We creaked along, with many stoppings.At two o'clock we were at Rosenheim.Rosenheim is a windy place, with clear starlight, with a multitude of cars on a multiplicity of tracks, and a large, lighted refreshment-room, which has a glowing, jolly stove.We stay there an hour, toasting by the fire and drinking excellent coffee.Groups of Germans are seated at tables playing cards, smoking, and taking coffee.Other trains arrive; and huge men stalk in, from Vienna or Russia, you would say, enveloped in enormous fur overcoats, reaching to the heels, and with big fur boots coming above the knees, in which they move like elephants.Another start, and a cold ride with cooling foot-warmers, droning on to Kurfstein.It is five o'clock when we reach Kurfstein, which is also a restaurant, with a hot stove, and more Germans going on as if it were daytime; but by this time in the morning the coffee had got to be wretched.
After an hour's waiting, we dream on again, and, before we know it, come out of our cold doze into the cold dawn.Through the thick frost on the windows we see the faint outlines of mountains.
Scraping away the incrustation, we find that we are in the Tyrol, high hills on all sides, no snow in the valley, a bright morning, and the snow-peaks are soon rosy in the sunrise.It is just as we expected,--little villages under the hills, and slender church spires with brick-red tops.At nine o'clock we are in Innsbruck, at the foot of the Brenner.No snow yet.It must be charming here in the summer.
During the night we have got out of Bavaria.The waiter at the restaurant wants us to pay him ninety kreuzers for our coffee, which is only six kreuzers a cup in Munich.Remembering that it takes one hundred kreuzers to make a gulden in Austria, I launch out a Bavarian gulden, and expect ten kreuzers in change.I have heard that sixty Bavarian kreuzers are equal to one hundred Austrian; but this waiter explains to me that my gulden is only good for ninety kreuzers.I, in my turn, explain to the waiter that it is better than the coffee;but we come to no understanding, and I give up, before I begin, trying to understand the Austrian currency.During the day I get my pockets full of coppers, which are very convenient to take in change, but appear to have a very slight purchasing, power in Austria even, and none at all elsewhere, and the only use for which I have found is to give to Italian beggars.One of these pieces satisfies a beggar when it drops into his hat; and then it detains him long enough in the examination of it, so that your carriage has time to get so far away that his renewed pursuit is usually unavailing.
The Brenner Pass repaid us for the pains we had taken to see it, especially as the sun shone and took the frost from our windows, and we encountered no snow on the track; and, indeed, the fall was not deep, except on the high peaks about us.Even if the engineering of the road were not so interesting, it was something to be again amidst mountains that can boast a height of ten thousand feet.After we passed the summit, and began the zigzag descent, we were on a sharp lookout for sunny Italy.I expected to lay aside my heavy overcoat, and sun myself at the first station among the vineyards.Instead of that, we bade good-by to bright sky, and plunged into a snowstorm, and, so greeted, drove down into the narrow gorges, whose steep slopes we could see were terraced to the top, and planted with vines.
We could distinguish enough to know that, with the old Roman ruins, the churches and convent towers perched on the crags, and all, the scenery in summer must be finer than that of the Rhine, especially as the vineyards here are picturesque,--the vines being trained so as to hide and clothe the ground with verdure.
It was four o'clock when we reached Trent, and colder than on top of the Brenner.As the Council, owing to the dead state of its members for now three centuries, was not in session, we made no long tarry.
We went into the magnificent large refreshment-room to get warm; but it was as cold as a New England barn.I asked the proprietor if we could not get at a fire; but he insisted that the room was warm, that it was heated with a furnace, and that he burned good stove-coal, and pointed to a register high up in the wall.Seeing that I looked incredulous, he insisted that I should test it.Accordingly, Iclimbed upon a table, and reached up my hand.A faint warmth came out; and I gave it up, and congratulated the landlord on his furnace.
But the register had no effect on the great hall.You might as well try to heat the dome of St.Peter's with a lucifer-match.At dark, Allah be praised! we reached Ala, where we went through the humbug of an Italian custom-house, and had our first glimpse of Italy in the picturesque-looking idlers in red-tasseled caps, and the jabber of a strange tongue.The snow turned into a cold rain: the foot-warmers, we having reached the sunny lands, could no longer be afforded; and we shivered along till nine o'clock, dark and rainy, brought us to Verona.We emerged from the station to find a crowd of omnibuses, carriages, drivers, runners, and people anxious to help us, all vociferating in the highest key.Amidst the usual Italian clamor about nothing, we gained our hotel omnibus, and sat there for ten minutes watching the dispute over our luggage, and serenely listening to the angry vituperations of policemen and drivers.It sounded like a revolution, but it was only the ordinary Italian way of doing things; and we were at last rattling away over the broad pavements.