ey first
planted the vine in Valtelline. Perhaps its superior culture in that
district may be due to ancient use surviving in a secluded Alpine
valley. One thing is certain, that the peasants of Sondrio and Tirano
understand viticulture better than the Italians of Lombardy.

Then my thoughts ran on to the period of modern history, when the
Grisons seized the Valtelline in lieu of war-pay from the Dukes of
Milan. For some three centuries they held it as a subject province.
From the Rathhaus at Davos or Chur they sent their nobles--Von
Salis and Buol, Planta and Sprecher von Bernegg--across the hills as
governors or podestas to Poschiavo, Sondrio, Tirano, and Morbegno.
In those old days the Valtelline wines came duly every winter over
snow-deep passes to fill the cellars of the Signori Grigioni. That
quaint traveller Tom Coryat, in his so-called 'Crudities,' notes
the custom early in the seventeenth century. And as that custom
then obtained, it still subsists with little alteration. The
wine-carriers--Weinfuehrer, as they are called--first scaled
the Bernina pass, halting then as now, perhaps at Poschiavo and
Pontresina. Afterwards, in order to reach Davos, the pass of the
Scaletta rose before them--a wilderness of untracked snow-drifts. The
country-folk still point to narrow, light hand-sledges, on which the
casks were charged before the last pitch of the pass. Some wine came,
no doubt, on pack-saddles. A meadow in front of the Dischma-Thal,
where the pass ends, still bears the name of the Ross-Weid, or
horse-pasture. It was here that the beasts of burden used for this
wine-service, rested after their long labours. In favourable weather
the whole journey from Tirano would have occupied at least four days,
with scanty halts at night.

The Valtelline slipped from the hands of the Grisons early in this
century. It is rumoured that one of the Von Salis family negotiated
matters with Napoleon more for his private benefit than for the
interests of the state. However this may have been, when the
Graubuenden became a Swiss Canton, after four centuries of sovereign
independence, the whole Valtelline passed to Austria, and so
eventually to Italy. According to modern and just notions of
nationality, this was right. In their period of power, the Grisons
masters had treated their Italian dependencies with harshness. The
Valtelline is an Italian valley, connected with the rest of
the peninsula by ties of race and language. It is, m