A little before nine, we were shown into a plain but comfortable room, with two beds loaded with blankets, and were left to our slumbers. Before we fell asleep, C—— and myself agreed, that, taking the convent altogether, it was a rum place, and that it required more imagination than either of us possessed, to throw about it the poetry of monastic seclusion, and the beautiful and simple hospitality of the patriarchs.
LETTER XXII.
Sublime Desolation.—A Morning Walk.—The Col.—A Lake.—Site of a Roman Temple.—Enter Italy.—Dreary Monotony.—Return to the Convent—Tasteless Character of the Building.—Its Origin and Purposes.—The Dead-house.—Dogs of St. Bernard.—The Chapel.—Desaix interred here.—Fare of St. Bernard, and Deportment of the Monks.—Leave the Convent.—Our Guide's Notion of the Americans.—Passage of Napoleon across the Great St. Bernard.—Similar Passages in former times.—Transport of Artillery up the Precipices.—Napoleon's perilous Accident.—Return to Vévey.
Dear ——,
The next morning we arose betimes, and on thrusting my head out of a window, I thought, by the keen air, that we had been suddenly transferred to Siberia. There is no month without frost at this great elevation, and as we had now reached the 27th September, the season was essentially beginning to change. Hurrying our clothes on, and our beards off, we went into the air to look about us.
Monks, convent, and historical recollections were, at first, all forgotten, at the sight of the sublime desolation that reigned around. The col is a narrow ravine, between lofty peaks, which happens to extend entirely across this point of the Upper Alps, thus forming a passage several thousand feet lower than would otherwise be obtained. The convent stands within a few yards of the northern verge of the precipice, and precisely at the spot where the lowest cavity is formed, the rocks beginning to rise, in its front and in its rear, at very short distances from the buildings. A little south of it, the mountains recede sufficiently to admit the bed of a small, dark, wintry-looking sheet of water, which is oval in form, and may cover fifty or sixty acres. This lake nearly fills the whole of the level part of the col, being bounded north by the site of the convent, east by the mountain, west by the path, for which there is barely room between the water and the rising rocks, and south by the same path, which is sheltered on its other side by a sort of low wall of fragments, piled some twenty or thirty feet high. Beyond these fragments, or isolated rocks, was evidently a valley of large dimensions.
We walked in the direction of this valley, descending gradually from the door of the convent, some thirty feet to the level of the lake. This we skirted by the regular path, rock smoothed by the hoof of horse and foot of man, until we came near the last curve of the oval formation. Here was the site of a temple erected by the Romans in honour of Jupiter of the Snows, this passage of the Alps having been frequented from the most remote antiquity. We looked at the spot with blind reverence, for the remains might pass for these of a salad-bed of the monks, of which there was one enshrined among the rocks hard by, and which was about as large, and, I fancy, about as productive, as those that are sometimes seen on the quarter-galleries of ships. At this point we entered Italy!
Passing from the frontier, we still followed the margin of the lake, until we reached a spot where its waters trickled, by a low passage, southward. The path took the same direction, pierced the barrier of low rocks, and came out on the verge of the southern declivity, which was still more precipitous than that on the other side. For a short distance the path ran en corniche along the margin of the descent, until it reached the remotest point of what might be called the col, whose southern edge is irregular, and then it plunged, by the most practicable descent which could be found, towards its Italian destination. When at this precise point our distance from the convent may have been half a mile, which, of course, is the breadth of the col. We could see more than half a league down the brown gulf below, but no sign of vegetation was visible. Above, around, beneath, wherever the eye rested—the void of the heavens, the distant peaks of snow, the lake, the convent and its accessories excepted—was dark, frowning rock, of the colour of iron rust. As all the buildings, even to the roofs, were composed of this material, they produced little to relieve the dreary monotony.