But even the briefest sketch of the tangled history of the Engadine is beyond the scope of this booklet. I will stick to my little last, the graceless business of cutting away four out of every five pages of a previous work which the world has willingly let die.* * This little book is mainly an abridgment of 'The Upper Engadine' (A. and C. Black, 1906). Most travellers enter the Engadine by the tunnel under the Albula, having slowly wound up from Chur along a line that can hardly be surpassed in bold engineering and romantic variety. After a momentary {11} halt at Spinas, we steam for a couple of miles down Val Bevers--very interesting to the geologist and botanist, the singular mixture of Alpine and meadow flora can be noted even from the rail--and reach the valley of the Inn at Bevers, where are some excellent specimens of the quaint old Engadine houses that have no small part in giving the valley its individual character. Away on the east stands Piz Esan, a bold, bare, dolomitic mass capped with Rhaetic, which is the south-western sentinel of the lately established National Park. The rail turns right and left. Let us turn right to Samaden, administratively the chief village of the Upper Engadine. Here, too, are good examples of old Engadine architecture, including a house of the Plantas, one of the ancient families of the valley whose name is writ large on every page of its history. St. Peter's at Samaden enjoys a traditional primacy among the churches of the valley, and has many representative functions. It bears the date 1491, but this must refer to the rebuilding of the nave; the Romanesque tower must date from the tenth or eleventh century. Switzerland has old churches in plenty, but both care and neglect have combined to denude them of nearly all the interesting features that the belfries show they must have possessed. Protestantism is often blamed for this, but in artistic desert I do not know that there is much to choose between the two communions; such difference as there may be {12} is expressed in two different estimates of George IV. Someone remarked that he had no taste. 'On the contrary,' said another, 'he's a great deal of taste, but it's bad.' Piz Ot, near Samaden, is a superb point of view; the neighbouring Piz Padella is interesting botanically and geologically.