The traveler of to-day, arriving at the hospice in a comfortable carriage within ten hours from the nearest railway-station, and provided with all the luxuries of modern life, can hardly picture to himself the terrible privations of the traveler in ancient times, when settlements were scarce. Provisions had to be carried along for many miles to these icy regions, most of the time covered with deep snow which obliterated every trace of roads.

On the evening of my arrival, I went to the plateau where once Jupiter was worshiped. The small lake beyond which it is situated had still some ice-cakes floating on its placid surface. Resting there on a stone, my fancy enlivened this scene of solitude and desolation with the savage soldiers of heathen times. I imagined that I heard the cracking and screaking of heavy cart-wheels, the clattering of armor, the clanking of spears, as the legions toiled wearisomely upward to the beating of drums and blowing of trumpets. My eyes pictured strange, stalwart warriors, exhausted from the arduous pull up those steep valleys, shivering with intense cold, fainting, sinking into the deep snow. And then an avalanche, breaking loose from the towering mountains above, came thundering down, dispersing this glittering array, and burying many under the soft, white, yet deadly, mass.

It was with the object of offering shelter to the weary and of rescuing those who succumbed to the inclemencies of these forbidding heights that in the year 962 a pious monk, Bernard, Count of Menthon, whose home was in Savoy, near Annecy, resolved to devote his life and fortune to the founding of a hospice on the summit of the pass. He succeeded in persuading other monks to share with him the dreary life, and thus founded a holy order, named to-day “Les Chanoines reguliers de St. Augustin.” Bernard of Menthon himself, afterward canonized by the pope, was elected first prior, and lived forty years at the hospice. His tomb is still standing in the Italian town of Novara. According to the keeper of the royal archives at Turin, whom I consulted on the history of the hospice, it is first mentioned in a document in the year 1108.

Drawn by André Castaigne. Half-tone plate engraved by R. Varley

AN AVALANCHE ON THE ST. BERNARD PASS

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LARGER IMAGE]

In the Middle Ages the hospice, being of great importance in the intercourse between the north and south of Europe, enjoyed the powerful support and protection of the great rulers of that period, notably the German emperors. In return for valuable services, the order was richly endowed, and became in time exceedingly wealthy and prosperous. At the beginning of the sixteenth century it possessed no fewer than ninety-eight livings. The Reformation, however, ended this prosperity, and since then various misfortunes have carried away most of its once very large revenues. Its total income is now about eight thousand dollars, and without the aid received from the Italian and Swiss governments it would be impossible to offer hospitality to the large number of tourists that come every year. As many as five hundred have received free board and lodging in a single day.

It is to be regretted that so few visitors take notice of the collection-box in the pretty little church. Many well able to pay for the hospitality they receive do not give even so much as they would pay for their entertainment in a third-rate inn. The total amount given by tourists is only a small fraction of the actual expense incurred in entertaining them. The present King of England, who visited the hospice when Prince of Wales, sent a piano, and I could not help wondering how this bulky instrument was brought up the steep mountains. Emperor Frederick of Germany, with his consort, came in 1883, and the prior showed me one of their valuable gifts—a volume of Thomas à Kempis, bearing their signatures.

One must bear in mind that provisions, wood, and all other necessities of life have to be brought up eight thousand feet from the valleys below. For miles about the hospice there is not a tree, not a bush or a single blade of grass, and the view from my window offered nothing but barren rocks, bleak mountains, glaciers, and snow-fields. The mean annual temperature is below the freezing-point, being about the same as Spitzbergen, within the Arctic Ocean! One cannot help admiring the little group of monks, about twelve in number, who, with an equal number of lay brothers and servants, live here, in this highest human habitation of Europe, summer and winter, year after year, till they die. They do not wear the monk’s capouch, but the ordinary black sacerdotal robe, with a white cord falling from the neck as a special distinction.