26 Horticultural Jottanda 



stop, while the guides endeavoured to find out the track. It 

 was still very dark; but on our right, apparently at about 

 150 yards' distance, we could dimly discern the whitish column 

 of the foaming fall, and occasionally the wind wafted its wet- 

 tino- spray against our faces, and the water we were in was a 

 deep and rapid eddying current. After a delay of about a 

 quarter of an hour, during which our driver answered all our 

 enquiries with " sacres, " and saintly invocations, the guides 

 returned, having rediscovered the road a little farther on, 

 lyinf high and dry, which by a lateral movement we soon 

 gained, and then found that, in the way w^e were going, we 

 stood a chance of a shower-bath beneath the Pisse-Yache 

 itself, if not of a worse fate. 



Here we dismissed our hardy guides with thanks and suit- 

 able remuneration ; and, with a grateful " bon soh\" they pre- 

 pared at once to return to St. Maurice by the way we had 

 come. The hardiness and endurance of the Swiss peasantry 

 is truly admirable ; and it is most worthy of being borne in 

 mind, that in no instance will a peasant seek to be employed 

 as a guide, on such occasions as this, unless his assistance 

 is necessary, which, when offered, should, consequently, be 

 always accepted. 



At about three o'clock in the morning we arrived safely at 

 Martigny, wet, cold, and uncomfortable, and got into bed. 



Such was our first day's journey in the Alps. The amount 

 of debris carried down by the torrents of one heavy day's 

 rain in the Alps is inconceivable. I shall be enabled, in the 

 progress of this little tour, to adduce some remarkable in- 

 stances of these and similar phenomena, which Lyell has so 

 ably illustrated, and founded thereon his geological system. 



The morning appeared again, with all the beauty of the 

 preceding one; and nought remained of the previous day's 

 inundation visible, but some muddy pools in the meadows, 

 and the swollen Drance, rolling turbidly along past the 

 town. 



Martigny, said to be the ancient " Octodurum," stands at 

 the extremity of a level and fertile valley, surrounded by lofty 

 mountains. The Drance coming from the passes of the Great 

 St. Bernard, which we will hereafter describe, sweeps past on 

 its way to join the Rhone farther down the valley. Imme- 

 diately behind the town, boldly perched upon a projecting 

 shoulder of the mountain, stands the ruins of the old castle 

 of La Bathia, once a bishop's palace. The town itself is a 

 scattered irregular collection of houses of the meaner sort : 

 the new square, however, has some in better style, and shows 

 a marked improvement in taste ; some of the streets are 



