valley, a bright morning, and the snow-peaks are soon
rosy in the sunrise. It is just as we expected,--little villages under
the hills, and slender church spires with brick-red tops. At nine
o'clock we are in Innsbruck, at the foot of the Brenner. No snow yet. It
must be charming here in the summer.

During the night we have got out of Bavaria. The waiter at the
restaurant wants us to pay him ninety kreuzers for our coffee, which is
only six kreuzers a cup in Munich. Remembering that it takes one hundred
kreuzers to make a gulden in Austria, I launch out a Bavarian gulden,
and expect ten kreuzers in change. I have heard that sixty Bavarian
kreuzers are equal to one hundred Austrian; but this waiter explains
to me that my gulden is only good for ninety kreuzers. I, in my turn,
explain to the waiter that it is better than the coffee; but we come to
no understanding, and I give up, before I begin, trying to understand
the Austrian currency. During the day I get my pockets full of coppers,
which are very convenient to take in change, but appear to have a very
slight purchasing, power in Austria even, and none at all elsewhere, and
the only use for which I have found is to give to Italian beggars. One
of these pieces satisfies a beggar when it drops into his hat; and
then it detains him long enough in the examination of it, so that your
carriage has time to get so far away that his renewed pursuit is usually
unavailing.

The Brenner Pass repaid us for the pains we had taken to see it,
especially as the sun shone and took the frost from our windows, and we
encountered no snow on the track; and, indeed, the fall was not deep,
except on the high peaks about us. Even if the engineering of the road
were not so interesting, it was something to be again amidst mountains
that can boast a height of ten thousand feet. After we passed the
summit, and began the zigzag descent, we were on a sharp lookout for
sunny Italy. I expected to lay aside my heavy overcoat, and sun myself
at the first station among the vineyards. Instead of that, we bade
good-by to bright sky, and plunged into a snowstorm, and, so greeted,
drove down into the narrow gorges, whose steep slopes we could see were
terraced to the top, and planted with vines. We could distinguish enough
to know that, with the old Roman ruins, the churches and convent towers
perched on the crags, and all, the scenery in summer must be finer
than that of the Rhine, especially as the vine