PAGE 7
Our Tour
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A sad disappointment, however, awaited us, for instead of the clear air that we had heretofore enjoyed, the clouds were rolling up from the valley, and we entirely lost the magnificent view of the plains of Lombardy which we ought to have seen; this was our first mishap, and we bore it heroically. A lunch may be had at Prali, and there the Italian tongue will be heard for the first time.
We must have both looked very questionable personages, for I remember that a man present asked me for a cigar; I gave him two, and he proffered a sou in return as a matter of course.
Shortly below Prali the clouds drew off, or rather we reached a lower level, so that they were above us, and now the walnut and the chestnut, the oak and the beech have driven away the pines of the other side, not that there were many of them; soon, too, the vineyards come in, the Indian corn again flourishes everywhere, the cherries grow ripe as we descend, and in an hour or two we felt to our great joy that we were fairly in Italy.
The descent is steep beyond compare, for La Tour, which we reached by four o’clock, is quite on the plain, very much on a level with Turin–I do not remember any descent between the two–and the pass cannot be much under eight thousand feet.
Passports are asked at Bobbio, but the very sight of the English name was at that time sufficient to cause the passport to be returned unscrutinised.
La Tour is a Protestant place, or at any rate chiefly so, indeed all the way from Cervieres we have been among people half Protestant and half Romanist; these were the Waldenses of the Middle Ages, they are handsome, particularly the young women, and I should fancy an honest simple race enough, but not over clean.
As a proof that we were in Italy we happened while waiting for table d’hote to be leaning over the balcony that ran round the house and passed our bedroom door, when a man and a girl came out with two large pails in their hands, and we watched them proceed to a cart with a barrel in it, which was in a corner of the yard; we had been wondering what was in the barrel and were glad to see them commence tapping it, when lo! out spouted the blood-red wine with which they actually half filled their pails before they left the spot. This was as Italy should be. After dinner, too, as we stroll in the showy Italian sort of piazza near the inn, the florid music which fills the whole square, accompanied by a female voice of some pretensions, again thoroughly Italianises the scene, and when she struck up our English national anthem (with such a bass accompaniment!) nothing could be imagined more incongruous.
Sleeping at La Tour at the hotel kept by M. Gai (which is very good, clean, and cheap), we left next morning, i.e. Tuesday, June 16, at four by diligence for Pinerolo, thence by rail to Turin where we spent the day. It was wet and we saw no vestiges of the Alps.
Turin is a very handsome city, very regularly built, the streets running nearly all parallel to and at right angles with each other; there are no suburbs, and the consequence is that at the end of every street one sees the country; the Alps surround the city like a horseshoe, and hence many of the streets seem actually walled in with a snowy mountain. Nowhere are the Alps seen to greater advantage than from Turin. I speak from the experience, not of the journey I am describing, but of a previous one. From the Superga the view is magnificent, but from the hospital for soldiers just above the Po on the eastern side of the city the view is very similar, and the city seen to greater advantage. The Po is a fine river, but very muddy, not like the Ticino which has the advantage of getting washed in the Lago Maggiore. On the whole Turin is well worth seeing. Leaving it, however, on Wednesday morning we arrived at Arona about half-past eleven: the country between the two places is flat, but rich and well cultivated: much rice is grown, and in consequence the whole country easily capable of being laid under water, a thing which I should imagine the Piedmontese would not be slow to avail themselves of; we ought to have had the Alps as a background to the view, but they were still veiled. It was here that a countryman, seeing me with one or two funny little pipes which I had bought in Turin, asked me if I was a fabricante di pipi- -a pipe-maker.