To leave this fascinating old-world town, where so much of the most beautiful in modern ideas stands side by side with ancient things, without a visit to some of the charming and interesting places in the immediate district--lovely lakes rivalling the deep-blue sky above them in the tint of their waters; peaceful valleys, where pure air invigorates scented by passage through pinewoods and across flower-decked Alpine pastures; wonderful peaks covered with that eternal weight of glorious snow, and bound about in some cases by the immemorial fastnesses of environing glaciers--should be impossible. Our only regret is that neither space nor the scope of the present volume permits of some description of the beauties which we have visited and which lie so close at hand; indeed, almost within call of the beautiful city set in a valley, and surrounded with majestic and lofty mountains, the lower slopes of whose wilder peaks are softened by pine forests, and fertile upper pastures. CHAPTER VIII SOME TOWNS AND VILLAGES OF SOUTH TYROL--MERAN, BOZEN, KLAUSEN, BRIXEN, SPINGES, STERZING, MATREI [Sidenote: MERAN] So many pens have described and praised Meran, the ancient capital of Tyrol, that there must be few adjectives of appreciation left unapplied to it. Many poets have also sung of this beautifully situated little town of some 8000 inhabitants which once played so important a part in Tyrolese history, and nowadays has developed into a fashionable health resort. It has by turns been called "the Jewel of South Tyrol," "Tyrol's sweet Paradise," and in one of the visitor's books "A Paradise of God's making and man's improving"! Artists love it, and therefore it goes without saying that Meran is both beautiful and picturesque. From whatever side one approaches the town, whether by the more usual route from the West via Innsbruck, and then by the little branch line of the Brenner railway from Bozen; from the south through Verona; from the north by way of Munich and Innsbruck,--one is at once struck by its wonderfully favoured situation amid vineyards, orchards and rich pasture land, set in a wide valley surrounded by beautiful mountain ranges, and watered by the Passer River. It is, indeed, a charming spot in which to either rest--as so many do--or from which to make excursions so varied in character, that they may suit all tastes. [Illustration: WINTER NEAR MERAN] The first view of the town, with its spires, huge hotels, white-walled houses and villas, and the ruins of Castle Tyrol set high on the north-western and vine-clad slope of the Kuchelberg, is one of great beauty. On the lower hillsides are chestnut groves and pine woods; and many of the villas and houses of the town itself appear amid them as though embowered in green. The railway from Bozen traverses the picturesque Etsch Valley, which is dotted with orchards, and follows the course of the Etsch to where it joins the Passer about three-quarters of a mile from Meran.