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we had a very pleasant walk down Yal Lavinuoz, withviews of the noble mass of Piz Linard immediatelyoverhead. The glen soon opened, at Lavin, on thehigh-road of the Lower Engadine , which we reachedin 4-g- hours’ walking from the hut—so that ourshort cut is not liable to the charge, usually broughtagainst Alpine short cuts, of being considerably longerthan the ordinary road.
Lavin, in 1869, suffered the usual fate of Engadine •villages, by being burnt to the ground. It is conse-•quently a new hamlet, with substantial, stone-built cot-tages and broad expanses of whitewash. In their pas-.sion for whiteness and cleanness, fresh paint and bright.flowers, and, I may add, in a certain slow persistency■ of character, the eastern Swiss seem to me the Dutch•of the mountains. The neighbourhood of Piz Linardmakes Lavin a desirable resting-place for climbers.Horses can be taken for three hours in the ascent, and apath has, I believe, been made up to the last rocks. 1This taller rival of Piz Languard deserves more atten-tion from strangers than it has yet received.
But the ordinary tourist will hasten on until hereaches the great bathing-place of the Lower Engadine ,which, if it has not yet equalled St. Moritz in popu-larity, is only behindhand because in the present gene-ration there are more Hamlets than Ealstaffs, morenervous and excitable than fat natures, and conse-quently a greater call for iron than for saline waters.
The Baths of Tarasp are so named from the com-mune in which they are situated. Between Tarasp and
1 The information is somewhat contradictory. Tsehudi speaks of a‘ new path a writer in the last year’s publication of the German Alpine Club talks of the climb as decidedly difficult.