“Oh ye, who stop at Bonneville town,
Beware of feeding at the Crown,”—
which, if written in charity, is useless on the dining-room shutter.
The heat being intense, our horses were rested for two hours, during which time the coachman failed to discover a loose fore shoe, which stopped us on the stone bridge which crosses the Arve, just as we started once more, and was remedied by a long nail, driven in anyhow.
Near the bridge is a lately erected column in honour of Carlo Felice, whose statue surmounts it, ninety-five feet above ordinary mortals; and in gratitude for the fresh embankments which restrain the Arve’s fury when it rushes from its mountain birthplace, swollen by the first melting of the ice in spring. Near their source, (the glaciers,) these streams are more awful than beautiful; they have the turbid hue produced by the snows and earth they bear violently along; and in their mildest aspect they roar in a narrow channel, amidst the broad expanse of desolation they have made in their anger.
Our way to Cluses lay between the Mole, now near us on the left, and Mont Brezon, whose range bounds, on the right, the rich cultivated valley; a lovely road, but traversing miserable villages and crowds of mendicants, the young children with the seamed and care-worn faces of age, and dark with emaciation. The dreadful goitre is common here, and we saw one unhappy cretin grinning vacantly as he tottered along.
Near Cluses the road is cut between the wall of rock and the precipices which overhang the river; and a stony defile which it commands, and partly fills, leads to the city, which has the aspect of a poor hamlet. It was the baronial capital in the time of the old lords of Faucigny, and conferred on those who lived there a year and a day the title and privileges of freemen.
Leaving Cluses we entered a wild glen; rocks arched above our heads, and the road cut in their base, or carried over their scattered fragments, and overhanging the Arve foaming below; tall oaks springing from half detached masses, and bowed forward, as if to measure the height of their threatened fall; and the dark pines of each forest looking darker from the contrasting foam and brightness of unnumbered streamlets and small cascades.
Issuing from the gorge, the mountains retreating to the left form a semicircle; we stopped for milk and lemonade at one of the huts, where the cow, the goat, and the family live happily together, being the spot whence the indefatigable traveller (to whose class none of our party belonged) ascends by a mule path to the cavern of La Balme. They pointed it out on the side of one of these mountains of the amphitheatre, eight hundred feet above; Mrs. Starke, with more truth than romance, compared it to the mouth of an oven! Within, a narrow gallery widens to a vast hall; its length is about sixteen hundred feet, and its effect fine by the torchlight, as the roof and walls sparkle with stalactites, which here and there form a bright pavement to the floor.
Between Balme and Maglan but the other side of the mountain, is the commune of Arache. Towards the close of the sixteenth century it produced a fortunate man, in the person of one Nicholas Falquet, who could barely read and write when he left his father’s cabin. Arrived at Vienna, in Austria, he entered a rich merchant’s service, who, noticing his intelligence and natural talents, allowed him to share the studies of his heiress. The young girl became attached to him, and his parents, who had learned to consider him as their son, consented to their union; but very shortly after some sudden malady carried off both father and mother, and either the same stroke, or sorrow for their loss, deprived him of his bride also. She had bequeathed to him her entire fortune, and Nicholas returned to the valley where he was born. There was a peasant girl, with whom, ere his emigration, he had been accustomed to herd flocks near the village. She had never quitted it or forgotten him, and after a time given to mourning, he married and conducted her to Vienna. Their son was created baron of the empire, and by Falquet’s order a small but beautiful church was erected on the site of his paternal cottage, in the village of Arache.