Ch. 6: Piora

An excursion which may be very well made from Faido is to the Val Piora, which I have already more than once mentioned. There is a large hotel here which has been opened some years, but has not hitherto proved the success which it was hoped it would be. I have stayed there two or three times and found it very comfortable; doubtless, now that Signor Lombardi of the Hotel Prosa has taken it, it will become a more popular place of resort.

I took a trap from Faido to Ambri, and thence walked over to Quinto; here the path begins to ascend, and after an hour Ronco is reached. There is a house at Ronco where refreshments and excellent Faido beer can be had. The old lady who keeps the house would make a perfect Fate; I saw her sitting at her window spinning, and looking down over the Ticino valley as though it were the world and she were spinning its destiny. She had a somewhat stern expression, thin lips, iron-grey eyes, and an aquiline nose; her scanty locks straggled from under the handkerchief which she wore round her head. Her employment and the wistful far-away look she cast upon the expanse below made a very fine ensemble. "She would have afforded," as Sir Walter Scott says, "a study for a Rembrandt, had that celebrated painter existed at the period," {9} but she must have been a smart-looking handsome girl once.

She brightened up in conversation. I talked about Piora, which I already knew, and the Lago Tom, the highest of the three lakes. She said she knew the Lago Tom. I said laughingly, "Oh, I have no doubt you do. We've had many a good day at the Lago Tom, I know." She looked down at once.

In spite of her nearly eighty years she was active as a woman of forty, and altogether she was a very grand old lady. Her house is scrupulously clean. While I watched her spinning, I thought of what must so often occur to summer visitors. I mean what sort of a look-out the old woman must have in winter, when the wind roars and whistles, and the snow drives down the valley with a fury of which we in England can have little conception. What a place to see a snowstorm from! and what a place from which to survey the landscape next morning after the storm is over and the air is calm and brilliant. There are such mornings: I saw one once, but I was at the bottom of the valley and not high up, as at Ronco. Ronco would take a little sun even in midwinter, but at the bottom of the valley there is no sun for weeks and weeks together; all is in deep shadow below, though the upper hillsides may be seen to have the sun upon them. I walked once on a frosty winter's morning from Airolo to Giornico, and can call to mind nothing in its way more beautiful: everything was locked in frost--there was not a waterwheel but was sheeted and coated with ice: the road was hard as granite--all was quiet and seen as through a dark but incredibly transparent medium. Near Piotta I met the whole village dragging a large tree;