churches and the character of the wall-paintings on the houses, but by
the amazing frequency of the wayside shrines, most of which consist of
representations of various phases of the Crucifixion, usually carved and
painted with a most harrowing fidelity of detail. Occasionally we
encountered groups of peasants wearing the picturesque velvet jackets,
tight knee-breeches, heavy woolen stockings and beribboned hats which
one usually associates with the Tyrolean yodelers who still inflict
themselves on vaudeville audiences in the United States. As we sped
northward the landscape changed with the inhabitants, the sunny Italian
countryside, ablaze with flowers and green with vineyards, giving way to
solemn forests, gloomy defiles, and crags surmounted by grim, gray
castles which reminded me of the stage-settings for "Tannhäuser" and
"Lohengrin."

Seen from the summit of the Mendel Pass, the road from Trent to Bozen
looks like a lariat thrown carelessly upon the ground. It climbs
laboriously upward, through splendid evergreen forests, in countless
curves and spirals, loiters for a few-score yards beside the margin of a
tiny crystal lake, and then, refreshed, plunges downward, in a series of
steep white zigzags, to meet the Isarco, in whose company it enters
Bozen. Because the car, like ourselves, was thirsty, we stopped at the
summit of the pass at the tiny hamlet of Madonna di Campiglio--Our Lady
of the Fields--for water and for tea. Should you have occasion to go
that way, I hope that you will take time to stop at the unpretentious
little Hotel Neumann. It is the sort of Tyrolean inn which had, I
supposed, gone out of existence with the war. The innkeeper, a jovial,
white-whiskered fellow, such as one rarely finds off the musical comedy
stage, served us with tea--with rum in it--and hot bread with honey, and
heaping dishes of small wild strawberries, and those pastries which the
Viennese used to make in such perfection. There were five of us,