[Illustration: Cover art] [Frontispiece: MUOTTAS MURAIGL.] [Illustration: title page] Beautiful Europe The Engadine By Spencer Musson A. & C. Black, Limited. Soho Square, London, W. Published Autumn, 1924 Printed in Great Britain AU PROFESSEUR CÉSAR ROUX DE LAUSANNE TÉMOIGNAGE DE PROFONDE ESTIME ET RECONNAISSANCE {vi} CONTENTS CHAPTER I. THE LAKE DISTRICT II. VAL BERNINA III. SUOT FONTANA MERLA IV. THE LOWER ENGADINE V. THE NATIONAL PARK VI. WINTER INDEX {vii} LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS BY J. HARDWICKE LEWIS SKETCH I. Muottas Muraigl . . . _Frontispiece_ II. Pontresina from above Celerina III. Piz Albana and Piz Julier in Winter IV. Val Fex V. The Rosegg Glacier VI. 'Zum Ewigen Schnee' VII. Piz Kesch from the Sertig Pass VIII. Lago di Bitabergo . . . _On the cover_ _The sketch on the title-page represents the Julier Pass._ MAPS Sketch Map of the Engadine Sketch Map showing Swiss National Park [Illustration: SKETCH MAP OF THE ENGADINE.] [Illustration: PONTRESINA FROM ABOVE CELERINA.] {9} THE ENGADINE I THE LAKE DISTRICT 'Ille terrarum mihi præter omnes angulus ridet' is the inscription that greets the traveller over the post-stables at Silvaplana. He is, perhaps, a little surprised, not having hitherto thought of stables and the postal service as haunts of classic culture; but those who know the Upper Engadine will readily accept the quotation as expressing their feeling towards it. There is something about that high-lying, broad-stretched valley, though its scenery is seldom of a dramatic, overmastering kind, that gives it a quite individual claim when Memory makes up her jewels. There is an individual note, too, about the people, a suggestion of peculiar history that mocks us as we try to seize it. One of the earliest documents in a people's archives is ordinarily their language, but that spoken by Engadiners, the interesting form of Romanic known as Ladin, one of the many tongues evolved from late Latin, only takes us back to the Roman {10} conquest of the Rhaetian upland that won the magniloquent admiration of Horace. In truth, the population is a human document, a palimpsest on which the Romans are but the latest and most masterful writers. Since, at the commencement of our era, the soldiers of Drusus and Tiberius wrote their enduring record, there have been only interlineations, mainly Teutonic, but many are the traces of antecedent scripts. Could we read below the prevailing Latin, we should probably find an elusive Keltic romance and enwoven with it perhaps a grave Etruscan legend, while scattered through all are undecipherable memorials of forgotten races and perished tongues. One ethnic wave after another has surged up that ancient highway from central Europe into Italy, and each as it passed or receded has contributed some component to the population.