Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE AMPEZZO PASS AND THE HOUSE OF THE STAR OF GOLD. OUR month's voyage of Venice had come to an , end. We had said so many times to each other in the mornings, " We must go," that the meaningless declaration had come to be received with bursts of laughter, and nobody dared say it any more. Nevertheless it was true: people who meant to summer in the Tyrol must not spend the whole of June in Venice. Silent, sad, beautiful Venice, how did our eyes dins; to .' thy spires, as looking backward from the railway carriage we saw them slowly go down in the pale water. That one can leave Venice by rail seems the most incredible thing in life. At the first turn of the wheels and snort of the engine we began to doubt whether the city had been real; the first sight of green land was bewildering; and when at the first station we saw wheeled carriages waiting for people, we were struck dumb. What a gigantic and agile creature did the horse appear! and what a marvel of beautiful solidity the level earth, brown under foot, and full of locust hedges and pink-blossomed trees! It is no small proof of the subtile spell of that wonderful city of water and stone, slowly sinking at anchor, that one month's life on its bosom is enough to make all other living seem unnatural. We even felt dull misgivings about the Tyrol, and the dolomite mountains of the grand Ampezzo Pass through which we were to pass to reach it. Nevertheless, " Ampezzo Pass " was so stamped upon our whole bearing, that, as soon as we stepped out of thecarriage at Conesrliano, we were taken possession of by screaming vetturini, each man of whom possessed the very best carriage and the very best horses, and was himself the very best guide in Conegliano! 0 the persistence, the superhuman persistence, of an Italian with a hope o...