THE GLACIÈRE AND NEIGIÈRE OF ARC-SOUS-CICON.


The beauties of the Val de Travers end only with the valley itself, at
the head of which a long tunnel ushers the traveller into a tamer
country,--a preparation, as it were, for France. After the border is
passed, the scenery begins to improve again, and the effect of the two
castles of Joux, the new and the old, crowning the heights on either
side of the narrow gorge through which the railway runs, is very fine.
The guide-books inform us that the Château of Joux was the place of
imprisonment of the unfortunate Toussaint L'Ouverture, and that there he
died of neglect and cold; and it was in the same strong fortress that
Mirabeau was confined by his father's desire. The old castle, however,
is more interesting from its connection with the history of Charles the
Bold, who retired to La Rivière after the battle of Morat, and spent
here those sad solitary weeks of which Philip de Comines tells with so
many moral reflections; weeks of bodily and mental distress, which left
him a mere wreck, and led to his wild want of generalship and his
miserable death at Nancy. He had melted down the church-bells in this
part of Burgundy and Vaud, to make cannon for the final effort which
failed so fatally at Morat; and the old chroniclers relate--without any
allusion to the sacrilege--that the artillery was wretchedly served on
that cruel[54] day. It is some comfort to Englishmen to know that their
ancestors under the Duke of Somerset displayed a marvellous courage on
the occasion.

We reached Pontarlier in time for a stroll through the quiet town; but
we searched in vain for the tempting convents and gates, which were
marked on my copy of an old plan of the place, dedicated to the Prince
d'Arenberg, in the well-known times when he governed the Franche