312 LIFE IN THE ALPS. 



a warm sun shining on the newly-fallen snow, which 

 vastly enhances the loveliness of the scenes around us. 

 We moreover regret bidding good-bye to the gorgeous 

 colouring of the trees and undergrowth, which might 

 bear comparison with the beauty of the foliage that I 

 have seen in autumn in the neighbourhood of your own 

 Boston. I have never forgotten the autumn splendour 

 of Mr. Winthrop's trees at Brookline. 



Sometimes, however, we depart under difficulties. 

 Last year, for example, on October 16, our porters 

 hoisted on their backs the luggage intended for home, 

 and through a dense fog, with the snow three feet 

 deep, and still heavity falling, we moved downwards. 

 Fog on the mountains is terribly bewildering; and as 

 we descended, one of our men, who had tramped the 

 neighbourhood from his infancy, and had on that ac- 

 count been chosen for our leader, stopped short, and 

 declared that he did not know which way to proceed. 

 There was no danger, but the difficulty was considerable. 

 A thousand feet or so lower down we got entirely clear 

 of the snow. 



Towards the end of June the flocks and herds are 

 driven to the upper pastures, private ownership ceasing 

 and communal rights, as to grazing, beginning at an 

 elevation of about four thousand feet above the Rhone, 

 or seven thousand feet above the sea. The peasants 

 and their families accompany their living property, re- 

 maining for two or three months in huts built expressly 

 with a view to their annual migration. Nearly the 

 whole of them move into Naters for the winter; but we 

 remain alone, amid the solemn silence of the hills, three 

 weeks or a month after the peasants have disappeared. 

 Their time of disappearance depends upon the exhaus- 

 tion of the pasturage. Many of them have intermediate 

 huts and bits of land between Naters and their highest 



