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in prospect of Mons Sempronius, now Mount Sampion, which has on its summit a few huts and a chapel. Approaching this, Captain Wray's water-spaniel (a huge filthy cur that had followed him out of England) hunted a herd of goats down the rocks into a river made by the melting of the snow. Arrived at our cold harbour (though the house had a stove in every room) and supping on cheese and milk with wretched wine, we went to bed in cupboards' so high from the floor, that we climbed them by a ladder; we were covered with feathers, that is, we lay between two ticks stuffed with them, and all little enough to keep one warm. The ceilings of the rooms are strangely low for those tall people. The house was now (in September) half covered with snow, nor is there a tree, or a bush, growing within many miles.

Thus we

From this uncomfortable place, we prepared to hasten away the next morning; but, as we were getting on our mules, comes a huge young fellow demanding money for a goat which he affirmed that Captain Wray's dog had killed; expostulating the matter, and impatient of staying in the cold, we set spurs and endeavoured to ride away, when a multitude of people being by this time gotten together about us (for it being Sunday morning and attending for the priest to say mass), they stopped our mules, beat us off our saddles, and, disarming us of our carbines, drew us into one of the rooms of our lodging, and set a guard upon us. continued prisoners till mass was ended, and then came half a score grim Swiss, who, taking on them to be magistrates, sate down on the table, and condemned us to pay a pistole for the goat, and ten more for attempting to ride away, threatening that if we did not pay it speedily, they would send us to prison, and keep us to a day of public justice, where, as they perhaps would have exaggerated the crime, for they pretended we had primed our carbines and would have shot some of them (as indeed the Captain was about to do), we might have had our heads cut off, as we were told afterwards, for that amongst these rude people a very small misdemeanour does often meet that sentence. Though the proceedings appeared highly unjust,2 on consultation among 1 They have such in Wales.

2

Surely these poor people had the right upon their side, and this is not expressed with Evelyn's usual liberality.

VOL. I.

B

ourselves we thought it safer to rid ourselves out of their hands, and the trouble we were brought into; and therefore we patiently laid down the money, and with fierce countenances had our mules and arms delivered to us, and glad we were to escape as we did. This was cold entertainment, but our journey after was colder, the rest of the way having been (as they told us) covered with snow since the Creation; no man remembered it to be without; and because, by the frequent snowing, the tracts are continually filled up, we passed by several tall masts set up to guide travellers, so as for many miles they stand in ken of one another, like to our beacons. In some places, where there is a cleft between two mountains, the snow fills it up, whilst the bottom, being thawed, leaves as it were a frozen arch of snow, and that so hard as to bear the greatest weight; for as it snows often, so it perpetually freezes, of which I was so sensible that it flawed the very skin of my face.

Beginning now to descend a little, Captain Wray's horse (that was our sumpter and carried all our baggage) plunging through a bank of loose snow, slid down a frightful precipice, which so incensed the choleric cavalier, his master, that he was sending a brace of bullets into the poor beast, lest our guide should recover him, and run away with his burden; but, just as he was lifting up his carbine, we gave such a shout, and so pelted the horse with snow-balls, as with all his might plunging through the snow, he fell from another steep place into another bottom, near a path we were to pass. It was yet a good while ere we got to him, but at last we recovered the place, and, easing him of his charge, hauled him out of the snow, where he had been certainly frozen in, if we had not prevented it, before night. It was as we judged. almost two miles that he had slid and fallen, yet without any other harm than the benumbing of his limbs for the present, but, with lusty rubbing and chafing he began to move, and, after a little walking, performed his journey well enough. All this way, affrighted with the disaster of this horse, we trudged on foot, driving our mules before us; sometimes we fell, sometimes we slid, through this ocean of snow, which after October is impassable. Towards night, we came into a larger way, through vast woods of pines, which clothe the middle parts of these rocks. Here, they were burning some

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SION

to make pitch and rosin, peeling the knotty branches, as we do to make charcoal, reserving what melts from them, which hardens into pitch. We passed several cascades of dissolved snow, that had made channels of formidable depth in the crevices of the mountains, and with such a fearful roaring as we could hear it for seven long miles. It is from these sources that the Rhone and the Rhine, which pass through all France and Germany, derive their originals. Late at night, we got to a town called Briga, at the foot of the Alps, in the Valteline. Almost every door had nailed on the outside and next the street a bear's, wolf's, or fox's head, and divers of them all three; a savage kind of sight, but, as the Alps are full of the beasts, the people often kill them. The next morning, we returned to our guide, and took fresh mules, and another to conduct us to the Lake of Geneva, passing through as pleasant a country as that we had just travelled was melancholy and troublesome. A strange and sudden change it seemed; for the reverberation of the sunbeams from the mountains and rocks that like walls range it on both sides, not above two flight-shots in breadth, for a very great number of miles, renders the passage excessively hot. Through such extremes we continued our journey, that goodly river, the Rhone, gliding by us in a narrow and quiet channel almost in the middle of this Canton, fertilizing the country for grass and corn, which grow here in abundance.

We arrived this night at Sion, a pretty town and city, a bishop's seat, and the head of Valesia. There is a castle, and the bishop who resides in it, has both civil and ecclesiastical jurisdiction. Our host, as the custom of these Cantons is, was one of the chiefest of the town, and had been a Colonel in France; he treated us with extreme civility, and was so displeased at the usage we received at Mount Sampion, that he would needs give us a letter to the Governor of the country, who resided at St. Maurice, which was in our way to Geneva, to revenge the affront. This was a true old blade, and had been a very curious virtuoso, as we found by a handsome collection of books, medals, pictures, shells, and other antiquities. He showed two heads and horns of the true capricorn, which animal he told us was frequently killed among the mountains; one branch

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