What traveller abroad does not know the Central Station at Milan? All the railroads of Europe would seem to lead there. And what a journey back it is to France over the Simplon route—even in its beginnings ! At Arona we come to the first hills rising on the northern limits of the plain of Lombardy. We skirt the shores of Lago Maggiore past Stresa, past Baveno. Isola Bella and her sister isles are sleeping in all their magical loveliness on the blue waters of the lake. There beyond them is Pallanza! At Feriolo we pass from the lake into the Toce valley and into the mountains. At Vogogna we are not a dozen miles from Domodossola and the tunnel beyond. But as we are pilgrims and not tourists we climb down from our train and set out on foot across the valley, that is to say, across a mile and more of the turbulent Toce’s wide-strewn debris to Pie di Mulera. Here the Anza flows in adding its tribute of glacier waters to the main stream. It is up the Val Anzasca we walk the ten miles to Vanzone, where we spend our first night among the Italian Alps.

Before dawn on July 29th, 1889, two young Milanese priests who had also spent the night at Van-zone, set off up the same valley on a great adventure. The scene of it rose majestically before their eyes as they approached Prequatero four miles on. It was Monte Rosa—’ a spectacle of incomparable beauty.’ Around us was the fresh green of the meadows and the woods; above us the canopy of heaven, fringed with the most beautiful blue that was ever seen . . . and in front towered the Alpine giant, inviting or defying—I hardly know which—with the immense extent of its snow and ice, with the mighty crown of its ten peaks . . . sparkling and flaming in the rosy rays of the rising sun.