These peaks are the advance-guard of the Tyrolese dolomites, boldly thrown across the valley of the Adige, as if to challenge on their own ground the snowy ranks of the Orteler and Adamello. They are separated from the granite by no wide depression such as divides the Venetian Alps and the Tauern, but only by a single valley. The boulder which rolls from the flanks of the Presanella will scarcely halt before it rests on dolomitic soil.
The Eastern Alps could scarcely have put forward a nobler champion than the range before us. Primiero and Auronzo may perhaps equal the marvellous skyline; but they offer nothing to rival the symmetry of the whole mass of the Brenta as it rises above Val Nambino. Consider the lower stories of the huge edifice. The slope is not monotonous in uniformity, yet the platforms which break it are too narrow to diminish by foreshortening the apparent height of the summits. From our feet rise powerful spurs, below dark with pines, above bare and white; their form is simple and severe, but every shifting light brings out fresh details in the fretwork which time has carved deeply into their sides. Like the flying buttresses of some vast cathedral they lead the eye up to the straight perpendicular lines of the crowning towers.
When we come to study the range more generally, what incomparable variety of beauty! On the west lies a green, open Alpine valley. The Lago di Molveno reflects in its blue mirror the eastern crags. The southern slopes are a rich tangle of vines and chestnuts; the beeches push up and dispute with the pines the inner glens; the cyclamens and gentians gird with successive belts of brightness the mountain form.
The traveller, when he penetrates this fantastic chain, finds himself at first in narrow glens watered by clear streams, now smooth-flowing over lawns of the softest turf, now dancing through beechwoods, now plunging deep into some miniature ravine hung with mosses and bright-berried ashes. He forgets, in the charm of what is near at hand, what he came to see. Then suddenly through the tree-tops an incredible yellow flame, set for ever between the green and blue, recalls the presence of the dolomites, and urges him to further exertion. He climbs a steep barrier, and the pinnacles range themselves as portions of a vast amphitheatre of rock. He advances a few hundred yards further along the level and the scene is changed. One solitary tower overclimbs the clouds and mixes with the sky. A second ascent brings another shift. Rocks, grey, gold, red, brown and black, cluster round his bewildered eyes, and he begins to doubt whether the scene is a solid reality or some Alastor-inspired Vision of Solitude.