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Zaproburno Yollanica Directory 16
Page 03
The incidents which it illustrates are treated with even more than the homeliness usual in works of this description when not dealing with such solemn events as the death and passion of Christ. Except when these subjects were being represented, something of the latitude, and even humour, allowed in the old mystery plays was permitted, doubtless from a desire to render the work more attractive to the peasants, who were the most numerous and most important pilgrims. It is not until faith begins to be weak that it fears an occasionally lighter treatment of semi-sacred subjects, and it is impossible to convey an accurate idea of the spirit prevailing at this hamlet of sanctuary without attuning oneself somewhat to the more pagan character of the place. Of irreverence, in the sense of a desire to laugh at things that are of high and serious import, there is not a trace, but at the same time there is a certain unbending of the bow at Montrigone which is not perceivable at Varallo.
We went down all the time on troubled waters, with rocky banks and innumerable obstacles all the way. We went through another terrible and most intricate rapid--the Labyrinth--and passed through a channel only 40 m. wide between high rocky banks. Then, after that, for 9,500 m. we had fair and smooth navigation, with a range of flat-topped hills 300 ft. high, extending from W.S.W. to E.N.E., in front of us to the north-west. Here there was a regular maze of channels, all more or less bad. We did not follow the principal one, which was strewn with rocks, but a smaller one, at the end of which, unfortunately, we found a barrier of rocks which we could not surmount. We had all the trouble of dragging the canoe back up the rapid until we could turn her round into another channel.
Naturally, when one has before one the prospect of leaving this world at any moment, and one is working under a severe mental strain, one generally thinks deeply of one's beloved parents and relatives. Thus my father, mother and sister were before me all the time in my imagination. Sometimes when I was half-dazed I could see them so vividly that I could almost believe they were so close that I could touch them. I never thought that I should see them again, in reality, although I never actually lost hope of doing so; but I was thinking incessantly of them, and of the anxiety I was causing them, as I had had no possible way of communicating with them for months and months.
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