f parchment
and the goitre, and even young children with the loathsome appendage,
the most wretched and filthy hovels, and the dirtiest, ugliest people in
them. The poor women are the beasts of burden. They often lead, mowing
in the hayfield; they carry heavy baskets on their backs; they balance
on their heads and carry large washtubs full of water. The more
appropriate load of one was a cradle with a baby in it, which seemed not
at all to fear falling. When one sees how the women are treated, he does
not wonder that there are so many deformed, hideous children. I think
the pretty girl has yet to be born in Switzerland.

This is not much about the Alps? Ah, well, the Alps are there. Go
read your guide-book, and find out what your emotions are. As I said,
everybody goes to Chamouny. Is it not enough to sit at your window, and
watch the clouds when they lift from the Mont Blanc range, disclosing
splendor after splendor, from the Aiguille de Goute to the Aiguille
Verte,--white needles which pierce the air for twelve thousand feet,
until, jubilate! the round summit of the monarch himself is visible, and
the vast expanse of white snow-fields, the whiteness of which is rather
of heaven than of earth, dazzles the eyes, even at so great a distance?
Everybody who is patient and waits in the cold and inhospitable-looking
valley of the Chamouny long enough, sees Mont Blanc; but every one
does not see a sunset of the royal order. The clouds breaking up and
clearing, after days of bad weather, showed us height after height,
and peak after peak, now wreathing the summits, now settling below or
hanging in patches on the sides, and again soaring above, until we had
the whole range lying, far and brilliant, in the evening light. The
clouds took on gorgeous colors, at length, and soon the snow caught the
hue, and whole fields were rosy pink, while uplifted peaks glowed red,
as with internal fire. Only Mont Blanc, afar off, remained purely white,
in a kind of regal inaccessibility. And, afterward, one star came out
over it, and a bright light shone from the hut on the Grand Mulets, a
rock in the waste of snow, where a Frenchman was passing the night on
his way to the summit.

Shall I describe the passage of the Tete Noire? My friend, it is
twenty-four miles, a road somewhat hilly, with splendid views of
Mont Blanc in the morning, and of the Bernese Oberland range in the
afternoon, when you descend into Martigny,--a hot place in the dusty