Not quite three miles from Silvaplana the high-road passes the little hamlet of Sils Baselgia, so called from the ancient church, the basilica of the neighbourhood, that stands, 'a grief-worn memory of old years,' in a flat meadow by the tranquil Inn. Past and present are delightfully merged in Signur Badrutt's Hôtel Margna on the right of the hamlet, an admirable example of an hotel in the traditional architecture of the region, and in harmony with the scenery around it. Nichol Hartmann was given a free hand with a characteristically massive and picturesque old Engadine house, which he restored, enlarged, and fitted with every modern comfort and convenience, but with unfailing antiquarian feeling; old features have been piously preserved, and their spirit carried {22} into the new construction, with infinite ingenuity and down to the smallest detail. About half an hour farther from the high-road, Sils Maria nestles cosily in a recess of the valley behind a rocky hill, which rises as an island from the flat meadows that have supplanted the lake. Val Fex, which stretches up some five miles to the south-east, is perhaps the most beautiful of the side-valleys of the Engadine. From the sunny breakfast-cloisters of the Hôtel Margna we see its widespread glacier sagging between the Capütschin and Piz Led, as it were a great white sheet let down from heaven. This forms the background of Plate IV., with the picturesque little chapel that stands on the steep meadow slope between the first and second reaches of the valley in the foreground. On either side of the glacier interesting passes lead to Chiesa in the beautiful Val Malenco, and thence down to Sondrio, the capital of the Valtelline; in a few hours we exchange ice-bound heights, sombre pines, and cautious, close-growing Alpine flora for umbrageous groves, trellised vines, and the luxurious breezes of the south. Various points in the great rocky down that separates the Fex and Fedoz valleys afford fine views. We look down the whole chain of the lakes, seeming masses of turquoise in an emerald setting; on the right the Val Fex mounts to its glacier with crowded peaks beyond; on the left is the wild ravine of the Fedoz, the billowy ice-field at its head descending in {23} a crumpled and crevassed glacier, beyond which a host of rocky peaks ring round the abyss of blue haze that covers the steep descent into Italy. On the opposite side of the Val Fex is Marmorè, another fine point of view. An interesting continuation of this walk leads to the savage amphitheatre round the little Lej Sgrischus, 'the shuddering lake.' This lonely tarn, 8,695 feet above the sea, frozen for nine months of the year, abounds in trout, a striking instance of the hardiness of these redoubtable little fish. How they came there is a problem; if introduced by human enterprise it must have been centuries ago as the renting of the fish-take is of ancient date.