Ch. 23: Fusio

We left Locarno by the conveyance which leaves every day at four o'clock for Bignasco, a ride of about four hours. The Ponte Brolla, a couple of miles out of Locarno, is remarkable, and the road is throughout (as a matter of course) good. I sat next an old priest, an excellent kindly man, who talked freely with me, and scolded me roundly for being a Protestant more than once.

He seemed much surprised when I discarded reason as the foundation of our belief. He had made up his mind that all Protestants based their convictions upon reason, and was not prepared to hear me go heartily with him in declaring the foundation of any durable system to lie in faith. When, however, it came to requiring me to have faith in what seemed good to him and his friends, rather than to me and mine, we did not agree so well. He then began to shake death at me; I met him with a reflection that I have never seen in print, though it is so obvious that it must have occurred to each one of my readers. I said that every man is an immortal to himself: he only dies as far as others are concerned; to himself he cannot, by any conceivable possibility, do so. For how can he know that he is dead until he IS dead? And when he IS dead, how can he know that he is dead? If he does, it is an abuse of terms to say that he is dead. A man can know no more about the end of his life than he did about the beginning. The most horrible and loathed death still resolves itself into being badly frightened, and not a little hurt towards the end of one's life, but it can never come to being unbearably hurt for long together. Besides, we are at all times, even during life, dead and dying to by far the greater part of our past selves. What we call dying is only dying to the balance, or residuum. This made the priest angry. He folded his arms and said, "Basta, basta," nor did he speak to me again. It is because I noticed the effect it produced upon my fellow-passenger that I introduce it here.

Bignasco is at the confluence of the two main branches of the Maggia. The greater part of the river comes down from the glacier of Basodino, which cannot be seen from Bignasco; I know nothing of this valley beyond having seen the glacier from the top of the pass between Fusio and Dalpe. The smaller half of the river comes down from Fusio, the valley of Sambucco, and the lake of Naret. The accommodation at Bignasco is quite enough for a bachelor; the people are good, but the inn is homely. From Bignasco the road ascends rapidly to Peccia, a village which has suffered terribly from inundations, and from Peccia it ascends more rapidly still-- Fusio being reached in about three hours from Bignasco. There is an excellent inn at Fusio kept by Signor Dazio, to whose energy the admirable mountain road from Peccia is mainly due. On the right just before he crosses the bridge, the traveller will note the fresco of the Crucifixion, which I have mentioned at page 140.

Fusio is