75 



THE MONK; A STORY OF THE ALPS. 



The pass of the great St. Bernard has been more than once 

 recorded in the page of history, as the scene where persevering 

 enterprise, combined with daring ambition, and supported by bold 

 execution, was enabled to conquer apparently insurmountable ob- 

 stacles, and to render vain even the barriers opposed by nature to 

 the completion of man's designs ; and the celebrated Hospice, situ- 

 ated near the summit of the mountain, has for ages been a perpetu- 

 ating monument of the power of generous sympathy and warm 

 benevolence to defy the chills of perennial snows, and the desolation 

 of dreary solitude. 



Though this pass is devoid of many of the magnificent features 

 that characterize some other of the Alpine tracts, yet its wild and 

 rugged paths cannot be traversed without feelings of deep interest ; 

 the memory will revert to the period when Hannibal* led his Car- 

 thaginian warriors over the stupendous Alps, as some maintain, by 

 this pass, and poured down his legions with resistless fury on the 

 richly cultivated plains of Lombardy, then teeming with wealth and 

 luxury that, ere long, was to enervate even the hardy veterans of 

 Africa, and compel them to yield to the magic spell of the soft 

 skies, the cooling fountains, and the love-breathing groves of Italy's 

 genial clime. Since that period small bodies of troops have occa- 

 sionally crossed the St. Bernard ; but the transit of forty thousand 



* The ascent of the Alps by Hannibal and his army is described as having 

 occupied nine days. In addition to the obstacles presented to their advance 

 by the rugged nature of the ground, the hardy mountaineers disputed every 

 pass with them, and frequently broke their disciplined ranks, or obliged 

 them to retreat ; but at length, by stratagem and perseverance, the Cartha- 

 ginian general succeeded in gaining the summit of the mountain, where he 

 permitted the soldiers to rest two days, after which they commenced the de- 

 scent, which was found extremely difficult, owing to the steepness of the de- 

 clivity. At one point a precipice of one thousand feet in depth seemed to 

 bar their farther progress; and here it was that the well-known artifice of 

 heating the rocks by fire and dissolving them with vinegar, was resorted to. 

 From whence the vinegar was obtained, and by what solvent property it 

 was enabled to reduce primitive granite, the historian omits to mention ; 

 possibly the efferveschig wine, for which the valley of Aosta is famous, may 

 be here signified. This, if given to the soldiers, might, by its refreshing 

 properties, have stimulated their exertion, and enabled them to overcome 

 the opposing barriers. 



