This night, through almost inaccessible heights, we came in prospect of Mons Sempronius, now Mount Sampion, which has on its summit a few huts and a chapel. Approaching this, Captain Wray's water spaniel (a huge filthy cur that had followed him out of England) hunted a herd of goats down the rocks into a river made by the melting of the snow. Arrived at our cold harbor (though the house had a stove in every room) and supping on cheese and milk with wretched wine, we went to bed in cupboards so high from the floor, that we climbed them by a ladder; we were covered with feathers, that is, we lay between two ticks stuffed with them, and all little enough to keep one warm. The ceilings of the rooms are strangely low for those tall people. The house was now (in September) half covered with snow, nor is there a tree, or a bush, growing within many miles.
From this uncomfortable place, we prepared to hasten away the next morning; but, as we were getting on our mules, comes a huge young fellow demanding money for a goat which he affirmed that Captain Wray's dog had killed; expostulating the matter, and impatient of staying in the cold, we set spurs and endeavored to ride away, when a multitude of people being by this time gotten together about us (for it being Sunday morning and attending for the priest to say mass), they stopped our mules, beat us off our saddles, and, disarming us of our carbines, drew us into one of the rooms of our lodging, and set a guard upon us. Thus we continued prisoners till mass was ended, and then came half a score grim Swiss, who, taking on them to be magistrates, sat down on the table, and condemned us to pay a pistole for the goat, and ten more for attempting to ride away, threatening that if we did not pay it speedily, they would send us to prison, and keep us to a day of public justice, where, as they perhaps would have exaggerated the crime, for they pretended we had primed our carbines and would have shot some of them (as indeed the Captain was about to do), we might have had our heads cut off, as we were told afterward, for that among these rude people a very small misdemeanor does often meet that sentence. Though the proceedings appeared highly unjust, on consultation among ourselves we thought it safer to rid ourselves out of their hands, and the trouble we were brought into; and therefore we patiently laid down the money, and with fierce countenances had our mules and arms delivered to us, and glad we were to escape as we did. This was cold entertainment, but our journey after was colder, the rest of the way having been (as they told us) covered with snow since the Creation; no man remembered it to be without; and because, by the frequent snowing, the tracks are continually filled up, we passed by several tall masts set up to guide travelers, so as for many miles they stand in ken of one another, like to our beacons. In some places, where there is a cleft between two mountains, the snow fills it up, while the bottom, being thawed, leaves as it were a frozen arch of snow, and that so hard as to bear the greatest weight; for as it snows often, so it perpetually freezes, of which I was so sensible that it flawed the very skin of my face.
Beginning now to descend a little, Captain Wray's horse (that was our sumpter and carried all our baggage) plunging through a bank of loose snow, slid down a frightful precipice, which so incensed the choleric cavalier, his master, that he was sending a brace of bullets into the poor beast, lest our guide should recover him, and run away with his burden; but, just as he was lifting up his carbine, we gave such a shout, and so pelted the horse with snow-balls, as with all his might plunging through the snow, he fell from another steep place into another bottom, near a path we were to pass. It was yet a good while ere we got to him, but at last we recovered the place, and, easing him of his charge, hauled him out of the snow, where he had been certainly frozen in, if we had not prevented it, before night. It was as we judged almost two miles that he had slid and fallen, yet without any other harm than the benumbing of his limbs for the present, but, with lusty rubbing and chafing he began to move, and, after a little walking, performed his journey well enough. All this way, affrighted with the disaster of this horse, we trudged on foot, driving our mules before us; sometimes we fell, sometimes we slid, through this ocean of snow, which after October is impassible. Toward night, we came into a larger way, through vast woods of pines, which clothe the middle parts of these rocks. Here, they were burning some to make pitch and rosin, peeling the knotty branches, as we do to make charcoal, reserving what melts from them, which hardens into pitch. We passed several cascades of dissolved snow, that had made channels of formidable depth in the crevices of the mountains, and with such a fearful roaring as we could hear it for seven long miles. It is from these sources that the Rhone and the Rhine, which pass through all France and Germany, derive their originals. Late at night, we got to a town called Briga, at the foot of the Alps, in the Valteline. Almost every door had nailed on the outside and next the street a bear's, wolf's, or fox's head, and divers of them, all three; a savage kind of sight, but, as the Alps are full of the beasts, the people often kill them. The next morning, we returned to our guide, and took fresh mules, and another to conduct us to the Lake of Geneva, passing through as pleasant a country as that we had just traveled was melancholy and troublesome. A strange and sudden change it seemed; for the reverberation of the sunbeams from the mountains and rocks that like walls range it on both sides, not above two flight-shots in breadth, for a very great number of miles, renders the passage excessively hot. Through such extremes we continued our journey, that goodly river, the Rhone, gliding by us in a narrow and quiet channel almost in the middle of this Canton, fertilizing the country for grass and corn, which grow here in abundance.
SION
We arrived this night at Sion, a pretty town and city, a bishop's seat, and the head of Valesia. There is a castle, and the bishop who resides in it, has both civil and ecclesiastical jurisdiction. Our host, as the custom of these Cantons is, was one of the chiefest of the town, and had been a Colonel in France: he treated us with extreme civility, and was so displeased at the usage we received at Mount Sampion, that he would needs give us a letter to the Governor of the country, who resided at St. Maurice, which was in our way to Geneva, to revenge the affront. This was a true old blade, and had been a very curious virtuoso, as we found by a handsome collection of books, medals, pictures, shells, and other antiquities. He showed two heads and horns of the true capricorn, which animal he told us was frequently killed among the mountains; one branch of them was as much as I could well lift, and near as high as my head, not much unlike the greater sort of goat's, save that they bent forward, by help whereof they climb up and hang on inaccessible rocks, from whence the inhabitants now and then shoot them. They speak prodigious things of their leaping from crag to crag, and of their sure footing, notwithstanding their being cloven-footed, unapt (one would think) to take hold and walk so steadily on those horrible ridges as they do. The Colonel would have given me one of these beams, but the want of a convenience to carry it along with me, caused me to refuse his courtesy. He told me that in the castle there were some Roman and Christian antiquities, and he had some inscriptions in his own garden. He invited us to his country-house, where he said he had better pictures, and other rarities; but, our time being short, I could not persuade my companions to stay and visit the places he would have had us see, nor the offer he made to show us the hunting of the bear, wolf, and other wild beasts. The next morning, having presented his daughter, a pretty well-fashioned young woman, with a small ruby ring, we parted somewhat late from our generous host.
Passing through the same pleasant valley between the horrid mountains on either hand, like a gallery many miles in length, we got to Martigni, where also we were well entertained. The houses in this country are all built of fir boards, planed within, low, and seldom above one story. The people very clownish and rusticly clad, after a very odd fashion, for the most part in blue cloth, very whole and warm, with little variety of distinction between the gentleman and common sort, by a law of their country being exceedingly frugal. Add to this their great honesty and fidelity, though exacting enough for what they part with: I saw not one beggar. We paid the value of twenty shillings English, for a day's hire of one horse. Every man goes with a sword by his side, the whole country well disciplined, and indeed impregnable, which made the Romans have such ill success against them; one lusty Swiss at their narrow passages is sufficient to repel a legion. It is a frequent thing here for a young tradesman, or farmer, to leave his wife and children for twelve or fifteen years, and seek his fortune in the wars in Spain, France, Italy, or Germany, and then return again to work. I look upon this country to be the safest spot of all Europe, neither envied nor envying; nor are any of them rich, nor poor; they live in great simplicity and tranquillity; and, though of the fourteen Cantons half be Roman Catholics, the rest reformed, yet they mutually agree, and are confederate with Geneva, and are its only security against its potent neighbors, as they themselves are from being attacked by the greater potentates, by the mutual jealousy of their neighbors, as either of them would be overbalanced, should the Swiss, who are wholly mercenary and auxiliaries, be subjected to France or Spain.
We were now arrived at St. Maurice, a large handsome town and residence of the President, where justice is done. To him we presented our letter from Sion, and made known the ill usage we had received for killing a wretched goat, which so incensed him, that he swore if we would stay he would not only help us to recover our money again, but most severely punish the whole rabble; but our desire of revenge had by this time subsided, and glad we were to be gotten so near France, which we reckoned as good as home. He courteously invited us to dine with him; but we excused ourselves, and, returning to our inn, while we were eating something before we took horse, the Governor had caused two pages to bring us a present of two great vessels of covered plate full of excellent wine, in which we drank his health, and rewarded the youths; they were two vast bowls supported by two Swiss, handsomely wrought after the German manner. This civility and that of our host at Sion, perfectly reconciled us to the highlanders; and so, proceeding on our journey we passed this afternoon through the gate which divides the Valais from the Duchy of Savoy, into which we were now entering, and so, through Montei, we arrived that evening at BEVERETTABeveretta. Being extremely weary and complaining of my head, and finding little accommodation in the house, I caused one of our hostess's daughters to be removed out of her bed and went immediately into it while it was yet warm, being so heavy with pain and drowsiness that I would not stay to have the sheets changed; but I shortly after paid dearly for my impatience, falling sick of the smallpox as soon as I came to GENEVAGeneva, for by the smell of frankincense and the tale the good woman told me of her daughter having had an ague, I afterward concluded she had been newly recovered of the smallpox. Notwithstanding this, I went with my company, the next day, hiring a bark to carry us over the lake; and indeed, sick as I was, the weather was so serene and bright, the water so calm, and air so temperate, that never had travelers a sweeter passage. Thus, we sailed the whole length of the lake, about thirty miles, the countries bordering on it (Savoy and Berne) affording one of the most delightful prospects in the world, the Alps covered with snow, though at a great distance, yet showing their aspiring tops. Through this lake, the river Rhodanus passes with that velocity as not to mingle with its exceeding deep waters, which are very clear, and breed the most celebrated trout for largeness and goodness of any in Europe. I have ordinarily seen one of three feet in length sold in the market for a small price, and such we had in the lodging where we abode, which was at the White Cross. All this while, I held up tolerably; and the next morning having a letter for Signor John Diodati, the famous Italian minister and translator of the Holy Bible into that language, I went to his house, and had a great deal of discourse with that learned person. He told me he had been in England, driven by tempest into Deal, while sailing for Holland, that he had seen London, and was exceedingly taken with the civilities he received. He so much approved of our Church-government by Bishops, that he told me the French Protestants would make no scruple to submit to it and all its pomp, had they a king of the Reformed religion as we had. He exceedingly deplored the difference now between his Majesty and the Parliament. After dinner, came one Monsieur Saladine, with his little pupil, the Earl of Caernarvon, to visit us, offering to carry us to the principal places of the town; but, being now no more able to hold up my head, I was constrained to keep my chamber, imagining that my very eyes would have dropped out; and this night I felt such a stinging about me, that I could not sleep. In the morning, I was very ill, but sending for a doctor, he persuaded me to be bled. He was a very learned old man, and, as he said, he had been physician to Gustavus the Great, King of Sweden, when he passed this way into Italy, under the name of Monsieur Gars, the initial letters of Gustavus Adolphus Rex Sueciæ, and of our famous Duke of Buckingham, on his returning out of Italy. He afterward acknowledged that he should not have bled me, had he suspected the smallpox, which broke out a day after. He afterward purged me, and applied leeches, and God knows what this would have produced, if the spots had not appeared, for he was thinking of bleeding me again. They now kept me warm in bed for sixteen days, tended by a vigilant Swiss matron, whose monstrous throat, when I sometimes awakened out of unquiet slumbers, would affright me. After the pimples were come forth, which were not many, I had much ease as to pain, but infinitely afflicted with heat and noisomeness. By God's mercy, after five weeks' keeping my chamber, I went abroad. Monsieur Saladine and his lady sent me many refreshments. Monsieur Le Chat, my physician, to excuse his letting me bleed, told me it was so burnt and vicious as it would have proved the plague, or spotted fever, had he proceeded by any other method. On my recovering sufficiently to go abroad, I dined at Monsieur Saladine's, and in the afternoon went across the water on the side of the lake, and took a lodging that stood exceedingly pleasant, about half a mile from the city for the better airing; but I stayed only one night, having no company there, save my pipe; so, the next day, I caused them to row me about the lake as far as the great stone, which they call Neptune's Rock, on which they say sacrifice was anciently offered to him. Thence, I landed at certain cherry gardens and pretty villas by the side of the lake, and exceedingly pleasant. Returning, I visited their conservatories of fish; in which were trouts of six and seven feet long, AS THEY AFFIRMED.
The Rhone, which parts the city in the midst dips into a cavern underground, about six miles from it, and afterward rises again, and runs its open course, like our Mole, or Swallow, by Dorking, in Surrey. The next morning (being Thursday) I heard Dr. Diodati preach in Italian, many of that country, especially of Lucca, his native place, being inhabitants of Geneva, and of the Reformed religion.
The town lying between Germany, France, and Italy, those three tongues are familiarly spoken by the inhabitants. It is a strong, well-fortified city, part of it built on a rising ground. The houses are not despicable, but the high pent-houses (for I can hardly call them cloisters, being all of wood), through which the people pass dry and in the shade, winter and summer, exceedingly deform the fronts of the buildings. Here are abundance of booksellers; but their books are of ill impressions; these, with watches (of which store are made here), crystal, and excellent screwed guns, are the staple commodities. All provisions are good and cheap.
The town-house is fairly built of stone; the portico has four black marble columns; and, on a table of the same, under the city arms, a demi-eagle and cross, between cross-keys, is a motto, "Post Tenebras Lux," and this inscription: