Page 441 - Four Thousand Years Ago by Geoffrey Bibby

important to gain control of this route and establish a more
regular trade with the Etruscans.
His arguments had carried weight, and now he was once
again riding into new territory, this time as an ambassador, with

an escort and a herald carrying a white-painted staff, on his way
to confer with the chiefs of the Alpine cantons at their religious
center in the southern Alps.

They had crossed the Brenner pass yesterday, and now they
had turned off the Amber Road, crossing an even higher pass into

the vale of Camonica, which ran down, a hundred miles it was
said, to the Po. The path by which they rode, following their
guide on his shaggy pony, was little more than a sheep track,

winding down and down into the narrow bare valley between
snow-clad peaks. But gradually, as they dropped, the air grew
warmer and the valley widened and straightened. They passed

summer pastures with grazing cattle and then, as the trees began,
patches of fenced plowland and an occasional timber house with
reed-thatched barns. Farther down, the cultivated land was wide

in extent, covering the whole valley floor, and on the southward­
facing slopes were terraced vineyards. It was here that they came
to the first of the painted rocks. Their guide reined up where the

path bent around a sloping rock face, and pulled off his close­
fitting cap. And as they followed his glance, they saw that the

rock was covered with pictures, carvings incised in the rock and
painted in vivid reds and yellows.
At first sight it was difficult to make head or tail of the pic­

tures on the rock; they were a jumbled mass of figures, some
freshly painted, others scarcely distinguishable. But gradually
details could be made out: figures of dancing men, of men

brandishing axes, of daggers, of oxen, and of horses. At many
points could be seen the rayed disc or the four-spoked wheel
which even the Danubians knew represented the sun. Slowly the

Master of the Horse realized that these were holy pictures, and
he pulled off his own ermine plumed helmet, remembering the

sun-worship of his own people.
As they rode on, past more and more of the carved rocks, he
questioned the guide about the pictures.
This was a holy valley, the guide explained, for the Thun­