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considerably less picturesque than those of their poorer neighbours.1 In the dusk of the evening we reached the village of Zwysimmen. The inn was the first regular Swiss house of which we had been inmates. The kitchen where we went to warm ourselves was, so to speak, all chimney, the walls sloping away gradually to a great height, till they terminated in an aperture, through which we saw the stars. Our supper consisted of soup, maigre enough; and, as we saw the concoction, we subjoin the ingredients: a ladle-full of dripping, from a large jar, stirred in boiling water, pepper, salt, and bits of toasted bread, that was all. This was followed by fresh trout from the stream,--as they generally have a little preserve in places where trout abound and travellers pass. This, eggs, a bit of mutton of an indescribable cut, and a salad, formed our supper. Our beds were clean, but we left them early, and were again on our road at five the next morning, and reached Saanen at nine, by a capital road.

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The first words we heard were an invitation, in good English, to walk up stairs, from a woman attached to the inn, who had married a Swiss in England, but work becoming scarce, they had returned to his native land, where she had been twenty-one years. She was, of course, delighted to meet with countrypeople, and stayed in the room nearly all the time we were at breakfast, asking and answering questions. We enjoyed an excellent breakfast, and she brought us two or three native productions to taste,-goat's cheese, which we did not like at all, though the milk was excellent, and preserve made of wild rasp

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I must not omit to mention the baths of Weissenburg, to see which we turned two or three miles out of our course, up a steep, narrow, picturesque defile, at the termination of which the bath house is nestled snugly between a rock and a waterfall.

berry, which, as well as the gooseberry and currant, are natives of Switzerland.

After breakfast we proceeded to Steig, at the foot of the Sanetsch, which rose almost perpendicularly above it, and here, being already late to commence the ascent, we were detained an hour by the people, for no one would let horse or mule, it was not safe, they said. We next tried to obtain a guide; but, though they all looked miserably poor, not one seemed to care to earn eleven francs, which was the sum we had to pay. The whole of this altercation, moreover, was carried on in German, which we could not understand, our voiturier serving as interpreter, the villagers standing round with their pipes in their mouths, perfectly unmoved, whilst we were fretting and fuming at the delay.

However, at last we got fairly en route, our party being recruited by a little trader of Thun, and an Italian soldier the former going to a firage, to be held the next day at Sion. They, like ourselves, were crossing for the first time, and were glad to avail themselves of our company, and we began to suspect at last that our guide was in a similar predicament. The Sanetsch is so little frequented by visitors, that but little is known about it. Latrobe calls it long, steep, and difficult: it is all three, one of the roughest practicable passes in Switzerland; the distance to Sion seven leagues. Rain fell all the way up; and we were enveloped in clouds, which boiled up from below like the steam of a furnace, as we crossed two waterfalls on pine logs,-one as pretty a piece of water as we had seen. All along the summit of the mountain, which is a broad table land, we encountered hail and snow driving in our teeth. At almost every mile of our further route, we came upon streams, but no more pine bridges; so we were obliged to scramble over

the best way we could,-on stepping-stones, if any, and if not, why, our feet had been wet through for hours, so it did not matter.

We rather rejoiced when we commenced our descent, but we soon found there was no great cause; the path became worse at every step, slippery, ancle-deep in mud, over broken rocks, and through the beds of mountain torrents. All this was bad enough by daylight, but night came, without moon or stars, whilst we were yet three leagues from Sion, and we really had to grope our way through all this in the dark, once for some little time by the edge of a precipice, where a false step would have been fatal. We walked along in couples, the soldier grasping my arm as in a vice, and once fairly lifting me off my feet, and carrying me under a cascade, which fell across our path. Within one league of Sion, we arrived at a house,—the first human habitation we had met with on the mountain.. We knocked up the people, and got a moment's rest, and some refreshment, for which they took payment. The place was filthy and the man drunk, but for all that we were informed he was a member of the House of Assembly.

On leaving this, our guide missed his way, and we were obliged to wake up the inmates of another châlet, and get a man to accompany us the remainder of our journey, and so we reached Sion at twelve o'clock. Sion is the capital of the Canton Vallais, which Canton we had entered half way up the mountain, the boundary being. marked by a few pine trunks. We put up at the Lion d'Or, and soon were in a sound sleep, which the noise of the Firage did not disturb. We all slept till noon the next day, and much too soundly to be disturbed by the vermin, for which the Lion d'Or is, or was, notorious.

The costume of the Vallais is not so characteristic or

picturesque as that of any other Canton; indeed, the hat is the only peculiarity; it is the shape of a man's hat, with ribbon of the same width set on in puffs all round.

Last night's fatigue had not left us much inclination for walking, so we hired a char-à-banc, and drove about to see the lions: of which, however, we found none, the Cathedral, even, presenting no interest. The castles,of which there are three,—we found would be best seen en route; so we proceeded in the afternoon to Leuk, through the valley of the Simplon. These castles-at least, two of them-stand on the summit of high isolated hills, which in the distance dwindle into mere mole-hills, as compared with the mountains around them, but they form a very pretty feature in the landscape. One of them, formerly the Episcopal palace, is a mere ruin; having been burnt at the time of a great fire at Sion, which reached the palace by the grass with which the hill was covered on the side next the town.

We were now in the valley of the Rĥone, on the commencement of that great road which Napoleon carried over the Simplon, and we thought there was a breeze from Italy, the sky seemed bluer than we had left on the other side the Alps, and the vineyards more luxuriant, and such a melting sunset to conclude the day, at the close of which we reached Leuk, where we spent the night; and then, after a day and night's rest, were off again at six next morning on mules, for the baths of Leuk, a distance of about three leagues. Here we made a good breakfast, and then visited the baths and their source. The former present a most ludicrous appearance to an English eye. It is considered necessary that the patient should spend so many hours in the bath, that at last it was considered desirable to bathe in company, so the people, men and women, sit on benches all round,

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with their heads just above the water, on which float little tables, containing work, books, coffee, &c. They are sometimes assembled here to the number of one hundred, or more. There is a platform all round, with a rail, where you can walk and talk with those below. It is a common thing to remain in six or seven hours; and one man boasted himself "le plus fort des baigneurs," having spent ten hours a-day in the water for the last fortnight, and intending to continue to do so for another fortnight. The water is obliged to be cooled before the patients use it, being at a temperature of 124° Fahr.

We could not long linger and gossip with the bathers, for our day's work was before us,-the ascent of the Gemmi, perhaps the most curious of all the Alpine passes. It is literally a perpendicular wall of rock, with a path zig-zagged along its face; but there is really no danger at all on foot, though it is very nervous work to ascend, and must be much worse to descend it. On the summit you come upon the Danbenzee, fed by glaciers, the views from the rocky summits of which mountain are very fine indeed there is a châlet here where travellers may rest and refresh themselves. On our descent, the valley opened upon us like a chasm, while clouds were hanging about the sides of the mountain. The last part of the descent is a zig-zag through a pine forest, and very steep. We reached Kandersteig at six. The following morning we walked out to a valley at about a league's distance, where is a pretty little lake, at the foot of the Blumlis Alp; but we were getting tired, and had seen so much already, that we thought it hardly repaid us, so we settled to hire a vehicle and return to Thun.

The said vehicle resembled our English butcher's cart, a bench with leathern thongs; but it was on springs, so that we were very comfortable, and we reached our old

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