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in Paris on level ground, but when it came to ascending
heights, although I stood up to the work manfully, I was unable to
continue it long, and my ordinary shoes were too light in the
soles for such work over rocky and uneven ground. Our guide
who was a sturdy mountaineer thought favorably of my capa-
city as a pedestrian from what he saw me as on our way to the
Mont-en-Vert, and whether it was flattery or not, I cannot say,
but he told me that he thought if I could spend a month in the
mountains, walking every day, I would be in condition then to at-
tempt the ascent of Mont Blanc.

Having spent a day at Chamouni and exhausted the sights,
we left on the morning of the second day for Martigny via
"la Tête noire" accompanied by our guide with his three mules
and our English friend. Mont Blanc was then in Savoy, but
is in French territory now, having been acquired by France after
the Italian campaign of 1859. We therefore had to pass a
frontier post soon after leaving which was occupied by Piedmontese
officials, and we were then again on Swiss territory. The valley of
the "Tête Noire" along which we rode and walked abounded
in the most superb scenery, and towards evening we reached
Martigny which was then a post horse station on the great
Simplon road, which had been constructed by the first Na-
poleon during his short reign a practicable highway between
France and Italy.

We paid our guide and discharged him that night, and
in the morning we started with another guide and mules for
the Hospice of the St Bernard, our English friend leaving us
also and going in another direction. This trip occupied us
during the greater part of the day and when we arrived at
the Hospice we felt quite tired and enjoyed a drink of cog-
nac which was brought to our rooms by a lay brother of
the religious community. Shortly after dinner was announced
which was a simple meal presided over by one of the monks.
There were only a few arrivals that day, and besides ourselves
there were only a lady and her son, a boy of twelve, at dinner.
The monk was a friend of the lady and was so absorbed in con-
versation with her that he rather neglected us, and our evening
was a dull one, the young monk who was expected to entertain
us having but few subjects of conversation. We found the hos-
pice rather a cheerless place and in the morning after placing
twenty francs a piece in the mite chest of the chapel, we break-
fasted, then visited the dead house where the bodies of those
who had died in the snow had been placed, and then com-
menced our return journey.

At a village called St Pierre where we stopped at midday to
partake of a lunch we were seated in the dining room preparatory
to a fresh start when, all of a sudden, the house began to move vio-