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PEASANTS OF THE MOUNTAINS.

least of all to his own countrymen; but he holds his umbrella with a nervous hand, consults his card assiduously, or imperturbably reads his "Hand-Book for Switzerland." Lady strangers, come to contemplate the wonders of Switzerland, gather in the stern or descend to the saloon, and give themselves up to a charming prattle in reciprocally detailing the minutiae of their toilet. The young ladies exchange albums; and a few, forgetful of the lake and its shores, read some new romance. The prettiest enjoy the pleasure of being looked at without having the appearance of seeing anything; and others, who are not pretty, set themselves up in the character of duennas, and survey, with an inquisitorial eye, both the admirers and the admired.

However, the confusion on deck from

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time to time recalls the passengers thither for a moment. Now it is occasioned by the landing at the port of Ouchy, below Lausanne. Further on is Vevay, the pretty little Vaudois city that bathes its feet in the lake; still further on is Clarens, a name made poetic by the genius of Rousseau, and which recalls the sweet Julie d'Etanges. Already we had left behind on the right the rocks of Meillerie, from the heights of which Saint Preux was about to precipitate himself in despair. The waters of the lake here attain their greatest depth, which exceeds nine hundred feet. The sublime character of this extremity of Lake Leman, encircled by mountains that become precipitous on the Savoyan shore, awakens anon the admiration of the tourist. We forget this mundane Babel, and turn again to nature.

The Château Chillon and its mournful legends carry you back to poetry more than to history, a proof of the masterly power of genius. The "Prisoner," of Byron, is much better known than the history of Bonnivara. Soon, however, history, poetry, and nature disappear before a more urgent preoccupation: that of finding your trunk and not losing your baggage, for we have come to the termination of our voyage; the enchantment of navigation, which, perhaps, we have not fully appreciated, has ceased, and we fall again into the material troubles which form the inevitable ground-work of what is called a pleasure trip.

It is necessary to be in all haste, and dispute with the crowd, all equally in a hurry, a place in one of the omnibuses from Villeneuve to Saint Maurice, and to assure yourself that your baggage is well fastened to the carriage, and that it will not be deposited en route to Aigle or Bex.

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The pleasing impressions which are experienced in the morning at Geneva from a view of the quiet azure of the sky, and the water, and the beautiful distinctness of the landscape, yield here to the most severe realities.

The dale of Vabefore

lais opens

you, traversed by the Rhône on its way to the lake, the same as in the morning you had at your right that pleasant valley whence flows the Arve, coming from Chamouni, and commanded by bold Mont Blanc in the distance.

But while this

opens widely, the

creep rather than walk, that make inarticulate sounds in their throats in place of words, whose laugh is a grimace, and whose smile freezes you, that stop you as mendicants, and whose contact with you causes an involuntary horror, as if you were seized by a phantom in the nightmare? Yet they appear inoffensive, and whatever may be the hideous complication that in them attains to perfect ugliness, an ugliness so monstrous that it would disgrace a beast, yet I know not whether it is their early degradation or a kindly

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A CRETIN.

even the appearance of malice and all of the passions. What are these objects of fear or of derision? They are idiots! (cretins.) Unfortunate race! It would seem that Divine vengeance was wreaking itself on them, that they are the cursed offspring of some one of the Titans, who tried to scale heaven by piling up mountains, and were discomfited by the thunders of Jupiter.

valley of the Rhone, more inclosed by high | decay that extinguishes upon their features mountains, presents, in spite of its rich vegetation, more somber perspectives, and has a mournful aspect. The snows do not shine so radiantly as those of Mont Blanc, which appear like a glittering carpet spread out for angels to climb upon to the furthest verge of earth, and rise from thence to heaven. Here they are scattering and hung upon the broken edges of cloud-capped summits, or else they appear in the distant horizon to form mysterious and inaccessible retreats.

If the shades of evening have commenced falling in the valleys, a secret terror glides into the imagination of the unaccustomed traveler at this threshold of unknown solitudes, leading to the summit of the Alps, to regions ever vexed with tempests, to a world which is always being menaced with glaciers and avalanches.

On the contrary, however, the fathers of these poor idiots were a simple people and pious Christians, who came to find pasturage for their herds in these secluded valleys, who passed their lives in prayer, and through lack of bread lived upon milk; who, through lack of wine, cooled their thirst with the clear water of the rivulets. But this water, against which no instinct could guard them,

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A VICTIM OF THE GOITER.

To the mournfulness of nature may be added that which is inspired at the sight of the inhabitants. What are these deformed dwarfs with a doltish look, a stupid form, abortive efforts at humanity, that

tends to produce that most terrible of all maladies, the goiter, which becomes hereditary and acquires the fullest development; and under the influence of the same regime continued, the intellectual faculties

are changed, and idiocy appears. What venomous principle diffused in these running waters has led to such rapid and profound disorders in the physical organization, and consequently in the mind? None at all. The presence of a little magnesia or the absence of a little iodine suffices to produce this effect. And this frightful degeneracy of the human species from the same causes manifests itself throughout mountainous countries, in the Pyrenees and in the Alps, in the Hartz and in the

MONKS ACCORDING TO ROMANCE.

Jura, in the valleys of Thibet, in the Ural chain, in the Andes, and the Cordilleras.

The canton of Valais, in Switzerland, is one of those countries where there is a predilection to the goiter and idiocy. The latter, in its excess, is happily the exception, but the goiter, more or less developed, is general among the women, and it is almost as much of a deformity as the neck of a swan would be in carrying the head of a Valaisian woman.

Next to the goiter the most general

characteristic of the Valaisian women is their singular hat. It is worn by the poor as well as the rich, only that of the rich is ornamented with a crest of a rich, wide, gold-colored ribbon, and the brim of it is formed by a multitude of black ribbons placed side by side upon the edge; a superfluity of ornament, the idea of which would scarcely enter the head of a Parisian milliner. These fine Valaisian hats are quite expensive; but one of them lasts a long time, for they are only worn on Sundays

and occasional fete

days.

If you scale the Alps, whose glaciers separate Switzerland from the kingdom of Sardinia, you will also find, in the southern valley of Aosta, the goiter and idiocy as much as in the northern valley already described. At the village of Aosta these things are infinitely worse. On a summer Sunday, if you pass through the

streets at an hour when the inhabitants come and seat themselves before the door to enjoy the air, you will be much affected at the sight of the numerous idiots.

A single road easily accessible, the route so celebrated under the name of the Great St. Bernard, is the means of communication between these two valleys, so rich in beautiful and picturesque scenes, and so mournful by the degradation of a part of the human race. At the culminating point of the passage, eight thousand one hundred and fifty feet above the level of the sea, is situated the hospice of the Great St. Bernard, in the midst of a desolate solitude where all vegetation is dead, where the snow-and some winters it falls to the depth of forty feet-does not disappear from the ground except during a very small portion of the year. For several months in each

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year mules and horses are continually employed in transporting from the valleys below the provision, wood, and other necessaries for the use of the hospice. The establishment of this precious retreat at the very point furthest removed from habitations on either side, and where the snow-storms would be the most dangerous for the traveler exhausted by fatigue and by cold, is a beneficence that cannot be too highly appreciated, but which has been wronged by false ideas induced by declamatory exaggerations. Chateaubriand, in his "Genius of Christianity," paints a young traveler lost at night in the snow. "A dog barks, he comes near, he finds him, he howls for joy; a recluse follows him. It is not enough to expose his own life a thousand times to save men; even animals must needs be made instrumental in these sublime deeds, which they embrace, so to speak, with all the ardent charity of their masters."

The imagination permits itself to be deceived by the use of false images. Many tourists, in approaching the convent, expect to find in the pale and austere countenances of the monks, traces of their devotion to a long martyrdom; but without referring to Chateaubriand, there is nothing, so far as can be discerned, in the physiognomy even of the dogs which appears as the glorious outshining of a ministering angel.

Some ladies in the company in which I arrived one evening at the hospice during a violent storm, were surprised at not seeing some one of these valuable and hospitable animals come out to meet us, carrying about his neck a basket filled with provisions, wrapped up in a snow white cloth, and a flagon of Madeira or some other reviving draught. Painters, who fib as well as poets, ut pictura poesis, have often represented such scenes. The truth is, there is nothing in it; and if by some great chance a dog of St. Bernard is the bearer of a little basket of provisions, I would strongly caution any sentimental traveler to be very careful and not touch it on penalty of being devoured at once. It is rather an unpleasant encounter to meet with one of these dogs prowling about at some distance from the buildings. The dogs of St. Bernard are watch-dogs, and in the silence of these

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THE MONK AS HE REALLY IS.

solitudes they can distinguish the approach of travelers at a great distance. As to their manners, they are the same as all watch-dogs, not very gratifying to the visitor.

On entering the convent you will find, not recluses nor monks with a sorrowful and mystic air, but regular canons of the order of St. Augustine, well favored, receiving the traveler with affability, reading the journals, and being quite conversant with what is going on in the world. At the dinner hour, which is about six o'clock during the pleasant season, you might be quite certain of finding a very agreeable company met in the dining hall at St. Bernard. One of the monks does the honor of the table. The repast is always found good by travelers to whom the journey and the keen air have given an appetite, but as for the rest, the most rigorous sumptuary law could find nothing there to be retrenched. The repast concluded,

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you walk into the parlor, and then yield yourselves up to the pleasures of conversation, or, thanks to the piano, a present from a grateful tourist, you can there listen to worldly music. In a word, you may there find at this height all the trite themes of common life, and the hospice of St. Bernard is no nearer heaven than the bottom of the valley.

While guests are received above, there are stated times in which hospitality is extended in the vast halls of the ground floor to a crowd of the peasantry coming both from Piedmont and Valois to attend mass in the convent. One year, on the 24th of August, I arrived at the hospice in the midst of such a crowd; it amounted to about three or four hundred persons. They were furnished with a repast consisting of bread and boiled vegetables, served to them on trenchers and moistened with good clear water; but lodging was

not furnished. The sixty or eighty beds of the hospice would hardly suffice such a crowd. Therefore, the most of the Piedmontese and Valoisians return early to their respective valleys. Occasionally a few young couples may be seen loitering behind in close conversation or admiring the extended prospects. Not far from the hospice, at a place still called the Plain of Jupiter, there was formerly a temple raised to this god. Could there have been one here also to Juno Lucina, and could it be by following the faint light of an ancient tradition that these young people take the trouble to climb eight thousand feet above the level of the sea to chat away the evening by starlight? But I am recalling memories of things already distant.

Times change the manners as well as the costumes. What has become of the easy toilet and short petticoat of the Brientz boat-women? Calicoes are superseding

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