Then I wandered on till I came to the chapel of S. Carlo; and in a few
minutes found myself on the _Lugo di Cadagna_. Here I heard that there
were people, and the people were not so much asleep as the simple
peasantry of these upland valleys are expected to be by nine o'clock in
the evening. For now was the time when they had moved up from Ronco,
Altanca, and other villages in some numbers to cut the hay, and were
living for a fortnight or three weeks in the chalets upon the _Lago di
Cadagna_. As I have said, there is a chapel, but I doubt whether it is
attended during this season with the regularity with which the parish
churches of Ronco, Altanca, &c., are attended during the rest of the
year. The young people, I am sure, like these annual visits to the high
places, and will be hardly weaned from them. Happily the hay will be
always there, and will have to be cut by some one, and the old people
will send the young ones.
As I was thinking of these things, I found myself going off into a doze,
and thought the burnished man from the furnace came up and sat beside me,
and laid his hand upon my shoulder. Then I saw the green slopes that
rise all round the lake were much higher than I had thought; they went up
thousands of feet, and there were pine forests upon them, while two large
glaciers came down in streams that ended in a precipice of ice, falling
sheer into the lake.
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