Journal.
September 22.—I left the city of
Calvin, Bonnet,
Rousseau, and Mad.
de Stael this morning at eight o'clock, with my friend
Brooks, who makes with me the tour of
Italy in a post-chaise.
Our route was the famous Route of the Simplon, which conducted us once more to the beautiful banks of the lake.
When I came to
Geneva, it was on the Swiss side, with the solemn mountains of
Savoy for my prospect; in leaving it my eye was delighted with the grace, and beauty, and luxuriance of the
Pays de Vaud. . . . . At St. Gingoulph we entered the Valais, and stopped to sleep at the post-house, directly on the bank of the lake.
It was the last time I should have the opportunity, and I could not resist the temptation to give half a day to sailing on these beautiful waters, which it seems as if I never could grow weary of admiring.
Before sunrise, therefore, we were in a boat, and enjoyed the beautiful scene of seeing its first gleams gild the mountains and disperse the mists about us. We sailed up the Valais side, covered with solemn groves of chestnuts, and came to the entrance of the Rhone, whose furious and turbid waters induced the ancients to think it rushed out from the secret recesses of the earth and the realms of eternal night.
After tracing the scenes described by
Rousseau, and going over the
Castle of Chillon, we crossed the lake to St. Gingoulph, and took horses in sad earnest to leave it. . . . .
September 24.—As it is our intention to go up the
St. Bernard, and as the weather is not good, we have spent the whole day at Martigny.
This has given me a little opportunity of seeing something of the Valais.
September 26.—We have had two superb days to go to the top of
St. Bernard.
Yesterday morning we set out at seven o'clock on mules, with a guide, but our much surer guide was the Dranse, a little stream rising from the summit of the mountain near the convent and falling into the Rhone near Martigny.
The road was very interesting.
On one side it is overhung by rude and menacing rocks; on the other it sinks into precipices which the imagination hardly dares to measure . . . . . One league before reaching the summit the pines and larches, which had for some time been growing shorter and rarer, forsook us, and finally on the top (8,074 feet) we found only a few starved and sickly mosses, bare and bleak rocks, and eternal snow.
The effect on human life was no less obvious . . . . . The shepherds,
