I returned a few days since from a journey to the Glaciers of Savoy, the Pays de Vallais, and other places among the Alps.
The wonderful accounts I had heard of the Glaciers had excited my curiosity a good deal, while the air of superiority assumed by some who had made this boasted tour, piqued my pride still more.
One could hardly mention any thing curious or singular, without being told by some of those travellers, with an air of cool contempt—Dear Sir,—that is pretty well; but, take my word for it, it is nothing to the Glaciers of Savoy.
I determined at last not to take their word for it, and I found some gentlemen of the same way of thinking. The party consisted of the Duke of H——, Mr. U——, Mr. G——, Mr. K——, and myself.
We left Geneva early in the morning of the third of August, and breakfasted at Bonneville, a small town in the duchy of Savoy, situated at the foot of Mole, and on the banks of the river Arve.
The summit of Mole, as we were told, is about 4600 English feet above the lake of Geneva, at the lower passage of the Rhone, which last is about 1200 feet above the level of the Mediterranean. For these particulars, I shall take the word of my informer, whatever airs of superiority he may assume on the discovery.
From Bonneville we proceeded to Cluse, by a road tolerably good, and highly entertaining on account of the singularity and variety of landscape to be seen from it. The objects change their appearance every moment as you advance, for the path is continually winding, to humour the position of the mountains, and to gain an access between the rocks, which in some places hang over it in a very threatening manner. The mountains overlook and press so closely upon this little town of Cluse, that when I stood in the principal street, each end of it seemed to be perfectly shut up; and wherever any of the houses had fallen down, the vacancy appeared to the eye, at a moderate distance, to be plugged up in the same manner by a green mountain.
On leaving Cluse, however, we found a well-made road running along the banks of the Arve, and flanked on each side by very high hills, whose opposite sides tally so exactly, as to lead one to imagine they have been torn from each other by some violent convulsion of nature.
In other places one side of this defile is a high perpendicular rock, so very smooth that it seems not to have been torn by nature, but chiselled by art, from top to bottom, while the whole of the side directly opposite is of the most smiling verdure.