Note 8 — Chapter XI · WÄLSCH-TIROL. THE WÄLSCH-TIROLISCHE ETSCHTHAL AND ITS TRIBUTARY VALLEYS.

The suburbs of Trent, among other excursions, offer the pleasing pilgrimage of the Madonna alle Laste,8 which is reached through the Porta dell’ Aquila, on the east side of the city, by half an hour’s climbing up a mountain path off the road to Bassano. On a spur of this declivity had stood from time immemorial a marble Maria-Bild, honoured by the veneration of the people. Somewhere about the year 1630 a Jew wantonly disfigured and damaged the sacred token, to the indignation of the whole neighbourhood. Christopher Detscher, a German artist, devoted himself to restoring it; but it was impossible altogether to obliterate the traces of the injury. By some means or other, however—the people said by miraculous intervention—it was altogether renewed in one night; and this prodigy so enhanced its fame, that there was no case so desperate but they believed it must obtain relief when pleaded for at such a shrine. A poor cowherd named Antonia, who had been deaf all her life, was said to have received the power of hearing after praying there; and a child, who had died before there was time to baptise it, a reprieve of existence long enough to receive that Sacrament. The grateful people now immediately set themselves to raise a stone chapel over it, and by their ready alms maintained a hermit on the spot to guard the sacred precincts. Twelve years later, by the bounty of Field-Marshal Gallas, a community of Carmelites was established on the spot, which continued to flourish down to the secularization of Joseph II. The convent buildings, however, yet serve the beneficent purpose of a Refuge for foundlings and orphans. The prospect from the precincts of the institution is very fine; between the distant ranges of mountains and the foreground slopes covered with peach trees, lies the grand old city of Trent, shaped, like the country of Tirol itself, in the form of a heart.9 Very effective in accentuating the outline are the two old castles of the Buon’ Consiglio and the Palazzo degli Alberi, both formerly fortress-residences of the Prince-Bishops of Trent, the former vieing with the castle of the Prince-Bishop of Salzburg in extent and grandeur. The curious isolated rock of Dos Trento is another centre of a splendid view. The Romans called it Verruca, a wart. It was strongly fortified by Augustus, and remains of inscriptions and bas-reliefs are built into the wall of the ancient church of St. Apollinaria, occupying the site of a temple of Saturn. The vantage ground it afforded in repelling the entry of the French in 1703 obtained for it the name of the Franzosenbühel. It has lately been newly fortified. A charming but somewhat adventurous excursion may be made on foot, by a path starting from the fort of the Dos Trento rock, to the cascade of Sardagna. Somewhere about this path, in the neighbourhood of Cadine, it is said, St. Ingenuin,10 one of the early evangelizers of the country, planted a beautiful garden, which was a living model of the Garden of Eden; but so divinely beautiful was it, that to no mortal was it given to find it. Only the holy Albuin obtained by his prayers permission once to find entrance to ‘St. Ingenuin’s Garden.’ Entranced with the delights of the place, he determined at least to bring back some sample of its produce. So he gathered some of its golden fruits, to show the children of earth. To this day a choice yellow apple, something like our golden pippin, grown in the neighbourhood, goes by the name of St. Albuin’s apple.