We Took Six Hours To
Travel From The Inn Where We Had Lodged Over The Mountain To
Limon, And Five Hours From Thence To Coni.
Here we found our
baggage, which we had sent off by the carriers one day before we
departed from Nice; and here we dismissed our guides, together
with the mules.
In winter, you have a mule for this whole journey
at the rate of twenty livres; and the
guides are payed at the rate of two livres a day, reckoning six
days, three for the journey to Coni, and three for their return
to Nice. We set out so early in the morning in order to avoid the
inconveniencies and dangers that attend the passage of this
mountain. The first of these arises from your meeting with long
strings of loaded mules in a slippery road, the breadth of which
does not exceed a foot and an half. As it is altogether
impossible for two mules to pass each other in such a narrow
path, the muleteers have made doublings or elbows in different
parts, and when the troops of mules meet, the least numerous is
obliged to turn off into one of these doublings, and there halt
until the others are past. Travellers, in order to avoid this
disagreeable delay, which is the more vexatious, considering the
excessive cold, begin the ascent of the mountain early in the
morning before the mules quit their inns. But the great danger of
travelling here when the sun is up, proceeds from what they call
the Valanches.
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