Augusta Macgregor Holmes

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Emerging from the few yards of obscurity, we were again on the bank of the rapid Rhone, the frontier fortress of Pierre Châtel crowning the high grand cliff opposite, and before us the light suspension bridge gracefully crossing the river, uniting Savoy to France. Half way up the cliff side and imbedded in it, a picturesque object among trees and briars which spring round, is a loopholed wall flanked by two low towers, the private entrance to the fort, to which conducts a stair cut in the living rock. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Our sleeping chamber with its dome is of such elegant form that I should like to transport it afar, but spoiled with gaudy frescoes on wall and ceiling, by dirty floor, and ragged furniture. The eating room, a noble hall, with a range of pillars down its centre, and hung round with paintings for sale—some few good, several curious; luxury and poverty, dirt and elegance, everywhere blended—even in the yard, which is an abomination, yet where a coved trellis-work forms a roof which a splendid vine covers with its thick leaves, making the loveliest of ceilings. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As we continued to descend, the clear green stream of the Arc, sometimes wild and angry, foams and roars among her masses of black stone, sometimes flows mildly and brightly, retreating from the road in coquettish curves, half hiding itself in a fringe of birch and larch and fir, and issuing again to smile at her admirers and receive their homage. Nothing can surpass in loveliness the valley of the Maurienne. Modane is a wretched hole, beautifully placed, a blot in Paradise; the noble road takes alternately both sides of the narrow valley. ”

“ Milan, 25th September. Once more not “upon the waters” but on the road, though indeed I need not have changed the quotation, since at Vogogna there is no bridge. Leaving Domo, the road runs in a straight and even line along the valley 157 and between the wooded mountains, the Simplon and its snow closing the glen behind us. The vine, so unsightly in France, here confers great beauty, rising from the road in terraces of shady arbours, or winding its flexible branches round cherry-tree and thorn, the long untrained tendrils waving gracefully, and the rich bunches hung heavily down. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Perhaps the hand of art is too visible, and the Isola Bella less striking from its individual beauty than its glorious position; but if not deserving the exaggerated praise of some, it still less merits the contempt of others. I prefer indeed the Isola Madre; for its forest of laurel, cypress and gigantic pine, though planted on a made soil also, grows in the wild beauty of nature, sheltering exotic birds, which live and multiply in freedom, and the plants of southern climes flourishing in the open air. ”

“ The views, as we issued from fog and into a burning atmosphere, grew at each step more Italian in their character, with villas on the wooded eminences, and here and there the umbrella pine rising above its fellow trees. Having left behind Cafaggiolo, where on the right hand there is a turreted castle, which belongs to the duke and resembles a fortress, our road descended to a valley, skirting a bright and narrow river, enclosed between hills where we 267 journeyed beneath a sun it was difficult to believe that of October. ”

“ Left early, for the clouds, though they threatened, dropped no rain, and took the road to Modane, the descent as far as Formignone being rapid, skirting the Arc and its pine-forests, the cold head of Mont Cenis towering behind. The weather grew milder and the scenery more lovely; larch and other trees not evergreen appearing beneath the masses of dark fir, and red and yellow with the tints of autumn, have a richness in their hues I never saw equalled elsewhere. ”

“ Ere arriving at Modane, we passed the superb fort of Lesseillon, which tier above tier crowns crag above crag, with its batteries ready to sweep road and valley. The range of cliffs to the right among which it rises are wild and bare. In the depths of the gorge under it, the Arc, narrowed to a streamlet, cuts its passage between walls of rock; the stone arch of the Pont du Diable spanning the 385 chasm, and nearer the fort a frailer wooden bridge flung with yet more hardihood. ”

“ The air is a contrast to that of the city, whose burning sun and biting musquitoes I am however glad to turn my back on. The Appennines appear to less advantage beneath the grey sky than when we crossed them in sunshine, and the Villa Borghese more sad in 336 its desolate grandeur, and saddest of all looked the public cemetery, where the grave-diggers were occupied in opening the deep fosses to which each night brings inmates: it is a large open space, without tomb or tree, saving the few cypress, which outside the wall shade the priests’ melancholy dwelling. ”

“ I had hoped our road lay beneath Gruyères, but it led through the streets of the town, and thence for a considerable distance across rich meadows, their green pastures spotted with chalets; farther on they are divided by pine forests, the road skirting or passing through them, the sunshine reposing on their verdant glades, or playing among their old trunks, or excluded where these have been felled and 22 supplied by multitudes of young stems crowded in nature’s extravagance. ”

“ At several of the windings of the road, now steep but always smooth and broad, and almost always protected, we again hung over what seemed a miniature of Brieg and the valley as far as Tourtemagnen, till arrived at a certain height, it runs nearly on a level along the edge of the ravine of the Ganther to the bold bridge at its extremity. Beneath its arch, from the rocks which back it, rushes the torrent, forming a cascade in its leap, where in winter roll the avalanches. ”

“ After traversing the streets, our road wound grandly and perilously round the base of rocks blasted for its formation; but this portion passed, we were again amidst the marshes, and between Visp and Glys the overflow of the Rhone has done most damage, as it is hereabouts swollen by numberless tributary streams—most turbulent vassals. Our horses sank above the fetlock in soft mud, which covered the whole face of the valley: Indian corn and pumpkins floating on its surface. ”