tain fall upon you; a torrent thundering beneath you; masses of the richest verdure flung in wild drapery over the whole gorge; galleries hewn in the rock, by which you pass the angular perpendicular cliffs as in rocky hammocks swung in the air; villages suspended above you, and looking sometimes as if floating in the clouds; snowy mountain ridges far above these; clusters of chalets almost as far below you, with the tinkling of bells, the hum of voices, and the roar of the torrent fitfully, sweeping up to you on the wind; these are the combinations presented to you in the Tête Noire.

It is a concentration and repetition in miniature of some of the grand features of the Simplon, but at the same time rich and beautiful beyond description. I enjoyed this passage much, although in the rain; and when I got to the solitary Auberge in the midst of all this grandeur, I resolved to go no farther, but to wait one night at least for fair weather. A party of English ladies with one gentleman passed me just then. I told him I did not like to leave such scenery without beholding it by sun-light. You are right, said he, to wait, being alone, but we must move on. Poor man! It was but too evident he en vied me my loneliness and independence. Just at this moment he could not well do otherwise; indeed, there is a comfort in being alone, sometimes; I certainly congratulated myself that I was not in the place of that gentleman, to go dripping behind the ladies in such a forlorn mist, through some of the finest scenery in the world. Had there been ladies in my case, we too should have had to move on, so there may possibly sometimes be something gained by being a single man. For, if I had been double or triple, the triplicity could hardly have been accommodated, or would have thought it necessary, as this English party did, to go farther, and perhaps fare worse. So on they went, through the mist and rain, doubting whether to admire the scenery, or to regret that they could not see it; while for me the good people at the Auberge kindled a fire, prepared me a comfortable supper with plenty of strawberries and cream, and gave me a comfortable bed. In strawberry and cream time, a traveller fares grandly in Switzerland, and I managed to bear the disappointment of a stormy evening with much

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more equanimity than if I had been clambering the precipices on the way to Martigny. The snow fell upon the mountains during the night, and the next day it was fine weather, the air as clear as crystal, and the sun shining as if just created. Sudden and beautiful was the revelation of the mountains, hidden in mist the evening before, now glittering far down even to the fields of summer verdure, in their robe of new fallen snow, and far up into the heavens, with their crown of glaciers. The pass of the Tête Noire now changes its direction into the valley of Trient, at the foot of the Forclaz and the Col de Balme. From the Auberge in the Tête Noire to the Forclaz, it was about two hours, a constant scene of grandeur and picturesqueness. Ascending to the Forclaz, the pinnacles from one of which a most unfortunate young German traveller a few years ago fell and lost his life, are directly before you, the hamlets and valley of Trient are beneath your feet; but a step or two onward carries you to a point, where, on the other side, one of the most extensive and beautiful views in Switzerland is instantaneously revealed. This is Martigny and the great valley of the Rhone, shut in by two mighty mountain ranges, and visible for many leagues up the Simplon without interruption or obstruction to your view. As you descend towards Martigny, the view becomes richer and more distinct, without losing any of its vastness.

Just before reaching the valley, I turned off into a village path, which the peasants pointed out to me, crossing a most luxuriant and lovely ravine with pleasant embowered cottages, and joining the route of the Grand St. Bernard a short distance up the valley of the Drance; by which cross-cut I both enjoyed a more romantic, unfrequented way, and avoided the necessity of travelling down to Martigny, gaining some miles besides. An admirable road runs up this valley, following the course of one of the most furious torrents of the Alps. The villages which you pass through are, I think, much better looking in general than those in the valley of the Rhone. I had made this remark without being aware under what government they were subject; not knowing that I had gone from one state into another. Supposing that I was still in the dominions of the

King of Sardinia, I asked a peasant, who was carrying my knapsack for an hour or two, if he were not a subject of that monarch, but he did not even let me get through with the question, so great was his scorn at the idea. "O no," exclaimed he, "Liberty! Liberty! We are of Suisse!" To be the subject of a King, and especially the King of Sardinia, seemed to him equivalent to the want of liberty, if not to slavery.

The carriage road over the Grand St. Bernard stops at a place called Liddes, from whence, or from St. Pierre, about three miles farther, mules are usually taken. A little beyond St. Pierre is the boundary of the Papal states, and about two hours further you reach the Cantine, or Auberge, the last habitable spot in a most desolate defile, utterly bare of trees and shrubs, gloomy and wild, just where the steep ascent of the Grand St. Bernard commences. I had intended getting to the

Hospice that night, but it was altogether too late, even if I had had a guide: without a guide it would have been rashness and folly to have attempted it. They gave me, at this wild spot, a good supper, an excellent bed, and a good breakfast, and were very moderate in their charges. The day had been a fatiguing one, though crowded with scenes of grandeur and beauty from morning till night, and closed with a sunset of such exquisite loveliness, such richness and magnificence, as it is very rare to witness. No language can describe the beauty of the outlines and slopes of the mountains in the setting sun, nor the splendour of the distant snow-covered ranges and summits. I could have stood for hours to watch them, and a great enjoyment it is to have them always before you, to mark their changes as you travel, and to take in leisurely every feature of beauty in the region you are crossing. I had passed to-day from the extreme of luxuriance and richness in nature, to that of desolation and wild sublimity. The beauty of the landscape at Orsieres deserves many words, if they could paint it, and the extraordinary richness of cultivation far up the mountain sides, sometimes to their very summits, makes them so lovely, that the eye is never satisfied with gazing. And often there are villages and clustered chalets so lofty, that you wonder if the airy inhabitants ever have any communication with the world below.

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CHAPTER XIV.

PASS OF THE GRAND ST. BERNARD.

In the year 1800 Napoleon crossed the Grand St. Bernard with his army, dragging their artillery, and a fearful task they must have had of it, in the month of May, especially through the forest and over the frightful precipices of St. Pierre. They unlocked the cannon from their stocks, put them in the hollow trunks of trees, and then one-half the battalions dragged them up the mountain, while the other half carried the arms and accoutrements of their comrades, with stores of provisions for five days. The road at this day scales the face of the deep ravine over the Drance, having been cut boldly out of the perpendicular rock, wide enough for a carriage; so that a man passing now so easily can scarcely conceive the difficulties with which Napoleon had to contend in scaling the precipices. For some distance up from St. Pierre, the road lies through the fir forest, where Napoleon came so near losing his life by slipping from his mule on the verge of the tremendous precipice. Perhaps he was dreaming of the battle of Marengo, but he was saved from falling over into the gulf only by his guide, who caught him by the coat and thus preserved him. The guide was rewarded with a thousand francs, and it would not have been amiss if the tailor who made the consular coat had been pensioned likewise, for if that had given way the French would never have had an Emperor. The mountains here on both sides are hung with verdure, but this speedily ceases-the larches and the pines become stunted, and at length disappear, leaving nothing but a covering of mosses and patches of grass, and at last the bare gray crags, declivities, and pinnacles of rock, or mounts of snow. You pass through difficult rugged defiles, and across rich mountain pasturages, watered by streams from the glaciers, which shoot their steep icy masses down into contact with the verdure on the plains.

My next morning's walk of about three hours brought me to the celebrated Hospice of the Grand St. Bernard. Nearly

half an hour of this journey is over ice and snow. The path circles the precipices, and crosses the torrent, and scales the declivities in such a manner, that in winter, when the deceitful masses of snow have covered the abysses, the passage must be very dangerous. A few wooden poles are stuck up here and there, to mark the way, but at such intervals, that if, in a misty day, or when the snow has covered the foot-path, you should undertake to follow them, you would certainly fall. Indeed, I do not see how there can be any passage at all in the winter, when the snow falls to such a depth, that around the building of the Hospice it is from twelve to twenty feet. Wo be to the poor traveller overtaken in a storm! How any man can ever escape in such a case is a marvel-but the dogs and monks have saved many a wanderer ready to perish.

There are some dreary and solemn memorials of the dangers of the way, in certain little low-browed stone huts like ice houses, planted here and there a little out of the path, the use of which a traveller would hardly conjecture in fair weather, though he might learn it from fearful experience in a storm? The guides will tell him that these are refuges in extreme peril, or in cases of death are used as temporory vaults, in which the stiffened bodies of unfortunate travellers are deposited, till they can be finally laid, with book and bell, and funeral hymns, and solemn chantings, in the stranger's burial-place at the Hospice. A man says within himself, as he stops and contemplates, the rude, solitary building, What if I had been laid there? And then, as swift as thought, he is away across the ocean, and gazing in upon the happy family circle, where his place is vacant, and he thinks what misery it would make there-what a funeral and a burial there would be in the hearts of those beloved inmates, and what lasting, wasting anguish, if he should die away from home, if he should perish in the storms of his pilgrimage. He bows down his head and muses, and, the faces of his home look him in the face, and those loving eyes of Mother and Sister are on him, and he hears his name breathed at the family altar in fervent prayer. But ah, how many dangers to be encountered, how many thousand leagues of earth and ocean to be traversed, before again he can kneel