This is the chief town of the county of Tirol, Œnopontum in Latin, the residence of Fernand, Archduke of Austria.87 It is a very beautiful little town and well built, standing in the bottom of the valley and full of fountains and running water, a convenience most common in all the towns we have seen in Germany and Switzerland. The houses are almost all built terraced, and we found lodgment at the “Rose,” an excellent house where they served us on plates of pewter. As to napkins of French fashion, we had already had them given us several days previous. Round about some of the beds they had hung curtains which, as typical of the character of the people, were fine and rich, of a certain sort of cloth, slashed and open worked, and also very short and narrow. In fine they were quite unfitted for the use to which we put such things, and there was besides a little tester, three fingers wide, with a lot of tassels. They gave me for M. de Montaigne white sheets trimmed with lace, four fingers wide, as is the custom of most towns in Germany. All night long men go about the streets crying the hour. Everywhere we have been they have the fashion of serving the fish the same time as the meat; but, as far as we saw, they offer no meat on fish days. On the Monday we departed, travelling along the right bank of the Inn through a fair plain for two leagues until we reached Hala.

We made the journey solely to see this place. Like Insprug it is a small town, about the size of Libourne, on the river Inn, which we crossed by a bridge. Here is produced all the salt used in Germany; they make nine hundred loaves thereof weekly at one crown apiece, the loaves being about the thickness of a half-hogshead, and somewhat of the same shape, for the vessel which serves as a mould is of the aforesaid kind. This traffic belongs to the archduke, and is carried on at a vast cost. To produce the salt they had gathered together the greatest store of wood I ever saw, for they boil in vast stoves of iron the brine, which is brought from a mountain more than two good leagues distant.

There are several fine churches, notably one belonging to the Jesuits, and this, as well as the one in Insprug, M. de Montaigne visited. Other churches there are, richly adorned and finely situated. After dinner we recrossed the river, forasmuch as the fine palace where the Archduke Fernand of Austria dwells is there situated. M. de Montaigne desired to kiss the hand of this prince, as he passed thereby in the morning, but from what a certain count told him he learned that the archduke was holding a council.

When we retraced our steps thither after dinner, and found that the archduke was in his garden, we hoped at least to be presented to him; but those who went to inform him that Messieurs were there, and at his service, brought word back that he prayed to be excused from granting an interview at that moment, but that on the morrow he would find it convenient so to do. Meantime, if Messieurs desired any favour of him, they might state their wants to a certain Milanese count. This cold reception, added to the fact that he refused to allow us to see the castle, ruffled somewhat M. de Montaigne’s temper; and when we spoke of this offence to an officer of the household this gentleman told him that the prince had said he was averse from seeing Frenchmen, for that the house of France was the foe of his own. We then returned to Insprug.

We next saw in a church eighteen magnificent bronze statues of the princes and princesses of the house of Austria.88 We also went to sup with the Cardinal of Austria89 and the Marquis of Burgant,90 sons of the archduke by a concubine, the daughter of a merchant of Augsburg. She bore him only these two sons, and then he married her to make them legitimate. She died during the present year and all the court still wears mourning. Here the ceremonial is almost the same as with our princes. The hall, the dais, and the chairs were all covered with black cloth. The cardinal, the elder, is not, I fancy, more than twenty; he drank wine freely diluted with water, and the marquis naught but sweet drink.91 The dinner was not served in a closed tray,92 but everything uncovered, the service of viands being conducted as with us. When they took their seats they placed themselves some distance from the table, which was moved towards them, laden with dishes; the cardinal sat highest, the right-hand place being always reckoned the chief one. In this palace we saw two tennis-courts and a seemly garden.

This archduke is a mighty builder and planner of all such useful devices. There we saw ten or twelve field-pieces, each carrying a ball as big as a goose’s egg, and mounted on wheels enriched and gilded all over; the very pieces themselves being gilded. They are made of nothing stronger than wood, but the muzzles are covered with iron plating, and inside the guns this plating is of double thickness. A man can carry one on his back. These guns are not fired so often as those cast in iron, but they will carry a ball almost as far. At the archduke’s country house we saw two oxen of an extraordinary size, grey with white heads, which M. de Ferrara had given him; for the aforesaid Duke of Ferrara had married one of his sisters, the Duke of Florence another, and the Duke of Mantua a third. At Hala three others formerly resided who were called “the Three Queens,”93 for to the daughters of the Emperor they give this style, as they call the daughters of other rulers countesses and duchesses, according to their estates; also to the Emperor’s daughters is given a surname from the kingdoms ruled by the Emperor. Two of these three are dead, and the third, who was still residing there, M. de Montaigne was unable to see. She lives in religious seclusion, and has called in and established the Jesuits at Hala.

Report goes that the archduke cannot leave his possessions to his children, but that these must revert to the successor to the Empire. They could not, however, give the reason for this arrangement; and, as far as this remark applies to the wife, it seems to carry no meaning, forasmuch as, though she was not of suitable rank, still he married her, and all men hold her to have been his lawful wife, and her children legitimate. However, he has amassed much money in order to bequeath them something.

On the Tuesday morning we resumed our journey, crossing the plain and following the mountain path. At the end of the first league we ascended for an hour a small mountain by an easy road. On the left hand we had a view of divers other mountains, which for the reason that they sloped gently, were covered with villages and churches and for the most part tilled up to the very tops, a pleasing prospect on account of the diversity of the landscape aforesaid. The mountains on the right were somewhat wilder and sparsely peopled. We crossed several brooks and torrents, running in varied course, and on the road we passed several large towns and villages and good inns, at the very base of the mountains. Also on the left hand were two castles and some gentlemen’s dwellings; and, about four leagues from Insprug, on the left side of a very narrow passage, we came upon a bronze tablet, richly engraved, attached to the rock and inscribed thus: “The Emperor Charles V., returning from Spain and Italy,94 where he had received the Imperial crown; and his brother Ferdinand, King of Hungary and Bohemia, coming from Pannonia, seeking one another after an interval of eight years, met at this spot in the year 1530. Ferdinand commanded this memorial to be placed here.” They are represented embracing one another.

A short distance farther on, as we passed beneath a gate which blocked the road, we found written thereon some Latin verses recording the passage of the Emperor aforesaid, and of his stay in this place after his capture of the King of France and of Rome. M. de Montaigne found the scenery of this pass greatly to his taste on account of the diversity of the objects to be seen, and we encountered no inconvenience, except the thickest and most intolerable dust we had ever experienced, which kept with us the whole of our mountain passage. After we had been on the road ten hours, M. de Montaigne affirmed that this journey seemed to him like moonlight travelling.95 It was always his habit, whether he purposed to halt on the road or not, to let his horses have oats to eat in the morning at the inn before starting. After faring seven leagues, we all arrived fasting late at night at Stertzinguen, a decent little town,96 belonging to the county of Tirol, with a fine new castle built on the rock above. At table they gave us round loaves, joined one to another, and as everywhere else in Germany, the mustard was liquid, with the taste of white French mustard. Everywhere the vinegar is white. No wine grows in these mountains, but corn enough for the inhabitants, who drink three sorts of good white wine. All these roads are perfectly safe, being much used by merchants, coachmen, and carters. Instead of the cold, which had been instanced as a detriment to this road, we were troubled with intolerable heat. The women of the country wear cloth hats, like our scholars’ caps, with their hair braided and hanging down as in other places. M. de Montaigne, having espied a fair young girl in a church, asked if she could speak Latin, deeming she was a scholar.

Here we had curtains to our beds of thick linen dyed red. In all our travels in Germany we found no room or chamber which was not panelled, the ceilings being very low. M. de Montaigne suffered this night from colic for two or three hours, and very sharply, to judge from what he said next morning. Then indeed, when he rose from bed, he passed a stone of medium size which crumbled easily: outside it was yellowish, and when broken showed white in the middle. He had taken cold the previous day and found himself ailing, but he had not suffered from colic since Plommieres. This seizure partially removed the fear he felt that at Plommieres some gravel had descended into the bladder without passing therefrom, and that certain matter, there arrested, was collecting and consolidating. Now, seeing what had happened, he felt he might reasonably infer that, if there were indeed other particles, they would have joined themselves to the stone he had just passed. On the way he complained of pain in his loins, and now he declared he had prolonged the day’s journey simply on this account, deeming that he would find greater ease on horseback than elsewhere. At this place he called for the schoolmaster to converse with him in Latin, but the fellow was a fool from whom he could get no information as to the country.

On the morrow, Wednesday, October 26, we set out over a plain some half-quarter of a league in width, having the river Aisoc97 on our right hand, and traversed this plain for two leagues. At the foot of the neighbouring mountains we saw here and there spaces of ground, inhabited and cultivated and often adjacent one to the other, but could discern no road leading thereto. We passed four or five castles, and crossed the river on a wooden bridge, and came upon some roadmakers who were repairing the way because it was somewhat stony, but not worse than the roads in Perigord. Then, having passed a stone gateway, we mounted to higher ground, where we came upon a level space about a league in length, and espied a similar plain on the other side of the river, both being sterile and rocky. There were some very fine low-lying meadows on our side of the stream. After going four leagues without halt we arrived in time for supper at Brixen, a fair little town, through which flows the river aforesaid, crossed by a wooden bridge. A bishop resides here and we saw two fine churches. We found good lodging at the “Eagle.”

The level ground here is of no great extent, but the adjacent mountains rise so gently, even on the left-hand side, that they can, so to speak, be curled and combed up to the very ears.98 The whole country seems full of clock towers and villages high up in the hills, and near the town are several fine houses well built and situated. M. de Montaigne declared “that he had all his life distrusted the verdict of other people upon the amenities of foreign lands, no one being able, apparently, to appreciate them except by the rule of his own peculiar habit, and the custom of his village; and that he paid very little respect to the information given him by travellers. But now he was more amazed than ever over their stupidity, seeing that he had heard tell—and especially concerning travelling in this region—of the exceeding difficulties to be overcome in these passes of the Alps; that the manners of the people were uncouth, the roads impassable, the lodging rough, and the air intolerable. As to the air, he thanked God to find it so mild—for he was fain of excess of heat rather than of cold, and up to the present we had experienced only three days of cold, and an hour or so of rain—and moreover, if he were minded to take his little girl99 of eight out for a walk, he would as lief take her out on this road as in his own garden; that, as to the lodgings, he had never seen a country where they were so plentiful and good, having always found accommodation in handsome towns well supplied with provision and wine at a cheaper rate than elsewhere.”

They use in these parts a machine with various wheels to turn the spits. They bind closely a strong cord round a great spindle of iron; this unwinds itself, and, the movement thereof being arrested somehow, the process lasts an hour. When it stops the machine has to be wound up afresh. As to smoke-jacks we saw several of these. So great is the abundance of iron that, besides fitting gratings of divers sorts to their windows and doors, they cover even the wooden shutters with plates of iron. Here we came again into the land of vines, which we had lost sight of since we quitted Augsburg. Round about these parts most of the houses have every storey vaulted. In Germany they do what we cannot do in France, to wit, they use hollow tiles to cover the narrowest slopes of roofing, as in their clock towers. Their tiling is smaller and more hollowed, and sometimes plastered at the joints. We quitted Brixen on the morning of the morrow, and traversed the same wide open valley, the roadsides being adorned with divers fine houses. Travelling with the river Eisock on our left, we passed a small village named Clause,100 inhabited by various sorts of workers, and at the end of three leagues came to Colman101 in time for dinner, a small place where the archduke has a pleasure-house.

At table they gave us, together with silver goblets, others of painted earthenware, and they washed the glasses with white salt. The first service was sent up in a hot dish, very handy, which they placed on the table with an iron implement. It contained eggs poached with butter. On quitting this place we found the road somewhat narrow, and the rocks closed upon us so much that the pass was hardly wide enough for ourselves and the river together. In sooth we should have been in danger of pushing one another into the abyss, if they had not built between the river and the wayfarers a wall which was continued in places a German league at a stretch. The more lofty of the mountains which stood around us were wild rocks, some in solid masses, some scored and broken up by the passage of the torrents, and some of a kind of shale which let fall below innumerable fragments of astonishing size, wherefore it impressed us that it would be perilous to travel here during a tempest. We saw likewise whole forests of pine trees torn up by the roots which still carried masses of earth. But the country is well peopled, for, beyond these lower hills, we caught sight of others higher up, cultivated and inhabited; and we learned also that above these were fine, broad, level fields and good houses occupied by rich farmers, who raised abundant corn for the villages below. We crossed the stream by one of the numerous wooden bridges and then had it on our left hand. Amongst other objects we saw a castle, perched on the loftiest and most inaccessible point of the mountains, which they told us belonged to a baron of the country, who lived there and enjoyed his fine lands and hunting. Beyond these hills there is always to be seen the range of high Alps, which we left to themselves. They indeed bar the issue from this pass, so that the traveller has continually to return to the course of the stream, and to emerge again at some turn or other. This county of Tirol, which yields no revenue except from the mountains, is worth three hundred thousand florins a year to the archduke, more than he gets from all the rest of his dominions. We crossed the river again by a stone bridge, and, after a bout of four leagues, we arrived in good time at Bolzan.102

This town, about the size of Libourne, is situated on the river before named, and is somewhat less pleasing than other towns we had visited in Germany, so much so that M. de Montaigne exclaimed that it was evident we were about to cross the German border. The streets are narrow, and there is no fine public place, but we still found fountains, running water, paintings, and glass windows. Wine is so plentiful that they supply the whole of Germany with what it needs, and the bread eaten in these mountains is the best in the world. The church is a very fine one, and possesses amongst other things a wooden organ, which is very high and placed close to the crucifix by the great altar. But the player sits some twelve feet lower, beside the column to which the organ is attached, and the bellows are underground outside the church, about fifteen paces behind the organist. The open space in which this town is situated is only just large enough to contain it, but the mountains to the right hand stand back somewhat, thus giving a little extra ground. From here M. de Montaigne wrote to François Hottoman, whom he had met at Basel, “that albeit he was bound for Italy, he had fared so well in Germany that he quitted it with much regret; that strangers had to suffer the exactions of innkeepers there as elsewhere, but that this abuse would soon right itself, and that the traveller would no longer be at the mercy of guides and interpreters who sold him and shared the profit. In every other respect he had always met with unbounded courtesy and convenience, and was specially struck with the justice and security everywhere prevalent.”103 We left Bolzan early on Friday morning, and at two leagues’ end we halted for breakfast and to feed our horses at Brounsol.104

This was a small village standing above the river Eysock which, after bearing us company so far, now mixed itself with the Adisse105 and flowed therewith to the Adriatic Sea, broad and tranquil, and no longer resembling the brawling and furious torrents of the mountains above. The plain, too, became a little broader as far as Trante,106 and the hills showed their peaks less prominently. The slopes of these, however, are less fertile than those higher up, and in the valley are some swamps which encroach upon the road in places, but elsewhere the travelling is easy in the bottom of the valley and along the plain. Two leagues after leaving Brounsol we came to a large village where a great crowd was assembled by reason of a fair. Farther on was another well-built village, called Solorne,107 where the archduke has a small castle on the left of the road, set in a strange position on the point of a rock. Five leagues’ journey took us to Trante, where we arrived in time for bed.

Trante is somewhat larger than Aagen, an unpleasant place, and quite lacking in the grace of the German towns, with narrow and crooked streets.108 Two leagues before reaching it we heard the Italian tongue, and the town itself is equally divided between the two languages, one quarter thereof being called after the Germans, with a church in which they have a preacher of their own speech. We heard no talk of the new forms of religion after we left Augsburg. In Trante, which is on the Adisse, we saw the cathedral, which had a look of great antiquity,109 and the same may be said of a square tower near thereto. We likewise visited Notre Dame, the new church where the Council was held, in which church there is an organ, the gift of a private gentleman. This is exceedingly beautiful; it is set up in a marble gallery which is carved and adorned with divers fine statues, those of some singing children being especially lovely.110 This church was built by Bernardus Clesius Cardinalis in 1520, a native of Trante and afterwards bishop.111 Trante is a free town under the charge and governance of the bishop, but at a time when they were hard pressed in a struggle with the Venetians, the people called in the Count of Tirol to help them, and in return therefor he has retained certain authority and rights over the town. There has been a contention between him and the bishop over this matter, but the bishop, who is a Cardinal Madruccio, now holds possession.112

On this point M. de Montaigne said “that he had taken note during his journey of those citizens who had done good service to the towns where they were born; of the Foulcres of Augsburg, to whom was due the main part of the embellishment of that city, who had placed palaces at all the crossings of the streets, and filled the churches with all kinds of works of art; of this Cardinal Clesius also, who, besides building this church and several streets at his own charges, added a very fine building to the castle of the town.” The outside of this building is nothing remarkable, but within it is furnished and painted and enriched in a fashion beyond anything that can be imagined. All the panel work below is enriched with painted patterns, the bosses of the ceilings are gilded and carven, the floors are made of a kind of hardened earth painted like marble, a part of the rooms being fitted after one fashion, and part, à l’Allemande, with stoves. One of these is of porcelain darkened to the colour of bronze, and made in the form of a group of large human figures, which, being heated warm the room. Moreover there are certain others, stationed close to the wall, which give out water, this being brought to them from the fountain in the court below. This is a fine piece of work. We saw there also amongst the other designs on the ceilings a torchlight procession by night, which M. de Montaigne admired greatly, also two or three circular chambers, in one of which was an inscription recording how “Clesius, having been sent in the year 1530 to the coronation of the Emperor Charles V. by Pope Clement VII., on St. Matthias’s Day, as envoy on the part of Ferdinand, King of Hungary and Bohemia, Count of Tirol, and brother of the aforenamed Emperor, was made a cardinal, being already Bishop of Trent.” Moreover, they have set round the chamber the armorial bearings, and painted on the walls the arms and the names of the gentlemen who accompanied him: some fifty in number, all counts and barons owing service to the bishopric. In one of these chambers there is a trap door through which a man can slip into the town without passing the main entrance, and two richly ornamented chimney-pieces. This was an excellent cardinal. The Foulcres have done great building work, but they have built for their posterity, while the cardinal aforesaid has built for the public weal, for he has left this castle, together with the furniture still in it worth more than a hundred thousand crowns, to his successors in office. Besides this he left to the public fund of the bishopric a hundred and fifty silver thalers, which is held without payment of interest on the same. In spite of these benefactions they have left his church of Notre Dame unfinished, and have erected a very mean tomb over his body. His successors provide themselves with no other furniture than the aforenamed for the castle. Some of this is fitted for the winter, some for the summer, and none of it can be alienated.

Here they reckon distance by the Italian mile, of which five go to make one mile of Germany, and they count the hours through to twenty-four without dividing them in the midst. We found good lodging at the “Rose,” and left Trante on the Saturday after dinner. We followed a road like the last we traversed in the valley, which was here wider and girt by higher, uninhabited mountains, having the river Adisse on our right hand. There we passed a castle113 belonging to the archduke, which commands the road, like various other strongholds elsewhere, built to control the passage, and arrived at Rovere114 very late, after travelling fifteen miles. Never until now did we journey in the dewfall,115 so carefully had we laid out our time on the road.

This town belongs to the archduke aforenamed. Here in our lodging we found once more the usages with which we were familiar: we found, indeed, not merely German neatness in rooms and furniture and glass windows, but German stoves as well, which commended themselves to M. de Montaigne much more than open chimneys.116 As to food, we had here no crayfish, which thing M. de Montaigne found very strange, seeing that, ever since we left Plommieres, a distance of two hundred leagues, this dish had been put before us at every meal. Here and in all this mountainous country they commonly eat snails larger and fatter than those of France, but not so well flavoured; also truffles which they peel and serve sliced with oil and vinegar, a passably good dish. The truffles we ate at Trante had been kept for a year. Here at Rovere, greatly to the gratification of M. de Montaigne, we were plentifully supplied with oranges and citrons and olives. The bed curtains are cut short and made either of cloth or serge. M. de Montaigne also regretted the lack of those beds which they use as coverings in Germany; made not like our beds, but of the finest down enclosed in an envelope of well-bleached fustian. The beds used for lying upon in Germany are not of this character, and could not be used as coverlets with comfort.

I verily believe that, if he had been alone with his own following, M. de Montaigne would rather have gone to Cracow or to Greece by land than have turned towards Italy. He took great pleasure in his visits to strange countries, finding therein forgetfulness of his age and of his ill-health, but he could never win over the rest of the company to this view, each one of them being anxious to have done with travel and to return. He was ever wont to say that, after an uneasy night, he would rise eager and lively when he remembered he was about to sally forth to see some fresh town or district. Never did I see him less subject to fatigue or less querulous of his ailments; so full of spirit both on the road and at his lodgings; so appreciative of everything he saw, and eager for conversation with strangers; indeed I believe that this habit drew off his thoughts from his infirmities. When the others complained to him of his practice of leading the party over indirect and winding roads, often returning to the spot whence they had set out (which he would often do when he heard report of something worth seeing, or when he saw reason for varying his plan of travel), he would reply that, for his own part, he never set forth for any place other than that in which he might at present find himself; and that it was impossible he should miss or go aside from his route, because this route always lay where places unfamiliar to him were to be seen; and that, provided he did not fare the same road twice over, or see one place a second time, he never considered that he had failed one jot in his original purpose. As to Rome, which other people might easily see, he was less fain to visit it than other places, because it was well known to every one, and moreover every lackey was ready to give news of Florence and Ferrara. He said that he seemed to be in like case to one who reads some delightful story or good book, and dreads to turn the last page. The pleasure of travel was to him so keen, that he hated the sight of the place where he ought rightly to stop and rest; moreover, he devised several projects of travelling exactly as the mood might seize him, supposing that he should separate from his present companions.

On the Sunday morning, having a wish to see the Lake of Garda, a famous lake of these parts and rich in the finest fish,117 he hired three horses for himself and Messieurs de Caselis and Mattecoulon at twenty batzen apiece. M. d’Estissac hired two others for himself and the Sieur du Hautoy, and with no escort—having left their own horses at this place, Rovere, for the day—they rode eight miles to Torbole, where they dined. This is a village under Tirolese jurisdiction, situated at the head of the lake, and opposite to it is a small town and a castle called Riva.118 To this place they were taken by water, five miles, and the same distance to return; they accomplished the journey in about three hours, being rowed by five boatmen. They saw nothing at Riva save a tower which had the appearance of great age, and the governor of the place, the Seigneur Hortimato Madruccio, brother of the present cardinal bishop of Trante. In looking down the lake the farther end is not in view, for it is thirty-five miles long, while the width and all they could see of it did not exceed five miles. The head of the lake is in the county of Tirol, but all the lower part on either side is under the Signiory of Venice, a region rich in fine churches, gardens of olives, oranges, and other similar fruits. This lake is terribly rough in times of tempest, and the surrounding mountains are more bare and threatening than any of those we had hitherto passed, according to the report of Messieurs.119 On quitting Rovere they crossed the Adisse, leaving the road to Verona to the left hand, and entered a deep valley where they passed through a long village and a small town, the road being the roughest and the view the most forbidding of any they had yet experienced, by reason of these mountains which obstructed the way. On leaving Torbole, they returned to Rovere to supper.

At this place we put our trunks on one of the rafts, which are called flottes in Germany, for conveyance to Verona by the river Adisse, paying therefor a florin, and on the morrow I had the charge of this transport. For supper they gave us poached eggs and a pike, together with a great plenty of flesh of all kinds. On the next morning, Monday, they set forth early, and following the valley, fairly populous but not over fertile and flanked by high, rocky mountains, they arrived after riding fifteen miles at Bourquet120 in time for dinner. This town lies within the county of Tirol, which is very large. In this matter M. de Montaigne, when he asked whether this county included aught else than the valley we had traversed and the mountain tops we had seen, was informed that it contained divers other mountain valleys, fully as extensive and fertile, and fine towns: that the county was, as we saw it, like a robe in folds, but that, were it spread out, it would cover a very wide stretch of country. The river was all this time on the right hand, and when they resumed their journey after dinner they kept the same road as far as Chiusa, a small fort in a mountain cleft above the Adisse, which the Venetians had taken. They followed the course of the river, descending a steep slope of solid rock over which the horses could hardly keep their feet, and passing the fort aforesaid, where the Venetian government, in whose territory they had been after a mile or two on this side of Bourquet, kept twenty-five soldiers. They arrived in time for bed at Volarne after riding twelve miles. At this place they found wretched lodging, as everywhere else on the way to Verona. A young lady, the daughter of the lord of the castle who was then absent, sent M. de Montaigne a present of wine. On the morrow there were no more mountains visible on the right of the road, and to the left even the hills which lay upon the skirts of the plain were far distant. The way was for some time over a sterile plain, but when it neared the river it improved, and vines, trained upon trees, as is the fashion in these parts, came in sight. After a journey of twelve miles they arrived on All Saints’ Day before mass at Verona.

END OF VOL. I.

Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson & Co.
Edinburgh & London