could not well be worse, the remainder might possibly be better, I decided on going on, estimating every additional inch as a valuable accession of space, with a secret proviso, however, in my own mind, that nothing on earth should induce me to return the same way, notwithstanding the declaration of the guides, that they knew of no other line, unless a bridge which had been impassable yesterday had been made passable to-day; and we knew the people were at work, for a man had gone before us with an axe over his shoulder. Thus, persevering with the speed of a tortoise, or a sloth, the solemn, slow movement of hand and foot forcibly reminding me of that cautious animal, we at last drew near to a more acute point in the curve of this gaunt amphitheatre, where it bent forward towards the river, and consequently we were more immediately fronted by the precipice forming the continuation of that on which we stood. By keeping my head obliquely turned inwards, I had hitherto in great measure avoided more visual communication than I wished with the bird's-eye prospect below; but there was no possibility of excluding the smooth, bare frontage of rock right ahead. There it reared itself from the clouds beneath to the clouds above without visible sign of fret or fissure, as far as I could judge, on which even a chamois could rest its tiny hoof; for the width of whatever ledge it might have was diminished by the perspective view we had of it, to Euclid's true definition of a mathematical line, namely, length without breadth. At this distance of time, I have no very clear recollection of the mode of our exit, and cannot speak positively as to whether we skirted any part of this perilous wall of the Titans, or crept up through the corner of the curve by some fissure leading to the summit. I have, however, a very clear and agreeable recollection of the moment when I came in contact with a tough bough, which I welcomed and grasped as I would have welcomed and grasped the hand of the dearest friend I had upon earth, and by the help of which I, in a very few seconds, scrambled upwards, and set my foot once more, without fear of slip or sliding, on a rough heathery surface, forming the bed of a ravine, which soon led us to an upland plateau, on which I stood as in the garden of Paradise. In talking over our adventure, one of the guides mentioned a curious circumstance that had occurred either to himself or to a brother guide, I forget which, in the course of their practice. He was escorting a traveller over a rather dizzy height, when the unfortunate tourist's head failed, and he fainted on the spot, whereupon the mountaineer, a strong muscular man, with great presence of mind, took up his charge, threw him over his shoulder, and coolly walked away with him till he came to a place of safety, where he deposited his burthen, and awaited the return of sense. But," added he, "had such a misfortune occurred on the Mauvais Pas, you must have submitted to your fate; the ledge was too narrow for exertion-we could have done nothing." 66 We were not now much more than a league from our original destination, a space of which, whether fair or foul, I cannot speak with much precision, so entirely was every thought and feeling engrossed on the business which had occupied so large a portion of the last hour. It is here necessary to inform the reader that at the expiration of a given time I stood before the ruins of a stupendous mound, formed of condensed masses of snow and ice, hurled down from above by the imperceptible but gradual advancement of the great glacier of Getroz, nursed in a gorge beneath the summit of Mount Pleuveur. Not a moment passed, with the fall of thundering avalanches bounding from rock to rock, till their shattered fragments, floundering down the inclined plane of snow, finally precipitated themselves into the bed of the channel through which the emancipated Lac de Manvoisin had, in the brief space of half-an-hour, rushed, after it had succeeded in corroding the excavated galleries, and blown up in an instant its icy barriers. Seated on a knoll immediately fronting the stage on which. this grand scenery was represented, we rested some time, during which we were joined by one or two of the workmen employed in repairing the roads and bridges to which the guides had alluded; and the first question asked was, "Peuton le traverser ?" (is it passable). No direct answer followed. It was evidently therefore a matter of doubt, requiring at least some discussion, during which, although the parties conversed in an undertone, I had again heard, more than once, the disagreeable repetition of "Mais a-t-il bonne tête ?" And a reference was finally made to me. It seems the bridge had been completely destroyed; but some people had that morning availed themselves of the commencement of a temporary accommodation, then in a state of preparation, and had crossed the channel, and, provided Monsieur had a bonne tête, there was no danger in following their example. Hesitation was out of the question; for whatever might be the possible extent of risk, in duration and degree it clearly would bear no comparison to the Mauvais Pas, the discomfiting sensations of which were still too fresh in my recollection to indulge a thought of encountering them a second time in the same day. I therefore decided on the bridge without more ado, "coûte que coûte" (cost what it might); and as we descended towards the river, I had soon the pleasure of seeing it far below me, and plenty of time to make up my mind as to the best way of ferrying myself over. Of the original pass nothing remained; but across two buttresses of natural rock I could distinguish something like a tight-rope, at the two extremities of which little moony things, no bigger than mites, were bustling about, and now and then I could perceive one or two of these diminutive monocletes venturing upon its apparently frail line of communication. A nearer view afforded no additional encouragement. At a depth of ninety feet below the road, the Drance foaming and splashing with inconceivable violence against its two adamantine abutments, which here confined the channel within a space of about thirty or forty feet, from rock to rock across the gulf, two pine poles had that morning been thrown, not yet rivetted together but lying loosely side by side. It certainly was not half "As full of peril and adventurous spirit But it was notwithstanding a very comfortless piece of footing to contemplate. Ye mariners of England, who think nothing of lying out on a topsail yard to pass an earing (the technical term for an operation necessary in reefing topsails) in a gale of wind, might have smiled at such a sight, and crossed merrily over without the vibration of a nerve, but let it be recollected as a balance of a landsman's fears, that these two spars were neither furnished with accommodating jack stays, supporting foot-ropes, nor encircling gaskets, to which the outlyer might cling in case of emergence. There they rested, one end of each on a projecting promontory of the chasm in all their bare nakedness. In the morning I might have paused to look before I leaped; but what were forty or fifty feet of pure vaulting in comparison to the protracted misery of a quarter of a mile of the Mauvais Pas. So, forthwith committing myself to their support on hands and knees, I crawled along, and in a few minutes trod again on terra firma, beyond the reach of further risk, rejoicing, and I hope, not ungrateful for the perils I had escaped. STAGE COACHES FIFTY YEARS AGO. 1832. The The following is part of a paper in the Quarterly Review, entitled "The Road," written when the stage-coach system was in the height of perfection, and steam locomotion by land scarcely in its infancy. writer is comparing coach travelling in his own day to that of ninety years previously, and with this view imagines a worthy old gentleman to have gone to sleep in 1742, and to have awakened on a Monday of 1832, in Piccadilly. "WHAT coach, your honour?" says a ruffianly looking fellow, much like what he might have been had he lived a hundred years back. "I wish to go home to Exeter," replies the old gentleman, mildly. "Just in time, your honour, here she comes-them there grey horses; where's your luggage?" "Don't be in a hurry," observes the stranger, gentleman's carriage." "that's a "It ain't! I tell you," says the cad; "it's the Comet, and you must be as quick as lightning." Nolens volens, the remonstrating old gentleman is shoved into the Comet by a cad at each elbow, having been three times assured his luggage was in the hind boot, and twice three times denied having ocular demonstration of the fact. However, he is now seated. "What gentleman is going to drive us?" is his first question to his fellow passengers. "He is no gentleman, sir," says a person who sits opposite to him, and who happens to be a proprietor of the coach. "He has been on the Comet ever since she started, and is a very steady young man." "Pardon my ignorance," says the awakened veteran, "from the cleanliness of his person, the neatness of his apparel, and the language he made use of, I mistook him for some enthusiastic Bachelor of Arts, wishing to become a character after the manner of the illustrious ancients." "You must have been long in foreign parts, sir," observes the proprietor. In five minutes or less after this parley commenced, the wheels went round, and in another five the coach arrived at Hyde Park Gate; but long before it got there, the worthy gentleman of 1742 (set down by his fellow travellers as either a little cracked or an emigrant from the backwoods of America) exclaimed, "What? off the stones already?" "You have never been on the stones," observed his. neighbour on his right; no stones in London now, sir." Bless me!" quoth our friend, "here's a noble house, to 66 |