Chapter 21

As yet the trembling year is unconfirmed,
And winter oft, at eve, resumes the breeze,
Chills the pale morn, and bids his driving sleets
Deform the day delightful:----

Thomson.

The horn of Pierre Dumont was blowing beneath the windows of the inn of
Martigny, with the peep of dawn. Then followed the appearance of drowsy
domestics, the saddling of unwilling mules, and the loading of baggage. A
few minutes later the little caravan was assembled, for the cavalcade
almost deserved this name, and the whole were in motion for the summits of
the Alps.

The travellers now left the valley of the Rhone to bury themselves amid
those piles of misty and confused mountains, which formed the back-ground
of the picture they had studied from the castle of Blonay and the sheet of
the Leman. They soon plunged into a glen, and, following the windings of a
brawling torrent, were led gradually, and by many turnings, into a country
of bleak upland pasturage, where the inhabitants gained a scanty
livelihood, principally by means of their dairies.

A few leagues above Martigny, the paths again separated, one inclining to
the left towards the elevated valley that has since become so celebrated
in the legends of this wild region, by the formation of a little lake in
its glacier, which, becoming too heavy for its foundation, broke through
its barrier of ice, and descended in a mountain of water to the Rhone, a
distance of many leagues, sweeping before it every vestige of civilization
that crossed its course, and even changing, in many places, the face of
nature itself. Here the glittering peak of Vélan became visible, and,
though so much nearer to the eye than when viewed from Vévey, it was still
a distant shining pile, grand in its solitude and mystery, on which the
sight loved to dwell, as it studies the pure and spotless edges of some
sleepy cloud.

It has already been said, that the ascent of the great St. Bernard, with
the exception of occasional hills and hollows, is nowhere very precipitous
but at the point at which the last rampart of rock is to be overcome. On
the contrary, the path, for leagues at a time, passes along tolerably even
valleys, though of necessity the general direction is upward, and for most
of the distance through a country that admits of cultivation, though the
meagreness of the soil, and the shortness of the seasons, render but an
indifferent return to the toil of the husbandman. In this respect it
differs from most of the other Alpine passes; but if it wants the variety,
wildness, and sublimity of the Splugen. the St. Gothard, the Gemmi, and
the Simplon, it is still an ascent on a magnificent scale, and he who
journeys on its path is raised, as it were, by insensible