This old gentleman is a considerable wine-dealer.  He sent us with his son, Giacomo, on a long journey underground through his cellars, where we tasted several sorts of Valtelline, especially the new Forzato, made a few weeks since, which singularly combines sweetness with strength, and both with a slight effervescence.  It is certainly the sort of wine wherewith to tempt a Polyphemus, and not unapt to turn a giant’s head.

Leaving Tirano, and once more passing through the poplars by Madonna, we descended the valley all along the vineyards of Villa and the vast district of Sassella.  Here and there, at wayside inns, we stopped to drink a glass of some particular vintage; and everywhere it seemed as though god Bacchus were at home.  The whole valley on the right side of the Adda is one gigantic vineyard, climbing the hills in tiers and terraces, which justify its Italian epithet of Teatro di Bacco.  The rock is a greyish granite, assuming sullen brown and orange tints where exposed to sun and weather.  The vines are grown on stakes, not trellised over trees or carried across boulders, as is the fashion at Chiavenna or Terlan.  Yet every advantage of the mountain is adroitly used; nooks and crannies being specially preferred, where the sun’s rays are deflected from hanging cliffs.  The soil seems deep, and is of a dull yellow tone.  When the vines end, brushwood takes up the growth, which expires at last in crag and snow.  Some alps and chalets, dimly traced against the sky, are evidences that a pastoral life prevails above the vineyards.  Pan there stretches the pine-thyrsus down to vine-garlanded Dionysos.

The Adda flows majestically among willows in the midst, and the valley is nearly straight.  The prettiest spot, perhaps, is at Tresenda or S. Giacomo, where a pass from Edolo and Brescia descends from the southern hills.  But the Valtelline has no great claim to beauty of scenery.  Its chief town, Sondrio, where we supped and drank some special wine called il vino de’ Signori Grigioni, has been modernised in dull Italian fashion.

V

The hotel at Sondrio, La Maddalena, was in carnival uproar of masquers, topers, and musicians all night through.  It was as much as we could do to rouse the sleepy servants and get a cup of coffee ere we started in the frozen dawn.  ‘Verfluchte Maddalena!’ grumbled Christian as he shouldered our portmanteaus and bore them in hot haste to the post.  Long experience only confirms the first impression, that, of all cold, the cold of an Italian winter is most penetrating.  As we lumbered out of Sondrio in a heavy diligence, I could have fancied myself back once again at Radicofani or among the Ciminian hills.  The frost was penetrating.  Fur-coats would not keep it out; and we longed to be once more in open sledges on Bernina rather than enclosed in that cold coupe.  Now we passed Grumello, the second largest of the renowned vine districts; and always