r, Mr. and Mrs. Watson, two Ladies Taylor, Kate,
Georgy, and I. We were wonderfully unanimous and cheerful; went away
from here by the steamer; found at its destination a whole omnibus
provided by the Brave (who went on in advance everywhere); rode therein
to Bex; found two large carriages ready to take us to Martigny; slept
there; and proceeded up the mountain on mules next day. Although the St.
Bernard convent is, as I dare say you know, the highest inhabited spot
but one in the world, the ascent is extremely gradual and uncommonly
easy: really presenting no difficulties at all, until within the last
league, when the ascent, lying through a place called the valley of
desolation, is very awful and tremendous, and the road is rendered
toilsome by scattered rocks and melting snow. The convent is a most
extraordinary place, full of great vaulted passages, divided from each
other with iron gratings; and presenting a series of the most
astonishing little dormitories, where the windows are so small (on
account of the cold and snow), that it is as much as one can do to get
one's head out of them. Here we slept: supping, thirty strong, in a
rambling room with a great wood-fire in it set apart for that purpose;
with a grim monk, in a high black sugar-loaf hat with a great knob at
the top of it, carving the dishes. At five o'clock in the morning the
chapel bell rang in the dismallest way for matins: and I, lying in bed
close to the chapel, and being awakened by the solemn organ and the
chaunting, thought for a moment I had died in the night and passed into
the unknown world.

"I wish to God you could see that place. A great hollow on the top of a
range of dreadful mountains, fenced in by riven rocks of every shape and
colour: and in the midst, a black lake, with phantom clouds perpetually
stalking over it. Peaks, and points, and plains of eternal ice and snow,
bounding the view, and shutting out the world on every side: the lake
reflecting nothing: and no human figure in the scene. The air so fine,
that it is difficult to breathe without feeling out of breath; and the
cold so exquisitely thin and sharp that it is not to be described.
Nothing of life or living interest in the picture, but the grey dull
walls of the convent. No vegetation of any sort or kind. Nothing
growing, nothing stirring. Everything iron-bound, and frozen up. Beside
the convent, in a little outhouse with a grated iron door which you may
unbolt for yourself, a