Amelia Edwards, English novelist, traveler, and Eqyptologist, published an account of her travels in the Dolomites, Untrodden Peaks and Unfrequented Valleys, in 1873.

In the preface, she provides an overview of the area.

The district described in the following pages occupies that part of the South-eastern Tyrol which lies between Botzen, Bruneck, Innichen, and Belluno. Within the space thus roughly indicated are found those remarkable limestone mountains called the Dolomites.

Till within the last six or eight years–that is to say, till the publication of Ball's Guide to the Eastern Alps in 1868, and the appearance of Messrs. Gilbert and Churchill's joint volume in 1864,–the Dolomite district was scarcely known even by name to any but scientific travellers. A few geologists found their way now and then to Predazzo; a few artists, attracted in the first instance to Cadore, as the birthplace of Titian, carried their sketch-books up the Ampezzo Thal; but there it ended. Even now, the general public is so slightly informed upon the subject that it is by no means uncommon to find educated persons who have never heard of the Dolomites at all, or who take them for a religious sect, like the Mormons or the Druses.

Nor is this surprising when we consider the nature of the ground lying within the area just named; the absence of roads; the impossibility of traversing the heart of the country, except on foot or on mule-back; the tedious postal arrangements; the want of telegraphic communication; and the primitive quality of the accommodation provided for travellers. A good road is the widest avenue to knowledge; but there is at present only one good and complete road in the whole district–namely, the Strada Regia which, traversing the whole length of the Ampezzo Thal, connects the Venetian provinces with Lower Austria. Other fragments of roads there are; but then they are only fragments, leading sometimes from point to point within an amphitheatre of mountains traversed only by mule-tracks.

When, however, one has said that there are few roads–that letters, having sometimes to be carried by walking postmen over a succession of passes, travel slowly and are delivered irregularly–that the inns are not only few and far between, but often of the humblest kind–and that, except at Cortina, there is not a telegraph station in the whole country, one has said all there is to say in disparagement of the district.

For the rest, it is difficult to speak of the people, of the climate, of the scenery, without risk of being thought too partial or too enthusiastic. To say that the arts of extortion are here unknown–that the old patriarchal notion of hospitality still survives, miraculously, in the minds of the inn-keepers–that it is as natural to the natives of these hills and valleys to be kind, and helpful, and disinterested, as it is natural to the Swiss to be rapacious–that here one escapes from hackneyed sights, from overcrowded hotels, from the dreary routine of table d'hôtes, from the flood of Cook's tourists,–is, after all, but to say that life in the South-eastern Tyrol is yet free from all the discomforts that have of late years made Switzerland unendurable; and that for those who love sketching and botany, mountain-climbing and mountain air, and who desire when they travel to leave London and Paris behind them, the Dolomites offer a "playground" far more attractive than the Alps.

That a certain amount of activity and some power to resist fatigue, are necessary to the proper enjoyment of this new playground, must be conceded from the beginning. The passes are too long and too fatiguing for ladies on foot, and should not be attempted by any who cannot endure eight and sometimes ten hours of mule-riding. The food and cooking, as will be seen in the course of the following narrative, are for the most part indifferent; and the albergos, as I have already said, are often of the humblest kind. The beds, however, in even "the worst inn's worst room" are generally irreproachable; and this alone covers a multitude of shortcomings. Anyone who visited Ober-Ammergau during the last performances of the Passion Play can form a tolerably exact idea of the sort of accommodation to be met with at Cortina, Caprile, Primiero, Predazzo, Paneveggio, Corfara, and St. Ulrich. A small store of tea, arrowroot, and Liebig's extract, a bottle or two of wine and brandy, a flask of spirits of wine and an Etna, are almost indispensable adjuncts to a lengthened tour in these mountains. The basket which contains them adds but little to the impedimenta, and immensely to the well-being of the traveller.

For ladies, side-saddles are absolutely necessary, there being only two in the whole country, and but one of these for hire. There is no need to take them out all the way from England. They can always be bought at the last large town through which travellers pass on their way to the Dolomites, and sold again at the first they come to on leaving the district.

Some knowledge of Italian and German is also indispensable. French here is of no use whatever; and Italian is almost universally spoken. It is only in the Grödner Thal, the Gader Thal, and the country north of the Ampezzo, that one comes upon a purely German population.

The Dolomite district is most easily approached from either Venice, Botzen, or Bruneck; the nearest railway stations being Toblach on the north, Atzwang on the west, and Conegliano on the south. All that is grandest, all that is most attractive to the artist, the geologist, and the Alpine climber, lies midway between these three points, and covers an area of about thirty-five miles by fifty. The scenes which the present writer has attempted to describe, all lie within that narrow radius.