A Lateral Valley Opening From The Puster Thal.

Toblach, Looking Toward The Ampezzo Thal.

Monte Cristallo And The DÜRren See.

One feature of the country instantly impressed me - the wonderful clearness of its atmosphere. Huge domes and spires, really miles away, seemed close at hand; and like the desert air in purity was the breeze which now and then swept downward from them to refresh us as we drove along. Another noticeable trait was a remarkable likeness in these barren crags and variegated hues to the fantastically shaped and richly tinted peaks that rise in arid splendor from the Arizona Canon. But while in the latter case the agent which thus fashioned them was water, working through an inconceivably lengthened period of erosion, the sculptors of the Dolomites, as we now see them, have been wind, rain, frost, and snow. In fact, the quality of these mountains that impressed itself most strongly on our minds (as well as on our moods, so strangely did this scenery affect us) was their astonishing configuration. The wildest imagination could not possibly conceive a more bewildering array of architectural designs than have been here thrown up against the sky. The Dolomites are the Alps in ruins. The elements, allied for their destruction, first cleft, then grooved the monster masses, till they stood asunder like extended fingers; and ever since then they have either blown or washed away innumerable tons of yielding rock, till now the mutilated ridges rear - a mile or two above our heads - millions of splintered cliffs and sharp, serrated walls which we in childish helplessness compare to castles, citadels, cathedrals, obelisks, towers, pyramids, chimneys, needles, bayonets, tusks, and other grotesque and distorted shapes, to name which all the languages devised by man are insufficient. Save in a few rare combinations, their forms cannot be truthfully called beautiful; but their effects of color, which will be considered later, are unique and exquisite.

Dolomite " Obelisks".

To me the Dolomites, with all their grandeur, are as a rule fierce, cruel, desolate, and uncanny. They are such peaks as D o r é might have seen in nightmare when engaged in illustrating Don Quixote. Hence, much as I enjoy repeated visits to their neighborhood, I would not care to live among them, as, for example, I delight in dwelling near the mountains of Meran, or in the valleys of the Bernese Oberland. For, unlike these, there is nothing peaceful in the aspect of the Dolomites, such as we find in the colossal snow dome of Mont Blanc, and in the spotless summit of the Jungfrau. They never seem to rest against the sky, and much less to support it like gigantic caryatides, but rather look as if they were encroaching on the azure like an enemy, and with their monstrous teeth and claws appear to bite and rend it. Nor are these Dolomitic forms so permanent as to suggest the "eternal hills." They are forever in a state of change. They will not look, nor can they be, next year, exactly as they are to-day. Their transformations illustrate the words of Tennyson:

A Dolomite "Tusk".

"The hills are shadows, and they flow From form to form, and nothing stands; They melt like mist, the solid lands, Like clouds they shape themselves and go".

Crumbling Towers.

An Island Of The Upper Air.

Accordingly, whether we gaze upon them from our hotel windows, or look up at them in amazement as we drive along their bases, or climb to altitudes where we can study their peculiarities more closely, the questions constantly recur to us, What can have been the history of these colossal ridges, and what has caused, and is still causing, their unusual disintegration ?

That they are fossiliferous, and not igneous, in their origin is certain, their composition being principally "dolomite," that is to say, a combination of carbonate of limestone and carbonate of magnesia resembling chalk, yet somewhat heavier and harder. It is preeminently a stone that lends itself to the caprices of the atmosphere, and hence in time assumes those numberless Protean shapes which so astonish the beholder. As to the origin of the Dolomites, the theory now most generally accepted is that they are coral reefs, once covered by the waves, and slowly lifted by a crumpling of the earth's crust, not merely to their present height, but even higher, since so much of their old material has been loosened by the elements and carried down again by rain and river to the sea.