nion which more familiar later acquaintance
confirmed, and which can hardly now give anything but pleasure to the
lady of whom it is expressed. To the second incident he alludes more
briefly. "As Haldimand and Mrs. Marcet and the Cerjats had devised a
small mountain expedition for us for to-morrow, I didn't like to allow
Chamounix to stand in the way. So we go with them first, and start on
our own account on Tuesday. We are extremely pleasant with these
people." The close of the same letter (25th of July), mentioning two
pieces of local news, gives intimation of the dangers incident to all
Swiss travelling, and of such special precautions as were necessary for
the holiday among the mountains he was now about to take. "My first news
is that a crocodile is said to have escaped from the Zoological gardens
at Geneva, and to be now 'zigzag-zigging' about the lake. But I can't
make out whether this is a great fact, or whether it is a pious fraud to
prevent too much bathing and liability to accidents. The other piece of
news is more serious. An English family whose name I don't know,
consisting of a father, mother, and daughter, arrived at the hotel
Gibbon here last Monday, and started off on some mountain expedition in
one of the carriages of the country. It was a mere track, the road, and
ought to have been travelled only by mules, but the Englishman persisted
(as Englishmen do) in going on in the carriage; and in answer to all the
representations of the driver that no carriage had ever gone up there,
said he needn't be afraid he wasn't going to be paid for it, and so
forth. Accordingly, the coachman got down and walked by the horses'
heads. It was fiery hot; and, after much tugging and rearing, the horses
began to back, and went down bodily, carriage and all, into a deep
ravine. The mother was killed on the spot; and the father and daughter
are lying at some house hard by, not expected to recover."

His next letter (written on the second of August) described his own
first real experience of mountain-travel. "I begin my letter to-night,
but only begin, for we returned from Chamounix in time for dinner just
now, and are pretty considerably done up. We went by a mountain pass not
often crossed by ladies, called the Col de Balme, where your imagination
may picture Kate and Georgy on mules _for ten hours at a stretch_,
riding up and down the most frightful precipices. We returned by the
pass of the Tete Noire, which Talfourd know