As you leave the villages to plunge into the woods, the flies swarm like beggars; and it is only when the guides have cut boughs from the trees, which you wave before you, wickedly suggesting palm branches, that you can proceed with tolerable comfort, and without the fear of an unexpected toss in the air, as one kick after another runs down the line.
Each horse or mule has his own slight peculiarities of habit and disposition. I recall one whose inordinate curiosity led him to walk always upon the verge of the precipices, so that the rider's feet overhung the frightful depths. Murray says it is best to allow these animals to choose their own paths. But to hang suspended between heaven and earth at the mercy of a strap and a mule, will shake one's faith, even in Murray.
My horse this day was possessed of the dreamy, melancholy nature of a poet, with the attendant lack of ambition. Every time we wound funereally through a village, he would walk deliberately to the mounting-steps, and wait most suggestively. Indeed, an air of abstraction characterized all his movements; even when, as we approached these villages, raising his head, he would seem to sniff the odors of Araby the Blest; which was a mistake, a delusion of his fancy shared by none of the others of the party. That he was without pride I must confess. No stable did we pass so poor, none so mean, that he was ashamed to pause and offer to enter with meek obdurateness.
Poetic as was his temperament, his appetites were developed in a remarkable degree. Once upon a narrow bridge we met two walking haystacks, out from which peered great, blue eyes. If the size of his mouth had corresponded at all to his desires, they would have vanished from sight in a twinkling; as it was, they barely escaped. Whether or not insatiable thirst is an attribute of a poet, I do not know; but each stream which crossed the path,—and the whole country seemed liquidizing,—each drinking-trough beside the way,—and to my excited imagination they seemed to form an unbroken line,—was an irresistible temptation. It was only by shouting, "Yeep! Yeep!" in staccato chorus, and vigorously applying the palm branches, thus engaging his attention and diverting his thoughts into less watery channels, that we succeeded in making any progress whatever. Under this disciplinary process his nature was at last so far subdued that he would have passed the ocean itself without a sigh, I am sure.
There was a rest of an hour at the Tête Noir inn at noon, shut in by the firs, and rocks, and mountains, then we went on to Argentière, where we gladly exchanged the horses and mules for some low, open carts with a couple of villagers in blue blouses for drivers. In these we accomplished the remaining three or four miles, and made a triumphal entry into Chamouni.
It was late in the afternoon when we crawled up the narrow, thronged street to the Hôtel Royal, from which the English, French, and American flags were flying. The clouds had dropped lower and lower, until a fine mist was beginning to deepen into rain, and the guides and tourists detained in the village fairly jostled each other at the intersection of the two principal streets, which seemed to form the village Exchange. The mire of the streets was thickly stamped with hoof-prints and the marks from the nails that stud the shoe-soles of the mountain climbers. Line after line of doleful looking objects, which might prove Egyptian mummies when unwrapped, were being lifted from still more sorry looking beasts before the door of the hotel, and assaying to mount the steps, with a stiffness and angularity of movement in which we all sympathized.
Indeed, after dinner, when a bright fire was lighted in the long salon where the various parties gathered to read, write, look over stereoscopic views, or chat among themselves, it was amusing, as well as pitiable to observe the abortive attempts at ease and flexibility as these individuals crossed the polished floor, to hear the groans smothered to sighs as they resumed their seats. "Mules!" whispered the girls, nudging each other, and mindful of the delight which misery is said to find in company.
All the next day the rain dripped down upon the village from the heavy clouds that hid the mountains. Everybody improved the opportunity to write letters, or yawned over the books scattered about the salon. Among them was a well-thumbed copy of "Artemus Ward, His Book." At the foot of each page the local allusions of the jokes were explained, I remember. Out in the street, umbrellas were dodging about from one shop to another. These rainy days, though a loss to the guides, are harvest times for the shopkeepers. Photographs and stereoscopic views of the mountains, the glaciers, and daring climbers hanging on by their eyelids, abound here, with any amount of wood and chamois (?) horn carving and crystal ornaments. Speaking of chamois-horn, if you expect to see in Switzerland—as you do in geographies—chamois perched upon every crag, preparatory to bounding from peak to peak, you will be grievously disappointed. Not a chamois will greet your eyes. We passed—I have forgotten where—a pen in which, by paying a certain sum, we might look upon a veritable live chamois; but we had no desire to see the incarnation of liberty thus degraded.
"Evidently the little old woman is going a journey." [Page 195].