I mention this, for he turned out a right
good fellow. Favret was getting his dinner
while he rested his baggage-mule, and the
other asked to sit down with him for a while:
so I went off alone, knowing the road
perfectly well, leaving them to come on as they
pleased. The storm had passed, but the
weather was still very sullen and threatening;
and I heard that peculiar moaning
noise amongst the mountains, which makes
an Alpine traveller get on as fast as he can.

I have crossed the St. Bernard twelve or
fourteen times, but I never saw the pass so
utterly deserted as it was this day. Just
above Orsieres, where you make a steep
short cut, to avoid the long zigzag of the
road, some men were putting up a little
wooden cross on the edge of the precipice.
It was to mark the scene of a terrible accident
which happened the week before.
Three men—Piedmontese—were going up to
the Convent in one of those sideway cars,
used on mountain roads. Just at this point
the mule shied and backed the car over the
edge of the road. The driver jumped off
and was saved; but the car, the mule,
and passengers went over the precipice,
and were alike smashed to pieces: they
must have fallen, at a rough estimate, a
hundred and fifty feet. After I left these
workmen, I did not meet another soul until I
got to St. Pierre—the last village up the pass
—and there a string of mules, with some
guides sitting in their side-saddles, were
starting on their way back to Orsieres.

It was now five o'clock, and the weather
was gradually becoming very bad. I had
been thoroughly wet through some time so
the rain did not incommode me so much, but
the wind was awful. It flew, shrieking and
howling round the angles of the pass, like an icy
knife, until it was as much as the mule could
do to battle against it—sending the chill
clouds, which now came right down the
mountains, in whirls of mist around and
above me, and blowing flakes of the cold
brawling Drause quite across the path, which
is here just on a level with the torrent. There
was nothing like danger of any kind, or
anything approaching to it; but the dead loneliness
of the place, with its grim lichen-covered
boulders, and roaring glacier waters, and
freezing atmosphere, and entire absence of
every trace of animal life, was altogether so
dispiriting in the declining day, that, although
every minute was an object, when I got to
the "Canteen"—the last human habitation
up the pass,—I pulled up.  Tumbling, rather
than getting off, my mule (which I could
not have done properly in any manner, as
there was a sack of corn on the crupper), I
blundered through the doorway. My teeth
chattered so, that I could scarcely ask for a
glass of hot brandy and water; and when I
got it, my hands were so numbed and helpless,
I could hardly lift it to my mouth. It
must be borne in mind that I was now at
an elevation of nearly seven thousand feet
above the level of the sea—twice the height
of Snowdon.

"A LA CANTINE, " as a dismal little creaking
weather-washed-out board describes it, is
supposed by the people who keep it, to be an
inn; but remote dwellers in mountains have
ever been given to superstitions and hallucinations.
Allowing it to be such, for an instant,
then all the cabins of the Flegere, the Faulhorn,
and the Col de Balme, take the comparative
rank of the Hotel de Louvre in Paris, the Great
Western in London, and the Lord Warden at
Dover.  That ready anonymous authority of
compilers of instructive works—" a recent
traveller "—might describe it as an irregular-
shaped mass of hollow granite, with square
apertures pierced at intervals, some glazed
to exclude air and admit light—others open
to let out smoke and dilute smells. Its stone
steps and passage afford such admirable
skating-ground, that owing to his smooth
shoe-nails, the tourist usually enters head
over heels; and, on recovering from the
surprise naturally incident to this novel
introduction, finds he has pantomimically
flip-flapped into the salle-a-manger, which is
very like the inside of a large bathing-machine,
and fitted up with a window, a
shutter, a bench, and a latch. Here you can
have blunt knives, and firewood, and salt,
and all sorts of similarly nice things, including
a very curious wine, which looks and tastes
like—and may be for aught I know to the
contrary—pickled-cabbage juice.

I found two travellers more, who had
determined upon remaining for the night,
rather than face the weather.  I was,
however, resolved upon reaching the Convent that
night; and whilst I was finishing my cognac,
as the landlord was pleased to call it—but
there is no good brandy in Switzerland, even
in the best hotels; it is chiefly adulterated
rum—my man from Orsieres came in, having
walked uncommonly well. He told me
Favret would not be after us for an hour; so
we left word that he was to follow, and once
more started on our journey.

It was getting quite dusk as we crossed the
wild dreary plain that surrounds the Canteen,
but the lightning was playing incessantly—
almost without intermission. We had now
three hours' work to reach the Convent; the
actual road had ceased, and all human life
was left behind us. There was nothing on
every side but snow-covered peaks, grey
debris of granite, and cold rushing waters,
swollen and turbulent from the continuous
rains. In about twenty minutes we had
traversed the level, and arrived at the foot
of the spur of Mont Velan, which appears
to forbid all further progress; for it is here
that the actual climbing the pass commences:
hitherto the road from Martigny had never
been steeper, to give a familiar instance, than
Southampton Street, Strand, London, or the
Rue de Courcelles, Paris; that is to say, on the