300 Travels in Italy 



it is at present, a good English horse would trot as fast as we 

 rammassed. The exaggerations we have read of this business 

 have arisen, perhaps, from travellers passing in summer and 

 accepting the descriptions of the muleteers. A journey on 

 snow is commonly productive of laughable incidents ; the road of 

 the iraineau is not wider than the machine and we were always 

 meeting mules, etc. It was sometimes, and with reason, a 

 question who should turn out; for the snow being ten feet deep 

 the mules had sagacity to consider a moment before they buried 

 themselves. A young Savoyard female, riding her mule, ex- 

 perienced a complete reversal; for attempting to pass my 

 Iraineau her beast was a little restive and, tumbling, dismounted 

 his rider: the girl's head pitched in the snow and sunk deep 

 enough to fix her beauties in the position of a forked post; and 

 the wicked muleteers instead of assisting her laughed too heartily 

 to move: if it had been one of the ballarini the attitude would 

 have been nothing distressing to her. These laughable adven- 

 tures, with the gilding of a bright sun, made the day pass 

 pleasantly; and we were in good humour enough to swallow 

 with cheerfulness a dinner at Lanebourg that, had we been in 

 England, we should have consigned very readily to the dog- 

 kennel. — 20 miles. 



22nd. The whole day we were among the high Alps. The 

 villages are apparently poor, the houses ill built, and the people 

 with few comforts about them except plenty of pine wood, the 

 forests of which harbour wolves and bears. Dine at Modane and 

 sleep at St. Michel. — 25 miles. 



2yd. Pass St. Jean Mauriennc, where there is a bishop, and 

 near that place we saw what is much better than a bishop, the 

 prettiest, and indeed the only pretty woman we saw in Savoy; 

 on inquiry found it was Madame de la Coste, wife of a farmer of 

 tobacco; I should have been better pleased if she had belonged 

 to the plough. — The mountains now relax their terrific features : 

 they recede enough to offer to the willing industry of the poor 

 inhabitants something like a valley; but the jealous torrent 

 seizes it with the hand of despotism, and, like his brother t)a ants, 

 reigns but to destroy. On some slopes vines : mulberries begin 

 to appear ; villages increase ; but still continue rather shapeless 

 heaps of inhabited stones than ranges of houses; yet in these 

 homely cots beneaththe snow-clad hills, where natural light comes 

 with tardy beams and art seems more sedulous to exclude than 

 admit it, peace and content, the companions of honesty, may re- 

 side; and certainly would, were the penury of nature the only 



