refresh ourselves with vin ordinaire and water, but making steady
way in the main, though heavily weighted and under a broiling sun,
at one we reach La Grave, which is opposite the Mont de Lans, a most
superb mountain. The whole scene equal to anything in Switzerland,
as far as the mountains go. The Mont de Lans is opposite the
windows, seeming little more than a stone's throw off, and causing
my companion (whose name I will, with his permission, Italianise
into that of the famous composer Giuseppe Verdi) to think it a mere
nothing to mount to the top of those sugared pinnacles which he will
not believe are many miles distant in reality. After dinner we
trudge on, the scenery constantly improving, the snow drawing down
to us, and the Romanche dwindling hourly; we reach the top of the
Col du Lautaret, which Murray must describe; I can only say that it
is first-class scenery. The flowers are splendid, acres and acres
of wild narcissus, the Alpine cowslip, gentians, large purple and
yellow anemones, soldanellas, and the whole kith and kin of the high
Alpine pasture flowers; great banks of snow lie on each side of the
road, and probably will continue to do so till the middle of July,
while all around are glaciers and precipices innumerable.

We only got as far as Monetier after all, for, reaching that town at
half-past eight, and finding that Briancon was still eight miles
further on, we preferred resting there at the miserable but cheap
and honest Hotel de l'Europe; had we gone on a little farther we
should have found a much better one, but we were tired with our
forty-two miles' walk, and, after a hasty supper and a quiet pipe,
over which we watch the last twilight on the Alps above Briancon, we
turn in very tired but very much charmed.

Sunday morning was the clearest and freshest morning that ever