going to pay their devotions, severally, at these neat white fanes.
There were faces that Guercino would not have disdained copying, with
braids of hair the softest and most luxuriant I ever beheld. Some
had wreathed it simply with flowers, other with rolls of a thin linen
(manufactured in the neighbourhood), and disposed it with a degree of
elegance one should not have expected on the cliffs of the Tyrol.

Being arrived, they knelt all together at the first chapel, on the
steps, a minute or two, whispered a short prayer, and then dispersed
each to her fane. Every little building had now its fair worshipper,
and you may well conceive how much such figures, scattered about the
landscape, increased its charms. Notwithstanding the fervour of
their adorations (for at intervals they sighed and beat their white
bosoms with energy), several bewitching profane glances were cast at
me as I passed by. Don't be surprised, then, if I became a convert
to idolatry in so amiable a form, and worshipped St. Anna on the
score of her namesakes.

When got beyond the last chapel, I began to hear the roar of a
cascade in a thick wood of beech and chestnut that clothes the steeps
of a wide fissure in the rock. My ear soon guided me to its
entrance, which was marked by a shed encompassed with mossy
fragments, and almost concealed by bushes of the caper-plant in full
red bloom. Amongst these I struggled, till, reaching a goat-track,
it conducted me, on the brink of the foaming waters, to the very
depths of the cliff, whence issues a stream which dashes impetuously
down, strikes against a ledge of rocks, and sprinkles the impending
thicket with dew. Big drops hung on every spray, and glittered on
the leaves partially gilt by the rays of the declining sun, whose
mellow hues softened the summits of the cliffs, and diffused a