170 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



April 



Fur the Naw England Farmer, 

 LETTER FKOM MR. FRENCH. 



Lynns, in France, August 15, 1857. 

 My Dear Brown : — The city of Lyons, as 

 the children who have recently been at school 

 ■would know, is on the Rhone, at the confluence 

 of that river with the Saone. My last letter was 

 written near Hendersteg, in Switzerland, and 

 while I am on the subject of geography, I may 

 as well add, for the benefit of all who may read 

 this letter, and have occasion to travel over this 

 region of beauty and grandeur, a sketch of our 

 route to this point. From Hendersteg we came 

 over what is called the German Pass of the Alps. 

 The first letter in the word German, by the way, 

 is hard, but not half so hard as the passage over 

 it, of which I will speak again presently. Next 

 to finding out where one is in this strange land, 

 is the difficulty of pronouncing the names of 

 places, so as to be at all intelligible. From the 

 German, we came down to the baths of Leuk, 

 as the name is usually printed on our maps, from 

 thence to the town of Leuk, on the Rhone, thence 

 down that river, by post-horses through Sian to 

 Montiguy, then across the Alps again over the 

 Tete Noir Pass to Chamouni, at the foot of the 

 famous Mont Blanc, the highest peak of the 

 chain, thence after various excursions to Geneva, 

 by diligence, from Geneva which is on Lake Ge- 

 neva, also called Lake Lenore, by diligence to a 

 small place called Sejssel, and thence by railway 

 to Lyons, which is called three hundred and 

 twenty-six miles from Paris. My proposed route 

 is from here to Paris, thence to London, from 

 there to the south of Ireland, thence through 

 Ireland to Scotland, and home by way of Liver- 

 pool. In our passage yesterday from Geneva 

 here we passed through a corner of Sardinia. 

 Of course, at the entrance of every kingdom, the 

 traveller is subjected to the trouble of showing 

 his passport and of having his baggage exam- 

 ined, to see that he is neither an enemy nor a 

 smuggler. The mode of conducting these opera- 

 tions is quite amusing to all but those who are 

 subjected to it. Our diligence, which is a big 

 kind of a stage-coach, divided into three apart- 

 ments below, with a sort of chaise-top above, for 

 the accommodation of about twenty-two persons 

 in all, with their baggage, was driven into a shed 

 under a stable, and there we twenty-two people, 

 who had been carefully packed at Geneva like so 

 many herrings in a box, were unpacked, and all 

 our innumerable trunks, bags, boxes, baskets and 

 budgets taken off" and spread out on a long plat- 

 form. Then each owner walked up and unlocked 

 or unstrapped his share of the plunder, and an 

 important military individual of the Sardinian 

 government, rumaged about in the interior among 

 our valuables till he was satisfied, and then we 



locked up again, and with our baggage were re- 

 packed and proceeded. After a few miles, we 

 came to France again, at Seyssel, and there our 

 passports were examined, all our baggage again 

 unstrapped and overhauled, and then we came 

 on to Lyons. 



In about two minutes after we were in our ho- 

 tel, an attendant of some kind came for our pass- 

 ports and took them away for half an hour to 

 send our names to the police, so that the govern- 

 ment may know who does their country the honor 

 of visiting it. This precaution is taken every- 

 where in France, and as often as a traveller 

 changes his boarding-place, the change is record- 

 ed in the office of the police. On the whole, I 

 am well pleased with a reason for this precaution, 

 suggested by a French gentleman, on being told 

 that we had no such practice in the United States. 

 "Why," said he, "if a man were travelling alone 

 in your country, and should be murdered or ac- 

 cidentally fall into a lake or river, his friends 

 would never be able to find any trace of him." I 

 have often had similar reflections when journey- 

 ing alone in England. Going from a railway, 

 perhaps at midnight, alone, with no person with- 

 in hundreds of miles who knew of my existence, 

 I have been shown into a chamber in the fourth 

 story of the hotel, without even giving my name, 

 and have lain down with the comforting reflec- 

 tion that if I should disappear before morning, 

 by a conflagration of the house, the utmost that 

 could be said of me by way of history or epitaph 

 would be, that a gentleman in number forty-seven, 

 was among the missing. As to the examination 

 of your baggage, it is somewhat annoying, espe- 

 cially to ladies, who do not seem to enjoy seeing 

 their private goods and chattels, which they have 

 nicely and smoothly arranged, turned up-side 

 down and inside out by the rude hands of strang- 

 ers. I carry but one bag, and always hold that 

 open to the inspection with such an air of con- 

 scious innocence that through the manifold ex- 

 aminations to which it has been subjected, not a 

 single article has ever been taken out of it. The 

 officer usually puts in a hand, and finding nothing 

 suspicious to the touch, passes along and bestows 

 his more critical attention upon the laces and 

 jewels of some poor lady, whose well-founded 

 apprehension that her dresses will be rumpled, 

 is mistaken for fear of being detected in smug- 

 gling. 



So much by way of episode ; and now let us 

 return to Hendersteg and cross the Gemmi to 

 the baths of Leuk. We set forth on the morn- 

 ing of Monday, the tenth of August, my three 

 Canadian friends and I, in a gentle drizzle of rain, 

 each mounted on a mule, with a man to each 

 mule, a guide besides, and one mule loaded with 

 our baggage, with another man to lead him. 



