Page:Whymper - Scrambles amongst the Alps.djvu/175

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chap. vi.
ON THE VAL TOURNANCHE.
135

settled by those who are concerned. Tyndall, Walter, and Bennen, now disappear from this history.[1]

The Val Tournanche is one of the most charming valleys in the Italian Alps; it is a paradise to an artist, and if the space at my command were greater I would willingly linger over its groves of chestnuts, its bright trickling rills and its roaring torrents, its upland unsuspected valleys and its noble cliffs. The path rises steeply from Chatillon, but it is well shaded, and the heat of the summer sun is tempered by cool air and spray which comes off the ice-cold streams.[2] One sees from the path, at several places on the right bank of the valley, groups of arches which have been built high up against the faces of the cliffs. Guide-books repeat—on whose authority I know not—that they are the remains of a Roman aqueduct. They have the Roman boldness of conception, but the work has not the usual Roman solidity. The arches have always seemed to me to be the remains of an unfinished work, and I learn from Jean Antoine Carrel that there are other groups of arches, which are not seen from the path, all having the same appearance. It may be questioned whether those seen near the village of Antey are Roman. Some of them are semicircular, whilst others are distinctly pointed. Here is one of the latter, which might pass for fourteenth-century work, or later;—a two-centred arch, with mean voussoirs, and the masonry, in rough courses. These arches are well worth the attention of an archæologist, but some difficulty will be found in approaching them closely.

    for, when he got to the end of "the shoulder," he must have been perfectly aware that the whole height of the final peak was still above him.

  1. Dr. Tyndall ascended the Matterhorn in 1868. See Appendix.
  2. Information upon the Val Tournanche will be found in De Saussure's Voyages dans les Alpes, vol. iv. pp. 379-81, 406-9; in Canon Carrel's pamphlet, La Vallée de Valtornenche en 1867; and in King's Italian Valleys of the Alps, pp. 220-1.