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At the foot of the Coche we arrived at the first house in Italy, the little auberge of the Pra, a great resort of sportsmen, who come to hunt the chamois in the adjoining mountains during the season. Here is also the usual customs station, with a few officers of the Italian douane, to watch the passage of merchandise across the frontier.
The descent from the Col down into the Pra is very difficult, in some places almost precipitous far more abrupt than on the French side, where the incline up to the summit is comparatively easy. Dr. Gilly crossed here from La Tour with Mrs. Gilly in 1829, when about to visit the French valleys; but he found the path so difficult and dangerous, that the lady had to walk nearly the whole way.
Let us now proceed up the valley of Angrogna, towards the famous stronghold of the Pra du Tour, the object of those repeated attacks of the enemy in the neighbourhood of Rochemalan. As we advance, the mountains gradually close in upon the valley, leaving a comparatively small width of pasture land by the river-side.
Arriving there by the coach on the night of October 13, I was met by my host and tutor, Dr. Porfirio Lanfranchi, and by him taken to his lodgings on the Pra della Valle and introduced to the charitable ministrations of his young and beautiful wife the fair, the too-fair Donna Aurelia, with whom, I shall not disguise from the reader, I fell romantically and ardently in love.
When the hostile troops of Savoy advanced upon La Tour, the inhabitants of the neighbouring valleys at once fled to the Pra, into which they drove their cattle, and carried what provisions they could; there constructing mills, ovens, houses, and all that was requisite for subsistence, as in a fort.
Besides these two grand lords of the forest I will also mention the ple pra, a colossus that, modestly, but without avarice, supplies the Sakai with excellent chestnuts. It is impossible, notwithstanding my desire, to describe the many other trees and fruits which form the richness of the forest, as it would take too long.
In the Tamanac tongue, acurivane means beautiful, and acurivanepra, ugly not beautiful; outapra, there is no fish, properly fish none; uteripipra, I will not go, properly I to go will not, composed of uteri,* to go, ipiri, to choose, and pra, not. In utechire we find the Tamanac verb to go, uteri, of which ute is also the radical, and ri the termination of the Infinitive.
Time fails to recount all that might be said of these celebrated regions. I must, however, make passing mention of the beautiful mountain peak a little higher up on the right hand as you approach Pra del Torno, i.e., La Vachera. On the 11th of June, 1655, after the Piedmontese troops were unable to force the Barricata, though they tried from 5 a.m. to 3 p.m., they advanced towards La Vachera.
They accordingly consented to lay down their arms, and the impregnable fastness of the Pra du Tour, which had never been taken by force, thus fell before falsehood and perfidy. "The defenders of this ancient sanctuary of the Church," says Dr.
It was called the Prato, and by the shocking discrepancy between its name and appearance added to my dejection, for the one recalled and the other mocked memories of that green and sunlit plain in Padua, that dear Pra della Valle, upon whose grassy dimples looked the house of Aurelia, and to whose wandering winds I had so often sighed her name.
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