322 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



kind-hearted monks, out of regard, probably, to the American 

 Minister, whose character they had learned from a young 

 Englishman who had joined us a little before arriving at the 

 top of the pass. There is little vegetation here. A little short, 

 sweet grass, studded with bright spring flowers, yellow and blue, 

 offered a sweet bite for a few cows during a few weeks of sum- 

 mer, kept in the basement in winter. Now and then a little 

 sheltered valley will help eke out the summer season, but 

 most of the food, both of man and beast, has to be carried up 

 on the backs of mules. Just at the end of the little lake which 

 almost touches the end of the hospice, there is a stone pillar 

 which indicates the line of Italy, into which we descended, 

 going down, down, for many hours, with lofty snow-capped 

 peaks on either hand, till we came again to the warm sun and 

 the luscious grapes, now fully ripe here. 



It was just in the midst of the vintage as we arrived at 

 Aosta, in one of the loveliest valleys of the Italian Alps, and I 

 shall nevei" forget the loads of grapes, in wagons, baskets, tubs, 

 and every kind of vessel, coming out of the vineyards in all 

 directions, their rich burdens going down into the village to be 

 pressed. 



But what specimens of humanity. More than half the men, 

 and three-quarters, probably seven-eighths of the coarse, sun-' 

 burnt women through these alpine valleys, have their necks 

 enlarged by the goitre, often so enormously as to be perfectly 

 horrible to look upon. Very few men that we saw in the beau- 

 tiful Val d'Aosta, could by any possibility button a shirt collar 

 round their necks, and as for the women, the appendages to 

 the neck were often larger than the head itself. 



And then tlic villages that we enter and pass, both on the 

 Swiss side, in ascending, and on the Italian, are the most disa- 

 greeable imaginable, thickly crowded with old " rattle-down " 

 houses, the narrow streets paved with stones, the side alleys all 

 muddy, swarming u^ith dirty, unwashed, tangled-haired chil- 

 dren, many of them cretins or idiots, a result of the prevailing 

 goitre, shut out almost from the pure air and the sunlight of 

 heaven, by over-crowding. Truly they don't know how to live. 



The most splendid crops of Indian corn grow along these 

 Italian alpine valleys, and the smaller grains are cultivated to 

 some extent. Walnuts, such as we improperly call English 



