CIIAP. ix.J ALPINE TRAVELS, 1841. 257 



and geology, together with that isolation and remoteness 

 which lends a peculiar, though doubtless a selfish, charm 

 to a prize which we imagine that others have in some 

 degree overlooked. This caused me to fix my quarters 

 in the very first village I reached, and again two years 

 later (1841) to revisit every point of geological interest, 

 to extend my notes, and to prepare a map and drawings 

 of the volcanic phenomena/ The unwonted presence of 

 travellers appears to have excited considerable curiosity 

 among the somewhat morose inhabitants of this remote 

 district. At Thuyets the Professor was taken for a tax- 

 gatherer, and roundly abused by an old woman on that 

 supposition. Again, at La Bastide, beside which rise the 

 ruins of a castle once belonging to the Count d'Autraigues, 

 a victim to popular fury during the French Revolution, 

 the consciences of the men whose fathers had sacked his 

 chateau and divided his lands smote them, and they 

 said, * The grandsons of the old Count are come ! ' 



After lingering for a few days at Thuyets, ' sketching, 

 geologizing, and bathing in the limpid Ardeche/ they 

 turned their steps towards the district of Le Puy, and, 

 although foiled by bad weather in many intended excur- 

 sions, they explored much interesting country. But 

 time pressed, and they soon turned eastward towards 

 Agassiz' try sting-place, which it was Forbes's intention 

 to reach by the Little St. Bernard, the Col Ferret, and 

 the valley of the Rhone, having first, however, revisited 

 the Alps of Dauphine*, and crossed, if possible, some of 

 the glacier passes of the Pelvoux group. In company 

 with Mr. Heath of Trinity College, Cambridge, who had 

 joined him at Grenoble, he succeeded in making two 

 interesting passes : the first of which, the Col de Sais, 

 had probably never been previously made by a native, the 

 second, the Col du Ce'lar, certainly never by a traveller. 



To Miss FORBES. 



* LA GRAVE, VAL ROMANCHE, DAUPHIN^, 

 A wtt Sund<uj, Aw/nst 1st, 1841. 



' . . . In my letter to John I described our passage 

 of a Col which no strangers, so far as we could hear, 



I 



