is often overtaken by the most severe weather, even after days of
cloudless beauty, when the glaciers glitter in the sunshine, and the
pink flowers of the rhododendron appear as if they were never to be
sullied by the tempest. But a storm suddenly comes on; the roads are
rendered impassable by drifts of snow; the avalanches, which are huge
loosened masses of snow or ice, are swept into the valleys, carrying
trees and crags of rock before them.

[Illustration: CONVENT OF MONT ST. BERNARD.]

The hospitable monks, though their revenue is scanty, open their doors
to every stranger that presents himself. To be cold, to be weary, to be
benighted, constitutes the title to their comfortable shelter, their
cheering meal, and their agreeable converse. But their attention to the
distressed does not end here. They devote themselves to the dangerous
task of searching for those unhappy persons who may have been overtaken
by the sudden storm, and would perish but for their charitable succour.
Most remarkably are they assisted in these truly Christian offices. They
have a breed of noble dogs in their establishment, whose extraordinary
sagacity often enables them to rescue the traveller from destruction.
Benumbed with cold, weary in the search of a lost track, his senses
yielding to the stupefying influence of frost, the unhappy man sinks
upon the ground, and the snow-drift covers him from human sight. It is
then that the keen scent and the exquisite docility of these admirable
dogs are called into action. Though the perishing man lie ten or even
twenty feet beneath the snow, the delicacy of smell with which they can
trace him offers a chance of escape. They scratch away the snow with
their feet; they set up a continued hoarse and solemn bark, which brings
the monks and labourers of the convent to their assistance.