bustle and
hopeless vulgarity of so many places similarly situated.

There is plenty going on, nevertheless, for Botzen is quite a little
commercial center in its own way, but with it there is this charm
of dignified repose. One wanders through the town under the cool
colonnades, strolls into some ancient cloisters, kneels for a moment in
some finely carved church and then goes out again to the open, to see
far above the little city that beautiful background of the Dolomite
peaks, dominated by the wonderfully impressive and fantastic Rosengarten
range, golden red in the western sun. With such a view experience may
well lapse into memory, to linger on so long as the mind possesses the
power of recalling the past.

CORTINA[27]

BY AMELIA B. EDWARDS

Situate on the left bank of the Boita, which here runs nearly due north
and south, with the Tre Croci pass opening away behind the town to the
east, and the Tre Sassi Pass widening before it to the west, Cortina
lies in a comparatively open space between four great mountains, and is
therefore less liable to danger from bergfalls than any other village
not only in the Val d'Ampezo but in the whole adjacent district. For
the same reason, it is cooler in summer than either Caprile, Agordo,
Primiero, or Predazzo; all of which, tho' more central as stopping
places, and in many respects more convenient, are yet somewhat too
closely hemmed in by surrounding heights. The climate of Cortina is
temperate throughout the year. Ball gives the village an elevation of
4,048 feet above the level of the sea; and one of the parish priests--an
intelligent old man who has devoted many years of his life to collecting
the flora of the Ampezzo--assured me that he had never known the
thermometer drop so low as fifteen degrees[28] of frost in even the
coldest winters. The soil, for all this, has a bleak and barren look;
the maize (here called "grano Turco") is cultivated, but does not
flourish; and the vine is unknown. But then agriculture is not a
specialty of the Ampezzo Thal, and the wealth of Cortina is derived
essentially from its pasture-lands and forests.

These last, in consequence of the increased and increasing value of
timber, have been lavishly cut down of late years by the Commune--too
probably at the expense of the future interests of Cortina. For the
present, however, every inn, homestead, and public building bespeaks
prosperity. The inhabitants are well-fed and well-drest. The