Note 22 — Chapter XI · WÄLSCH-TIROL. THE WÄLSCH-TIROLISCHE ETSCHTHAL AND ITS TRIBUTARY VALLEYS.

Vigo is the principal town, and serves as the starting-point for the magnificent mountain excursions of the neighbourhood. The most difficult of these, and one only to be attempted by the well-seasoned Alpine climber,22 is that of the massive snow-clad Marmolata, 10,400 feet high, surnamed the Queen of the Dolomites; but she is a severe and haughty queen, who knows how to hold her own, and keep intruders at a distance; and many who have been enchanted with her stern beauty from afar have rued the attempt at intruding on the cold solitude of her eternal penance. For the legends tell that in her youth she was covered with verdant charms, which made her the delight of the people; but they were not content to use with pious moderation the precious gifts she had in store, and for some sin of theirs—some say for selfish disregard of the law of charity to the poor;23 some say for disregard of the Church’s law forbidding to work on the hohe Unser-frauentag (the Assumption),24 some say for unjust striving for the possession of the soil—the vengeance of Heaven overtook them, and the once smiling meadows were converted into the hard and barren glacier. Near Vigo is a little way-side chapel, highly prized, because near it some French soldiers in the invasion of 1809 lost their way, and the town was thus saved from their depredations; and the legend arose that the Madonnabild had stricken them blind. Several of them died of falls and hunger, and tradition says, that on wild nights notes of distress from a dying bugler’s horn may be heard resounding still.