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 passed
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; coarse, sunburnt women, with their necks enlarged
by the goitre; and dirty children, with tangled hair, and the same
disgusting disease, - these were the principal 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 passages, 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.
I was glad enough when the old building came in view, though the road
lay up an ascent of snow almost perpendicular.
At the foot of this ascent we paused. Our guides, who looked a little
puzzled, held a few moments' conversation, in which the word
"_fonce_" was particularly prominent, a word which I took to be
equivalent to our English "_slump;_" and indeed the place was
suggestive of the idea. The snow had so far melted and softened under
the influence of the July sun, that something of this kind, in going
up the ascent, seemed exceedingly probable. The man stood leaning on
his alpenstock, looking at the thing to be demonstrated. There were
two paths, both equally steep and snowy. At last he gathered up the
bridle, and started up the most direct way. The mule did not like it
at all, evidently, and expressed his disgust by occasionally stopping
short and snuffing, meaning probably to intimate that he considered
the whole thing a humbug, and that in his opinion we should all slump
through together, and go to - nobody knows where. At last, when we were
almost up the ascent, he did slump, and went up to his breast in the
snow; whereat the guide pulled me out of the saddle with one hand, and
pulled him out of the hole with the other.
