A short time brought us to the first village in the Valtelline,
where the road bifurcates northward to Bormio and the Stelvio pass,
southward to Sondrio and Lombardy. It is a little hamlet, known by
the name of La Madonna di Tirano, having grown up round a pilgrimage
church of great beauty, with tall Lombard bell-tower, pierced with
many tiers of pilastered windows, ending in a whimsical spire, and
dominating a fantastic cupola building of the earlier Renaissance.
Taken altogether, this is a charming bit of architecture,
picturesquely set beneath the granite snow-peaks of the Valtelline.
The church, they say, was raised at Madonna's own command to stay the
tide of heresy descending from the Engadine; and in the year 1620, the
bronze statue of S. Michael, which still spreads wide its wings above
the cupola, looked down upon the massacre of six hundred Protestants
and foreigners, commanded by the patriot Jacopo Robustelli.

From Madonna the road leads up the valley through a narrow avenue of
poplar-trees to the town of Tirano. We were now in the district where
Forzato is made, and every vineyard had a name and history. In Tirano
we betook ourself to the house of an old acquaintance of the Buol
family, Bernardo da Campo, or, as the Graubündeners call him, Bernard
Campbèll. We found him at dinner with his son and grandchildren in a
vast, dark, bare Italian chamber. It would be difficult to find a more
typical old Scotchman of the Lowlands than he looked, with his clean
close-shaven face, bright brown eyes, and snow-white hair escaping
from a broad-brimmed hat. He might have sat to a painter for some
Covenanter's portrait, except that there was nothing dour about him,
or for an illustration to Burns's 'Cotter's Saturday Night.' The air
of probity and canniness combined with a twinkle of dry humour was
completely Scotch; and when he tapped his snuff-box, telling stories