facilitating a passage so truly desirable, till one of the great wonders
now to be observed among the Alps, is the ease with which even a
delicate traveller may cross them. In these prospects, colouring is
carried to its utmost point of perfection, particularly at the time I
found it, variegated with golden touches of autumnal tints; immense
cascades mean time bursting from naked mountains on the one side;
cultivated fields, rich with vineyards, on the other, and tufted with
elegant shrubs that invite one to pluck and carry them away to where
they would be treated with much more respect. Little towns flicking in
the clefts, where one would imagine it was impossible to clamber; light
clouds often sailing under the feet of the high-perched inhabitants,
while the sound of a deep and rapid though narrow river, dashing with
violence among the insolently impeding rocks at the bottom, and bells in
thickly-scattered spires calling the quiet Savoyards to church upon the
steep sides of every hill--fill one's mind with such mutable, such
various ideas, as no other place can ever possibly afford.

I had the satisfaction of seeing a chamois at a distance, and spoke with
a fellow who had killed five hungry bears that made depredation on his
pastures: we looked on him with reverence as a monster-tamer of
antiquity, Hercules or Cadmus; he had the skin of a beast wrapt round
his middle, which confirmed the fancy--but our servants, who borrowed
from no fictitious records the few ideas that adorned their talk, told
us he reminded _them_ of _John the Baptist_. I had scarce recovered the
shock of this too sublime comparison, when we approached his cottage,
and found the felons nailed against the wall, like foxes heads or spread
kites in England. Here are many goats, but neither white nor large, like
those which browze upon the steeps of Snowdon, or clamber among the
cliffs of Plinlimmon.