struggling horses, buffeted and blinded by the wings of the tempest, and wrapped in a winding sheet of ice and snow, were launched off by the crashing mountain masses, and buried for ever. Over this gorge the avalanches hang balanced and brooding, so that a whisper may precipitate them. They have sometimes fallen like a thunderbolt, and swept away one traveller, leaving another in safety by his side. The mail carriers have seen their horses shot into the abyss, not indeed from under them, but when they had dismounted for an instant. It seems to be a pass shrouded in more absolute terrors than any in Switzerland.

There are indeed more avalanches annually in this Canton of the Grisons than in any other, and a greater number of lives lost every year. There is no avoiding the peril, because no foreseeing when it may fall. A story is told, with all the evidence of truth, of the whole village of Rueras in 1749 being swept off by an avalanche so immense, taking such vast deep masses of earth all at once, that the inmates in some of the houses were not even awakened by the rush of the mountain, and when they did awake buried, lay abed and wondered that the night was so long! Tired mountaineers sleep very soundly, but I do not demand credit for this, though it is not absolutely incredible. There are incidents enough, terrible and grand, and escapes almost miraculous, which do not so tax faith's faculties.

In the passage of Macdonald's army through this frightful region, so far from being surprised at the number of men swept to destruction, we only wonder that whole regiments were not buried at once; the amazement is, that passing in a winter's storm, with avalanches repeatedly shooting through these columns, so large a portion of the army escaped, not more than a hundred men, and as many horses, being lost. One of the drummers of the army, having been shot in a snow bank from the avalanche into the frightful gulf, and having struggled forth alive, but out of sight and reach of his comrades, was heard beating his drum for hours in the abyss, vainly expecting rescue. Poor fellow! the roll of his martial instrument had often roused his fellow soldiers with fierce courage to the attack, but now it was his own funeral march that he was beating, and it sounded like a death summons for the whole army into this frightful Hades, if another avalanche should

thunder down. There was no reaching him, and death with icy fingers stilled the roll of the drum, and beat out the last pulsations of hope and life in his bosom !

Macdonald was struggling on to Marengo. The army suffered more from fatigue and terror in the passage than in all their battles. Had they perished in the gorge of the Cardinell, the victory at Marengo would perhaps have been changed into a defeat, which itself might have changed the whole course of modern history. What might not have been, had such and such things not been! and what mighty things might never have been, if such and such things had been. Give me but the power to have put a pin where I might choose, twice in the last forty years, and I could have revolutionized all Europe. Ir, is a great word. How many at this moment are saying, If I had but done so and so, or, if this circumstance were only so, or, if I had but avoided doing so and so! Sometimes, ifs are fearful things, especially on a dying bed, when they balance the soul between hell and heaven. One half the sentence presents it at the gates of Paradise, the other thrusts it through the portals of the world of wo.

We pass now above the village of Isola, with the deserted and unused zigzags leading to it, which you overlook completely, as if you could jump down upon the clustered houses. The laboriously constructed roads and great galleries tell you, if you are at all sceptical, what dangers lie in wait from the avalanches, which you find it difficult to conceive, when crossing the pass in the depth of summer and in fine weather. A space of about three thousand feet, where the avalanches roar across the passage every year, and would plough up an open road like the wedge of the descending pyramids of Dgizeh, is nearly covered with these massive galleries, one of them 700 feet in length, a second 642 feet long, and a still longer gallery of 1530 feet by fifteen high and wide. The solid smooth roofs slope outwards, and the traveller beneath them, if he is there at a proper time, may hear above him the sublime roar of the descending masses of ice and snow, impetuously sweeping the roof and shooting into the gulf like a tornado.

The road crosses the stream of the Medissimo, at the very verge of the precipice, where the little river takes a sheer plunge, of

near 800 feet high, down into the vale of the Lira, making one of the most truly magnificent cascades in all Switzerland. But you should see it when the stream is well swollen with rains. You command the whole fall from above; you have also the most admirable points of view sideways and half in front, as you wind your way beyond the river down into the Vale, by the rocky zigzags turning and returning upon the scene. It is indescribably beautiful.

If the day itself did not begin to be cloudy and severe, you would have, even thus far up the mountains, a taste of the sweet air of Italy, as well as an experience of its bitter, desolate and dirty inns. Its golden delicious names begin to winnow the air like winged words upon your ear at every step, and from the village of Splugen, with its clattering consonants, and its comfortable, excellent hotel, you pass to the village of Campo Dolcino, a paradisaical name, a dirty hamlet, and an execrable inn. This was the Post inn, and here we had been promised a new carriage and horses, not being able, on any condition, to persuade our obstinate or faint-hearted young driver from Splugen to carry us in to Chiavenna. The governors of the stable at Campo Dolcino either could not or would not provide us a voiture, whereupon, as we would have ridden a rail rather than stay in this dram-drinking, oath-swearing place over the sabbath (and it was now Saturday evening) a peasant's hay cart, that stood in a melancholy out-house, was harnessed, the postillions and horses of two carriages that had just arrived on the way to Splugen were appended, and in this sumptuous style we set out for Chiavenna. We came into Italy in the fog and rain, and into Chiavenna upon the vertebræ of a cart, drawn by two horses, with six more fastened behind, and three yellow and red-coated postillions on the seat in front of us, with their brazen music-breaking horns of office slung over their shoulders.

The pass down the valley is the very sublimity of desolation, a chaos of huge blocks of rock from the surrounding mountains, thrown and piled disorderly from age to age, in squares and parallelograms, and now covered partially, and richly veiled, with mosses and verdure. The rock is of a kind that reddens in the air after long exposure, so that the color of the scene is dark and

rich, and the many magnificent chestnut trees, with their thick, luxuriant foliage, amidst the precipices, along which the road winds downwards, make the landscape most impressive for its solemnity and beauty. Two or three miles before arriving at Chiavenna, this narrow vale of Lira opens out into an expansive combination of the lovely luxuriance of Italy with the grandeur of Switzerland; glorious mountains broken into picturesque red crags, embosomed in foliage, so that the sun, shining on them with the slant golden light of setting day, turns them into jasper; green vineyards purpled with the luscious ripe grapes; overshadowing chestnuts, leafy figs, pomegranates, mulberries, almonds, and everywhere the record of an inexhaustible life and fertility, in the richest, most consummate vegetation. Here lies, romantically situated, on the river Maira, at the mouth of the Val Bregaglia, under the overawing mountains, the Italian town of Chiavenna.

You drive up to the Inn Conradi, if you come genteelly and properly into the town; but we had to walk as if we had dropped from the clouds, for our roguish postillions were afraid their owners should see them with the peasant's hay-cart, and kindness to them, as well as respect for ourselves, prevented us from insisting that they should parade our queer establishment in the great square, so we got out at a proper distance and threaded our way to the hotel, leaving them to follow with our luggage. Hard by the inn rises a most romantic ruined old castle, on the summit of a grottoed cliff, and a few steps from it are the antique ecclesiastical structures of the town, among which the most singular are a couple of human skeleton-houses, with grated doors, through which you see piled innumerable skulls and cross-bones grinning at you; an order of architecture more antique and solemn than any other in the world. The priests are busy with their processions, the bells are ringing, the world is singing, and the whole population, especially of women, seem to be church choristers. The two guardian genii of Italy are perpetually at work around you, Music and Superstition.

CHAPTER XLII.

The Buried Town of Pleurs.

The

THERE are in Chiavenna about three thousand people. great interest of the surrounding region is in the beauty of the Valley of Bregaglia, above the town towards the pass of the Maloggia, most grand and beautiful. About an hour's walk brings you to a spot, which was to me one of the most interesting in all my rambles, the spot where the village of Pleurs, with about twentyfive hundred inhabitants, was overwhelmed in the year 1618, by the falling of a mountain. This terrific avalanche took place in the night, and was so sudden, complete, and overwhelming, that not only every soul perished, but no trace whatever of the village or of any of the remains of the inhabitants could afterwards be discovered. The mountain must have buried the town to the depth of several hundred feet. Though the all-veiling gentleness of nature has covered both the mountain that stood, and that which fell, with luxuriant vegetation, and even a forest of chestnuts has grown amidst the wilderness of the rocks, yet the vast ness and the wreck of the avalanche are clearly distinguishable. Enormous angular blocks of rocks are strewn and piled in the wildest confusion possible, some of them being at least sixty feet high. The soil has so accumulated in the space of two hundred years, that on the surface of these ruins there are smooth, grassy fields at intervals, and the chestnuts grow everywhere. A few clusters of miserable hamlets, like Indians' or gipsies' wigwams, are also scattered over the grave of the former village, and there is a forlorn looking chapel that might serve as a convent for banditti. The mountains rise on either side to a great height in most picturesque peaks and outlines, and the valley is filled up with a snowy range at the north.

On this spot I read with great pleasure the Benedicite in the Book of Common Prayer, which my friend lent me. O ye