traversa li montagna no erat facile! Nenni! II san
Gottardo? Nil est! pooh! poco! Ma hesterna jo ha voulu traversar in
Val Bavona, e credi non ritornar, namfredo, fredo erat in alto! La
tourmente ma prise...'_

And so forth, explaining all fully with gestures, exaggerating,
emphasizing, and acting the whole matter, so that they understood me
without much error. But I found it more difficult to understand them,
because they had a regular formed language with terminations and
special words.

It went to my heart to offer them no wine, but a thought was in me of
which you shall soon hear more. My money was running low, and the
chief anxiety of a civilized man was spreading over my mind like the
shadow of a cloud over a field of corn in summer. They gave me a
number of 'good-nights', and at parting I could not forbear from
boasting that I was a pilgrim on my way to Rome. This they repeated
one to another, and one man told me that the next good halting-place
was a town called Faido, three hours down the road. He held up three
fingers to explain, and that was the last intercourse I had with the
Airolans, for at once I took the road.

I glanced up the dark ravine which I should have descended had I
crossed the Nufenen. I thought of the Val Bavona, only just over the
great wall that held the west; and in one place where a rift (you have
just seen its picture) led up to the summits of the hills I was half
tempted to go back to Airolo and sleep and next morning to attempt a
crossing. But I had accepted my fate on the Gries and the falling road
also held me, and so I continued my way.

Everything was pleasing in this new valley under the sunlight that
still came strongly from behind the enormous mountains; everything
also was new, and I was evidently now in a country of a special kind.
The slopes were populous, I had come to the great mother of fruits and
men, and I was soon to see her cities and her old walls, and the
rivers that glide by them. Church towers also repeated the same shapes
up and up the wooded hills until the villages stopped at the line of
the higher slopes and at the patches of snow. The houses were square
and coloured; they were graced with arbours, and there seemed to be
all around nothing but what was reasonable and secure, and especially
no rich or poor.

I noticed all these things on the one side and the other till, not two
hours from Airolo, I came to a step in the valley. For the valley of
the Tici