Italy from the Alps to Mount Etna . e train, and the foreign tongues theyspeak, seem to deepen the impression that their service is hard and compulsory. Severalofficers, too, get into the train at this point: mostly fine-looking fellows. Many a oneis accompanied to the carriage door by a woman who looks after the departing trainwith wet eyes; to Hungary, to Poland, to Trieste, they are dispersing in variousdirections. But not only the men, all the memories, in this locality bear a military , where the ways part to the Pustcrthal and the Brenner, where lies the key of theapproach to I
Italy from the Alps to Mount Etna . e train, and the foreign tongues theyspeak, seem to deepen the impression that their service is hard and compulsory. Severalofficers, too, get into the train at this point: mostly fine-looking fellows. Many a oneis accompanied to the carriage door by a woman who looks after the departing trainwith wet eyes; to Hungary, to Poland, to Trieste, they are dispersing in variousdirections. But not only the men, all the memories, in this locality bear a military , where the ways part to the Pustcrthal and the Brenner, where lies the key of theapproach to Italy, much noble blood has flowed ; we have reached that part of thepass which is strategically the strongest, and forts were erected to protect it. Here, at ACROSS THE BRENNER. i7 this point which commands the gorge of Brixen, there have been bitter struggles for themastery, nay it almost seems as though Nature herself took sides, and fought for thedefence of the pass. She grows rougher and sterner than heretofore, and piles up on. WANDERERS ON THE BRENNER TASS. giddy heights a store of rocky projectiles which, in the combats of 1809, crashed downupon the foe; the bloodstain of 1809 is the stamp and token, the distinctive symbol,of this road! In Mittenwald, where there is a solitary post-house, the bullets arestill sticking in the walls. More than a thousand men of one German regiment wereslain at a spot still called the Sachsen Klemme, or Strait of the Saxons. The trees D 18 ITAL Y. were torn from the heights, and the stones from the rocks, to bs hurled down on theinvader. The enraged people fought as in the old heroic times; they had beendisarmed, but Nature herself furnished an inexhaustible armoury ; she was their ally andtheir refuge; she gave to the combat that elemental fury which we cannot think of with-out a shudder. Every People has its Thermopylae. Now, in the central point of the defile stands the threatening fortress of Franzens-fest, upon a colossal substructure
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Keywords: ., bookauthorcavagnasangiulianidig, bookcentury1800, bookdecade1870
