Augusta Macgregor Holmes

“ We crossed a handsome bridge and broader stream before we caught sight of Chambéry, which lies embosomed in mountains; a bold and beautiful view, but not matching that of the Échelles. Behind the town, which lay before us, rises a line of fine frowning mountains—the Beauges; that which seems to hang over Chambéry, presenting at its summit a succession of seeming towers and ramparts like a mighty fortification. Far away to the left shone the lake of Bourget, on the road to Geneva. The valley is fertile, and the vines trained in arbours. ”

“ Crossing a torrent on a bridge, at last, about two leagues from the summit, we entered the most dirty village of the Simplon, where we had decided to stop only to feed the horses, who were well able to end their day’s journey at Domo d’Ossola: it is built on a knoll above the rapid stream, commanding an unproductive valley. The houses, built in stone, take mellow and picturesque tints from the moss and lichens which clothe them, and winter lasting here during two-thirds of the year, the small garden, which each possesses, is cultivated almost in vain. ”

“ Beyond us, and a league beyond Chamouny, at the head of the valley, we saw the Glacier du Bois, which terminates the Mer de Glace. We crossed numerous torrents on their moving and nervous bridges, the waters of some clear and bright, of others turbid as the Arve, here wilder and muddier than ever, and which we traversed to continue our way along its right bank. The valley 332 seen in the light of the declining sun, with its fresh green meadows, its flax and corn fields, its scattered cottages and shining church spires, and black forests and snows for background, must be the loveliest on earth. ”

“ This melancholy valley is succeeded by one of surpassing beauty, for there are crags still grey and shattered but peeping above wooded hills on which stand the proud ruins of convent and castle, or with vineyards growing up their sides, the clear water of the rapid stream at their foot flashing as it turns watermills, and in the hollow where it flows so busily, oak and chestnut, and walnut, and ash-trees, forming groves rich and varied, interspersed with clumps of dark box and portions of fallen rock bright with the delicate greens of the mosses which cover them. ”

“ Near the town the vine is much cultivated, but in France its stunted stumps give no charm to scenery. Further on the soil is worse, but prodigiously manured, and they grow oats and rye in what appears a stiff red clay, lightened only by layers of flat stones, which would break English hearts and ploughs. Nothing to relieve the eye, not a bush, not a speck of green, not an habitation for miles on either side of the glaring white road; we travelled for ever up the steep rise, and down the sharp descent, which succeed as like each other and uninteresting as if all had been cast in the same mould. ”

“ Left the Couronne with its discomfort and dirty stables. A steep descent leads to the bridge, beyond which run at right angles the two roads, one leading hither, the other to Zurich, beneath noble avenues. We had a lovely day and ride through a happy looking country, wood, pasture and mountain, and passed through a village, where the laugh of all the lookers-on from the windows saluted me as I rode Fanny in and through a clear pond, far deeper than I thought, but out of which we got to our honour. ”

“ Entering Chambéry, we rode under the old palace of the Counts and Dukes of Savoy, with its high terrace shaded by magnificent horse-chestnuts, and a still most royal looking tower, which stands alone, and whose hollow walls have defied time and two fires. The governor’s palace is modern, and joins at its extremity another portion of the ancient building, which must once, from the traces remaining, have occupied the entire platform. The chapel remains, that part which rises above the narrow street, built in the Gothic style: the façade has been altered to the Italian taste and spoiled. ”

“ As we slowly descended the road which skirts the Rhone, we could long look back on this romantic castle, dark on its shadowed crag, while the sun made a sheet of silver of the swollen river, which spread beyond its natural shores, forming islets and peninsulas innumerable, circling round the peaked 104 mounds, which, varying in height from fifty to two hundred feet, their crags gay with vegetation, crowd the valley,—first created, Ebel says, by the violent Rhone cutting a deep passage among the rubbish and ruins cast in his bed by the earth—avalanches of the mountains ”

“ They are a more gentle and amiable people than the money-making Genevese; but so wretched where their unproductive territory touches that of Geneva, that, passing the frontier and the cross with its artificial flowers, the contrast from the clean comfort of the Swiss to their squalid misery is striking and sad.
The Swiss troops, with the exception of the few on permanent service, receive no pay, and perform their duty without murmur. Every year they pass three months encamped; so that Switzerland might, in case of necessity, find ready at her call an army of 180,000 men. ”

“ A sudden bend of the river parts it from the road, which, scarcely broad enough for one carriage, winds under and among tall crags, 397 scattered over turf like velvet, till it enters a gallery formed by two of these, which might serve for portal to Dante’s Inferno. The sides are so high, and the aperture they leave so narrow, that no sunshine penetrates to dissipate its chill or darkness; and down the face of its upper portion, and through the more opaque mass which projects below, a winter torrent, which now only trickles, has worn itself a deep groove and circular passage. ”

“ Surmounting one tall crag is a square castle, of the form and size of those so often met with in Ireland, perched on a height it would have puzzled our feet to attain. Over the rocks, on the lake’s opposite side, hung a light mist, rather enhancing than robbing them of their grandeur. A 345 rapid descent leads to Vevay, which lay smiling in the evening glow with its sleeping lake and green woods and sunny mountains, and the gray church tower, flanked by four turrets, among its trees on the hill above the town. ”

“ La Posta is clean, its owners civil, and dinners good, but the nakedness of Italian rooms is melancholy. In France, even in an humble inn, you will find the mirror over the chimney, with the clock and vases of gaudy flowers to decorate it, and a comfortable chair, and curtains to bed and window; but here the iron bedstead has none, the chimney has no looking-glass, one or two upright straw chairs and a deal table only on the dirty brick floor; and looking from the furniture to the plastered walls, it is difficult not to fancy oneself either in the cell of a prison or the ward of an hospital. ”

“ The mountains at every step grow more grand; the fine trees, which abound, are mostly chestnut; and the cottages, now built in the Swiss style, with jutting roofs and outside stairs and galleries, hide themselves among them, sometimes betrayed only by a stream of light smoke. Their gardens are even neater than in England, and we have a luxury which you perhaps will hardly comprehend, in cooling our horses’ feet in the innumerable mountain streams which sparkle along at every step. ”

“ My hat, lately purchased in a country town, proving only felt, and softened by rain till it clung to my throat like a black silk handkerchief: rain almost the whole weary day, and the road crossing a wood, thin, stunted and leafless, so affording no shelter. Ere entering Melun, the shoe of Grizzle’s obstinate hind foot, and the two fore shoes of Fanny, were discovered to be loose, and must be put on ere we leave to-morrow. This inn, the Hôtel de France, is a 412 contrast and a foil to its Fontainebleau namesake, being as bad as its masters are uncivil. ”

“ The immediate environs of Geneva so closely resemble England, with their good macadamized roads, bordered by park palings and neat cottages with turf and flowers, and no apparent poverty, that with my back turned to Mont Blanc, I could have believed myself in my own country. The common people are remarkably industrious and certainly know the value of time,—for I constantly see young girls and old men also walking along with a load on their backs of fruit and vegetables to be sold in the town, perseveringly knitting the whole way. ”

“ John the Baptistery, opposite the unfinished façade of the cathedral, which has 272 been painted in fresco, now washed away by rain, occupy the centre of a fine open space, which shows to advantage their beauties or peculiarities. Is it sacrilege to think that its monstrous dome seems to weigh down the remainder of the building; that its mass of black and white marble wants relief, or what the French call mouvement, to give it light and shadow; that the octagon temple, with its pointed roof, once pagan, cased in marble, and become that of St. John, is heavy and ungraceful? ”

“ The road leads, beneath an ancient arch, to the public promenade which surrounds the chateau which crowns it, like a verdant belt, its fine trees making, in French taste, stars and circles. The view it commands, as it juts over the valley, is very lovely; as the river shines below, and seems to lose itself winding among wooded hills, which succeed each other far to the right. The townspeople were assembled on the terrace, playing rackets with much noise and small skill ”

“ There is nothing lovelier than this road, winding along the flank of the mountains, here rich with wood. We passed Clarens, beautiful as Byron’s description, hiding among its own trees, and straggling up the hill side from the shore. The noble old castle of Chastellar on its solitary mound, and the peaked stone spire of Montreux seeming to lean against the forest, above which the Dent de Jaman stands, cold and barren,—all the way the lake shining below, with the stern rocks of Meillerie opposite, and the Alps closing the valley. ”

“ Notwithstanding the most bitter of east winds, we have ridden over great part of the forest, the wildest and finest I ever saw. Its groves of old oak, interspersed with tracts clothed with black firs, and hills, and valleys of barren stone; the Hermitage of Franchard; the wonderful Roche qui pleure, through which filters water, which the good peasants still collect as a sovereign remedy against disease, are on the Paris side of the forest. Shortly before arriving at Franchard, there is a plain iron cross raised on a heap of flints, the scene of some old murder. ”

“ The peasants of La Bresse are a quiet though uncouth set of people; their miserable habitations cleaner than those of the more northern provinces of France. Met no one save a group of gipsies, on whom we came as I walked to warm myself down one of these quasi mountains, Fanny following like a spaniel. They were gathered beneath an ancient oak, the older people cooking, a handsome youth touching a guitar, and a girl, with the dark fine features of her race, gazing at him as did the large dog, whose head rested on her knee. ”

“ Having mistaken first our way and then the inn, we at last dismounted at the Trois Couronnes, second in comfort to only the Secheron. Its proprietor is building an hotel, which will replace this, larger and more commodious, and commanding the view, whose beauty is not to be surpassed. At the extremity of the market-place is a boulevard and a grove,—the roots of whose trees the lake washes: we sat there till after nightfall. The thin mist still lay on the surface, smooth as a mirror, reflecting the dark branches and old irregular houses, with the curving shore to the left ”

“ When we had crossed the bridge, the grandeur and the beauty merged in the muddy street of this most filthy town; the contrast between the Vaud we had left and the Valais we had just entered, marvellous, considering that the separation is a bridge seventy feet long. Manure heaps before the doors, and pigs revelling in them once more; and the hideous goitre, and more hideous cretin, telling at every step their tale of unwholesome filth and misery. ”

“ The peasant only knew that its name was Vavilliers, and it was not furnished or inhabited, which is not extraordinary, as there only remain a hollow tower and outer wall. The human race here improves as much as the country, but the villages are still the same. This one at a distance looked deceitfully well, having neat houses at its entrance among clumps of chestnut trees, and I hoped the Chapeau Rouge might prove one of them; but the street twisted and narrowed into an abominable alley with its vile variety of odours, and there was the inn. ”

“ At a spot which most claimed admiration, we met a post carriage, its inmate this warm day ensconced in great coat and cap, fast asleep. We have once more the hardy peasantry, a contrast to that of Italy, 386 the women with their fresh faces and thick ankles, ascending the mountain paths followed by their cows and goats tinkling their gay bells; and we have also the pretty country churches with their spires of grey stone peeping over rocks and through pines instead of the staring dome and unfinished Roman front of those of Italian hamlets, which wanted money as well as modesty. ”

“ I should not, however, like to sojourn at Lausanne, many of whose steep crowded streets have no prospect of the beauty which surrounds them, running parallel to the lake, and some communicating with each other by stairs as at Lyons, so that a walk to the shore and back may resemble an hour in a treadmill. The outside of the cathedral is of a bad Gothic architecture; its interior the finest in Switzerland, and contains the monument of Amedée the Eighth of Savoy, alias Pope Felix, and that of Otho of Granson. ”

“ At such times, to distract her attention, we cantered along through the sunshine and sweet air, acknowledging its influence, for on the broad road there was little danger; it is certain the mind has less energy, and the body feels more fatigue, on the plain. Somewhere hereabouts we crossed a bridge of planks without parapets, not dangerous however. Here also a stream gushes from the rock, and passes under to foam and lose itself among the pine trees,—some standing to fringe its shores, others, broken by its force, lying at its feet to do it homage. ”

“ A flight of steps on each side the choir leads below. A few rude pillars sustain the roof; on a tomb lies a colossal figure of the Saviour sculptured in stone by some unskilful artist of gone by centuries; it is surrounded by nine others of like size, which stand in various attitudes about the tomb. All have been more or less mutilated, but bear traces of having been painted long ago. This giant group has a startling effect on entering the dimly lighted chapel, and the good people of Chambéry hold the figures in fear and reverence. ”