Sheltered somewhat from the rain by the overhanging rocks, we pursued our weary way to the bottom; and then, through mud and mire and darkness, drenched to our skins, we reached the Hotel Blanche at Leukenbad.
This is the great bathing establishment of Switzerland. It is higher above the sea than the summit of any mountain in Great Britain. Again and again it has been swept away by avalanches, and is now protected by a strong wall above the village. The water bursts out from the ground immediately in front of our hotel, and supplies the baths, which are twenty feet square, and in which a dozen or twenty men and women may be seen, for hours, sitting with their heads only out of water, reading the newspapers, or books, on little floats before them; playing chess; or whiling away the time in some more agreeable manner.
The next morning, by a most romantic pathway along the borders of a vast abyss, the scene of a bloody battle in 1799, we pursued our journey to the valley of the Rhone, and taking the Great Simplon road, through Sion, went to Martigny.
CHAPTER X.
MONKS OF SAINT BERNARD.
The Char-a-banc—the Napoleon Pass—Travellers in winter—Monks—Dogs—Dinner—Music—Dead-house—Contributions—a Monk’s Kiss.
The weather was threatening when we set off from Martigny, and we had many forebodings that the dogs of Saint Bernard might have to look us up, if the storm should come before we reached the hospice. A char-a-banc, a narrow carriage in which we sat three in a line with the tandem horses, was to convey us to the village of Liddes. On leaving the valley and crossing the river Drance, we soon commenced the ascent, by the side of the raving torrent, with majestic heights on either hand. A terrible tale of devastation and misery, of sublime fortitude and heroic courage, is told of the valley of Bagnes, where the ice had made a mighty barrier against the descending waters, which accumulated so rapidly that a lake seven thousand feet wide was formed, and a tunnel was cut through the frozen dam with incredible toil, when it burst through and swept madly over the country below, bearing destruction upon its bosom. In two hours some four hundred houses were destroyed with thirty-four lives and half a million dollars’ worth of property. We were four hours and a half getting up to Liddes, where we had a wretched dinner, and then mounted horses to ride to the summit of the pass.
The rain, which had been falling at intervals all the morning, was changed into snow as we got into colder regions. The path became rougher and more difficult, and it was hard to believe that even the indomitable spirit of Napoleon could have carried an army with all the munitions of war, over such a route as this. Yet the passage now is smooth and easy compared with what it was when in 1800 he crossed the Alps.
Leaving the miserable village of Saint Pierre, through which a Roman Catholic procession was passing, we had an opportunity of refusing to take off our hats, though some of the peasants insisted on our so doing. We came up to heights where no trees and few shrubs were growing: flowers would sometimes put their sweet faces up through the snow and smile on us as we passed, and I stopped to gather them as emblems of beauty and happiness in the midst of desolation and death.
