ornamented with gold or silver leaf--the women in short petticoats
composed of horizontal bands of different colors--and both sexes, for
the most part, wearing broad-brimmed hats with hemispherical crowns,
tho' there was a sugar-loaf variety much affected by the men, adorned
with a band of lace and sometimes a knot of flowers. They are a robust,
healthy-looking race, tho' they have an awkward stoop in the shoulders.
But what struck me most forcibly was the devotional habits of the
people.

The Tyrolese might be cited as an illustration of the remark, that
mountaineers are more habitually and profoundly religious than others.
Persons of all sexes, young and old, whom we meet in the road, were
repeating their prayers audibly. We passed a troop of old women, all in
broad-brimmed hats and short gray petticoats, carrying long staves, one
of whom held a bead-roll and gave out the prayers, to which the others
made the responses in chorus. They looked at us so solemnly from under
their broad brims, and marched along with so grave and deliberate a
pace, that I could hardly help fancying that the wicked Austrians had
caught a dozen elders of the respectable Society of Friends, and put
them in petticoats to punish them for their heresy. We afterward saw
persons going to the labors of the day, or returning, telling their
rosaries and saying their prayers as they went, as if their devotions
had been their favorite amusement. At regular intervals of about half a
mile, we saw wooden crucifixes erected by the way-side, covered from the
weather with little sheds, bearing the image of the Savior, crowned with
thorns and frightfully dashed with streaks and drops of red paint, to
represent the blood that flowed from his wounds. The outer walls of the
better kind of houses were ornamented with paintings in fresco, and the
subjects of these were mostly sacred, such as the Virgin and Child, the
Crucifixion, and the Ascension. The number of houses of worship was