Here, again, winter must be
worth seeing, but on a rough snowy day Piora must be an awful place.
There are a few stunted pines near the hotel, but the hillsides are for
the most part bare and green. Piora in fact is a fine breezy open upland
valley of singular beauty, and with a sweet atmosphere of cow about it;
it is rich in rhododendrons and all manner of Alpine flowers, just a
trifle bleak, but as bracing as the Engadine itself.
The first night I was ever in Piora there was a brilliant moon, and the
unruffled surface of the lake took the reflection of the mountains. I
could see the cattle a mile off, and hear the tinkling of their bells
which danced multitudinously before the ear as fire-flies come and go
before the eyes; for all through a fine summer's night the cattle will
feed as though it were day. A little above the lake I came upon a man in
a cave before a furnace, burning lime, and he sat looking into the fire
with his back to the moonlight. He was a quiet moody man, and I am
afraid I bored him, for I could get hardly anything out of him but "Oh
altro"--polite but not communicative. So after a while I left him with
his face burnished as with gold from the fire, and his back silver with
the moonbeams; behind him were the pastures and the reflections in the
lake and the mountains and the distant ringing of the cowbells.
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