service. Though some points and angles of the road are such that one can not help feeling a sense of danger, still it is more than counterbalanced by the ever opening beauties of the landscape. We climbed for about six miles, and then reached the summit of the Forclaz, and resting ourselves here whilst the mules enjoyed a drink, we cast our eye backwards, and there, at our feet, as if we were looking down at it out of a cloud, lay the village of Martigny, with the whole beautiful valley of the Rhone. Mrs. Stowe says:"Nothing that I saw anywhere through the Alps impressed me as this did. It seemed to me more

like the vision of the land that is very far off, than anything earthly." It was a perfectly flat valley, studded with villages that looked like dots on the landscape at this distance, and on every side the magnificent mountains hemmed it in. Now commenced the outburst of joy and gladness from each of the party, that they had at last got fairly among mountains of the first order. Our companion, "the countess," for our gratification, brought out all the adjectives and similes which she could possibly think of, and though numerous, they did not suffice for the whole of the journey. "Superb!" "Exquisite!" "Magnifique!" &c., &c., were among the least expressive of her vocabulary of adjectives. It must be confessed that before we reached Chamouni, on this eventful day, our vocabulary of laudatory epithets got very threadbare, and we began mutually to bore and be bored by one another's exclamations of "Beautiful!" "How very fine!" "Did you ever see anything so beautiful!" "How exceedingly grand!" &c. I know this much too, that before we reached our journey's end; what with the vile roads, tired mules,

still more tired equestrians, and the eager calls of hunger, (for our digestive organs were fully alive. and active in these regions of the Alps) we became thoroughly sick of the picturesque, and somewhat crusty with one another.

But to return. After leaving the Forclaz summit, we descended the mountain, and soon had our attention arrested by a scene of great beauty and grandeur. This was the Cascade Barberina, on our right, one of the grandest waterfalls in Switzerland. It falls eight hundred yards from the ridge of a mountain which is almost covered by the spouting sheet of water; this torrent, pouring from a reservoir which it has hollowed upon the mountain, rolls along its rocky channel, and bounding to the very bottom of the valley. This fine waterfall is also embellished by large trees, which shoot from the summit of the mountain into the clouds, and in its front by lofty firs and rocks, so as altogether to form a picture the most delightful as well as extraordinary. Of the many other attractions of this pass which now at every point and every moment burst upon our view, I can give you no proper idea. Dr. Cheever has summed up some of them in a beautiful passage :— "There is a combination of grand and beautiful elements in this pass, which it is very difficult to array in language, and the painter can transfer only little by little the wonders of the scene. Abrupt precipices, frown at each other across the way like black thunder clouds about to meet; enormous crags overhanging you so far that you tremble to pass under them; savage cliffs looking down upon you and watching you on the other side, as if waiting to see the mountain fall upon you; a torrent thundering beneath you; masses of the richest verdure

flung in wild drapery over the whole gorge; galleries hewn in the rock, by which you pass the perpendicular cliffs as in rocky hammocks swung in the air; villages suspended above you, and looking sometimes as if floating in the clouds; snowy mountain ridges far above these; clusters of chalets almost as far below you with the tinkling of bells, the hum of voices, and the roar of the torrent fitfully sweeping up to you on the wind; these are the combinations-rich and beautiful beyond description-presented to you in the pass of the Tête

Noire."

We rode through these interesting scenes, till we came to the "Tête Noire Hotel," where we had to halt for two hours. During the time dinner was preparing I looked over the list of "notables" who had during the last few years visited this solitary region. In most of the hotels which we visited on the continent, we found, what is called, the "Livre des Etrangers," a book in which travellers are requested only to put down their names, without any remarks. Inspired however by the sublimity of the scenery, or vexed at the exorbitant charges sometimes made at the hotels, or what is perhaps more likely, panting to become authors, in however humble a line of composition, many persons who had called at this hostelry had added to their names the strangest medley of observations you could conceive, some in prose, and some in verse. This entertaining book furnished amusement for a length of time, and was only placed on one side when a fragrant repast of côtelettes and coffee invited the hungry and empty stomach to its work. Having still an hour to spare, we sauntered out of doors, to admire the innumerable and infinitely varied beauties of nature spread

out to the eye. Some of our party were just returning to their dinner, having been for an hour on a botanizing excursion, and they were now loaded with the floral treasures of the Alps.

We stood and gazed with wondering admiration at the glorious prospect around us, and felt

"A something that informs 'tis an hour

Whence we may date henceforward and for ever."

Looking to the left we could realize the truth of the poet's lines:

:

"Ye mountains,

So varied and so terrible in beauty,

There, in your rugged majesty of rocks

And toppling trees that twine their roots with stone
In perpendicular places, where the foot

Of man would tremble, could he reach them.-yes,
Ye look eternal!"

The mules being again marshalled in order, we took our seats, and shortly found that good feeding, with these animals produced a salutary effect, for pricking their ears, they started off down the hill in a most lively, if not agreeable manner. As Mrs. Stowe has drawn the character and habits of these hardy and useful creatures, in a most amusing manner, and to the very life, I give you her description :

"As mules are most determined followers of precedent, every one keeps his nose close by the heels of his predecessor. The delicate point, therefore, of the whole operation is keeping the first mule straight. The first mule in our party, who rejoiced in the name of Rousse, was selected to head the caravan, perhaps because he had more native originality than most mules, and therefore was better fitted to lead than to follow. A troublesome beast was he, from a habit of abstract meditation which was always liable to come on him in most inconvenient localities. Every now and then,

E

simply in accordance with his own sovereign will and pleasure, and without consulting those behind him, he would stop short and descend into himself in gloomy reverie; not that he seemed to have anything in particular on his mind, at least nothing of the sort escaped his lips,-but the idea would seem to strike him all of a sudden that he was an ill used beast, and that he'd be hanged if he went another step. Now, as his stopping stopped all the rest, wheresoever they might happen to be, it often occurred that we were detained in most critical localities, just on the very verge of some tremendous precipice, or up a rocky stairway. In vain did the foremost driver admonish him by thumping his nose with a sharp stick, and tugging and pulling upon the bridle. Rousse was gifted with one of those long indiarubber necks that can stretch out indefinitely, so that the utmost pulling and jerking only took his head along a little further, but left his heels planted exactly where they were before. His eyes, meanwhile, devoutly closed, with an air of meekness overspreading his visage, he might have stood as an emblem of conscientious obstinacy.

The fact is, that in ascending these mountains there is just enough danger to make one's nerves a little unsteady; not by any means as much as on board a rail car at home; still it comes to you in a more demonstrable form. Here you are, for instance, on a precipice two thousand feet deep; pine trees, which, when you passed them at the foot you saw were a hundred feet high, have dwindled to the size of pins. No barrier of any kind protects the dizzy edge, and your mule is particularly conscientious to stand on the very verge, no matter how wide the path may be. Now,