171 
had lain ever since tlie persecution of tlie Covenanters in the 
reign of Charles II.* Although peat, as we have seen, will 
arrest decomposition for long periods, this property is also 
possessed by ice and mineral waters. Of the former, we 
have the instance of the frozen and entire bodies of the 
mammoth and rhinoceros, in Siberia. The following singular 
discovery was made more recently, in September, 1863 : — 
On the 14th of September, 1844, a young man of the village of Passy, 
between Chamouny and Sallanches, left his home on a pilgrimage to 
the Convent of St. Bernard, Such pilgrimages are common in these 
parts ; the Augustine monks, who exercise the world-renowned hospi- 
tality of the old hotel-convent, being in the habit of sending annually 
messengers through the whole of Savoy and Switzerland to collect 
offerings for the maintenance of the Hospice, as well as to encourage 
visits to the shrine of St. Bernard. The chief period of these religious 
excursions is in the middle of September, when the roads are freest from 
snow and ice, and most of the villages in the mountains are enlivened 
by fairs, municipal processions, and other festive gatherings. The 
pilgrim of Passy, a robust young man, but lately married, and setting 
out on his journey in consequence of a vow made before gaining the 
belle of the village, quitted his home in the most joyous spirits, striding 
with elastic step, now through purple fields covered with rhododendrons, 
and then again up huge boulders of rock and across mighty glaciers, 
extending, like frozen rivers, down to the gi^een valley of Chamouny. 
The people of the mountains do not like the beaten roads, along which 
eager tourists hurry in stage-coaches and on mules, but prefer the silent 
footpaths across the hills, mostly shorter than the highway, and always 
more beautiful. Thus the traveller from Passy, in going to the great 
St. Bernard, instead of proceeding up the famous passage by which the 
legions of Bonaparte went to Marengo, preferred walking across the 
spurs of the Aiguille dArgentiere, and from thence, by the Yallee 
des Morts, to the Hospice. He reached the convent safely on the 
evening of the day on which he started, was hospitably entertained at 
the Hotel de St. Louis, paid his devotion to the saint of the mountain, 
and on the following morning descended the path to Martigny, famous 
for its wine, its monks, and its gnats. 
Martigny was not on the road of the pilgrim of Passy, and the object 
of his going there was a purely mercantile one. The annual fair, visited 
by dealers and manufacturers from all parts of Switzerland, was being 
* Memoirs of the Anthropological Society, vol. ii., p. 36. 
