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Updated: June 25, 2025
The following day a more prosperous start was made, and poor Bianca was saved from the terrors of the deep to make another perilous journey, this time across the Alps on muleback, by that fearful and cruel mountain of Nombray, as a Venetian chronicler described the Stelvio Pass. She finally reached Innsbruck, where she was joined, some months later, by her tardy and cold-hearted bridegroom.
The Valtelline is an Italian valley, connected with the rest of the peninsula by ties of race and language. It is, moreover, geographically linked to Italy by the great stream of the Adda, which takes its rise upon the Stelvio, and after passing through the Lake of Como, swells the volume of the Po.
Crossing into Italy by the Stelvio Pass, a sharp but passing fit of illness detained Coley at Como for a day, and caused him to call in an Italian doctor, who treated him on the starvation system, administered no medicines, and would take no fee. The next day Coley was in condition to go on to Milan, where his first impression of the Cathedral was, as so often happens, almost of bewilderment.
Then the Italian troops began to secure the position gained by constructing defensive works covering the road approaches to Brescia, and linking these up with other defensive positions extending along the entire front from the Stelvio pass to Lake Garda.
There are many, perhaps, who, within sight of some great scene among the Alps, upon the height of the Stelvio or the slopes of Mürren, or at night in the valley of Courmayeur, have felt themselves raised above cares and doubts and miseries by the mere recognition of unchangeable magnificence; have found a deep peace in the sense of their own nothingness.
"The rest of the front, from the Lago di Garda to the Stelvio and the frontier of Switzerland, is not at present the scene of important operations, so I contented myself by ascertaining at second hand how matters stand between the Valtellina and the Chiese. "I have had the honor of a private audience with his Majesty the King of Italy, and have seen and talked to nearly all the leading soldiers.
No mere study of the map can convey any true idea of the difficulties to be overcome before the Austrian positions in the Dolomites and Carnic Alps could be captured. For such a survey could give no indication of the huge guns mounted on the very summit of snow-clad peaks, or the lines of armored trenches stretching uninterruptedly from the Stelvio to the Isonzo.
Another passage in one of these summer tourist letters well deserves to be copied here, as it shows the artist's point of view of labours like Telford's and Stephenson's. "From Bormio," he says, "the famous road begins which passes over the Stelvio into the Tyrol; the highest carriage-road in the world. We began the ascent early in the morning. It is magnificent and wonderful.
A short time brought us to the first village in the Valtelline, where the road bifurcates northward to Bormio and the Stelvio pass, southward to Sondrio and Lombardy.
Did those two great men, as they sat together in one room, sculptor and sitter, know one another's early history and strange struggles, we wonder? Perhaps not; but if they did, it must surely have made a bond of union between them. At any rate, Gibson greatly admired Stephenson, just as he had admired the Stelvio road.
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