At that season half the highways of France were lined with hedges heavy with blackberries. At first I was not sure they were blackberries, and I was afraid to eat them; for I had noticed that the thrifty French peasant never touched them, letting them go to waste. But, coming one morning upon a hedge fairly loaded with large, juicy fruit, I tasted one, discovered that it was a real blackberry, and fell to picking a capful. A band of peasants, on their way to the fields, stopped to gaze at me in astonishment, and burst into loud laughter.
“But, mon vieux,” cried a plowman, “what in the world will you do with those berries there?”
“Eat them, of course,” I answered.
“Eat them!” roared the countrymen. “But those things are not good to eat.” And they went on, laughing louder than before.
CHAPTER VI
CLIMBING OVER THE ALPS
I tramped through several villages, and came to the bank of the Upper Loire River. A short distance beyond, the road began winding up the first foot-hills of the Alps. Along the way every rocky hillside was cut into steps to its very top, and every step was thickly set with grape-vines.
As I continued climbing upward I left the patches of grape-vines below me, and came to waving forests where sounded the twitter of birds and now and then the cheery song of a woodsman or shepherd boy.
At sunset I reached the top. The road led downward, the forests fell away, the tiny fields appeared once more, and the song of the mountaineer was silent. Lower still, I spent the night at a barracks half filled with soldiers.
The next day was Sunday. As I tramped down the mountains I met groups of people from Lyon, chattering gaily as, dressed in their Sunday clothes, they climbed to the freer air of the hills. I continued my downward journey, stopping now and then to look about me. The grape-vines disappeared, to give place to mulberry trees. From my height I could see the city of Lyon at the meeting-place of the rivers Soane and Rhône. Even on this day of merrymaking the whir of silk-looms sounded from the wayside cottages, well into the suburbs of the city.
From Lyon I turned northeastward toward the Alps. A route winding like a snake climbed upward. Often I tramped for hours around the edge of a yawning pit, having always in view a rugged village and its vineyards far below, only to find myself at the end of that time within a stone’s throw of a sign-post that I had passed before. But I kept on, passed through Geneva, and in a few days’ time came to the town of Brig, at the foot of the Simplon Pass which crosses the Alps.