164 HISTORY OF THE DOG. 



interesting dogs perform are very different from those to 

 which the bloodhound has often been degraded : and the 

 following account of their labors, services, and sufferings, 

 will be read with interest : 



" The convent of the great St. Bernard is situated at the 

 top of the mountain known by that name, near one of 

 the most dangerous passages of the Alps, between Switz- 

 erland and Savoy. On these regions the traveller is often 

 overtaken by the most severe weather, even after days of 

 cloudless beauty, when the glaciers glitter in the sunshine, 

 and the pink flowers of the rhododendron appear as if 

 they were never to be sullied by the tempest. But a storm 

 suddenly comes on ; the roads are rendered impassable by 

 drifts of snow ; the avalanches, which are huge loosened 

 masses of snow or ice, are swept into the valleys, carrying 

 trees and crags of rock before them. The hospitable 

 monks, though their revenue is scanty, open their doors to 

 every stranger that presents himself. To be cold, to be 

 weary, to be benighted, constitute the title to their com- 

 fortable shelter, their cheering meal, and their agreeable 

 discourse. But their attention to the distressed does not 

 end here. They devote themselves to the dangerous task 

 of searching for those unhappy persons who may have 

 been overtaken by the sudden storm, and would perish 

 but for their charitable succor. Most remarkably are they 

 assisted in these truly Christian offices. They have a 

 breed of noble dogs in their establishment, whose extraor- 

 dinary sagacity often enables 1 them to rescue the traveller 

 from destruction. Benumbed with cold, weary in the 

 search for-a lost track, his senses yielding to the stupify- 

 ing influence of frost, which betrays the exhausted sufferer 

 into a deep sleep, the unhappy man sinks upon the ground, 

 and the snow-drift covers him from human sight. It is 

 then that the keen scent and the exquisite docility of these 

 admirable dogs are called into action. Though the 

 perishing man lie ten, or even twenty feet beneath the 



