ot market-day, but streams of people were coming to the town.
Many of them were pilgrims returning from the sanctuary, but more were
bringing the produce of their farms or the work of their hands for sale.
We had to face a steady stream of chairs, which were coming to town in
baskets upon women's heads. Each basket contained twelve chairs, though
whether it is correct to say that the basket contained the chairs--when
the chairs were all, so to say, froth running over the top of the
basket--is a point I cannot settle. Certainly we had never seen anything
like so many chairs before, and felt almost as though we had surprised
nature in the laboratory wherefrom she turns out the chair-supply of the
world. The road continued through a succession of villages almost
running into one another for a long way after Biella was passed, but
everywhere we noticed the same air of busy thriving industry which we had
seen in Biella itself. We noted also that a preponderance of the people
had light hair, while that of the children was frequently nearly white,
as though the infusion of German blood was here stronger even than usual.
Though so thickly peopled, the country was of great beauty. Near at hand
were the most exquisite pastures close shaven after their second mowing,
gay with autumnal crocuses, and shaded with stately chestnuts; beyond
were rugged mountains, in a combe on one of which we saw Oropa itself now
gradually nearing; behind, and below, many villages, with vineyards and
terraces cultivated to the highest perfection; farther on, Biella already
distant, and beyond this a "big stare," as an American might say, over
the plains of Lombardy from Turin to Milan, with the Apennines from Genoa
to Bologna hemming the horizon. On the road immediately before us, we
still faced the same steady stream of chairs flowing ever Biella-ward.

After a couple of hours the houses became more rare; we got above the
sources of the chair-stream; bits of rough rock began to jut out from the
pasture; here and there the rhododendron began to shew itself by the
roadside; the chestnuts left off along a line as level as though cut with
a knife; stone-roofed _cascine_ began to abound, with goats and cattle
feeding near them; the booths of the religious trinket-mongers increased;
the blind, halt, and maimed became more importunate, and the
foot-passengers were more entirely composed of those whose object was, or
had been, a visit to the sanctuary its