impression, not of snowy summits and glistening glaciers, but of
wonderful rocks and more wonderful coloring and of great peaks of
fantastic form, set in a garden spot of green. And Botzen is a fitting
terminus. It dates far back to the Middle Ages. It boasts of churches,
houses and public buildings of artistic merit and architectural beauty
and over all there lingers an atmosphere of rest and refinement,
refreshing to see, where there might have been the noisy bustle and
hopeless vulgarity of so many places similarly situated.

There is plenty going on, nevertheless, for Botzen is quite a little
commercial center in its own way, but with it there is this charm
of dignified repose. One wanders through the town under the cool
colonnades, strolls into some ancient cloisters, kneels for a moment in
some finely carved church and then goes out again to the open, to see
far above the little city that beautiful background of the Dolomite
peaks, dominated by the wonderfully impressive and fantastic Rosengarten
range, golden red in the western sun. With such a view experience may
well lapse into memory, to linger on so long as the mind possesses the
power of recalling the past.


CORTINA[27]

BY AMELIA B. EDWARDS

Situate on the left bank of the Boita, which here runs nearly due north
and south, with the Tre Croci pass opening away behind the town to the
east, and the Tre Sassi Pass widening before it to the west, Cortina
lies in a comparatively open space between four great mountains, and is
therefore less liable to danger from bergfalls than any other village