Col de Tende 225 



abbe a friend, all well bred polite men, who were very attentive 

 to me as a foreigner, and had great readiness to answer all my 

 inquiries: I reaped a good deal of information from their con- 

 versation. The three first days of this journey are employed in 

 crossing three mountains; to-day we passed the Col de Pruss.^ 

 The features in the heights are interesting, wild, and great. The 

 descent to 5ospello is picturesque. — 26 miles. 



22nd. My friend, the old Piedmontese colonel, commends 

 the English character greatly, when it is truly English; that is, 

 as I guessed by his explanations, when it is not a hurrying, 

 bustling, expensive young man of great fortune against whom 

 he threw out some severe reflections. He desired my name, and 

 where I lived in England, which he begged me to write down for 

 him; and commended very much the object of my journey, 

 which appeared so extraordinary to him that he could not help 

 putting many questions. The mountain we crossed to-day is 

 yet more savage than that of yesterday; much of it wild, and 

 e\ en sublime. The little town of Saorgio and its castle are 

 situated most romantically, stuck against the side of a mountain, 

 like a swallow's nest against the side of a house. I had no oppor- 

 tunity of asking how many necks are broken in a year, in going 

 peaceably to and fro; but the blackness of this town, and the 

 total want of glass, make it gloomy as well as romantic; indeed 

 the view of all these mountain-towns, where there may be so 

 much happiness with so little appearance of it, is forbidding. 

 Tende, which is the capital of a district, and gives name to this 

 great ridge of mountain {Col de Tende), is a horrid place of this 

 sort, with a vile inn; all black, dirty, stinking, and no glass. — 

 30 miles. 



2yd. Out by four in the morning, in the dark, in order to 

 cross the Col de Tende as soon after break of day as possible, a 

 necessary precaution they say, as the wind is then most quiet; 

 if there is any storm, the passage is dangerous, and even im- 

 practicable; not so much from height as from situation, in a 

 draught of wind between Piedmont and the sea. The pass in 

 the rocks for some distance before mounting the hill is sublime, 

 hemmed in among such enormous mountains and rocks that 

 they reminded me a little of the amazing pass in the Pyrenees, 

 but are much inferior to it. In the face of one of them is a long 

 inscription to the honour of Victor Amadeus III. for making the 

 road ; and near it an old one, purporting that the eleventh Duke 

 of Savoy made the old road, to connect Piedmont and Nice, 



' Col de Bruis. 



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