270 Horticultural Jottanda 



Art. II. Horticultural Jottanda of a recent Continental Tour. 

 By Robert Male:et, Esq. 



{^Continued from p. 29.) 



In the enlivening sunshine of the morning, fresh from the 

 recent rain, we mounted our mules at the door of the little inn 

 of Martigny, prepared to pass through the Tete Noir into 

 Chamouni, with our good-humoured muleteer, Giuseppe, as 

 guide. We wound slowly along beside the Drance, and passed 

 one of those singular specimens of mechanical simplicity, a 

 Swiss saw mill. The fall is so rapid in Alpine torrents, that 

 all the preparation necessary for a saw mill is to choose a spot 

 where the torrent curves, or has some natural obstruction to 

 its direct course : here a wooden shoot is inserted, and con- 

 veyed a few yards at a rapid inclination to the water-wheel, 

 generally about 5 ft. diameter, with short paddles ; against 

 which the water, rushing with immense velocity through the 

 shoot, strikes, and turns it with such speed that the crank to 

 which the saws are attached, and on the same axis, makes 

 about sixty revolutions per minute. The timber is driven on 

 by hand. The whole machine is often in the open air, some- 

 times under a shingle roof. 



A little beyond the saw mill the road rises over an immense 

 slope of sandy debris, beneath which an iron foundery lies 

 entombed, from the inundation of 1818. We now turned 

 aside, and commenced a sharp ascent along the edge of a 

 wooded dell, in the bottom of which murmured a mountain 

 brook, on its way to join the Drance : it soon was far below 

 us; and under the shade of noble chestnuts we continued to 

 ascend, through delicious pasture, with cattle quietly feeding 

 among the trees, and here and there a chalet [mountain hut] 

 under " the shadow of a great rock," for about two miles. 

 At one place the ground scarped off precipitately on the left, 

 exposing an extended tract of loose stones and brambles, 

 thickly covered with the Cuscuta europae'a, its beautiful scarlet 

 tendrils glittering in the sun, and the huge grasshoppers 

 revellinij in its mimic labvrinths: while innumerable butter- 

 flies, some azure, some yellow, fluttered above it. A waft of 

 cool refreshing air sometimes indicated the elevation we had 

 attained ; and presently we emerged from the chestnut forestry 

 into open mountain pasture, bare and short, but embroidered 

 with a thousand flowers; and, higher still, thick dark pine 

 forests, and far behind us two or three snowy peaks, rose high 

 and alone. We had now attained nearly the highest point of 

 our path, and soon began to descend towards the ravine of 



