VAL DI PRATO.

25

solitary herdsman welcomed us with a courtesy andcoffee worthy of an Eastern sheikh. The pouring rain,perhaps, flavoured the beverage, but Francois Devouas-soud and I both fancied that, west of Constantinople ,we had never tasted so aromatic a draught.

The head of the valley seemed to be a basin sur-rounded on all sides by rugged cliffs; in the presentweather it was nothing but a caldron of mist. Howshould we escape from it ? The hill-shoulders pressedus in on all sides; yet the shepherd promised a stradahuona. In a quarter of an hour we were at the meet-ing-place of the mountain-torrents, where from theirunion sprang a stream, the bluest of all the blue watersof Val Maggia , full of a life now bright and dashing,now calm and deep, such as might fitly be personifiedin a Naiad. This was the fairy who would unbar thegates of our prison. We followed the guidance of thewaters into the jaws of the mountain, where they hadseized on some flaw or fissure to work for themselvesa passage. But the stream had thought only for itself.No room was provided for a path, and the ingenuity ofa road-making population had evidently been taxed tothe utmost to render the ravine passable for cows aswell as water. A causeway was built up on everynatural shelf, and, where the level could no longer bekept, the hanging terraces were connected by regularly-built stone staircases. A rough balustrade formed aprotection on the outside, and prevented a hasty plungeinto the gulf, where the brilliant waters wrestled withthe stiff crags which every now and then thrust outa knee to stop their flow, and gave them a tumblefrom which they collected themselves at leisure in adeep still pool before dancing off again to fresh