Over the Ocean Part 32

Fatigued with travel, I certainly felt no inclination to rise early the next morning; and so, when a sonorous cow-bell pa.s.sed, slowly sounding beneath our window at about four and a half A. M., I mentally anathematized the wearer, and composed myself for a renewal of sleep.

Scarce comfortably settled ere another cow-bell, with a more spiteful clang, was heard approaching; clank, clink, clank, clink, like the chain about a walking ghost, it neared the window at the foot of my couch, pa.s.sed, and faded off into the distance. That's gone; but what is this distant tinkle? Can it be there is sleighing here, and this is a party returning home? Tinkle, jinkle, tinkle, tinkle--there they come!

"Away to the window I flew like a flash, Tore open"--the curtain, looked out through the sash,-- "When what to my wondering eyes should appear But"

a procession of goats being driven to pasture by a girl in the gray light of the morning! With an e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n more fervid than elegant, the couch was sought again; but it was of no avail; a new campanologian company was heard approaching with differently toned instruments of torture; this was in turn succeeded by another, till it seemed as if every note in the bell-ringing gamut had been sounded, and every contrivance, from a church to a tea bell, had been rung.

After half an hour of this torture, flesh and blood could endure it no longer, and I went once more to the window, to find that beneath it ran the path by which the goats and cattle of the whole district were driven to pasture, and, casting my eyes upwards, saw the gorgeous spectacle of sunrise on Mont Blanc, whose glistening peaks were in full view. Half an hour's admiration of this spectacle was enough for one not clad for the occasion, and having made the discovery that the cows and goats were all driven to pasture before half past six A. M., we took our revenge in two hours of tired nature's sweet restorer after that time, before discussing breakfast and topographically examining Chamouny.

Chamouny appears to be a village of eight or ten hotels, a church or two, and a collection of peasants' huts and poor Swiss houses, surrounded on all sides by the grandest and most sublime scenery ever looked upon. It seems to be a grand central point in Switzerland for the tourists of all nations. The great hotels are full, their _table d'hotes_ are noisy with the clatter of tongues of half a dozen nationalities, and gay with the fas.h.i.+ons of Paris. The princ.i.p.al portion of the inhabitants are either employes of the hotels; or guides, and these Chamouny guides are the best, most honest, and most reliable of their craft in Europe. They are formed into a regular a.s.sociation, and bound by very strict rules, such as not being permitted to guide until of a certain age, not to take the lead till after a certain amount of experience; and absolute honesty and temperance being requisite for the service. Indeed, I find that some consider honesty a characteristic of the Swiss in this region; for upon my remonstrating with a fellow-tourist, an old traveller, for leaving his watch and chain exposed upon his dressing-table during his absence from his room at the hotel, he replied there was no danger, as the attendants in the wing of the house he occupied were all Swiss, and no English, French, or Americans ever came there. To be a guide upon the excursions from Chamouny requires a man of very steady habits, and of unquestionable skill and endurance; and all of these men that we saw appeared so. They are very jealous also of their reputation, and never allow it to be injured by incompetency, dishonesty, or any species of imposition upon travellers.

Here we are in the midst of Alps, a whole panorama of them in full view on every side. The River Arve, a dark-colored stream fresh from the glaciers, roars and rushes through the valley into which Chamouny seems sunk. Above us are great mountains with snowy peaks; great mountains with dark-green pines at their base, and splintered, gray, needle-like points; glittering glaciers, like frozen rivers, can be seen coming down through great ravines; waterfalls are on the mountain-sides; and towering up like a gigantic dome, the vastness and awful sublimity of which is indescribable, is Mont Blanc, which the lover of grand mountain scenery will pause and gaze at, again and again, in silent awe and admiration. But whither shall we go? There are dozens of excursions that may be made. Looking across a level pasture of the valley from our window, we see a waterfall leaping down the mountain. An easy path to it is visible, and we make a little excursion, in the forenoon, to the Falls of Blatiere, just to get used to climbing; for at two P. M. mules were at the door, with trusty guides at their heads, and away we started for the ascent of the Flegere, a height on the spur of one of the mountains, commanding a fine view of the Mer de Glace and Glacier des Bois, which are directly opposite. The ascent of this occupied some three hours, and the path reminds one very much of the ascent of Mount Was.h.i.+ngton, New Hamps.h.i.+re, although the distant scenery is of course incomparably more grand. We went through woods, and over rocks, across stony slopes, and up zigzags, until finally we reached the Cross of Flegere, the point of view.

From this perch we looked right over across on to the Mer de Glace, where it gushed out like a great frozen torrent around the Montanvert, and the Glacier des Bois, another silent ice torrent, that flowed out of it. At our right, far down, five thousand feet below, rested Chamouny, with the cloudy Arve running beside it. Away off to the left were a number of needle-like peaks, with vast snow-fields between them; and nearly in front of us, a little to the left, rose the sharp, jagged points about the Aiguille Verte, and a right lofty needle it was, its point piercing the air to the height of twelve thousand five hundred feet; and then there were the Red Needles, and the Middle Needles, and, in fact, a whole chain of peaks of the range--the best view we have had yet, including, of course, the grand old snowy sovereign, Mont Blanc, at the right, overtopping all the rest.

An hour was spent gazing upon this magnificent scene; after which we began the descent, which was made in about an hour and a quarter, bringing us to the hotel door at seven P. M. Our leading guide we discovered to be an experienced one, of many years' service, who had guided Louis Napoleon, on his visit here in 1861, soon after Savoy was annexed to France--a service of which he was quite proud, as the emperor held his hand during his excursion to the centre of the Mer de Glace (always necessary for safety); he was also interested in the American war of the rebellion, and, like all the Swiss who know enough to read, was strong on the Union side of the question. Being an old soldier, the song of "Tramp, tramp, the boys are marching," had especial charms for him, and he called for a repet.i.tion of the "Glory, glory, hallelujah"

chorus, till he had mastered the words himself, from a young Union officer of our party. Of course we were glad to engage our cheerful _vieux moustache_ for our excursion on the morrow to the Montanvert and Mer de Glace. In the evening we were called out to see the lights of a party at the Grand Mulets, where they had halted for the night, preparatory to completing the ascent of Mont Blanc. The sight of the little twinkling flame, away up in the darkness, I confess, awakened no desire in my mind to make the ascent; and I fully agree with one of the guide-books, which says it cannot conceive why people will undergo the trial and fatigue of the ascent, when they can risk their lives in a balloon for one half of the expense.

Next morning we started with guides, and on muleback, for the Montanvert, directly opposite the Flegere, the scene of our ascent the day before, twenty minutes' ride across the meadow, and by the river side; and then we began to ascend the mountain, through romantic pine woods, and by a zigzag pathway upon the brow of the mountain, crossing, occasionally, the deep channel of an avalanche, or an earth-slide, and getting occasional glimpses of the valley below or the mountain opposite, till, after a three hours' climb, we stand upon a rugged crag, overlooking the tremendous and awful sea of ice, and the huge mountains that enclose it.

This great petrified or frozen stream, between its precipitous banks, seemed more like a ma.s.s of dirty snow or dingy plaster than ice. Looking far up into the gorge between the mountains, we could see where the ice and snow looked purer and more glistening than that directly beneath us.

Indeed, we began to imagine that the terrors of the pa.s.sage, told by travellers and letter-writers, were pure fables; and, to some extent, they are; and a marked instance of magnifying the dangers is shown in the account of Miss Frederika Bremer's experience, quoted in Harper's Guide-Book, which, to any one of ordinary nerves, who has recently made the pa.s.sage, appears to be a most ridiculous piece of affectation.

We descended the rocky sides of the cliff, seamed and creased by the ice-flood, and stood upon the great glacier. At first, near the sh.o.r.e, it seemed like a mixture of dirty snow and ice, such as is frozen in a country road after a thaw, and its surface but slightly irregular, and but little trouble to be antic.i.p.ated in crossing; but as we advanced far into its centre, we began to realize more forcibly the appropriateness of the t.i.tle given to this great ice-field. On every side of us were frozen billows, sharp, upheaved points, great spires of ice, congealed waves, as if a mighty torrent were tumbling down this great ravine, and had been suddenly arrested by the wand of the ice-king in mid career. We came to creva.s.ses,--broad splits,--revealing the clear, clean, blue ice, as we looked hundreds of feet down into them. We crossed and pa.s.sed some of them on narrow ice-bridges, not more than two or three feet wide, where notched steps were cut for us by the forward guide's hatchet, and we held the firm grasp of one before and one behind, to guard against a slip, which might have been fatal.

We pa.s.sed little pools, which were melted into the bosom of this silent field, and now and then a huge piece of rock in the midst of a pellucid pool, which had been borne along upon the surface of this slow-moving stream since it fell from the mountain-side, and gradually sank by its weight, and the action of the sun. Midway, we were bidden to halt and look away up the ravine, and see the frozen stream that was coming tumbling down towards us. There was genuine ice enough now--waves, mounds, peaks, hillocks, great blue sheets, and foaming ma.s.ses. It sparkled like silver beneath the sunbeams between the dark framework of the two mountains on either side. We stopped talking. Not a sound was heard. The stillness was as profound as the hush preceding a thunder storm; and, as we listened, the crash of a great boulder that had become loosed by the slow-moving torrent, falling into a creva.s.se from its brink, echoed for a moment in the solitude, and all was still again.

The sure-footed guides, with their iron-spiked shoes, led us on. The ladies were a trifle nervous as we pa.s.sed one or two of the narrower ice-bridges; but on the route we crossed there were not above three or four such, and the whole pa.s.sage was made in less than an hour. Arrived at the other side, we clambered up the cliff, and began our descent. I should have remarked, that we sent back the mules from Montanvert, to meet us upon our descent on the other side of the Mer de Glace, on foot, by the way of the Mauvais Pas, a tiresome, but most interesting tramp of three or four miles, over rugged rocks and rough pathways, but such a one as gives real zest to Alpine journeys, from its exciting scenes.

We now entered upon the celebrated Mauvais Pas. I had read so much, from youth upwards, about the dangers of this pa.s.s, that I began to wonder if we had done right in bringing ladies, and how we should get around that sharp projection of the cliff; where a traveller is said to be obliged to hold on to the face of the rock, and stretch his leg around the projecting cliff, and feel for a foothold, the guides guarding him from a slip out into empty s.p.a.ce, by standing, one on each side of the projection, and forming an outside hand-rail, by holding each end of an alpenstock. Was not this the pa.s.s where the Swiss hunter met the chamois, and, finding that neither could turn backward, had lain down and let the herd jump over him?

But how these travellers' tales and sublime exaggerations vanish as one approaches them! The Mauvais Pas may have been _tres mauvais_ many years ago; but either its dangers have been greatly exaggerated, or the hand of improvement has rendered it _pas mauvais_ at present. It is a series of steps, hewn for some distance along the rocky side of the mountain.

These steps are about three feet in width from the face of the cliff, into which a strong iron rail is fastened, by which the traveller may hold on, the whole distance. The outer edge is unprotected, and, at some points, it must be confessed, it is an ugly look to glance down the tremendous heights to the jagged rocks below, that form the sh.o.r.es of the icy sea; but in some of the more dangerous places, modern improvement has provided an additional safeguard in an outer rail, so that the danger is but trifling to persons of ordinary nerve.

Finally, we reach the end of this narrow pathway, and find ourselves at a small house on a jutting precipice, called the _Chapeau_; and here we pause and breathe a while, buy beer, Swiss bread and honey, curious Alpine crystals, &c., and enjoy another one of those wondrous Alpine views which, once seen, live in memory forever as a scene of sublime beauty and grandeur.

They call all the mountain peaks needles here. There were the Aiguilles de Charmoz, ten thousand two hundred feet high, and ever so many other "_aiguilles_," whose names I have not noted. As we looked down here upon the glacier, it seemed to be more broken and upheaved; it rose into huge, sharp, icicle-pointed waves, rent in every direction by large cracks and fissures; the great pointed pinnacles and upheavals a.s.sumed as curious appearances as the frost-work upon a window; there were a procession of monks, the pinnacles of a Gothic cathedral, and the ruins of a temple. It is here that the Mer de Glace begins to debouche into the Glacier des Bois, which, in turn, runs down into the Chamouny valley, and from which runs the Arveiron; in fact, the end of this glacier is the river's source.

Down we go through the woods, and finally strike upon a rocky, rugged path, on through a ma.s.s of miles of pulverized rock, fragments of boulders, stone chips, and the rocky debris of ages, which has been brought down by the tremendous grinding of the slow-moving glaciers, till we reach a valley covered with the moraine in front of the great ice arches of the Glacier des Bois, out of which rushes the river. Of course here was a wooden hut, with Swiss crystals, carved work, and a fee of a franc, if we would like to go under the glacier. There had been a winding cavern hewed into this great ice wall, and planks laid along into it for two hundred feet or more, and, with umbrellas to protect us, the author and two other gentlemen started for this ice grotto, about a hundred rods distant.

Arrived near its mouth, we beheld, on one side, the river, rus.h.i.+ng out from under a great natural ice arch, fifty feet in height, the glacier here appearing to be about one hundred feet in height; the stream came out with a force and vigor, gained, doubtless, from running a long distance beneath the ice before it came out into the daylight. The ice grotto, which has been hollowed out for visitors, is eight or ten feet high, and the guide, who goes on before, lights it up with numerous candles, placed at intervals, causing the clear, deep-blue ice to resemble walls of polished steel; but the thought suggested by one visitor when we had reached the farthermost extremity, "What if the arches overhead should give way beneath the pressure?" did not incline us to protract our stay in its chilly recesses; so, returning to the chalet, where our mules were waiting, that had been sent round and down from the Montanvert, we completed the day's laborious excursion by an hour's ride back to the hotel at Chamouny.

Now good by to Chamouny, and away to the Tete Noir Pa.s.s, on our way to Martigny. Starting at eight o'clock A. M., a vehicle carried us to Argentiere, about two hours' ride, where mules were found in waiting, by the aid of which the rest of the journey, occupying the remainder of the day, was made, though why the road of this pa.s.s is not laid out like others, as a carriage road, I am at a loss to comprehend, unless it be that the fees for mules and guides are too profitable a source of income to be easily relinquished. Indeed, a large portion of the pa.s.s, in its present condition, could be traversed safely by a one-horse vehicle--some improvement over the tedious muleback ride of a whole day's duration.

The road is romantic, pleasant, and picturesque, with deep gorges, dark pine-clad mountains, crags, and waterfalls. Invigorated by the fresh mountain air, we left our mules to follow in the train with the guides and ladies, and, alpenstock in hand, trudged forward on foot, keeping in advance by short cuts, and having an infinitely better opportunity, under the guidance of a tourist who had been over the route, of enjoying the scenery. We pa.s.sed two or three waterfalls, walked over a spot noted as being swept by avalanches in the early spring, where was a cross in memory of a young count and two guides who fell beneath one: the guides say, when the avalanche is heard approaching, it is already too late to think of escaping, so swift is its career, and nothing but the hand of Providence will save the traveller from destruction.

Our path carried us through a wild, stony ravine, with great mountains on either side, and the inevitable river in the centre, rus.h.i.+ng and foaming over the rocks. Then we went up and over a beautiful mountain path, commanding fine views of the distant mountains, with deep gorges below, then wound round the base of the Tete Noir Mountain and through the woods, and a tunnel, pierced through a rocky spur of the mountain, that jutted out upon the pa.s.s. We saw away across, from one point on our journey, the wild-looking road that was the route to the Pa.s.s of the Great St. Bernard, and at another, looked far down into the valley, where we could see the River Trient rus.h.i.+ng and tumbling on its course.

We soon came to a point, before commencing our descent, which commanded a view of the Rhone valley as far as Sion, spread out, seemingly, as flat as a carpet, with the river meandering through its entire length, the white chalets and brown roads looking rather hot in the blaze of the afternoon sunlight. The view of this valley--what little we saw of it--is far better at this distance than when one reaches its tumble-down towns and poor inhabitants.

We went down a pleasant descent, past orchards and farm-houses, till we reached Martigny, where we had supper, and were nearly devoured by mosquitos, so that at nine P. M. we were glad to take the railway train. How odd it seemed to be rattling over a railroad, in a comfortable railway carriage, after our mountain experiences! The train, at quarter past ten o'clock, landed us at Sion, where we took up our quarters at the Hotel de la Poste, an Italian inn, with an obsequious little French landlord, who was continually bowing, and rubbing his hands, as if was.h.i.+ng them with invisible soap, and saying, "_Oui, monsieur_," to every question that was asked him, and withal looking so like the old French teacher of my boyhood's days, that it seemed as though it must be the old fellow, who had stopped growing old, and been transported here by some mysterious means.

The fifteen-mile mountain tramp I had made, and the day's journey, as a whole, caused the not very comfortable beds of the hotel to seem luxurious couches soon after arrival, and we therefore deferred interviews with Italian drivers, a crowd of whom were in attendance from Stressa, via the Simplon Road, and who were anxious to open negotiations, till the next morning, notwithstanding their a.s.sertions that they might be engaged and gone when we should come down to breakfast, and that we should, therefore, lose the magnificent opportunities they were offering.

We were fortunate in having the company of a gentleman who had frequently been over this route, and fully understood the _modus operandi_ of making contracts with Italian post drivers, as will be seen. It seems that there are often drivers here at Sion who have driven parties from Stressa (via the Simplon) who desire to get a freight back, and with whom the tourist, if he understands matters, can make a very reasonable contract, as they prefer to take a party back at a low rate, rather than to wait long at an expense, or return with empty vehicles.

If there be more than one (as in our case) of these waiting post drivers, there is likely to be a compet.i.tion among them, which of course results to the tourist's advantage.

Therefore, after breakfast, instead of "having been engaged and gone,"

we found two or three anxious drivers, who jabbered with all their might about the merits of their respective vehicles and themselves, and were anxious to be engaged. The price mentioned as _bon marche_ at first was four hundred francs for our whole party of seven for the three days'

journey over the Simplon Pa.s.s to Lake Maggiore; and really, I thought it was, and had I been the negotiator for the party, should have closed; but not so he who acted for us--acted in more senses than one; for when this price was named, he gave the true French deprecatory shrug of the shoulders, filled his pipe, and sat down on the hotel portico to smoke.

Ere long he was waited upon by driver number two, who represented that three hundred and fifty francs would induce _him_ to take the party, "if monsieur would start _to-day_." Smoker only elevated his eyebrows, and thought if he "waited a few days there would be more carriages here."

In fifteen minutes the price was down to three hundred francs--no anxiety on the part of monsieur to close.

A smart young driver, whose team had been "eating their heads off" for three days, proposed two hundred and twenty francs, and to pay all expenses, except our own hotel bills; and monsieur concluded to accept him, putting the agreement, to prevent mistakes, in writing, which is necessary with the Italian drivers. The contract was duly signed.

"When would monsieur's party be ready?"

"In fifteen minutes;" and the calm, indifferent smoker, to the driver's surprise, became a lithe, elastic American, driving half a dozen servants nearly crazy by hurrying them down with the luggage, mustering the whole party with explanations of the necessity of starting at once, and helping the landlord's major-domo make out the bills, without giving any opportunity of getting in extras that we didn't have.

He shouted in Italian at the driver, who, with the stable-helpers, was putting in the horses, jabbered in French with the hotel servants, and in half an hour we were seated in the vehicle, with the luggage strapped on behind, and the old landlord and the waiters and porters bowing at the door, as we started, amid a volley of whip smacks, sounding like the firing of a bunch of Chinese crackers.

These post drivers are marvellously skilful at whip-snapping. They can almost crack out a tune with their whips, and they make a noise consistent with their ideas of the importance of their freight, or perhaps as a signal to the landlords that especial attention is required, as distinguished foreigners are coming; for, as they approached hotels, or drove into their court-yards, it was always with eight or a dozen pistol-like cracks in succession that brought out a bowing landlord and string of servants, who formed a double line from the carriage to the door, welcoming the tourist in with great deference and politeness. On the road the whip-cracks admonish all peasants, donkey-carts, and market-wagons to sheer off, and allow monsieur's carriage to pa.s.s; and, as he enters a little village, the fusillade from his lash brings half the population to the doors and windows.

Our first day's journey, after leaving Sion, was through the Rhone Valley--rather a hot ride, and tame and uninteresting after the grand views we had been enjoying. We pa.s.sed Sierre on a hill-side, rattled over a bridge across the Rhone, having a view of pleasantly-wooded hills near at hand, and the great mountains in the background; then pa.s.sed two or three other villages, and finally halted at a place called Tourtemagne for dinner. After this we pushed on, went past Visp, and in the afternoon trotted into Brieg, where, with a view to a good night's rest before the morrow's journey, we stopped for the night. After tea we had a magnificent view of sunset upon the lofty snow-clads above us, which fairly glowed in a halo of rose-pink--a beautiful and indescribable effect. Far away up on one of the mountain sides we were pointed to the road over which we were to journey on the morrow. After an early breakfast we started off with the usual fusillade of whip-cracks, and were soon upon the famous Simplon Road.

This magnificent road is one of the wonders of the old world. Its cost must have been enormous, and the cost of keeping it in such splendid condition very large, owing to the injury it must inevitably sustain from storms and avalanches during the winter season. The cost of the road is said to have averaged over three thousand pounds sterling per mile. The splendid engineering excites admiration from even the inexperienced in those matters. You go sometimes right up the very face of a steep mountain, that would seem to have originally been almost inaccessible, by means of a series of zigzags. Then again the road winds round a huge mountain wall, thousands of feet high on one side, with a yawning ravine thousands of feet deep on the other. Long tunnels pierce through the very heart of mountains. Bridges span dizzy heights and mad torrents. Great galleries, or shelters, protect some parts of the road, which are suspended midway up the mountain, from the avalanches which ever and anon thunder down from above. At one place, where a great a roaring cataract comes down, the road is conducted safely under the sheet, which scatters but a few drops of spray upon it, except the covered portion, as it leaps clear over the pa.s.sage, and plunges into the deep abyss below, a ma.s.s of thundering foam.

This part of the road, we were told, although it was a section not six hundred feet long, was one of the most difficult to construct, and required the labor of a hundred men for over a year and a half before it could be completed, it being necessary in some places to suspend the workmen by ropes from above, until a platform and a footing could be built. And, indeed, standing there with the torrent roaring above, and leaping clear over our heads away down into that rocky gorge, the clean, broad road the only foothold about there, we could only wonder at human skill, perseverance, and ingenuity in overcoming natural obstacles. From the great glaciers far above the Kaltwa.s.ser come several other rus.h.i.+ng cascades, one of which, as you approach, seems as if it would drop directly upon the road itself, but hits just short of it, and plunges directly under, so that you can stand on the arched bridge, and look right at it, as it comes leaping fiercely to wards you.

Murray gives the bridges, great and small, on this wonderful road between Brieg and Sesto as "six hundred and eleven, in addition to the far more vast and costly constructions, such as terraces of ma.s.sive masonry, miles in length, ten galleries, either cut out of the living rock or built of solid stone, twenty houses of refuge to shelter travellers, and lodge the laborers constantly employed in taking care of the road. Its breadth is throughout at least twenty-five feet, in some places thirty feet, and the average slope nowhere exceeds six inches in six feet and a half."

After emerging from the Kaltwa.s.ser Glacier Gallery, we had a superb view of the Rhone Valley, with Brieg, which we had left in the morning, directly beneath us, while away across the valley, distinctly visible in the clear atmosphere, rose the Bernese Alps, with the Breithorn, and Aletshorn, and the great Aletsch Glacier distinctly visible. At the highest point of the pa.s.s is the Hospice, over six thousand two hundred feet above the level of the sea; and here we halted for a lunch, and then trudged on in advance, leaving the carriage and ladies to overtake us--enjoying the wild scenery of distant snow-capped mountains, great glaciers, with cascades pouring from their ruffled edges to the green valleys that were far below.

Soon after pa.s.sing the little village of Simplon, we came to the never-to-be-forgotten ravine of Gondo, one of the wildest, grandest, and most magnificent gorges in the whole Alps. The ravine, as you proceed, grows narrower and narrower, with its huge, lofty walls of rock rising on either side. The furious River Diveria rushes through it like a regiment of white-plumed cavalry at full gallop, and its thundering roar is not unlike the tremendous rush of their thousand hoof-beats, as it goes up between these ma.s.sy barriers. The gorge narrows till there is nought but road and river, with the black crags jutting out over the pathway, and we come to a huge black ma.s.s that seems a barrier directly across it; but through this the determined engineers have bored a great gallery, and we ride through a tunnel of six hundred and eighty-three feet in length, to emerge upon a new surprise, and a scene which called forth a shout of admiration from every one of us.

As we emerged from this dark, rocky grotto, we beheld the towering ma.s.ses of rock on either side, like great walls of granite upholding, the blue masonry of heaven, that seemed bent like a vaulted arch above; and from one side, right at our very path, coming from far above with a roar like thunder, leaped a ma.s.s of foam, like a huge cascade of snowy ostrich plumes--the Fressinone Waterfall, which tossed its fine, scintillating spray upon the slender bridge that spanned the gorge, while the roaring cataract itself pa.s.sed beneath, striking sixty or eighty feet below upon the black rocks. It is a magnificent cascade, and prepared us for the grandeur of the great gorge of Gondo, with its huge walls of rock rising two thousand feet high, which seemed, when we were hemmed in to their prison walls of black granite, as though there was no possible way out, except upwards to the strip of sky that roofed the narrow ravine.

Other cascades and waterfalls we saw, but none like the magnificent Fressinone, with the graceful and apparently slender-arched bridge, that almost trembled beneath its rush as we stood upon it--the huge rocky walls towering to heaven, the black entrance to the tunnel just beyond, looking, in the midst of this wild scene of terrific grandeur, like the cavern of some powerful enchanter--the wild, deep gorge, with the foaming waters swiftly gliding away in ma.s.ses of tumbling foam far below, and all the surroundings so grand and picturesque as to make it no wonder that it is a favorite study for artists, as one of the most spirited of Alpine pictures.

We pa.s.sed the granite pillar that marked the boundary line, and were in Italy; and soon after at the mountain custom-house and inn, where we were to dine. The officials are very polite, make scarce any examination whatever of the luggage of tourists; and our trunks remained undisturbed on the travelling carriage while we dined.

Now we begin to ride towards the valley, and soon begin to have Italian views of sunny landscape and trellised vines. We reach the town of Domo d' Ossola, and our driver proclaims his coming by a _feu de joie_ with the whip. The town looks like a collection of worn-out scenery thrown together promiscuously from an old theatre. Old shattered arches cross the street; half-ruined houses of solid masonry have the graceful pillars of their lower stories broken and cracked, and ornamented with strings of onions and bunches of garlic, sold in the shops within; old churches, with a Gothic arch here and there, are turned into a warehouse or a stable; tough old mahogany-colored women are seen squatting before baskets of peaches, grapes, and figs in the streets; dark-skinned, black-eyed girls, with the flat Italian head-dresses seen in pictures; men, dirty and lazy-looking, with huge black whiskers, dark, greasy complexions, in red and blue flannel s.h.i.+rts, and their coats thrown over their shoulders without putting their arms in the sleeves, the coats looking as though they had done many years duty in cleaning oiled machinery; curious houses with overhanging upper stories; striped awnings project outside of upper windows; a garlicky, greasy, Italian smell pervades the narrower streets, from which we were glad to emerge into the more open square, upon which our hotel--quite a s.p.a.cious affair--was located.

Our carriage rattled beneath the arched entrance, and into the paved court-yard, where were three or four other similar equipages, and two great lumbering diligences, while the rattling peal of whip-crack detonations must have made the landlord think that a grand duke and suite, at least, were arriving; for he tumbled out, with half a dozen waiters, porters, and helpers, in a twinkling, and we were soon bestowed in cool and lofty rooms, with many bows and flourishes. This old hotel was a curiosity, many of its rooms opening upon the wooden gallery that ran all around and above the large paved court-yard, into which diligences arrived, stopped for the night, or took up their loads and departed, and post carriages came with their freights to and from the Simplon. It always had a group or two of drivers harnessing up, or wrangling over something or other, or travellers, stowing themselves away in the diligence; horses stamping, and jingling their bells and harnesses; tourists, hunting up luggage; or couriers, arranging matters for the travelling parties they were cheating.

The fatigue of a day's mountain ride, and continued sight-seeing, however, made us sleep soundly, despite any of these noises. Of all fatigues, the tourist ere long discovers the fatigue of a constant succession of sight-seeing to be the most exhausting; so that he soon comes to regard a tolerably good bed and clean room as among the most agreeable experiences of his journey. In the morning we were escorted to the carriage with many bows by the young Italian landlord, and his wife, who, with one of those splendid oval faces, beautiful hair descending in graceful curve to and away from her rich, pure brunette complexion, her wonderful great l.u.s.trous eyes, a head such as one seldom sees, except in a painting or upon a cameo, made every Englishman or American, when he first saw her, start with surprise, utter something to his neighbor, and always look at her a second time, evidently to the landlord's gratification, for he did not seem to have a particle of the traditional Italian jealousy about him--perhaps he had been married too long.

The landlord and his wife said something very pretty by way of a farewell, no doubt, for there were "_grazias_," "_buonos_," "_addios_,"

and some other words, which I remember having heard sung by singers at the opera, in his speech, to which our driver responded with a royal salute of whip-cracks, and we dashed out of the court-yard once more on our journey.