Volume Ii Part 20 (2/2)

I redoubled the logical admonition; he jumped the more perceptibly; finally, after an unusually affecting appeal from a piece of granite, he fairly budged, and I seized the bridle to mount.

”Not at all,” said he, wheeling round to his first position, like a true proslavery demagogue.

”Ah,” said I; and went over the same line of argument in a more solid and convincing manner. At length the salutary impression seemed permanently fastened on his mind; he fairly gave in; and I rode on in triumph to overtake the party--having no need of a fur coat.

h.o.r.eb, Sinai, and Hor! What a wilderness! what a sudden change!

Nothing but savage, awful precipices of naked granite, snowy fields, and verdureless wastes! In every other place in the Alps, we have looked upon the snow in the remote distance, to be dazzled with its sheeny effulgence--ourselves, meanwhile, in the region of verdure and warmth. Here we march through a horrid desert--not a leaf, not a blade of gra.s.s--over the deep drifts of snow; and we find our admiration turns to horror. And this is the road that Hannibal trod, and Charlemagne, and Napoleon! They were fit conquerors of Rome, who could vanquish the sterner despotism of eternal winter.

After an hour's perilous climbing, we reached, at last, the _hospice_, and in five minutes were sitting at the supper table, by a good blazing fire, with a lively company, chatting with a gentlemanly abbe, discussing figs and fun, cracking filberts and jokes, and regaling ourselves genially. But ever and anon drawing, with a half s.h.i.+ver, a little closer to the roaring f.a.gots in the chimney, I thought to myself, ”And this is our midsummer nights'

dream”!

LETTER x.x.xVI.

Dear:--

During breakfast, we were discussing whether we could get through the snow to Mont St. Bernard. Some thought we could, and some thought not.

So it goes here: we are gasping and sweltering one hour, and plunging through snow banks the next.

After breakfast, we entered the _char-a-banc_, a crab-like, sideway carriage, and were soon on our way. Our path was cut from the breast of the mountain, in a stifling gorge, where walls of rock on both sides served as double reflectors to concentrate the heat of the sun on our hapless heads. To be sure, there was a fine foaming stream at the bottom of the pa.s.s, and ever so much fine scenery, if we could have seen it; but our chars opened but one way, and that against the perpendicular rock, close enough, almost, to blister our faces; and the sun beat in so on our backs that we were obliged to have the curtain down. Thus we were as uncognizant of the scenery we pa.s.sed through as if we had been nailed up in a box. Nothing but the consideration that we were travelling for pleasure could for a moment have reconciled us to such inconveniences. As it was, I occasionally called out to C., in the back carriage, to be sure and take good care of the fur coat; which always brought shouts of laughter from the whole party. The idea of a fur coat seemed so supremely ridiculous to us, there was no making us believe we ever should or could want it.

That was the most unpleasant day's ride I had in the Alps. We stopped to take dinner in the little wretched village of Liddes. You have no idea what a disagreeable, unsavory concern one of these villages is.

Houses, none of which look much better than the log barns in our Western States, set close together on either side of a street paved with round stones; coa.r.s.e, sunburnt women, with their necks enlarged by the goitre; and dirty children, with tangled hair, and the same disgusting disease,--these were the princ.i.p.al features of the scene.

This goitre prevails so extensively in this region, that you seldom see a person with the neck in a healthy condition. The worst of the matter is, that in many cases of children it induces idiocy. Cases of this kind were so frequent, that, after a while, whenever I met a child, I began to search in its face for indications of the approach of this disease.

They are called _cretins_. In many cases the whole head appears swelled and deformed. As usual, every one you look at puts out the hand to beg. The tavern where we stopped to dine seemed more like a great barn, or cavern, than any thing else. We go groping along perfectly dark stone pa.s.sages, stumbling up a stone staircase, and gaining light only when the door of a kind of reception room opens upon us--a long, rough-looking room, without any carpet, furnished with a table, and some chairs, and a rude sofa. We were shown to a bed room, carpetless, but tolerably clean, with a very high feather bed in each corner, under a canopy of white curtains.

After dinner we went on towards St. Pierre, a miserable hamlet, where the mules were taken out of the chars, and we prepared to mount them.

It was between three and four o'clock. Our path lay up a desolate mountain gorge. After we had ascended some way the cold became intense. The mountain torrent, by the side of which we went up, leaped and tumbled under ribs of ice, and through banks of snow.

I noticed on either side of the defile that there were high posts put up on the rocks, and a cord stretched from one to the other. The object of these, my guide told me, was to show the path, when this whole ravine is filled up with deep snow.

I could not help thinking how horrible it must be to go up here in the winter.

Our path sometimes came so near to the torrent as to suggest uncomfortable ideas.

In one place it swept round the point of a rock which projected into the foaming flood, so that it was completely under water. I stopped a little before I came to this, and told the guide I wanted to get down.

He was all accommodation, and lifted me from my saddle, and then stood to see what I would do next. When I made him understand that I meant to walk round the point, he very earnestly insisted that I should get back to the saddle again, and was so positive that I had only to obey.

It was well I did so, for the mule went round safely enough, and could afford to go up to his ankles in water better than I could.

As we neared the _hospice_ I began to feel the effects of the rarefied air very sensibly. It made me dizzy and sick, bringing on a most acute headache--a sharp, knife-like pain. S. was still more affected.

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