The region takes its name Tarasp, _terra aspera_, from the castle, which stands on a hill of splintered rock some distance from the principal springs. On the hillside is the hamlet of Sparsels, with a curious fountain-shrine; and below, by a little lake, Fontana, with the parish church and a Capuchin hospice, for, owing to the long tenure of the seigniory by Austria, this commune, alone in the Engadine, has remained Catholic. In the eleventh century, after long disputes, the castle and seigniory became vested in the bishopric of Chur. In 1239 they passed to the counts of Tirol, and remained Austrian till, by the Treaty of Luneville in 1801, they were made over to Graubünden as a set-off to various fiefs of the bishopric of Chur scattered in the Vorarlberg and Tirol. There are enchanting views of this loveliest nook of the Lower Engadine from the windows of the castle, whose latest purchaser is the ex-Grand-Duke of Hesse. Descending the valley, we pass the ruin of the Romanesque church of St. Peter on a rocky hill. Then the villages of Sent and Crusch, 'The Cross,' a little below which a road crosses the Inn to Sur En on the right bank at the opening of the sequestered Val d'Uina. About a mile and a half below Crusch is the deep ravine through which the Sinestra flows to the Inn. On a rocky hill above is the ruined castle of Tschanuf, {43} the seat till the beginning of last century of an episcopal castellan who controlled the jurisdiction of the Lower Engadine. Less than an hour up the wild and lovely Val Sinestra are some famous springs impregnated with iron, arsenic, and other minerals, and highly charged with carbonic acid gas. Centuries before the present high-road and Kurhaus facilitated access to and use of them, their virtues were known in the Engadine and Tirol, and a little band of sufferers flocked yearly to this secluded glen, living in tents while they drank the waters and bathed with pristine simplicity under a spreading elder tree in troughs in which the water was warmed by heated stones. Descending the Inn Valley we come to Ramuosch in a fertile nook of ancient cultivation. Its interesting church, which formerly claimed to enshrine the wonder-working remains of St. Florin, was long a place of pilgrimage both for Engadiners and Tirolese. Though the saint was priest of Ramuosch, his birthplace was Matsch in Tirol, and every year on his festival the chest that was believed to hold his bones was carried in solemn procession from Ramuosch to Matsch, some eight hours distant, and back. In 1530 it occurred to the authorities of Ramuosch to open the chest, which was found to contain nothing but rags. Ramuosch was then halting at the crossways, and {44} this cruel disillusion decided it for the Reformation.*