On the lowest and broadest of the meadow-shelves or terraces stands the hamlet and castle of Tarasp; the latter a whitewashed building perched on a rocky knoll, and mirrored in a shallow tarn. Seen from a certain distance, it forms a picturesque element in the foreground. From this point, where an hotel ought to be built, a charming forest-path follows the right bank of the Inn to Steinhaus, and numerous sledge-tracks, commanding fine views of the stern limestone peaks which encircle the entrance to the Scarl Thal, lead to upper shelves of the mountain.
The Piz Pisoc, Piz St. Jon, and Piz Lischanna, are in their own way really fine objects, challenging, of course, no comparison with the snow-clad giants of the Upper Engadine, but rather recalling to mind some of the wilder and least beautiful portions of the Venetian Alps.
Piz Lischanna is easy of ascent, and nourishes a glacier oddly described in 'Bradshaw' as 'the finest of the higher glaciers of Switzerland.' It is in fact a broad ice-lake which rests sluggishly on its uplifted limestone platform, and, finding sufficient difficulty to maintain existence where it is, has not energy enough to make a push for the valley. A slight increase of temperature--say to the climate of Primiero--would melt its masses and lay bare the rocky bed.
Piz Pisoc, the highest of the group, enjoyed for long a local reputation for inaccessibility, until, in 1865, Fluri took the trouble to come down from Pontresina, and, untroubled with any impediment in the way of 'herrschaft,' but with for companion a young native of Schuls, who has since left the country, planted a flag on the summit. This is not the only first ascent that has been made by Pontresina men on their own account: two of them repeated the unusual proceeding afterwards on Piz d' Aela near Bergun. One ought to be glad, I suppose, to see such evidence of a genuine love of sport in a class sometimes represented as the unwilling victims of foreign gold. But to the Alpine clubman such conduct looks a little like the gamekeeper turning poacher, and selecting moreover the moment when his employer's game is nearly exhausted to go out by himself and shoot off the few remaining pheasants. And the mountaineer recollects further as an aggravation of the offence that maiden peaks cannot like pheasants be bred in the farmyard or sent down by the morning express from town. Fortunately for the Engadiners they are not subject to the jurisdiction of a bench of climbing county magistrates. From their own countrymen they have nothing to fear. Swiss 'Klubists' do not seem to find the point or interest of a 'first' ascent seriously diminished by the fact that their guides have made it beforehand; and as the guides of Pontresina have never got on particularly well with our countrymen they are quite right, perhaps, even from a professional point of view, in their practice.