The passage between the mountains gradually opens as you advance, and the scene diversifies with a fine luxuriancy of wild landscape.
Before you enter the town of Sallenche, you must cross the Arve, which at this season is much larger than in winter, being swoln by the dissolving snows of the Alps.
This river has its source at the Parish of Argentiere, in the valley of Chamouni, is immediately augmented by torrents from the neighbouring Glaciers, and pours its chill turbid stream into the Rhone, soon after that river issues from the lake of Geneva.
The contrast between those two rivers is very striking, the one being as pure and limpid as the other is foul and muddy. The Rhone seems to scorn the alliance, and keeps as long as possible unmingled with his dirty spouse. Two miles below the place of their junction, a difference and opposition between this ill-sorted couple is still observable; these, however, gradually abate by long habit, till at last, yielding to necessity, and to those unrelenting laws which joined them together, they mix in perfect union, and flow in a common stream to the end of their course.
We passed the night at Sallenche, and the remaining part of our journey not admitting of chaises, they were sent back to Geneva, with orders to the drivers, to go round by the other side of the lake, and meet us at the village of Martigny, in the Pays de Vallais.
We agreed with a muleteer at Sallenche, who provided mules to carry us over the mountains to Martigny. It is a good day’s journey from Sallenche to Chamouni, not on account of the distance, but from the difficulty and perplexity of the road, and the steep ascents and descents with which you are teased alternately the whole way.
Some of the mountains are covered with pine, oak, beech, and walnut trees. These are interspersed with apple, plum, cherry, and other fruit trees, so that we rode a great part of the forenoon in shade.
Besides the refreshing coolness this occasioned, it was most agreeable to me on another account. The road was in some places so exceedingly steep, that I never doubted but some of us were to fall; I therefore reflected with satisfaction, that those trees would probably arrest our course, and hinder us from rolling a great way.