I Started From Turin
On The Morning Of The 9th December In The French Diligence Bound To Lyon,
But Taking My Place Only As Far As Chambery.
In the diligence were a
Piedmontese Colonel who had served under Napoleon, and a young Scotchman, a
relation of Lord Minto.
The latter was fond of excursions in ice and snow
and on our arrival at Suza he proposed to me to start from there two or
three hours before the diligence and to ascend Mont Cenis on foot as far as
the Hospice and I was mad enough to accede to the proposal, for it
certainly was little less than madness in a person of my chilly habits and
susceptibility of cold and who had passed several years within the tropics
to scale the Alps on foot in the middle of December and to walk 24 miles in
snow and ice at one o'clock in the morning, which was the hour at which we
started. I was well clad in flannel and I went thro' the journey valiantly
and in high spirits and without suffering much from the cold till within
five miles of the Hospice, when a heavy snow storm came on; it then began
to look a little ugly and but for Napoleon's grand chausses we were lost.
We struggled on three miles further in the snow before we fell in with a
maison de refuge. We knocked there and nobody answered. We then
determined coute que coute to push on to the Hospice which we knew
could not be more than two miles distant; indeed it was much more advisable
so to do than to run the risk of being frozen by remaining two or three
hours in the cold air till the diligence should come up.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 378 of 558
Words from 103081 to 103378
of 151859
