148 The Carnivora. 
issuing two or more portly monks, staff and crucifix in 
hand, to administer the last consolation of religion to 
the poor wretch, who appears already too far frozen for 
any human aid to be able to restore him to conscious- 
ness. 
“The dog has always a bottle containing brandy tied 
round his neck, and a cloak strapped on his back, and this 
absurd picture is taken (I for one believed it most implicitly) 
as a true and faithful delineation of what actually occurs 
there. Anyone who has been at the convent of St. Bernard 
can see with his own eyes that not a tree grows within 
some miles, and that the dogs are not nearly so large as 
a well-grown Newfoundland; and as I have taken the pains 
to make very minute inquiries of the monks—who are the 
most polite, gentlemanly men I ever saw, quite au fait with 
all that is passing in the world outside, and the usages of 
polite society—I can venture to say one or two words on 
the matter. In the first place, the dogs are never sent out. 
alone, nor with a cloak or any: other garment strapped on 
their backs and a bottle of brandy hanging round their 
necks; and their sense of smell, though good, is not of 
that wonderful, almost miraculous, keenness attributed to. 
them. Their great usefulness, as one of the brethren told 
me, consists in this—that as, every day, they accompany the 
servants belonging to the monks to the cantine and the 
villages below the line of snow, for the purpose of fetch- 
ing fuel, hay, and provisions for the use of the Hospice, 
they are so accustomed to the road that, when it is entirely 
lost under the deep snows of winter, their instinct is a. 
much surer guide than human reason in helping to find it. 
And as to the monks, whose hospitality and delightful 
society I shall never forget, they are men of too much 
humanity and practical good sense not to give their first 
care to the revival of the body, and are far more likely 
to gladden the awakening senses of a frozen traveller with 
the grateful sight and smell of a cup of hot tea or spiced. 
