresco, and the subjects of these
were mostly sacred, such as the Virgin and Child, the Crucifixion, and the
Ascension. The number of houses of worship was surprising; I do not mean
spacious or stately churches such as we meet with in Italy, but most
commonly little chapels dispersed so as best to accommodate the
population. Of these the smallest neighborhood has one for the morning
devotions of its inhabitants, and even the solitary inn has its little
consecrated building with its miniature spire, for the convenience of
pious wayfarers. At Sterzing, a little village beautifully situated at the
base of the mountain called the Brenner, and containing, as I should
judge, not more than two or three thousand inhabitants, we counted seven
churches and chapels within the compass of a square mile. The observances
of the Roman Catholic church are nowhere more rigidly complied with than
in the Tyrol. When we stopped at Bruneck on Friday evening, I happened to
drop a word about a little meat for dinner in a conversation with the
spruce-looking landlady, who appeared so shocked that I gave up the point,
on the promise of some excellent and remarkably well-flavored trout from
the stream that flowed through the village - a promise that was literally
fulfilled. At the post-house on the Brenner, where we stopped on Saturday
evening, we were absolutely refused any thing but soup-maigre and fish;
the postmaster telling us that the priest had positively forbidden meat to
be given to travellers. Think of that! - that we who had eaten wild-boar
and pheasants on Good Friday, at Rome, under the very nostrils of the Pope
himself and his whole conclave of Cardinals, should be refused a morsel of
flesh on an ordinary Saturday, at a tavern on a lonely mountain in the
Tyrol, by the orders of a parish priest! Before getting our soup-maigre,
we witnessed another example of Tyrolese devotion. Eight or ten
travellers, apparently laboring men, took possession of the entrance hall
of the inn, and kneeling, poured forth their orisons in the German
language for half an hour with no small appearance of fervency. In the
morning when we were ready to set out, we inquired for our coachman, an
Italian, and found that he too, although not remarkably religious, had
caught something of the spirit of the place, and was at the _Gotteshaus_,
as the waiter called the tavern chapel, offering his morning prayers.
We descended the Brenner on the 28th of June in a snow-storm, the wind
whirling the light flakes in the air as it does with us in winter. It
changed to rain, however, as we approached the beautiful and picturesque
valley watered by the river Inn, on the banks of wrhich stands the fine
old town of Innsbruck, the capital of the Tyrol. Here we visited the
Church of the Holy Cross, in which is the bronze tomb of Maximilian I. and
twenty or thirty bronze statues ranged on each side of the nave,
representing fierce warrior chiefs, and gowned prelates, and stately
damsels of the middle ages.
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