AN ACCOUNT OF SHELLEY'S
VISITS TO FRANCE SWITZER
LAND AND SAVOY IN THE
YEARS 1814 AND 1816

r'

TABLE OF CONTENTS
'Page
I. Introduction . . . i
2. Tour of 1814: France . . 15
3. Tour of 1 8 14: Switzerland and the Rhine 33
4. Tour of 1 8 16: The Lake of Geneva . 45
5. Tour of 1816: Chamouni ... 68
6. A list of the principal works to which
reference has been made . .105
7. Extracts :
I. History of a Six Weeks' Tour —
Preface . . .ill
II. Introduction . . 113
III. France .... 114
IV. Switzerland and the Rhine . -131
V. Germany . ... 141
VT. Holland .... 147

vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Tage
8. Letters written during a residence of three
months in the Environs of Geneva
in the Summer of 1 8 1 6 :
Letter 1  151
Letter II  157
Letter III  161
Letter IV  173
9. Mont Blanc. Lines written in the Vale
of Chamouni . . . .190
Index . . . . . . .197

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
^tiatagrabnre
Portrait of Shelley . . . Frontispiece
Swiss Chalets .... To face page 34
Porte St.-Denis . . . . .118

l|cn=anir=inft Sftetcjes

Pilatus

. To face page 10

Besan^on .

.

. 28

Stolzenfels

. 40
Rotterdam
• 4+
Chillon .
. 64
Mont Blanc
: Lac de Chede
. 78
Mer de Glace .
• 96
Neuchatel
.
¦ 132
Rheinstein
.
. 142
viii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Cologne  To face page 1 46
Lausanne . . . • • • .17°
Cluse  176
Glacier des Bossons . . . • i°4

SHELLEY'S VISITS TO FRANCE,
SWITZERLAND, AND SAVOY
INTRODUCTION
The object of this essay is to illustrate the little
volume containing the history of Shelley's six weeks'
tour, and the letters on Chamouni and the environs
of Geneva, which first appeared in 1817 without
any author's name, but were eventually recognised
as being " Shelley's publication." Nothing, said
Mrs. Shelley, who took herself a great share in the
work, could possibly be more unpresuming than the
account of their desultory visits to places which are
now familiar to us all. It has ceased to be interesting
in itself to hear of a journey up the Rhine, or to the
English colony at Montreux, or to receive the last
description of the Ijeauties of Geneva or Lucerne.
But, after all, the " castled Rhine " will never lose
the charm thrown over it by the writer of " Childe
Harold," nor Meillerie and Mont Blanc cease to be
A

2 INTRODUCTION
transfigured by Shelley's romantic visions. We do
not care so much for what they actually saw as for the
picture of their eager pursuit of an " inconstant sum
mer of delight." In order to understand that state of
mind it is necessary to examine the poems composed
in connection with these journeys, including, besides
the " Lines to Mont Blanc " and the " Hymn to In
tellectual Beauty," several later poems, and a few
more fragments that appear to contain allusions to
the original journals and letters. Apart from mere
reminiscences of scenery, the thought underlying
most of these poems is the idea that the beauty of
Nature is the friend and companion of Man : the
phenomena of the universe are regarded as existing
in the observer's mind, while that mind and all that
belongs to it may be viewed apart as one of the
forms presented in Nature. We shall find that both
Shelley and Byron continually return to this idea ;
and it seems clear that in their dealings with the
subject they both owed something to Wordsworth.
We may be sure that Shelley cared little for the
" Excursion " ; but it is easy to see that he was in
fluenced by certain portions of its preface. Words
worth had intended to construct a vast work, for
which the " Excursion " was to serve as an intro
duction, the two being related to each other " as the
antechapel to the body of a Gothic church." The

INTRODUCTION 3
minor pieces, which had long been before the world,
were to be referred to the same design, and might be
likened to " the little cells, and oratories, and sepul
chral recesses." " The Recluse," as the whole work
was to be called, never advanced very far towards
completion ; but its author placed in the preface to
" The Excursion " a passage from its first book to
serve as a clue to his argument. The description of
Beauty, in the form of Imagination, follows his invo
cation of Milton's " heavenly muse " and Shake
speare's " prophetic spirit " for help in his exploration
of the human mind, in which he found the haunt and
the main region of his song :
Beauty, a living presence of the earth.
Surpassing the most fair ideal forms
Which craft and delicate spirits have composed
From earth's materials, waits upon my steps,
Pitches her tents before me as I move.
An hourly neighbour.
In Wordsworth's theory we may either say that
man's intellect is framed to receive all Nature, or that
the Universe itself is " fitted to the mind." The
point is recognised both by Shelley and Byron in their
pictures of the country round Montreux. In the one
case we may refer to the poem on " Intellectual
Beauty," and in the other to the Third Canto of
" Childe Harold," and its writer's own notes upon the

4 INTRODUCTION
poem. Byron, one would suppose, gained some of
his insight from conversations with Shelley, although
the younger man acknowledged the complete supre
macy of one whose conceptions rose fast and fair
"as perfect worlds at the Creator's will." Shelley
certainly outstripped Wordsworth in finding the
delicate meanings that underlie the forms of Nature.
"What is your substance, whereof are you made,
that millions of strange shadows on you tend ? "
There had been a mightier spirit before them, skilled
far beyond their powers in " dreaming of things to
come," and in all these thoughts they were in fact
depending on what Shakespeare had given to the
world : Hither as to their fountain other stars.
Repairing, in their golden urns draw light.
Let us take Byron's picture of Clarens and the
opposite heights. He is dealing with Rousseau,
his " self-torturing sophist," who in 1759 had asso
ciated his " Nouvelle Hdoise " with the broad lake
and the Alps frowning in bastions and parallels :
'Tis lone.
And wonderful and deep, and hath a sound,
And sense, and sight of sweetness : here the Rhone
Hath spread himself a couch, the Alps have reared a throne.
In describing the voyage round the lake he
acknowledged that it would be difficult to deny the

INTRODUCTION 5
peculiar adaptation of the whole region to the events
associated with their scenery in literature. " But
this is not all," says Byron ; " if the great writer
had not chosen these scenes as the setting of his
work, the same kind of associations would have
belonged to them ; and perhaps they have done for
him what no human being could do for them." The
feeling, he adds, with which Clarens and the
rocks of Meillerie are invested, is of a higher and
more comprehensive order than any mere sympathy
with individual passion. " It is the great principle
of the universe, which is there condensed, but not
less manifested ; of which knowing ourselves to be a
part, we lose our individuality and mingle in the
beauty of the whole." The same thoughts appear in
those portions of " Childe Harold " which were
written under the influence of the same scenery.
" I live not in myself, but I become portion of that
around me : " and again he cries :
Are not the mountains, waves, and skies, a part
Of me and of my soul, as I of them ?
Is not the love of these deep in my heart
With a ptire passion ?
At Clarens, his " sweet Clarens," Byron found
every aspect of Nature charged with the " breath of
passionate thought " ; it is the home of Love, " who
here ascends a throne, to which the steps are

6 INTRODUCTION
mountains." As one looks across the lake at sun
rise or sunset, the peaks above Meillerie flame pink
or red-hot as an oven, according to the structure of
the mountain, and the ice-fields of Mont Blanc shine
like the pure angel-gold; and Shelley adds the
colours of fire and amethyst seen in masses of cloud
that roll on the mountain-side " while the sunset
sleeps upon its snow." To Byron everything around
told of a world of beauty and love : " The snows
above, the very glaciers have his colours caught, and
sunset into rose-hues sees them wrought." The
flower knows his presence, and the air his " soft and
summer breath " :
All things are here of him : from the black pines
Which are his shade on high, and the loud roar
Of torrents where he listeneth, to the vines
Which slope his green path downward to the shore.
When the bowed waters meet him and adore.
Kissing his feet with murmurs.
Shelley's " Hymn to Intellectual Beauty " was an
out-come of the same expedition. We may detect in
it some echo of the lines from " The Recluse," and
some tone of Milton's " Uranian lute " : its inner
meaning is to be , found in that phrase, already
noticed, where youth is shown " pursuing, like the
swallow, the inconstant summer of delight and
beauty that invests this visible world." It was

INTRODUCTION 7
upon the mutability of the presence, the fleeting
shadow of an unseen Power, that his mind was most
inclined to reflect : it passes, he thought, with an
inconstant wing " as summer winds that creep from
flower to flower " :
Spirit of Beauty, that dost consecrate
With thine own hues all thou dost shine upon
Of human thought or form, where art thou gone ?
Why dost thou pass away, and leave our state.
This dim vast vale of tears, vacant and desolate ?
Ask why the sunlight not for ever
Weaves rainbows o'er yon mountain-river.
Why aught should fail and fade that once is shown.
His emotional temperament was excited by reading
a fine description of the Lake in the place where the
picture had been drawn. He uses the words of
passionate affection in dilating on the prospect before
his eyes. At Clarens he found it hard to repress
" the tears of melancholy transport " ; and in
addressing the influence that brought the beauty of
Nature into his mind, he broke into a similar
rapture :
I vowed that I would dedicate my powers
To thee and thine : have I not kept the vow ?
With beating heart and streaming eyes, even now
I call the phantoms of a thousand hours.
Each from his voiceless grave.
The poem on Mont Blanc represents the

8 INTRODUCTION
same kind of feeling, with some variation of form.
The Universe flows through the mind, " and rolls
its rapid waves " : and the soul in " unremitting
interchange " receives ideas from without, and ren
ders life to the phaenomena of Nature. Shelley
gave his own account of the poem at the end of the
preface to the " Six Weeks' Tour " : " It was com
posed under the immediate impression of the deep
and powerful feelings excited by the objects which
it attempts to describe; and, as an undisciplined
overflowing of the soul, rests its claim to appro
bation on an attempt to imitate the untameable
wildness and inaccessible solemnity from which
those feelings sprang." The poem on "Spiritual
Beauty " had dealt with frailty and mutability : the
" Ode to Mont Blanc " teaches the permanence of
those forces by which are sustained " the earth and
stars and sea " :
The secret strength of things
Which governs thought, and to the infinite dome
Of heaven is as a law, inhabits. thee.
Shelley had left his cottage at Montalegre on
the 20th of July 1816, and arrived at the entrance
to the Valley of Servoz on the afternoon of the
following day. " Mont Blanc was before us ! " he
writes : " Mont Blanc was before us, but it was
covered with cloud : its base, furrowed with dreadful

INTRODUCTION 9
gaps, was seen above. Pinnacles of snow intoler
ably bright, part of the chain connected with Mont
Blanc, shone through the clouds at intervals on
high. I never knew, I never imagined, what moun
tains were before ? There was a wooden bridge,
called the Pont Pelissier, which spanned the Arve
and its ravine : here Shelley stood before the vision
of the dazzling mountains that ' glittered though a
chasm of the clouds ' ; and here the poem was in
spired, as he lingered on the bridge. On that
evening they passed close to the Glacier des Bossons,
which overhung the woods and meadows with an
icy precipice, ' winding through its own ravine like
a bright belt flung over the region of pines.' The
next day was given to rest ; but on the 23rd
Shelley went with his companions to the source
of the Arveiron, and saw the ice-cave and the jagged
rim of the Glacier des Bois : ' we saw, as we sat on
a rock, masses of ice detach themselves from on
high, and rush with a loud dull noise into the vale.'
In the evening, Shelley visited the Glacier des
Bossons, and was deeply impressed by the shattered
trees and desert of stones at its base, and the pin
nacles above, "like spires of radiant crystal, covered
with a network of frosted silver." The poem as it
stands was finished that same night ; but in Mr.
Rossetti's edition there are a few fragmentary lines

10 INTRODUCTION
showing that Shelley had intended to add an allusion
to the noise of the breaking glacier :
It is the roar
Of the rent ice-cliffs, which the sunbeams call,
Plunging into the vale : it is the blast
Descending on the pines.
In the earlier portion of the same poem there is a
reference to one of the waterfalls in the valley of
the Arve. We are shown the crags clothed with
pines, and the river foaming in rifts cut like caverns
through the rock :
When power in likeness of the Arve comes down
From the ice-gulfs that gird his secret throne,
Bursting through these dark mountains like the flame
Of lightning through the tempest.
Within a short space the travellers saw two streams
shot from a great height into the valley. " The first
fell from the overhanging brow of a bleak precipice
on an enormous rock, precisely resembling some
colossal Egyptian statue of a female deity." The
water struck the head of the image, and fell on both
sides in cloudy foam, " imitating a veil of the most
exquisite woof." Uniting itself again, the stream
concealed the lower portion of the statue, and hid
in a winding of its channel, where it burst into a
deeper fall. We quote a passage from the invocation
addressed by the poet to the " many-coloured, many-
voiced vale " :

INTRODUCTION ii
Thine earthly rainbows stretched across the sleep
Of the ethereal waterfall, whose veil
Robes some unsculptured image : the strange sleep
Which when the voices of the desert fail
Wraps all in its own deep eternity ;
Thy caverns echoing to the Arve's commotion,
A loud lone sound no other sound may tame,
Thou art pervaded by that ceaseless motion.
Thou art the path of that unresting sound.
A few allusions to Shelley's Swiss tours may be
found in his later poems. The Vale of Chamouni,
for instance, might have supplied the type of the
hanging snow-fields and ice-girt pinnacles in the
" Sonnet to the Nile." The allegory of the " Two
Spirits " contains stanzas that remind us of a legend
from Lucerne. One may read it in the first of
the delightful letters of Victor Hugo to his Adele,
where he describes the marvels of Pilatus : there
was a colossal pine, they told him, which stood
alone on the cliff, and on each of its spreading limbs
grew another pine, so that it looked like a seven-
branched candlestick. Shelley may have heard the
story at Lucerne or Brunnen, though neither
Pilatus nor any of its companions is named in
the journal :
Some say there is a precipice
Where one vast pine is frozen to ruin,
O'er piles of snow and chasms of ice,
'Mid Alpine mountains ;

12 INTRODUCTION
And that the languid storm pursuing
That winged shape for ever flies
Round those hoar branches, aye renewing
Its aery fountains.
Shelley did not see the cliffs in their winter
desolation: but he had read and talked about the
pendant icicles, the snow-wreaths, and the torrent
frozen into a blue-veined mass, like the treasure in
the caves of crystal. The scene appears in a poem
composed only a few months after his wanderings
round the lake. " It was at the season," he writes,
" when the Earth up-springs from slumber " :
'Twas at this season that Prince Athanase
Passed the white Alps. Those eagle-baffling mountains
Slept in their shrouds of snow. Beside the ways
The waterfalls were voiceless ; for their fountains
Were changed to mines of sunless crystal now,
Or by the curdling winds, like brazen wings
Which clanged along the mountain's marble brow.
Warped into adamantine fretwork hung
And filled with frozen light the chasm below.
Though the " Prometheus Unbound " was not
finished tifl the later visit to Rome, it is clear that
it contains many passages based either on the
Six Weeks' Tour or the visit to Chamouni. Some
of these will be discussed later; but we may just
mention the "crawling glaciers," the springs
stagnating "with white wrinkled frost," and the

INTRODUCTION 13
roseate sunlight quivering through " peaks of cloud
like snow." The last phrase recalls that fine passage
in the Journal where the travellers describe their
first sight of the Alps. " They were a hundred
miles distant, but they reach so high in the heavens
that they looked like those accumulated clouds of
dazzling white that arrange themselves on the
horizon during summer." And in a letter from
Secheron we are shown the Alps glowing in that
rose-like hue " which attends the clouds of an
autumnal sky when the daylight is almost gone."
In another part of the poem we find an evident
reference to the drive from Les Rousses to the
Lake of Geneva. There was a complaint that the
plains of snow were only broken by scattered
pine-trees and poles set up to mark the road.
" No river or rock-encircled lawn relieved the eye ; "
and when the tortured Prometheus is speaking of
the beauty of life, he calls up a very similar scene :
Of rock-embosomed lawns and snow-fed streams.
Now seen athwart from vapours deep below.
We shall learn from the journals of their first
expedition how Shelley rejoiced in the scenery of
the Rhine. He saw the river in its glorious
vintage-season and compared it to "the loveliest
paradise on earth " ; and we perceive that he is

14 INTRODUCTION
thinking of the Rhine when the voice of 'Asia' is
heard singing of the magical boat on the river that
rolls towards the sea :
It seems to float, ever, for ever.
Upon that many-winding river.
Between mountains, woods, abysses,
A paradise of wildernesses.
Whoever has seen the Castle of Chillon will
recollect the little He de Paix, which Byron rightly
picked out as causing a very peculiar effect upon
the view, from its solitude and diminutive size :
" A small green isle, it seemed no more, scarce
broader than my dungeon-floor." We cannot tell
whether Shelley wrote on this subject at the time of
his visit; but on looking at the later fragments
there is a picture of an islet, with young flowers
and shady trees, which cannot be mistaken, more
especially as we are told that it was girdled by the
waves, " with which the clouds and mountains pave
a lake's blue chasm " :
There was a little lawny islet.
By anemone and violet.
Like mosaic, paven :
And its roof was flowers and leaves.
Which the summer's breath inweaves.
Where nor sun, nor showers nor breeze.
Pierce the pines and tallest trees,"
Like a gem engraven.

TOUR OF 1814: FRANCE
We now proceed to take the little Journal in hand,
in order to follow the young travellers in the course
of their simple adventures. Our business is con
cerned with what they saw, and more especially with
the effect of the scenery upon Shelley's imagination.
We have nothing to do here with their family
troubles or private affairs, except that we may
perhaps notice some of their odd shifts when in
pawn at Paris, or scraping their way home by the
cheapest conveyance, after magnificent dreams of a
winter in Italy. This first tour took place in 18 14,
very soon after the deposition of Napoleon ; but the
printed account did not appear till 18 17, some
months after their second expedition to Switzer
land. In making the full extracts that form a great
portion of our work, it has been thought convenient
to modernise the spelling, except in the case of a
few local names, of which the old-fashioned forms
still remain in partial use. We shall keep to the
initials of the original, instead of inserting the

1 6 TOUR IN 1814
travellers' own names in the modern way. It will
be observed that M. stands for " Mary," and C. for
" Claire," as Miss Clairmont generally called herself.
It may be also noticed that M. and C. are described
as sisters, although they were not really related,
the one being Godwin's daughter by his marriage
with Mary WoUstonecraft, and the other the daughter
of his second wife by her former marriage. The
various omissions of passages and phrases occurring
in the Journal and Letters relate for the most part
to indiscriminate attacks upon large classes of
people, which it is only fair to ascribe to some
passing influence of the heat or bad weather. The
omissions from the Swiss Letters relate partly to
similar cases, and partly to misquotations from
Horace and Tacitus, made at a distance from
books and left uncorrected by accident, as well as
to the various attempts at identifying places men
tioned by Rousseau, when by his own published
statement such efforts could never succeed.
" It is now nearly three years since the journey
took place," says Mrs. Shelley in her Introduction
to the work ; "and the diary then kept was not very
copious." She had arranged its contents as well as
she could, with the addition of several letters from
Switzerland; and she could only regret that the
materials were not more complete. The party

FRANCE 17
reached Dover on Thursday, July 28, 18 14. They
had reasons for wishing to cross without delay, and
declined to wait for the morning packet, which
might contain visitors whom they did not wish
to meet. They watched her next day from Calais,
beating her wings for hours in vain attempts to
reach the harbour.
Shelley had hired a smack on the evening of their
arrival, hoping to sail pleasantly across to France in
two or three hours. The weather of 18 14 was
hotter than had been known for many years. The
little vessel crept out, but was nearly becalmed, and
the sail " flapped in the flagging breeze " ; but later
on a fresh wind sprang up, and the moonbeams
glanced on the marching waves, "like the path of
some sweet water-sprite, on the heaving and deso
late sea." A rack of clouds piled itself above a red
and stormy horizon : " the fast-flashing lightning
became pale in the breaking day.'' We seem to be
present, and to share their alarms : a " thunder-
squall " strikes the sail : but the wind veers and
drives the smack before it, and at last the sun rises
with a broad red face above the pier.
They are delighted with the old hotel and the
look of the people in the streets. They saw ladies
with hair trained into stiff towers, decked in ribbons
or flowers a yard above their eyebrows, and market-
B

i8 TOUR OF 1814
women in great starched caps ; and they liked the
boatmen in earrings, and the fishwives whom
Wordsworth scolded for being so withered and
grotesque, "and shrill and fierce in accent." Like
other tourists, they were cheered by the thought
that the Enghsh had been masters of Calais and
the Pale for two centuries before Queen Mary
died. Two of the party went outside the ramparts
to inspect the defences, which seemed to the
ladies to consist of " fields where the hay was
making." A graver traveller had written a tech
nical account, when the escarpments were not fifty
years old : " the town," says Mr. Ray, " is very
strongly fortified after the modern fashion, with an
impenetrable wall and bastions of earth, and a deep
trench of water to the landward."
On Saturday afternoon they started for Boulogne
in a cabriolet with three horses, the harness as usual
being composed of ropes and thongs : the queer
pig-tailed postillion cracked his whip as they clat
tered over the Chauss6e, and " an old forlorn shep
herd with a cocked hat" gazed sadly after their
equipage. At Paris it was too hot for sight-seeing :
they walked in the trim gardens of the Tuileries,
but preferred the delightful Boulevards, the Porte
St. Denis in its splendour, and the fountain, or
say rather "the superb cascade," which used to

FRANCE 19
spout perfume on a Coronation-day. After talking
over many plans, they fixed upon one which was
both pleasant and eccentric. " We resolved to walk
through France " : " and we determined to purchase
an ass, to carry our portmanteau and one of us by
turns." No sooner said than done; and on Monday,
the 8th of August, Shelley and Miss Clairmont
" went to the ass-market and purchased an ass."
The regular course would have been to go next day
to the horse-market at the Barrifere de St. Victor.
Captain Medwin tells us that they found what was
wanted at the Marche des Herbes, where it seems
that they bought a costermonger's donkey, which
broke down at once under the portmanteau. We
remember, when Don Quixote left his village, how
Sancho Panza rode like a patriarch with wallet and
bottle, and his master stood pensive awhile, won
dering if any one had ever heard of a knight with a
squire " so assishly mounted." He could not dis
cover any authority ; but thought that his squire
might use the beast for a time, resolving to accom
modate him more honourably upon the next occasion.
The first evening of the tour was spent at Charenton,
in the winding valley of the Seine. " Oh ! this is
beautiful enough; let us live here," cried the
youngest of the trio. " We were merry enough,"
says the Diarist, " and thought the leagues short ; "

20 TOUR OF 1814
but in fact they were plodding slowly enough, and
were hardly three miles from Paris when they came
to their journey's end. Finding the ass useless, the
writer continued, they sold it as soon as they
arrived, and bought a mule for ten napoleons.
They started next morning, " clad in black silk,"
and soon reached the shady woodlands, and lunched,
not like the knight-errant on Spanish ham and
acorns, but on a long loaf and good fruit ; and they
drank their eau rougie, thinking of Don Quixote and
Sancho. They slept that night at Guignes, a village set in
the midst of a wide plain between the streams of
the Yvron and Ancceur. The place had been the
scene of great events in the earlier part of the year,
when Napoleon had rallied his forces there, and had
rolled back the Austrians and Bavarians on the
road to Troyes. Four of his Marshals were posted
with their divisions in the immediate neighbourhood.
His own headquarters were at Guignes on February
the 1 6th, the day before the battle of Mormant ;
and he took the opportunity of reviewing the
division of Dragoons which General Trelliard had
just brought from Bayonne, and about a thousand
of the Grenadiers and Chasseurs, who had arrived
from the army of the Pyrenees or had been collected
in the depots of the Guard. The Comte de Valmy

FRANCE 21
had brought in his cavalry the evening before,
" We slept at Guignes," says the Diary, " in the
same room and beds in which Napoleon and some
of his Generals had rested during the late war : the
little old woman of the place was highly gratified in
having this little story to tell."
At Provins they left the dreary plain, and were
delighted with the "Tour de Cesar" and the crumbHng
battlements of the Upper Town, " and the ancient
church of St. Quiriace, to which the ruined castle
serves as a belfry. The irregular scene looked like
a bit for a painter, and was " a delicious relief to the
eye." They had "nearly forgotten " the war; but
they soon found themselves on the track of the
Cossacks. Nogent, we are told, had been entirely
desolated by these barbarians, who perhaps remem
bered Moscow and the plunder of the Russian
villages. All the miseries of the war were doubtless
attributed to the savage warriors under the Hetman
Platow ; but as a matter of fact there were very few
Russians present when Nogent was destroyed.
Being a small open town, it was doubtful whether
the place should be defended ; but General Bour-
mont finding the new works useless, and indeed
hardly begun, determined to resist the Austrians in
the ancient fashion. The streets were barricaded,
the houses loopholed, and a villa called the Belve-

22 TOUR OF 1814
dere was converted into a fortified post. The
Count de Pahlen delivered his attack on the nth
of February, and after a desperate struggle of forty
hours found that he had lost 1800 men, and had
only taken a few outlying houses. The town was
shelled and set on fire at several points; but the
defence was kept up manfully until orders were
received for a retreat upon Provins. General Bour-
mont was wounded; but Colonel Voirol, who had
taken the command, carried off his force after
blowing up the bridge, together with a Russian
officer and fifty Cossacks advancing too eagerly
in pursuit. A Uttle beyond Nogent the travellers
left the Grande Route, and struck across the plains
towards Troyes. They arrived at St. Aubin about
sunset, and thought it " a lovely village," as it stood
embowered in foliage ; but on a nearer view the
cottages were found to be roofless and the rafters
black. There were a few inhabitants remaining,
and the visitors asked for milk, as they had far
to go before night : " They had none to give : all
their cows had been taken by the Cossacks."
Village after village, as they advanced through the
chalky plain, presented nothing to the sight but
broken walls, charred beams, and gardens white
with dust and plaster. Some of the descriptions
are so repelling in their details that we omit to

FRANCE 33
produce them again. It may be taken for granted
that a place lately ransacked or taken by storm
will offer little in itself or in the looks of its ruined
inhabitants, that will please the visitor's taste.
At Echemine only the inn remained standing, and
the villagers were camping out in a sad state of
misery. The English travellers were not very
cordially received : " these people did not know
that Napoleon had been deposed," though the treaty
between the new King and the Allies had been
signed on the 1st of June. Asked why they did not
rebuild the cottages, the people . said that they
were afraid the Cossacks would destroy them on
their return. Perhaps they knew more about
Napoleon and the Cossacks than their foreign
visitors supposed. But at Pavilion, where no such
great ravages had occurred, " we might have fancied
ourself," says the Diary, "in another quarter of the
globe." All was cleanliness and hospitality ; the
people were building up the houses that had been
destroyed. " What could occasion so great a differ
ence ? " Shelley refers to these, events again in the
preface to the " Revolt of Islam " : "I have seen the
theatre of the more visible ravages of tyranny and
war ; cities and villages reduced to scattered groups
of black and roofless houses, and the naked inhabit
ants sitting famished on their desolated households."

24 TOUR OF 1814
Such troubles befell the party at Troyes that there
was no time to write about the town, except to note
that it seemed dirty and uninviting, and that some
of the suburbs were destroyed. Shelley had hurt
his ankle and was totally incapable of walking, and
the rest of them were in nearly as bad a condition.
The mule and its saddle were given away for a mere
song; and they determined to buy a httle open
carriage, and to engage a voiturier with another
mule to take them on to Neuchatel. The first of a
series of quarrels with the voiturier began on
leaving the town. It arose, according to the
Journal, out of " a curious instance of French
vanity " ; but it turned out that the coachman was
right in the main. He pointed to the flat country
between the Seine and Barce, and said that there had
been a battle on that ground between the French
and the Russians. " The Russians got the victory,"
laughs the lady. " Ah, Madame ! the French are
never beaten," the driver replies; and he explains
that the defeated Russians had only occupied the
town by wheehng round " in a circuitous route."
The French, in fact, had not been defeated at
Troyes, though the town had several times changed
hands. On the ist of February Napoleon was
badly beaten by Blucher at La Rothifere, in the
valley of the Aube; falling back on Troyes, after

FRANCE 25
winning a battle at Rouay, he occupied the town on
the 3rd and left it on the 6th, when it was immedi
ately occupied by the Army of Silesia. Napoleon
returned on February the 23rd, and found that
Blucher had left only an Austrian brigade to hold
the place. The Emperor commenced an attack, and
was about to order an assault, when he received a
message that the town would be evacuated during
the night, but that if the cannonade were continued
it would first be set on fire. Napoleon entered the
town on the next morning, and it was held by the
French till March the 4th. When the attack had
begun, after the Austrian general had declined to
surrender, the garrison had replied by a fire of
shells and grenades which set the suburbs of St.
Martin and St^ Savine in flames. On the 4th of
March, Marshal Macdonald again evacuated Troyes,
which was at once occupied by the combined
Austrian and Russian forces ; and we are told that
the Allies used their opportunity very unmercifully,
and gave the town up for two days to every kind of
licence. There was, indeed, no occasion on which
it could properly be said that the Allies entered
Troyes after winning a battle upon the adjoining
plains. The village of Vandceuvres had suffered consider
ably in the war ; but the party found a castle close by,

26 TOUR OF 1814
with grounds laid out in the English style, and they
were allowed to ramble as they pleased, and to rest
I in the green shade of a wood. At the next turn of
Ithe road they entered the narrow valley of the
I Aube, and were delighted with the vine-wreathed
hills rising steep out of the meadows streaked with
lines of willows and poplars. The country churches
still reared their glittering spires, which " the
Cossacks " had forgotten to destroy. Some of the
most romantic sites, however, were filled with the
ruins of hamlets destroyed by fire ; but these for the
most part had been burned by the French themselves
when Oudinot was retreating from La Rothiere.
Bar-sur-Aube is a small town standing at the foot
of Mont St^. Germaine, at that narrow opening into
the valley " where the hills abruptly terminate." Our
travellers made an ascent for a view, but were caught
in mist and rain : " the laden clouds," said Shelley,
" made the darkness almost as deep as at midnight,
but in the west an unusually brilliant and fiery
redness occupied an opening in the vapours." At
the gates of Bar they bid the mountains " a short
f farewell " : but they found that Chaumont was set
I on a steep elevation above the Marne, and that
Langres occupied a lofty plateau. This town is now
a very strong fortress ; but at the time of their visit
there were only remains of old and scanty works of

FRANCE 27
defence. From a point at the edge of this plateau it
is possible to see Mont Blanc, about a hundred and
eighty miles away. Looking towards the Jura about
sunset, the head of the mountain shows like a star
above the purple ridges on the horizon, just as the
white marble of Milan Cathedral can be seen at
sunrise as a glittering point of hght from the summit
of Monte Rosa. M. de la Condamine mentioned the
fact as early as 1773 in the remarks on the
mountains and ice-valleys of Switzerland em
bodied in his " Journal of a Tour to Italy." " Mont
Cenis," he said, " is the highest mountain of the
Alps : yet the White Mountain that we see from
the banks of the Lake of Geneva, and the upper
half of which is always covered with snow, is in
comparably much higher." He adds that this White
Mountain, not included by him among the Alps,
must be four thousand feet higher than the Pike
of Teneriffe, which is oddly described as having
passed for " the highest mountain of Europe " :
" the White Mountain is also seen from the environs
of Langres at sixty leagues distance, where they
distinguish its summit covered with snow above the
chain of Mount Jura." It is evident from what they
said that the travellers had no suspicion of the fact.
It was not, indeed, till they had entered Switzerland
that they saw what they had so long desired. " Two

28 TOUR OF 1814
leagues from Neuchatel we saw the Alps : range after
range of black mountains are seen extending one
before the other, and far behind all, towering above
every feature of the scene, the snowy Alps."
The description of the country round BesanQon is
very skilfully contrived. The hills appeared in the
distance during the whole day as the party drew
near to the town ; but they were quite unprepared
for the view that met their eyes in the morning.
As they passed out of the gate they saw that the
town stood as it were on a peninsula of rock, shut
in by the River Doubs, "in a horse-shoe curve."
The gateway itself had been cut out of the live
rock by the Roman workmen who had built the
aqueduct. The road wound under the wall of a
precipice, and in front rose a rocky amphitheatre
of hills thickly covered with vines. " This approach
to mountain scenery filled us with delight," said the
travellers ; but it was otherwise with the voiturier
who came from the plains of Troyes ; for these hills,
we are told, so utterly scared him, " that in some
degree he lost his reason." The man appears to
have been both sulky and perverse : but we need
not attribute his dark moods to anything like lunacy.
The idea may have been an after-thought, suggested
by Shelley's feelings when he stood under the
pinnacles of Mont Blanc, and felt his spirit breath-

^0SS^'9^^i 1 'g ^ fcfl (g ® fco //?®^

FRANCE 29
less before " the harmony of Nature " : " the im
mensity of those aerial summits, when they suddenly
burst upon the sight, excited a sentiment of ecstatic
wonder not unallied to madness." Goethe made a
remark of much the same kind when Eckermann
complained of the " uncomfortable feeling " produced
by the gloomy sublimity of the Alps upon one who
was born in the plains. " The feeUng is natural,"
said Goethe : " Switzerland, at first, made so great
an impression on me, that it disturbed and confused
me ; only after repeated visits, only in after-years,
when I visited those mountains merely as a mine
ralogist, could I feel at my ease among them."
It seems that the mule broke down under the
task of drawing four persons and their luggage
in a four-wheeled carriage, though the tourists put
down its master's disobliging mood to the fact that
" the hills had scared his senses." At any rate, they
were compelled to remain many hours at the hamlet
of Mort almost as soon as they began to mount the
hills again. The journey was resumed before sun
rise. The road led to the west of the range that
encircle the plateau of Besan9on. From the top
they saw the whole expanse of the valley filled
with a white undulating mist, which was pierced
by the piny mountains, like islands : " the sun
had just risen, and a ray of red light lay upon

30 TOUR OF 1814
the waves of this fluctuating vapour ; to the west,
opposite the sun, it seemed driven by the light
against the rocks in immense masses of foaming
cloud, until it became lost in the distance, mixing
its tints with the fleecy sky."
The incident is closely reproduced in the dialogue
between Asia and Panthea in the " Prometheus
Unbound." Asia and her sister are seen on a
pinnacle of rock among mountains, in the realm of
Demogorgon. " How glorious art thou. Earth ! "
cries Asia, ready almost to fall and worship the
beauties of creation :
Even now my heart adoreth. Wonderful !
Look, sister, ere the vapour dim thy brain :
Beneath is a wide plain of billoWy mist.
As a lake, paving in the morning sky
With azure waves which burst in silver light.
Some Indian vale. Behold it, rolling on
Under the curdling winds, and islanding
The peak whereon we stand, midway, around,
Encinctured by the dark and blooming forests.
Dim twilight-lawns and stream-illumined caves.
And wind-enchanted shapes of wandering mist.
The effects of the " ray of red light " upon the
masses of foaming cloud, and the scattering of its
tints " through a fleecy sky," are reproduced in the
words of Panthea and in the description of the
advancing spirits :

FRANCE 31
Look how the gusty sea of mist is breaking
In crimson foam, even at our feet ! It rises
As ocean at the enchantment of the moon
Round foodless men wrecked on some oozy isle.
The fragments of the cloud are scattered up ;
The wind that lifts them disentwines my hair :
The billows now sweep o'er mine eyes : my brain
Grows dizzy : I see thin shapes within the mist.
While the mule rested at Nofi, the party walked
to the rocky slopes beyond the meadows, and dis
covered a " pine forest " all carpeted with moss ;
and here one might see a multitude of young trees
springing out of clefts in the stone, with shady
retreats arranged under the fringe of drooping
boughs. On returning to the inn they found that
they were abandoned and betrayed : the moon
struck voiturier had departed alone, taking their
baggage, and leaving word that he should expect to
see them at Pontarlier, about twenty miles away.
Sorely and painfully they crept along the road till
the evening fell, Shelley with a sprained ankle and
the ladies with aching limbs ; but their spirit
was high, and " the scenery," they said, " was
lovely enough to beguile us of fatigue." We
suppose that Shelley himself supplied the words of
the description. " The horned moon hung in the
light of sunset, that threw out a glow of unusual

32 TOUR OF 1814: FRANCE
depth of redness over the piny mountains and the
dark deep valleys : at intervals in the woods were
beautiful lawns, interspersed with picturesque clumps
of trees, and dark pines overshadowed our road."
At Pontarlier they came up with the truant
conductor, who stammered out his falsehoods and
excuses : " and thus ended the adventures of that
day."

TOUR OF 1814: SWITZERLAND AND
THE RHINE
The travellers were now fast approaching the
frontier of Switzerland. In front of them stood the
range of the Lower or Western Jura and the open
ing of the Valley of the Doubs, where the road
wound onward through a gorge between high
cliffs: "the scenery was divine, with piny moun
tains, barren rocks, and spots of verdure surpass
ing imagination." They crossed the frontier at
Vervieres, and descended for about three miles
between overhanging woods, with green glades here
and there interspersed, and lawns running upwards
from the valley. At St. Sulpice they admired the
trim chalets, much cleaner and neater than the
French cottages. " The inhabitants," as they said,
" exhibit the same contrast : the Swiss women
wear a great deal of white linen, and their whole
dress is always perfectly clean." Travellers in
Germany, they had heard, have remarked the same
difference between the Protestant and Catholic

34 TOUR OF 1814
towns, and they were inclined to attribute the
distinction to a variety in religion. There is an
argument of much the same kind in Shelley's
account of the Lake of Geneva. He contrasted
the rude kingdom of Sardinia with the free
republics of Switzerland, and found in the com
parison an illustration of " the blighting mischiefs of
despotism." Gray commented in one of his letters
upon Rousseau's argument in praise of Geneva as
compared with the poverty of Savoy. The poet
had a wholesome contempt for the romance in
which the argument appeared : he thought it more
absurd than Amadis de Gaul, and would not have
cared if all the "good characters" had been hanged
in the third volume; but he was deceived into
agreeing with an obviously unfair piece of reason
ing. We are shown the city and its miniature
dominions, the abode of peace and plenty, its gay
crowd on the ramparts, the militia marching in good
broadcloth, the bankers and merchants bustUng
towards 'Change ; while out in the Duchy of
Chablais one met only a few barefooted peasants,
living in misery and squalor. " And all this," said
Mr. Gray, " makes any person who is not blind
sensible what a difference there is between the two
Governments, that are the causes of the one view
and the other."

'«^9*^/^i^..r

(yJ^^MixM ^4ii^.

SWITZERLAND AND THE RHINE 35
The mule had now become very lame, and the
travellers felt that the moods of the mad voiturier
were no longer to be borne. "We determined to
engage a horse," they said, "for the remainder
of the way " ; but they were anticipated ; " he had
determined to leave them at this village, and had
taken measures to that effect." Their new guide was
a young Swiss farmer, who pointed to the forest-
lawns with glee, and vowed that they produced the
finest cheese and butter in the world. The road led
between the highest points of the mountain-range:
the rocks overhung them above, and below were
masses of trees, and a river reflecting the sun. The
mountains were " so little asunder " that in time of
war the ravine was closed by a chain. On the neck
of the pass the Alpine ranges broke upon their view,
and they saw beneath their feet the stony tract of
Val Travers, the flats of Neuchatel, and the shining
expanses of the lake.
A carriage-drive to Lucerne occupied rather more
than two days. They went by way of Soleure, and
thought the whole journey extremely dull, except for
occasional glimpses of the great chain of Alps in the
distance. At the Lake of Lucerne they hoped for
better things. They continually debated whether
they should cross the St. Gothard, but were afraid of
the expense ; in any case, however, they would see

36 TOUR OF 1814
the Painted Chapel on the spot where Tell's lime-
tree stood, and the records of his vengeance against
the oppressors of his country. They arrived at the
town of Lucerne on the 23rd of August, and hired
a boat at once, proposing to coast the lake in search
of " some suitable habitation," or perhaps to push on
to Altorf and make their way over the mountains
into Italy. Shelley's condition of health was known
to be precarious, and it was but a few months later
that he was in actual danger :
There late was one, within whose subtle being
As light and wind within some delicate cloud
That fades amid the blue noon's burning sky.
Genius and Death contended.
Brunnen, after some hesitation, was selected as
their temporary headquarters. The village stands
near the opening of the Bay of Uri, a long reach
lying at right angles to the main body of the lake :
in front was the Painted Chapel, which the travellers
were destined never to reach, and in the valley
behind lay the peaceful town of Schwyz, with its
" sweet fields " and meadows spreading " in unam
bitious compass." At Brunnen was a broken-down
chateau, where rooms could be hired for a guinea a
month; and here Shelley proposed to set up his
abode, at least until they could make up their minds

SWITZERLAND AND THE RHINE 37
about an expedition into Italy. "The high moun
tains encompassed us," says the Journal, " darkening
the waters " ; the summits of several of the moun
tains were covered with eternal snow. " We re
mained," it was added, " on the shore of the lake,
conversing, enjoying the rising breeze, and contem
plating with feelings of exquisite delight the divine
objects that surrounded us." When they became
familiar with the beauties of Lake Leman in their
later tour, they still remembered with regret the
" sacred solitude and deep seclusion " which had so
delighted them in their visit to Brunnen. Next day
a fierce south-wind arose, and tore the lake into
foam, shooting the water into spouts that fell back
like a deluge of rain. The scene was well described
by Mrs. Shelley in " Frankenstein " : "I have visited
the lakes of Lucerne and Uri, where the snowy
mountains descend almost perpendicularly to the
water, casting black and impenetrable shades, which
would cause a gloomy and mournful appearance
were it not for the verdant islands that relieve the
eye. I have seen this lake agitated by a tempest
when the wind tore up whirlwinds of water, and
gave you an idea of what the waterspout must be on
the great ocean." We know, too, that when Goethe's
mind was full of the legends of this lake, and was

38 TOUR OF 1814
already " humming his hexameters," he described a
thunderstorm which swept over its surface from the
depths of the mountains. " I saw it," he said, " in
the light of the loveliest morning sun, a rejoicing and
a Ufe in wood and meadow." He was asked if the
great description of sunrise in the second part of
" Faust " was not founded on his recollections : and
he answered, that, without the impression of those
wonderful scenes, he could never have conceived the
subject which he had touched in his " terza rima."
" But that is all which I have coined from the gold
of my Tell localities : the rest I left to Schiller, who,
as we know, made the most beautiful use of it." On
the abating of the storm, Shelley was so incautious
as to sit in the evening on the wet pier, reading
from Tacitus about the preparations for the siege of
Jerusalem, the civic broils, the comet and the
tempest of meteors, and the voices as of a multitude
departing from the Holy City. Between the chance
of illness and the certainty of money troubles, it
was clear that they must make for home. Convey
ance by water was cheap enough ; and fortunately
as they calculated, by taking advantage of barges on
the Reuss and Rhine, they might reach England
without travelling a league on land. From Lucerne
to the Falls of Loffenburg they had places in the
diligence-par-eau : between the Falls and Basle they

SWITZERLAND AND THE RHINE 39
used the narrow punts which they called their
" Indian canoes." These were so alarmingly unsafe
that they tried once or twice to proceed by land,
hiring a return carriage that unluckily broke down,
and walking for some miles in the neighbourhood of
Rheinfelden. One delightful day was passed on a
barge laden with goods for Strasburg. There were
no other passengers, and Shelley read aloud the
" Letters from Sweden and Norway," by Mary WoU
stonecraft, whose fine descriptions of scenery and
strength in narrative were emulated but never sur
passed by her daughter, the authoress of " Franken
stein." The journey from Strasburg to Bonn may
be described in the words of that romance : " We
passed many willowy islands, and saw several
beautiful towns, and we stayed a day at Mannheim,
and on the fifth day arrived at Mayence. The course
of the Rhine below Mayence becomes much more
picturesque. The river descends rapidly, and winds
between hills, not high, but of beautiful forms. In
one spot you view rugged hills, ruined castles over
looking tremendous precipices, with the dark Rhine
rushing beneath ; and on the sudden turn of a pro
montory, flourishing vineyards with green Sloping
banks, and a meandering river and populous towns,
occupy the scene. We travelled at the time of the
vintage, and heard the song of the labourers as we

40 TOUR OF 1814
glided down the stream. Look at that castle which
overhangs yon precipice; and that on the island,
almost concealed amongst the foliage of those lovely
trees; and now that group of labourers coming from
among their vines, and that village half-hid in the
recess of the mountain." Shelley himself, as Med
win has told us, used to dilate with an infectious
enthusiasm " on the rapidity of their descent past
terraced vineyards and castled heights " : on such
a topic he seemed to be able "to intoxicate his
imagination," and to lavish its inexhaustible store
" with the prodigality of Nature in some tropical
island." This part of the Rhine, says Mrs. Shelley,
is that which was so beautifully described by Lord
Byron in the Third Canto of " Childe Harold." That
canto was written at the Villa Diodati in the
summer of 18 16, when the whole party were
residing in the environs of Geneva. Lord Byron,
we are told, was the only one who put his thoughts
upon paper, while the fine weather continued ;
" these, as he brought them successively to us,
clothed in all the light and harmony of poetry,
seemed to stamp as divine the glories of heaven and
earth." His companions read the verses with
delight, as they conjured up memories of Stolzenfels
and Ehrenbreitstein and the " breast of waters "

"Sir® D=s s K) iFiitws.

SWITZERLAND AND THE RHINE 41
broadly swelling between the banks and crags of the
winding Rhine :
The negligently grand, the fruitful bloom
Of coming ripeness, the white city's sheen.
The rolling stream, the precipice's gloom.
The forest's growth, and Gothic walls between
The wild rocks shaped as they had turrets been
In mockery of man's art.
This part of the Rhine, said Mrs. Shelley, came to
her remembrance as " the loveliest Paradise on
earth." But when they had threaded the last nar
rows near Bonn, and had seen the end of the Seven
Hills, they began to dread the idea of winding
slowly through the sandy flats of Holland, and made
up their minds to proceed by land to Rotterdam.
They missed in their haste the pleasure of watching
the splendid effects of dawn and sunset on what
seems like a silver lake, and the peaceful charm of
drifting past willowy shores and the wharves of the
river-side towns, as Wordsworth has it :
More perfect was the pleasure
When hurrying forward, till the slackening stream
Spread like a spacious mere ; we then could measure
A smooth free course along the watery gleam,
Think calmly on the past, and mark at leisure
Features which else had vanished like a dream.
The travellers seem to have found nothing worth

42 TOUR OF 1814
remarking in the whole course of their journey by
land. The slow diligence crawled in a long day
over the eight leagues between Cologne and Cleves.
For the drive to Rotterdam we must refer to a
more lively report. " Sure nothing," says Lady
Mary Wortley Montague, " can be more agreeable
than travelling in Holland : the whole country
appears a large garden ; the roads are well paved,
shaded on each side with rows of trees, and
bordered with large canals full of boats passing and
repassing. Every twenty paces gives you the
prospect of some villa, and every four hours that of
a large town, so surprisingly neat I am sure you
would be charmed with them." Rotterdam, our
travellers remarked, was wonderfully clean : " The
Dutch even wash the outside brickwork of their
houses." For the rest, they could find little to
admire. The roads, they thought, were too narrow
and sandy ; the windmills too near the carriage-way ;
the flax drying against the treees had a disagreeable
smell, and the canals were full of " enormous frogs
and toads " : " the only sight that refreshed the eye
was the delicious verdure of the fields." It is curious
to observe how closely the writer of the Journal
noticed insects and reptiles. In the central plain
of France she mentions the multitude of white
butterflies that hovered about the chalky road ; on

SWITZERLAND AND THE RHINE 43
the way to Besan90n she tells us how " a thousand
beautiful summer insects skimmed over the streams " :
at Geneva her attention is given at once to the
chirping grasshoppers, the humming of sun-loving
insects, the pleasure of relieving fallen cockchafers,
and watching the motions of "a myriad of lizards."
When they reached Nimeguen they had nothing
to say about the size of the great church or the
beauties of the sloping hill; but they mentioned
the " turf-fortifications " and the flying-bridge over
the Waal, which Lady Mary had described in her
Letters. She had loved to linger among the ruins
of the Walkenhof and the tall trees mirrored in the
stream. She was reminded of Nottingham and the
silver Trent, and declared that one has but to
exchange the names of two rivers, " and there is no
distinguishing the prospect." The houses in each
case were built one above the other, and stood
intermixed among trees and gardens. Julius
Caesar's Tower had much the same situation as
Nottingham Castle. It is true, she admits, that the
fortifications make a considerable difference : " All
the learned in the art of war bestow great commend
ation upon them. For my part, I shall content my
self with telling you 'tis a very pretty walk on the
ramparts, on which there is a tower, very deservedly
called the Belvidera, where people go to drink

44 TOUR OF 1814
coffee and tea, and enjoy one of the finest prospects
in the world." " I must not forget to take notice of
the bridge, which appeared very surprising to me : it
is large enough to hold hundreds of men, with horses
and carriages ; they give the value of an English
twopence to get upon it, and then away they go,
bridge and all, to the other side of the river, with
so slow a motion, one is hardly sensible of any at
all." On the evening of the 8th of September, in the
Journal called the 8th of August by mistake, Shelley
and his party sailed from Rotterdam to the Thames,
after being detained for two days at Maasluys, a
little above the bar. Like Lady Mary in her yacht,
they were " tossed very handsomely " in crossing ;
but they reached Gravesend on the third day after
leaving the Dutch coast, "after an unexpectedly
short navigation."

<:*(•

TOUR OF 1816 : THE LAKE OF GENEVA
In the summer of 18 16 the same trio took up their
residence for about three months in the environs of
Geneva. They reached Paris on the 8th of May,
but were detained by some trouble about passports.
The French Government had become more circum
spect since the escape of the Comte de Lavalette,
who had been condemned to death after Waterloo
" as an accomplice in Buonaparte's treason " ; but
his" guard had allowed him to slip out of prison in
his wife's clothes, and he had been smuggled abroad
about the beginning of January. The travellers
made their way to Troyes by the route which they
had followed two years before; but instead of
taking the turn to Pontarlier, they proceeded by
way of Dijon to Geneva. They passed Dole without
waiting for the view of Mont Blanc, which is visible
from the hills though a hundred miles away. The
foot of Jura was reached at Poligny, where the
houses are overshadowed by a cliff that rises
suddenly from the plain. "We proceeded," says

46 TOUR OF x8i6
the Journal, " by the light of a stormy moon to
Champagnolles, in the depth of the mountains":
the serpentine road clung on one side to the preci
pice, and the other side was "a gulf fiUed by the
darkness of the driving clouds." The next day was
spent in passing the forest, which filled the clefts of
the valleys and wound high into the regions of frost.
The snow fell fast, the sun occasionally breaking out
and illuminating the deep ravines : as the evening
advanced the storm was fiercer, and began to impede
their way as they approached Les Rousses and the
Swiss frontier. From Les Rousses there are two
roads to Geneva : the one by Nion, in Swiss terri
tory, the other by Gex, for which latter their pass
ports had been arranged ; the trifling difficulty was
settled in the usual fashion. They hired four horses
for Nion, with ten men to hold up the carriage,
and left Les Rousses at six in the evening, the
snow and darkness depriving them of the expected
view of the Lake of Geneva and the Alps in the
distance. Near Geneva it was all sunshine again. They
established themselves in the Hotel de Londres at
Secheron, about a mile and a half from the city, and
were joined there soon afterwards by Lord Byron,
accompanied by Dr. Polidori and the rest of his suite.
" We see the lovely lake, blue as the heavens which

THE LAKE OF GENEVA 47
it reflects, and sparkling with golden beams " : we
are shown the smiling slopes of the Pays de Vaud,
ridges of black mountains, and Mont Blanc in its
majesty. Such is the view reflected by the lake.
A few words out of Byron's Journal will show that
the picture was not overcoloured. On July the
20th he writes : " I observed for some time the
distinct reflection of Mont Blanc and Mont Argentifere
in the calm of the lake, while I was crossing in my
boat : the distance of these mountains from their
mirror is sixty miles." Shelley and Byron had
joined in purchasing a little craft, in which they
made constant expeditions. " You know our attach
ment to water-excursions. Every evening we sail on
the lake, which is delightful, whether we glide over
a glassy surface or are speeded along by a strong
wind." The first letter is full of the gaiety of the
spring. " I feel as happy as a new-fledged bird,"
says its writer, "and hardly care what twig I fly
to, so that I may try my new-found wings." " We
read Latin and Italian during the heats of noon."
We know from other sources that Shelley during
this year read Lucretius, Pliny's Letters, and the
Annals and " Germany " of Tacitus ; and we may
conclude that he kept up the reading of Ariosto,
Tasso, and Alfieri, which he had commenced not
long before. The list of English works for the same

48 TOUR OF 1816
year included " Paradise Lost," the " Faery Queen,"
and a translation of " Don Quixote." Later in the
season, he tells us, the friends used to crowd round
a blazing wood-fire at Montalfegre or the Villa
Diodati, amusing themselves with German ghost-
stories ; and it was from a playful competition in
imitating those horrors that the romance of " Frank
enstein " took its origin.
The next letter was written at the Campagne
Chapuis, or Montalegre, near the Hill of Coligny, on
the " Bellerive " or eastern shore of the lake. A small
garden divided the cottage from the shore, and
farther up the hill, across a vineyard, was Byron's
" divine Diodati." They had exchanged the view of
Mont Blanc for the dark-frowning Jura. The letter
deplores a break-up of the weather and the torrents
of an almost perpetual rain. " The thunderstorms
that visit us are grander and more terrific than I
have ever seen before : we watch them as they
approach, observing the lightning play among the
clouds in various parts of the heavens and dart in
jagged figures upon the piny heights of Jura." One
of these storms is described in " Frankenstein."
The narrator is crossing the lake at night in order
to reach Plainpalais, and during the short voyage he
sees the pallid lightnings playing round the head of
Mont Blanc in fantastic figures. The clouds seemed

THE LAKE OF GENEVA 49
to advance very rapidly, and the thunder broke with
a crash above him. " The storm, as is often the
case in Switzerland, appeared at once in various
parts of the heavens." The most violent commotion
was exactly north of the town ; another storm
illumined the Jura with faint flashes ; " and another
darkened and sometimes disclosed the Mole, a peaked
mountain to the east of the lake." Byron touches
on the same subject in " Childe Harold," where he
tells us how the lake was Ht at night by phosphoric
fires : And now the glee
Of the loud hills shakes with its mountain-mirth.
As if they did rejoice o'er a young earthquake's birth.
" The thunder-storms," he says, " to which these
lines refer, occurred on the 13th of June 18 16, at
midnight; I have seen among the Acroceraunian
mountains of Chimari several more terrible, but
none more beautiful." We may see how the two
poets were becoming accustomed to use a common
store of images. We recognise Shelley's vision of
Mont Blanc, where the old Earthquake-daemon
teaches lessons of ruin to her young, and his
repeated allusions to the snows of Chimari and
Arethusa's couch "in the Acroceraunian moun
tains " ; and we shall find Byron in the same way
borrowing from Shelley his metaphor of the

so TOUR OF jSi6
" broken mirror," and weaving into " Manfred " the
words which had first occurred to Shelley's mind
in the Vale of Chamouni.
The description of Geneva is very imperfect, and
there was an obvious mistake about Plainpalais.
The writer of the letter supposed that this was the
promenade where some of the Magistrates were
murdered in the Revolution : this is situated within
the walls, and is the place where a bust of
Rousseau was set up. The promenade was aban
doned in consequence of the massacre, and the
citizens thenceforth resorted to Plainpalais, which
extends its garden-like expanse from the city wall
to the crags of Mont Salfeve. This letter contains
a charming description of the vine-dressers' songs.
" The theme of their ballads consists of shepherds,
love, flocks, and the sons of kings who fall in love
with beautiful shepherdesses. Their tunes are
monotonous, but it is sweet to hear them in the
stillness of evening, while we are enjoying the sight
of the setting sun, either from the hill behind our
house or from the lake."
The tour of the lake is described by Shelley him
self in a letter to Thomas Love Peacock. This
letter bears the date of July the 12th and the
address of Montalegre, but with the exception of
a few lines at the end it had been written at Vevey

THE LAKE OF GENEVA 51
nearly a fortnight before. It contains an abstract
of the whole voyage, which, as he said, lasted eight
days, " and if you have a map of Switzerland, you
can follow me." Shelley and Byron started in their
boat from Montalegre at half-past two in the after
noon of June the 23rd ; on Saturday, the 30th,
they quitted Ouchy, " and after two days' pleasant
sailing arrived at Montalegre on Sunday evening."
It seems that neither Shelley nor Byron had ever
studied the "Nouvelle Heloise," which had been
written many years before either of them was born.
They now read it for the first time, and found that
in some parts it formed an excellent guide-book.
The travellers threw themselves with zeal into an
attempt to identify the very places where its imagi
nary incidents might have occurred ; and they were
probably unaware at the time that its author had
admitted the existence of topographical errors and
transpositions of scenery, in some cases due to
carelessness and in others to a desire to lead the
reader astray. There was something about the
book which fascinated Shelley for a time, even
while he disagreed with its sentiments ; but in the
"Triumph of Life" he placed its author among
those who fell disgraced in the Valley of Oblivion :
" I have suffered what I wrote, and viler pain, and
so my words have seeds of misery." The matter has

Sa TOUR OF 1816
long ceased to be important, but Meillerie is still
"enchanted ground," even if Rousseau were "no
magician." Shelley's letter contains a series of
miniature sketches, bold in outline and infused with
a delicate brightness. He touches lightly on the
traditions received from the villagers and boatmen ;
it would be useless to expect any discussion of their
historical value. A three-hours' row brought the
strangers to a ruined tower, which was reported to
have been built by Caesar, when he shut in the
Helvetians with his famous Wall ; and it seems
that there had been three more of these " towers of
Julius," which the men of Geneva had used as
quarries when they fortified their town " alia mo-
dema." The neighbouring town of Hernance had
grown up round " a great hall of Burgundy " ; it
was founded ages ago by a Queen of the Barbarians,
and had been reduced to ruin by the armies of
Berne, "who burnt and ravaged everything they
could find." In the evening the tourists arrived at
Nerni, and they noticed as they paced the beach
how the line of " the purple and misty waters " was
broken by two craggy islands near the shore.
Shelley stood by the waterside and watched the
fish sporting on the surface and crowding up to
catch the insects that fell from the rocks. Lake
Leman is celebrated for its " Umbla," or Ombre, for the

THE LAKE OF GENEVA S3
pike at the outlet of the Rhone, and the giant lake-
trout known as truite saumonne'e. Byron might re
member the supper provided for Walpole and Gray :
for he was in correspondence with old Mr. Bonstetten,
who remembered Gray as "the most melancholy
and gentlemanlike of all possible poets." " One
night," the pensive poet had written, " we ate part
of a trout taken in the lake that weighed thirty-
seven pounds : they assured us that it was not
uncommon to catch them of fifty pounds. They are
dressed here, and sent to Paris on some great
occasions — nay, even to Madrid, as we were told."
The fish that Shelley observed were probably of the
kind called ferra, looking like something between a
white-trout and a herring. This is, indeed, shown
by their being classed as Coregontis Clupeoides.
They are hardly to be distinguished from the
" gwyniad " of Lake Bala, in North Wales, and the
" skellies " of UUeswater. Alexandre Dumas, who
knew all about gastronomy, has warned travellers
that the ferra should be served with the white wine
of Vevey ; and he declared that it was as good as
the lavalet of Neuchatel, and almost as delicate as
the shads that ascend the Seine in spring-time.
After walking up to the village, the visitors saw the
children playing at Genevan bowls, which somewhat
resembled "curling" on dry land, or at least had

S4 TOUR OF 1816
borrowed some incidents from "the roaring game."
The party looked out for a very uneven ground :
the first hand threw his bowl so as to rest where it
struck : " if that be a fortunate situation, the next
player pitches his bowl directly upon his adversary,
so as to make it spring away, while his own fixes
itself in the spot." Most of the children had their
throats enlarged by goitre, which argued something
wrong with the water-supply. The disease is very
local ; it is said that it existed in those days only
in one hamlet of the Vale of Chamouni ; but it was
admitted, on the other hand, that there was an idiot
in almost every family. Some of the peasants, before
tourists abounded, would have been glad to change
places with the cretins. "^ lis sont tres heureux," said
an old soldier to Dr. Moore : " if I had been one I
should not have had to work." "Would you take
a goitre" said the Doctor, " to be quit of rates and
taxes ? " " Tres volontiers, monsieur," was the reply :
" the one is just as good as the other."
The evening was spent in conversation about
Greece and the Islands. A servant had brightened
up the rooms, but the place still looked somewhat
disconsolate. Byron said that it was like the rough
parts of the Morea — "it is five years since I
have slept in such a bed " ; and he described his
wanderings in 1810-11, when he visited the Pasha

THE LAKE OF GENEVA 55
at Tripolitza, and made a tour by Napoli di
Romania and Argos.
As they rounded the promontory in the morning
the lake assumed a wilder aspect. The mountains
fell in broken ridges towards a broad bay ; the pine-
woods made a dark band between the icy rocks
aloft in the blue air and the groves of oak and
chestnut with " lawny fields " near the shore. The
next bay fronted the marshy plain formed by the
divided streams of the Drance, a glacier-torrent
which dashes down through lofty glens and squanders
itself in an expanse of sand and mud. The shallows
teem with fish, and are haunted by coots and crested
grebes and a multitude of shore-birds, for which the
boatmen find quaint names in their patois. The
curlew is a " crenet" ; the sandpipers are distin
guished by their cries, as the " sifflet," the " sifflasson,''
and the " tiou-tiou " ; and there is a " becassine " with
a note very different from the bleating of an English
snipe. The entrances of the river were crowded
with " besolets," or black-hooded terns, standing by
the streams or " winnowing up and down " in a
gull-like flight. " There were thousands of these
besolets," said Sielley ; " beautiful water-birds, like
sea-gulls, but smaller, and with purple on their
backs." The weather broke as they left the bay : a rainy

56 TOUR OF 1816
squall from the east was followed by a hot blast
from the south : the wind seemed to be in all
quarters, and there was " thunder out of a clear
sky," such as terrified the Roman poet. " During
our voyage," remarks Shelley, "on the distant
height of a hill, we saw a ruined castle, which re
minded me of those on the Rhine." In the evening
they put up at Evian-les-Bains, which was even
then a fashionable resort. There are alkaline
waters, said to be useful for the gout, and the rich
citizens of Geneva used to come over for the cure,
or to amuse themselves in a delightful retreat.
The town is situated on the old Roman road near
a plain " flanked with fine tall trees " : there was a
large and well-dressed company; but Shelley, being
in a desponding mood, could see nothing that was
even tolerable. " The appearance of the inhabitants,"
he wrote, "is more wretched, diseased, and poor
than I ever recollect to have seen."
A stormy passage brought the boat to Meillerie,
sailing in the shadow of mighty forests, under moun
tains " with icy points," rising straight above the
cliffs whose base was "echoing to the waves."
A torrent foamed through the gorge between a fir-
wood and clumps of oak trees : in the background
stood the cliffs of the Dent d'Oche, shutting out the
sight of the crest of ice, that covered it " in the

THE LAKE OF GENEVA 57
beginning of the world." The visitors took pains
to identify the exact places connected with the old
romance, just as at Clarens they were pleased at
being shown the place of the "visionary woods"
and disturbed at the " brutal outrage " which had
obliterated their imaginary growth. Rousseau, said
Byron, was unfortunate about his " local habitations."
" The Prior of Great St. Bernard has cut down
some of his woods for the sake of a few casks of
wine ; " and Buonaparte had levelled part of the rocks
of Meillerie in improving the Simplon route. The
road was an excellent piece of work ; but the poet
could hardly agree with the remark made in his
presence, that "La route vaut mieux que les souve
nirs." Both Byron and Shelley have left accounts of the
dangerous squall in which their boat was nearly
capsized. " I had the fortune," said the former,
" good or evil as it might be, to sail from Meillerie,
where we landed for some time, to St. Gingoux
during a lake-storm, which added to the magnificence
of all around, although occasionally accompanied by
danger to the boat, which was small and over
loaded." Shelley's account is far more highly
coloured. The waves, he writes, were of a frightful
height, and they covered the whole surface with " a
chaos of foam." The boatman was slow in releasing

58 TOUR OF 1816
the sheet, and the waves began to come in. Byron,
of course, was an excellent swimmer. "He took
off his coat," says Shelley, " I did the same, and we
sat with our arms crossed, every instant expecting
to be swamped." Shelley's courage was indomitable,
as appears from several incidents of his life, and it
is therefore the more interesting to learn what his
feelings were when his life, as he thought, was in
peril " from the immensity of the waves." " I felt
in this near prospect of death a mixture of sensa
tions, among which terror entered, though subor-
dinately. My feelings would have been less painful
had I been alone : but I know that my companion
would have attempted to save me, and I was over
come with humiliation when I thought that his life
might have been risked to preserve mine." Know
ing what happened afterwards behind the sea-fog
and under a black cloud in the Gulf of Spezia, must
we not feel that in these words we have a glimpse
of his actual fate, as if we saw the darkness opened
and Shelley courageous in death? It seemed, said
Trelawny, after the bodies had been found, that he
probably went down at once, " for he was unable to
swim, and had always declared that in case of wreck
he would vanish instantly, and not imperil others in
the endeavour to save him."
St. Gingoux was even more beautiful than Meillerie.

THE LAKE OF GENEVA 59
The mountains are higher, and they descend " more
abruptly " to the lake. " On high the aerial sum
mits still cherish great depths of snow in their ravines
and in the paths of their unseen torrents." The
forests, we are told, seemed to have become deeper :
"the chestnut gives a peculiarity to the scene,
which is most beautiful, and will make a picture in
my memory." They saw a huge tree which had
been overthrown by the storm earlier in the day ;
and Byron in his " Childe Harold " added a note to
the same effect : " We found that the wind had been
sufficiently stormy to blow down some fine old
chestnut trees on the lower parts of the mountains."
They now looked out upon the mouths of the Rhone,
where a line of " tremendous breakers " marked its
confluence with the lake. The turbid waters seemed to
mix unwillingly with the "azured crystal," as if fearing
to soil its purity ; yet when they looked around they
perceived that the whole expanse between the shores
had been formed as a channel for such a river to fill.
Shelley reverted to the phrase more than once when
he was passing through the ravine " which is at once
the couch and the creation of the Arve."
As Byron always rose late, his companion had
time for a long visit to the waterfalls above St.
Gingoux. The whole river was but a chain of
cataracts, whirling between the caverned rocks, and

6o TOUR OF x8i6
drenching the foliage with a perpetual spray. The
path sometimes left the rocky banks and deviated
into meadows and pastures : " and in these meadows,"
said Shelley, " I gathered a nosegay of such flowers
as I never saw in England."
Being as yet no botanist, Shelley gave us no
details as to the particular kinds that he admired.
If exact information were required, it might be
conveniently found in Ray's list of the plants in
this neighbourhood. " Our long stay at Geneva,"
said the traveller, "and that in the proper season
for ' simpling ' gave us leisure to search for and
advantage in finding many species of plants in the
neighbouring fields and mountains " ; and he adds a
list of all the " simples," unknown or rarely found at
home, which he observed near the streams and in
the woods, and generally in the zone of vegetation
from the lake to the summit of Mont Salfeve.
The poet was up with the day, as if, like his own
figure of the morning breeze, he were fed with
" dews and sunrise " ; the boatmen were lounging
about the pier, and the craft lay idle and waiting :
What think you, as she lies in her green cove.
Our little sleeping boat is thinking of ?
If morning dreams are true, why I should guess
That she was dreaming of our idleness.
And of the miles of watery way
We should have led her by this time of day 1

THE LAKE OF GENEVA 6i
" After breakfast we sailed for Clarens, determining
first to see the three mouths of the Rhone, and then
the Castle of Chillon." The day was fine and the
water calm. Byron is seen entering in fine spirits,
excited perhaps at what he thought to be an early
start :The mom is up again, the dewy morn.
With breath all incense and with cheek all bloom,
Laughing the clouds away with playful scorn.
And living as if earth contained no tomb,
And glowing into day : we may resume
The march of our existence.
Sailing to Chillon, they looked toward the head of
the lake, and saw the white houses of Villeneuve
crowding about the shore, the tower of La Bouverie
under the cliff, the huge mountains of the Oberland
"clothed in clouds," and the willowy plain of the
Valais. In describing the castle we shall follow
Byron's account in the main. It is situated between
the towns of Villeneuve and Clarens, in Montreux ;
on the left are the entrances of the Rhone, and
beyond them the heights above Meillerie and St.
Gingoux. The neighbouring districts of the Pays de
Vaud were inhabited by the descendants of the
Protestant refugees from Piedmont and Savoy, and
in the times of persecution the prisons at Chillon
were filled with the supporters of the Reformed

62 TOUR OF x8i6
doctrine. Close to the walls the water is said to be
eight hundred feet deep ; and Byron adopted even a
more imposing measure :
A thousand feet in depth below
Its massy waters meet and flow ;
Thus much the fathom line was sent
From Chillon's snow-white battlement.
Behind the castle there is a torrent, leaping down
"channelled rocks," to which Byron paid another
visit a few weeks afterwards. His journal gives us
an entertaining account of the noisy or drunken
gendarme who had shown them the black gallows-
beam and the deep cells that might be flooded in a
moment. He was just like Bllicher, says Byron,
" and to my mind as great a man." He seems,
indeed, to have told the visitors nothing about the
famous Bonnivard, of whom they only heard after
wards from friends at Geneva. Shelley mentions
no date earlier than 1670 in connection with the
prison, and adds that the names carved on the pillars
were doubtless those of the prisoners, "of whom
now no memory remains." In the year 1 5 13
Francois de Bonnivard held office as " Prieur de St.
Victor " at Geneva. It was mainly owing to his
efforts that the city was not joined to Savoy under
an agreement between the Bishop and the Duke.
Bonnivard faced his enemies successfully for several

THE LAKE OF GENEVA 63
years, but was captured at last, though travelling
under the ducal safe-conduct, and was sent to the
" living grave " at Chillon. For about two years he
lay in the upper dungeon without any pretence of
trial Then the Duke visited the place, and ordered
him to be cast into the vault of the seven columns,
below the level of the lake. Released in 1536,
during the war between Savoy and Berne, he became
a citizen and councillor under the new constitution
of Geneva. His advice was always in favour of
moderation, and he even succeeded in checking the
zeal of the followers of Calvin. He served his
country like a hero, and wrote its history " with the
naivete oi the philosopher and the enthusiasm of a
patriot." The last of his good deeds was not the
least ; for he made a gift to the city of his precious
collection of early-printed books, which became the
foundation of its celebrated public library.
Such a man, wrote Byron, was worthy of the best
age of freedom ; and the " sad floor of Chillon "
becomes an altar in his sonnet, " for 'twas trod,
until his very steps have left a trace, by Bonnivard."
But when he first visited the place in company with
Shelley they knew as little about the patriot as
Victor Hugo's tourist who boasted at the Hotel
on the Rigi, "J'ai visite Chillon, oil est mort
Bolivar ! " Byron may have repaired all omissions

64 TOUR OF 1816
on his second arrival ; but Dumas makes up too
good a story about the stealthy movements of the
" Pilgrim of Eternity." A boat glides Hke a swan
below the castle-wall : there is a pale-faced man in
a Ipng black cloak, halting slightly as he stepped on
the shore : " he demanded to see the dungeon of Bon
nivard, and stayed there a long time alone, and when
the guardians entered the vault again, they found
the word ' Byron ' carved on the rock where the
martyr had been chained." It is, however, generally
believed that the inscription is an impudent forgery.
The guides at Clarens were not much better
than their colleague in the chateau. They chattered
about Rousseau, and continually mixed up the man
and his book. The visitors joined the haymakers
under the legendary trees ; and it was not until the
next day that they discovered how they had been
deceived about the "Bosquet." The chateau at
Clarens was " a square strong house," surrounded
by a double terrace, and approached by a steep road
lined with walnut and chestnut : as they roamed in
the deserted garden they picked roses for absent
friends; but on Byron's later visit he found the
terraces closed, and " the roses were gone with their
summer." Vevey, their next resting-place, is described as
most beautiful in its simpUcity : " its market-

?tF^K'?fe

THE LAKE OF GENEVA 65
place looks directly upon the mountains of
Savoy and the Valais, the lake, and the valley of
the Rhone." It was here that Byron stood gazing
at the Alps, " in the very eyes of Mont Blanc,"
when he heard an English voice, and the question,
" Did you ever see anything so rural ? " Here,
while lodging at " Le Cerf," the philosopher of
Geneva had long ago composed his romance : and
here, under the excitement of that tradition, Shelley
wrote all but the concluding lines of his brilliant
description of the lake.
They were detained at Ouchy by stress of weather,
but took an opportunity of visiting Gibbon's house
at Lausanne. We find in his Life an account of
its delightful situation. " Communicating with the
town on the north side, the south opened to a
garden of the extent of four acres, ornamented by
the taste of M. Deyverdun, where the cloudless sun of
summer was only shaded by the lovely green of the
groves of acacias." From the garden to the lake
the whole country was covered with meadows and
vineyards, interspersed here and there with villas
and picturesque chalets. " We were shown,"
writes Shelley, "the decayed summer-house where
he finished his History, and the old acacias on the
terrace from which he saw Mont Blanc after having
written the last sentence." We shall quote the

66 TOUR OF x8z6
very words of the historian : " It was on the day,
or rather night, of the 27th of June 1787, between
the hours of eleven and twelve, that I wrote the
last lines of the last page in a summer-house in my
garden. After laying down my pen, I took several
turns in a berceau or covered walk of acacias, which
commands a prospect of the country, the lake, and
the mountains. The air was temperate, the sky
was serene, the silver orb of the moon was reflected
from the waters, and all nature was silent. I will
not dissemble the first emotions of joy on the
recovery of my freedom, and perhaps the establish
ment of my fame." The sudden departure of his
cherished and accustomed toil, added Shelley, must
have left him, like the death of a dear friend, sad
and solitary. He does not notice the coincidence of
the anniversary, which Byron evidently had in his
mind. Byron wrote that evening to Mr. Murray :
" I enclose you a sprig of Gibbon's acacia and some
rose-leaves from his garden, which, with part of his
house, I have just seen : you will find honourable
mention in his Life made of this acacia, when he
walked out on the night of concluding his History :
the garden and summer-house, where he composed,
are neglected, and the last utterly decayed."
During the one interval of sunshine in a stormy
day, Shelley walked down to the pier, to watch the

THE LAKE OP GENEVA 67
waves. "A rainbow spanned the lake, or rather
rested one extremity of its arch upon the water, and
the other at the foot of the mountains of Savoy :
some white houses, I know not if they were those
of Meillerie, shone through the yellow fire." We
are reminded of the " sphere-fires '' above the
moist earth, and the marvellous imagery of " The
Cloud " :
From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape,
Over a torrent sea.
Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof.
The mountains its columns be.
The triumphal arch through which I march
With hurricane fire and snow.
When the powers of the air are chained to my chair
Is the million-coloured bow.

TOUR OF 1816: CHAMOUNI
Shelley's second letter to Peacock was written
piecemeal in the form of a diary. Its first portion,
dated the 22nd of July 18 16, contains an account
of the journey from Geneva to Chamouni : two days
afterwards, its writer added a description of the ice-
cave at the source of the Arveiron, and of a visit to
the Glacier des Bossons ; the entries for July the
25th contain the wonderful pictures of Montanvert
and the Mer de Glace; and the whole Journal
concludes on the 28th with the return of the party
to Montalegre. We should note the classical and
stately style of the opening passage, which resembles
Pliny's Letters in the facility shown in moulding
language into new forms for thought. "Whilst
you, my friend, are engaged in securing a home for
us, we are wandering in search of recollections to
embellish it." How could any one describe the
wonders of the surrounding scene ? He has read
the raptures of travellers, and must be warned by

TOUR OF x8x6: CHAMOUNI 69
their example. "To exhaust the epithets which
express the astonishment and the admiration, the
very excess of satisfied astonishment, where expec
tation scarcely acknowledged any boundary — is this
to impress upon your mind the images which fill
mine now even till it overflow ? "
The first stage of the journey took them only to
the gateway of the Alps. The day was cloudless,
and the two ladies found the heat very oppressive.
The ancient boundary of the Republic was reached
a little more than a mile from the city wall, the
territories of Savoy beginning at the brook of Chfene,
and extending as far as the Great St. Bernard.
The face of the country rises gradually from the
base of Mont Saleve to the Mole; though the soil
is chiefly composed of sand and debris, it seemed to
the travellers to be sufficiently fertile, and was at
any rate covered with corn-fields and orchards.
After passing the ravine of the Menoge torrent the
road mounted to the plateau of Nangy and Conta-
mines, the latter village lying huddled up between
the Arve and a hill that joins the Mole. A little
farther on they passed under a steep escarpment
of rock on which stood the ruins of the castle of
Faucigny, once the head of that great lordship which
included Mont Blanc and the Valley of Chamouni,
Bonneville, Cluses, and Sallanches, and many other

70 TOUR OF x8x6
thriving towns and villages. Those who have read
the earlier books on the Alps will remember that
Mont Blanc and its companions were long without
particular names, and were known in a general
phrase as the Montagnes Maudites or the Glacieres
du Faucigny. These names were applied to the
whole cordon between the Dent du Midi and the
Great St. Bernard ; but Mont Blanc was singled out
as " la Montagne Maudite " in a special sense, as
being a region known only to wild beasts and birds
of prey, " where the stiffened corpse of Nature was
lying in a winding-sheet." Shelley seems to have
been thinking of this when he described the abode
of the Earthquake-daemon :
A desert peopled by the storms alone.
Save where the eagle brings some hunter's bone,
And the wolf tracks her there. How hideously
Its shapes are heaped around, rude, bare, and high.
Ghastly and scarred and riven.
Bonneville was the capital of Faucigny before the
lordship became an appendage of Dauphine, at
least after the burning of Cluses, at the beginning of
the fourteenth centiiry. When the travellers reached
this point, they found that the peak or pyramid of the
Mole had completely lost its accustomed shape, and
stood over the Arve in a frowning ridge. On the
other side of the narrow defile rises the Brezon, with

CHAMOUNI 71
a steep face of cliff fronting the town, and green
terraces sloping on each side towards the stream.
The two mountains form a kind of gateway into
the higher Alps, but there is nevertheless a great
gap beside the Mole, where a huge mountain seems
to have fallen in ruin :
Mountains have fallen.
Leaving a gap in the clouds, and with the shock
Rocking their Alpine brethren : filling up
The ripe green valleys with destruction's splinters,
Damming the rivers with a sudden dash.
Which crushed the waters into mist, and made
Their fountains find another channel. Thus,
Thus in its old age did Mount Rosenberg.
Shelley mentions another celebrated instance.
Mont d'Anterne, a high mountain near Servoz,
began to fall on a certain Sunday in 175 1. The
dust rose in black clouds like columns of smoke,
and it was reported at Turin that a terrible volcano
had broken out. The King of Sardinia at once
despatched Vitaliano Donati, a famous Venetian
naturalist, to report on the nature of the disaster.
Donati was in time to see a great part of the fall,
and was able to trace it to the action of water
percolating from certain lakes, and to an abnormal
fall of snow, as may be seen in the works of De
Saussure.

72 TOUR OF x8i6
On leaving Bonneville the next morning the
tourists passed a fine stone bridge across the Arve,
and shortly afterwards entered the marshy valley of
Cluses, not so fertile as Shelley supposed ; a new
road led across the fields, and there was a fine view
of mountains on all sides. Above the heights
crowned with pine and chestnut they could see the
snow-peaks of the Morche and the Dent du Midi.
After a time, when the valley became narrow, the
road seemed to be forced by the river against the
side of the mountain. M. Leschevin of Geneva,
who wrote very shortly before that time, left an
interesting account of this part of the route. The
road was shaded by oaks and walnut-trees, and led
the traveller through the greenest of pastures. After
leaving the slopes of the Mole he descended into the
flat valley near Siongy, where stood the fine house
that had been the Chartreuse of the Reposoir, and
where once had been a tall belfry, destroyed by a
fanatical deputy in a wild crusade against steeples.
Here the travellers were but half a league from
Cluses, though nothing of the town could be seen.
There was a cirque or amphitheatre of cliffs,
enclosing a tract of meadows and oak-woods, with
out any apparent opening : then the road turned
suddenly to the right, and crossed the river, and
they looked down into a little arcaded town nestled
up against an enormous precipice.

CHAMOUNI 73
This little town of watchmakers had a somewhat
amusing history. The military importance of its
site had made it an object of favour to its ancient
lords. The inhabitants were permitted to fortify
their town and to practise the use of arms. Though
not exactly noble, the men of Cluses were free to
hold fiefs and lordships, and were exempt from tolls
in all the markets of Savoy. It is said that they
once destroyed an army by rolling down stones from
their heights ; it is certain that they were bold
enough to burn Bonneville, after their own town
was destroyed, and to bring back a number of
captured serfs to help in restoring their home.
There was a Marquis, who called himself their
feudal lord ; but his only privilege was to have the
tongue when a beast was killed. The Porter of
Cluses was a much greater man, for he was not only
the Executioner, but also Colonel of the Guard.
The greatest of all was the "Abbot of Basoche,"
•otherwise known as the Knight of the Popingay.
Every year they had a Fete Patriotique, or Wappen-
-shaw, in which noblemen from a distance were glad
to join. A wooden bird was set on a rock, and the
successful marksman, who knocked the prize from
its perch, at once became King of the Feast and
Mayor of the Town, whose duty was to create a new
burgess, and to open the ball in the evening with
the queen whom he had decked with a rose.

74 TOUR OF x8i6
The name of Cluses is derived from the gorge in
which the cliffs almost meet. " They press so closely
on the town," Dr. Moore wrote, about 1780, " that
when I stood in the principal street, each end of it
appeared to be perfectly shut up ; and wherever any
of the houses had fallen down, the vacancy was
plugged up in the same manner by a green moun
tain." Sir Frederick Eden wrote home a few years
later : " The mountains almost appear to close ; then
they open into spacious valleys, and every now and
then we catch a glimpse of the distant Alps and the
snowy head of Mont Blanc." The savage and
colossal gorge of Cluses reminded Shelley of Derby
shire. " The scene," he says, " differs from Matlock
only in its immense proportions and inaccessible
solitude." Mrs. Shelley discussed the same idea in
her romance. The country near Matlock in her
opinion resembled this part of Switzerland ; " but
everything is on a lower scale, and the green hills
want the crown of white Alps which attend on the
piny mountains." They had visited " the wondrous
cave," which might well be compared to the legend-
haunted " Caverne du Balme," and the little Cabinet
of Natural History, "where the curiosities are
disposed in the same manner as in the collections
at Servoz and Chamouni." All through this part of
the journey Shelley talked of home : he compared

CHAMOUNI 75
an innkeeper's little museum to what he had seen at
the lakes or Bethgelert, and the trays of curious
minerals at Chamouni to the specimens at Keswick
and Matlock and CUfton. A passage in Mrs.
Shelley's book seems to refer to a conversation
upon this point. " A tingling long-lost sense of
pleasure often came across me during the journey
to Mont Blanc : some turn in the road, some new
object, suddenly perceived and recognised, reminded
me of days gone by, and were associated with the
light-hearted gaiety of boyhood."
As the road goes from Balme towards Magland the
valleys open into those lawns embowered in green
leaves which M. Bourrit described with such artistic
enthusiasm. "The ravishing vision enchants me,
and follows me wherever I go. The emerald sward
is watered by the river below and shaded by tall
trees above : it is the theatre of my imagination,
and I can only pity and smile at the traveller
who thinks that he enjoys it as he trots by on his
mule or lies ensconced in his berline." Shortly
after the road left the rich and beautiful village of
Magland the travellers walked up to see the cascade
of the Nant d'Arpenaz, where a crystal brook falls
into the valley over a cliff about 800 feet high.
Shelley, it may be observed, adds half as much
again to its proper height, and makes the same

76 TOUR OF 1816
mistake with respect to the neighbouring cascade of
the " Egyptian Statue." "The violence with which
it fell," he remarks, " made it look more like some
shape which an exhalation had assumed than like
water, for it streamed beyond the mountain, which
appeared dark behind it." It is interesting to
observe how almost similar phrases may be used to
produce contrary effects. The waterfalls of the
Lotos-eaters, for instance, were taken by Tennyson
from what he had seen in the Pyrenees. In Shelley's
picture the evanescent cloud of spray floats upwards
across the black rock, and the fleecy foam of the
lesser fall rolls down upon the sculptured stone;
but the stream in the Lotos-land slants towards the
earth like mist before the wind, and the heavy veil
floats like a fine " cloth of tiffany," more suited to the
chmate of the South :
And like a downward smoke the slender stream
Along the cliffs to fall, and pause and fall, did seem.
A land of streams ! Some, like a downward smoke.
Slow-dropping veils of thinnest lawn, did go ;
And some through wavering lights and shadows broke.
Rolling a slumbrous sheet of foam below.
All the way from the Nant d'Arpenaz to St.
Martin the cliffs on the left side are broken into a
line of battlements, with cones of slaty rock, which
take a fine purple colour as the sun goes down.

CHAMOUNI i-j
St. Martin, where Shelley's party rested for the
night, is divided by a bridge from Sallanches, a
busy place, of which the other village forms an
unprosperous suburb. Our travellers did not cross
the river, and may not have known of the fine view
of Mont Blanc to be seen above the town. There
is a green hexagonal hill behind Sallanches, with a
ring of sharp rocks near the summit where the
Dome is seen far above the clouds. We read in
Sir Frederick Eden's journal how he was taken
there by Maxime the aesthetic guide, who was
called " le Baron de la Pierre Ronde " : " the setting
sun produced a fine appearance on Mont Blanc,
which looked like a sugar-loaf, and was tinged
perfectly pink: had I not seen it in the morning,
I should never have guessed that it was covered
with snow."
On the morning of the 22nd of July the party
proceeded by what was known as the " Grande
Route " to the valley of Servoz. The road was in
many places blocked with sand and stones brought
down by the Arve, the bed of the track torn up, and
the bridges damaged in the floods. It has long been
replaced by the modern carriage-road, which leads
from Sallanches, past the Bonnant and the ruins of
St. Gervais, and meets the old track a little beyond
the Pont Pelissier. In earlier times travellers had

78 TOUR OF x8x6
to force their way by a stony track along the heights
of Passi, where a number of Roman remains,
including two valuable inscriptions, show the line
of the ancient trade-route across the Salassian
territories. The difficulties of this route appear
in the records of Pococke's expedition, and we can
imagine the confusion that prevailed among his
crowd of armed attendants in charge of the tents
and baggage. " From Sallanches," he says, " the road
began to be stony and rough, and we were obliged,
not without danger, to wade through several brooks
and wood-waters that fall from the rocks. In this
manner, and with great difficulty, we got to Servoz,
a poor village : there we were obliged to pass along
the stony foot of a mountain, and at last we arrived
at a long valley from which we descried the ice-
mountains." The hillside of Passi, with its orchards and hay-
fields, and the sharp needle of Mont Varens in the
sky, looked almost artificially designed, like a scene
in a play. Two narrow pinnacles in front were
reared like masts against the sky, and the clouds fell
round them in folds, as if a huge ship were spreading
her sails to the wind. " On the other side," says
the theatrical Bourrit, " you have another coup d'ceil
for the stage " ; but we must remember that he was
a professional musician, and had an eye to operatic

'.•n !'

Cn)@MT Bt^CsJie . !ri5I®W ILAS m gMg®[i" t«-^

CHAMOUNI 79
effects. On arriving at the little village of Chede,
nearly opposite to St. Gervais, all travellers were
expected to mount a steep path that leads to a
cascade and a miniature lake. An immense body
of water dashed between the rocks, and cast a spray
which formed a mist around it : " in the midst of it
hung a multitude of sun-bows, which faded or
became unspeakably vivid as the inconstant sun
shone through the clouds." The rainbow seemed
to form a perfect circle, perhaps twenty feet in
diameter. We find an excellent description of its
appearance in " Manfred." Lord Byron says : " This
iris is formed by the rays of the sun over the lower
parts of the Alpine torrents : it is exactly like a
rainbow come down to pay a visit, and so close that
that you may walk into it. This effect lasts till
noon : It is not noon, the sun-bow's rays still arch
The torrent with the many hues of heaven.
And roll the sheeted silver's waving column
O'er the crag's headlong perpendicular.
The little Lac de Chede, so well known by
Bourrit's descriptions and drawings, and by the fine
picture which the Republic of Geneva presented to
M. Necker, is hardly more than a clear pool filled
by a trickling rivulet ; but the snowy Alps were
reflected in its mirror, and there were tall trees

8o TOUR OF x8i6
drooping over mossy rocks and "velvet lawns." It
does not follow from Shelley's omission to describe
the mountain-pool that he left the lawns of Chfede
unobserved. We have already noticed his enjoy
ment of " the dells of lawny expanse," and in the
Vale of Servoz he noticed openings in the forest
" with lawns of such verdure as he had never seen
before." In that fragment of an Essay on the
Coliseum which was expected " to rival, if not to
surpass, Corinne," Shelley compared the foliage on
the arches to the lawny dells of soft short grass
among the precipices of the Alps of Savoy. Medwin
quotes another passage in which the ruin itself is
likened to the ravine near Chamouni, as though " a
nurseling of man " had been transformed by en
chantment into a creation of Nature. The water
falling from its broken ledges sounds like the voice
of a stream in the forest : " changed to a mountain,
cloven with woody dells and shattered into toppling
precipices, even the clouds intercepted by its
summits supply eternal fountains with their rain."
Shelley was fond of natural history, and within
a few months after his return to England he gave
considerable attention to anatomy, and became " a
tolerable botanist." He was much interested in
the collection of mineral specimens which Joseph
Deschamps, the innkeeper at Servoz, had got

CHAMOUNI 8l
together under the instructions of M. Jurine and
other men of science at Geneva. Shelley mentions
Servoz as a place " where there are lead and copper
mines " ; and it is true that the village long formed
the headquarters of a French company that worked
the minerals of Upper Faucigny. They found
copper and silver-lead in this neighbourhood, besides
some rich beds of iron-ore ; and it was said that they
made steel as good as any at Sheffield or Langres,
and that their copper in bars was highly esteemed
by the watchmakers of Geneva and Cluses. The
undertaking seems never to have been very profit
able. The company had spent nearly a million
francs at Servoz before 1791 ; and at that date they
were only working at Foully, under Mont Chatelard,
at the western end of the Valley of Chamouni. When
the Revolution broke out, the directors emigrated,
and the whole business came to an end. The neigh
bourhood of Servoz, however, continued to be famous
for mineral specimens. M. Leschevin refers for their
description to the Journal des Mines, No. 5 (J-79S)-
Besides the black, gray, and red hornblendes, and
one or two stray deposits of gypsum and slate among
the primitive rocks, he mentions the fine pink crystals
of feldspar, a white fluor containing fibres of silver
and copper, and pyrites containing copper and gold.
He added a piece of advice for tourists, which
7

S2 TOUR OF x8x6
no one was likely to adopt : " Go to the mountains
and get the specimens for yourselves; for though
Deschamps is an excellent fellow, il vend un peu cher
ses coquilles."
" We saw in this cabinet," says Shelley, " some
chamois' horns, and the horns of an exceedingly
rare animal called the bouquetin, which inhabits the
deserts of Mont Blanc." This was the ibex, a
mountain-goat, which Shelley classified by mistake
as " a kind of deer." The hunters called it " ibsch "
or " stein-bock." It is believed that a few of these
animals remain on Mont Is^ran, where they are
strictly preserved by the King of Italy ; but in
Switzerland, Savoy, and the Tyrol the species is
said to be extinct. We hear a good deal about the
ibex in the Swiss literature of the seventeenth cen
tury. In Plantin's " Helvetia," for example, we are
told that the animal can only live among the highest
Alps, and would become blind in any "warmer
climate ; that the oldest bucks have as many as
twenty ridges on their curved horns ; and that when
the " ibsch " is about to die he clinches his horns
round a peak, and twists himself round and round,
until he grinds down the edge of those " anchored
hooks," and falls dying into the gulf below. Ray
has given us a charming account of a visit to the
museum at Glarus in 1665 • " Here we saw the

CHAMOUNI 83
horns of the ibex, which they call stein-bock, some
what like goats' horns, only larger. The people said
that the animal was long extinct in that neighbour
hood, but that specimens might be found in the
Valais or in the Archbishopric of Salzburg. They
had plenty of chamois, which Ray calls "gimpses,"
and " of the Alpine mice, or marmottoes, they
had a good store." M. Bourrit saw herds of ibex on
the range of Mont Blanc upon more than one occa
sion. He describes a herd that he saw in 1781
when crossing the Col de la Seigne to Courmayeur.
" This part of the Alps," he said, " is the Paradise
of these peaceful creatures," and there were such
ice-firths and labyrinths and " pathless Belvederes "
that he could not beheve that the breed would ever
be destroyed. Shelley saw the huge ibex-horns both
at Servoz and Chamouni; he described them as
" broad, massy, pointed at the ends, and surrounded
with a number of rings " ; but they are more
accurately described as being square-fronted, and
marked with transverse ridges and knobs, which
indicate the animal's age, like the circular ridges
added year by year to the horns of the Indian
buffalo. After seeing the collections at Chamouni, Shelley
added a few words about some other wild animals.
He notes that there are no bears in that region,

84 TOUR OF 1816
though he had heard that they were sometimes seen
near Lucerne. Bears, it is known, still exist in the
Jura and in some parts of the Grisons, and they
occasionally make their way into the Valais. " The
wolves," said Shelley, " are more powerful than the
fiercest and strongest dog." " Did I tell you," he
asks Peacock, " that there are troops of wolves in
these mountains ? In the winter they descend into
the valleys, which the snow occupies six months of
the year, and devour everything that they can find
out of doors." He may have been thinking again
of the legends of Bethgelert, or may be referring to
the adventure that befell Gray and his companion,
when they crossed Mont Cenis in muffs and beaver-
masks, and Horace Walpole's black spaniel ran by
the side of the chaise. " It was noonday, and the
sun shone bright, when all of a sudden from the
woodside out rushed a great wolf, caught the dog
by the throat, and rushed up the hill with him in its
mouth. This was done in a quarter of a minute : we
all saw it, and yet the servants had not time to draw
their pistols or to do anything to save the dog."
Two roads led from the village towards Chamouni.
One was a mere track from the inn at Servoz to
the works which the Mining Company had left
standing at Foully. The other was the Route des
Monties, with easier grades and more convenient in

CHAMOUNI 8s
every way, though some of the earlier tourists had
described it as the steepest and roughest road that
ever was seen. Such as it was, Shelley deter
mined to use this road, which had been widened and
improved a short time before, so that the mules no
longer jammed their riders against the cliff, and
there was even room for a little light carriage to
pass along. We may take from " Frankenstein "
a description of what they saw after leaving the
deserted lead-and-copper mine at the foot of Mont
Vandagne. " Still as I ascended higher, the Valley
of Servoz assumed a more magnificent and astonish
ing character: ruined castles hanging on the
precipices and piny mountains, the impetuous Arve,
and cottages here and there peeping forth from
among the trees, formed a scene of singular
beauty." There is a reference here to the "haunted
ruin " of the Chateau de St. Michel, about half a
league from Servoz, as to which the peasants told
many wild stories of buried treasure, and fiends,
and sorcerers. About a mile farther the track
descends abruptly to the Pont Pelissier, which
spanned the Arve and its ravine. The structure
was of wood, the original stone bridge having been
carried away in a flood : there was always a danger
from the river, or those torrents of mud and
powdered rocks from the side-valleys which the

86 TOUR OF 1816
natives call the " Nant Sauvage" or the bursting
of the pent-up waters of a glacier, such as came
down the Bonnant, not long ago, to overwhelm the
Baths of St. Gervais. Standing on this bridge,
Shelley could look into the transverse ravine which
leads straight up to Chamouni. " Mont Blanc was
before us," he writes, "but it was covered with
cloud ; its base, furrowed with dreadful gaps, was
seen above." Between the driving clouds they
saw the white shapes of the Dome and the Aiguille
du Midi. If we may quote Mrs. Shelley once
more, the scene was made sublime by the mighty
Alps ; " their white and shining pyramids and domes
towered above all as belonging to another earth,
the habitation of another set of beings." In the
ravine above the bridge the vegetation suffers a
change. The trees are of a sable rusty hue, and
are huddled in a sunless crowd, though for an
instant one may see the dazzling snow through a
gap in the frondage. The ravine is black in its
depth below, " so deep that the very roaring of the
untameable Arve cannot be heard above." The Valley
of Chamouni appears as one crosses the stony
ridge. "The snowy mountains are its immediate
boundaries. " I saw no more ruined castles," says
Frankenstein : " immense glaciers approached the
road : I heard the rumbling thunder of an avalanche.

CHAMOUNI 87
and marked the smoke of its passage." That
avalanche has appeared in many descriptions of
the scene. Shelley tells us how he felt that there
was something earthly in the sound, and how they
watched the whirling cloud and heard at intervals
"the bursting of its fall." At one point it displaced
the dark torrent that bursts from the Glacier of
Taconnay, and presently they saw the "tawny-
coloured waters " spread out across the ravine that
formed their bed :
Hark, the rushing snow.
The sun-awakened avalanche ! whose mass,
Thrice sifted by the storm, had gathered there
Flake after flake.
The first stream to cross their path was the Nant
de Nayin, rolling in its channel a mixed de'bris
of slate and quartz. The roofs of the well-built
houses at Ouches are supplied by the vertical strata
of slate in the neighbouring mountain. The muddy
stream of the Gria, just outside the village, is the
most dangerous of all. It comes from a small
glacier of the same name, which hangs over a bed
of gypsum, which is called "Gria" in the local
dialect. M. Bourrit has left a vivid account of his
escape when he was trying to pass the stepping-
stones, and a mass of mud and water, rolling rocks
and trees before it, came roaring down in a moment,

88 TOUR OF x8i6
" like lava from a volcano." Just beyond the Gria is
the ravine of the Taconnay, where they saw the
avalanche, and it was not long before they crossed a
wooden bridge over the stream fed by the Glacier
des Bossons. The glacier at that time was much
lower on the hillside than it is at present. It had
advanced about three hundred feet even during
the twelvemonth that preceded Shelley's visit.
"We saw this glacier, which comes close to the
fertile plain, as we passed : its surface was broken
into a thousand unaccountable figures ; conical and
pyramidical crystallisations more than fifty feet high
rise from its surface, arid precipices of ice of
dazzling splendour overhang the woods and mea
dows of the vale." Two days afterwards Shelley
visited the ice-fall again with his guide, of whom
he says, "he is the only tolerable person that I
have seen in this country." This was "Ducr^e,"
or " Ducroz " as he would be called in the patois,
who had apparently conducted the party all the way
from St. Martin. The verge of the glacier presented
a most vivid picture of desolation. The pines were
overthrown and shattered at its base : the meadows
perished under the accumulated sand and stones :
"no one dares to approach it," says the Poet, "for
the enormous pinnacles of ice, which perpetually
fall, are perpetually reproduced."

"#;

(PStfJ'U' g>°^® WHB^OS

CHAMOUNI 89
There many a precipice
Frost and the sun in scorn of mortal power
Have piled : dome, pyramid, and pinnacle,
A city of Death, distinct with many a tower
And wall impregnable of gleaming ice :
Yet not a city, but a flood of ruin.
Is there, that from the boundaries of the sky
Rolls its perpetual stream.
On arriving at " Le Prieure," the principal village
in the district, the guide took the visitors to the
expensive Hotel de Londres, then kept by M. Tairraz,
assisted by his sons Jean-Pierre, Michel, and Victor ;
they were all experienced guides, and the innkeeper
himself is stated by Mr. Coolidge to have done much
towards making the mule-path up to the Montanvert.
The " Angleterre," originally founded by Madame
Couteran, had enjoyed the best reputation among
the citizens of Geneva ever since the days of De
Saussure; but we are told that her son failed to
propitiate the guides of St. Martin and Sallanches,
who in revenge took all their clients to the
" Londres." These two inns were afterwards
united under one management. M. Bourrit, de
scribing the place about 1785, pays a high tribute of
praise to the original " Angleterre " ; but he says
that two other auberges had been built, the one near
the entrance of the village, belonging to M. Tairraz,
and the other at the further end of the street. The

90 TOUR OF x8i6
history of the third inn is not quite clear. Some
take it to have been connected with the " Union,"
kept by MM. Charles and Simond ; but this house
was not built until 1817, and was situated near the
entrance of the village. It may be observed, how
ever, that Sir Frederick Eden stated in his diary for
1 79 1 that on proceeding to Chamouni in that year he
found "an excellent inn, called Les Balances."
As soon as any party of travellers was reported
as having arrived at their inn, they were at once
assailed by guides seeking engagements, and vendors
of curiosities with plants and minerals for sale, and
the only hope of escape lay in promising to go as
soon as possible to Paccard's Museum and the
collections of Joseph Cartier and David Payot. All
these men, we are assured, were persons of intelli
gence and even of some culture in their various
ways ; and Paccard, who had been one of De
Saussure's guides, was specially praised as being
" wise, well-instructed, and trustworthy." But
Shelley appears to have been intensely irritated
either by the fine appearance of the hotel, or by the
pertinacity of the peasants in pressing their wares,
and he includes them all, from Paccard downwards,
in one sweeping blast of condemnation : " There is
a cabinet of Histoire Naturelle, the proprietor of
which is the very vilest specimen of that vile species

CHAMOUNI 91
of quack that, together with the whole army of
aubergistes and guides, and the entire mass of the
population, subsists on the weakness and credulity
of travellers as leeches subsist on the sick." It
would have been more entertaining if he had made
acquaintance with the tribes of Couttet and Carrier
and Tournier, and enquired after old Lambard, sur-
named "le Grande-Jorasse," and Marie Paradis,
then "Marie Frasseron dite Mont-Blanc," who had
made the great ascent in 1809 with the Balmats and
two of the young men of the Hotel de Londres. He
may even have seen the heroine, as she owned a
little cottage on the mountainside, where travellers
could buy souvenirs. When the great Dumas came
over the Tete-Noire, after partaking of a biftek d'Ours
at Martigny, his first thought was to send an invita
tion to " M. Jacques Balmat, dit Mont-Blanc," whom
he celebrated in his " Travels " as the Christopher
Columbus of Chamouni. He wanted to learn at first
hand the story of 1786, when Balmat and Dr.
Paccard had ascended Mont Blanc as the pioneers
of De Saussure. The gray old " mountain- wolf,"
they say, took a long draught, and smacked his lips
and blinked his eyes, and told them how he had got
to the top alone, the Doctor being snow-blind and
frost-bitten ; " he had reached a point where no
man, or eagle, or chamois, had been before ; he was

92 TOUR OF x8x6
the King of the Mountain, the statue on the
monstrous pedestal"; and afl his subjects in the
village below saw him drag up the Doctor, crippled
as he was, to make the conquest complete. Pierre
Payot, the only other guest, took Dumas next day
to the Mer de Glace, and showed him the Fountain
of Caillet, which, in Payot's opinion, was " immortal
ised " as the resort of the unfortunate shepherdess
in Florian's pastoral of "Claudine."
Shelley and the ladies rode up beyond the fountain
on their first expedition, but were turned back by
the rain before they were much more than half-way
to the ice-field. The weather had broken soon after
the start, and they all returned wet through. The
incident appears in " Frankenstein," with additions
filled in after a later and more successful ascent.
" I looked on the valley beneath : vast mists were
rising from the rivers which ran through it, while
rain poured from the dark sky, and added to the
melancholy impression I received from the objects
around me." We are told that the whole scene was
" terrifically desolate," and that in a thousand spots
the broken and fallen trees showed the track of the
winter avalanches. The difficulties of the road are
well known. It is like walking " on a steep slate-
roof " two thousand feet high : at every mauvais pas
there is a chance of rolling down to the Arveiron

CHAMOUNI 93
brawling below; there are snow-slopes and falling
stones, and at one place in particular there is actual
danger of being struck by fragments from a range of
disintegrated rocks. "Our guides," said Shelley,
" desired us to pass quickly " : and only a few years
before, it had been the practice to forbid talking, for
fear of producing " concussion of air " sufficient to
cause an accident. De Saussure, according to M.
Leschevin, used to fire a pistol on reaching this
point, and the discharge was always followed in a
short time by a fall of loose blocks. The Hut or
Cabin of Montanvert was set up under the personal
superintendence of M. Bourrit. When De Saussure
first began his explorations there had been nothing
but a kind of cave, made by propping up a few stones
under the granite boulder known after the visit of
Pococke and Windham as the "Pierre des Anglais."
The rough "Chateau de Montanvert," as some of
the guides used to call it, was abandoned in favour
of a cabin set up about 1779 by Mr. Charles Blair.
Coxe described " Blair's cabin " in the " Travels in
Switzerland " as a small but commodious wooden
house ; and Mr. Coolidge tells us that this hut was
visited by Goethe as early as the 5 th of November
1779, when he was passing through Switzerland for
the second time, in company. with the Grand Duke
of Weimar. M. Leschevin, however, is positive that

94 TOUR OF x8i6
Blair built a stone cabin in 1781, which had proved
to be a great comfort to travellers, and was still
standing when he published his book in 181 2. On
consulting the manuscript account of Sir Frederick
Eden's tour in 1790 we read : " On the top of Mont
anvert we found a hut built of stone, called Blair's
Cabin, having been erected by Charles Blair, from
which we descended a little and mounted the Sea of
Ice, of which I cannot give you a better idea than
by comparing it to a stormy sea suddenly frozen."
The hut visited by Shelley had been planned as
early as 1793, but was not actually built till two years
afterwards, the expenses being generously borne by
M. Fdlix Desportes, then acting as French Resident
at Geneva. M. Leschevin has described the mis
chievous destruction of the fittings and furniture of
this " Temple de la Nature," as it was named from
Bourrit's inscription above the door. It remained
for some years, according to Mr. Coolidge, in a very
pitiable state ; but it was put into good order again
by the Senator Le Doulcet Pontecoulant in the year
1803, and thenceforth remained in charge of M.
Couteran, of the Hotel d'Angleterre at Chamouni. In
1840 a new wing was built by the Commune of
Chamouni, which was replaced in 1879 by the
existing establishment.
Shelley has given us a fine picture of the Aiguille

CHAMOUNI 95
du Dru and its three companions. The summits of
the mountains, he said, are "sharp and naked pin
nacles," too steep for the snows to rest: "lines
of dazzling ice occupy here and there the perpen
dicular rifts, and shine through the driving vapours
with inexpressible brilliance." Mrs. Shelley borrowed
some of his phrases for her romance, and spoke of
the mountains dependent on the River of Ice, with
their " aerial summits " hanging over its recesses, and
their " icy and glittering peaks " that shone in the
sunlight above the clouds. We are tempted to add
a reference to a story more suited, one would think,
to Munchausen than to the veracious journals of Dr.
Moore. While contemplating the Valley of Ice and
the Needles, he remarks, one of the company observed
that there must be a fine view from the peaks
extending over the Valais and all the way to Mount
Jura. " This excited the ambition of the Duke of
Hamilton ; he sprang up and made toward the
Aiguille du Dru, the highest of the four Needles;
though he bounded over the ice with the elasticity of
a young chamois, it was a considerable time before
he could arrive at its foot, for people are greatly
deceived as to distances in those snowy regions."
" Should he get near the top," cried another, " he
will swear we have seen nothing ; but I'll try to mount
as high as he can." So saying, he sprang after him.

g6 TOUR OF x8x6
In a short time we saw them both scrambling up the
rock. The Duke had gained a considerable height,
when he was suddenly stopped by a part of the rock
which was perfectly impracticable, for his impetuosity
had prevented him from choosing the easiest way.
The rivals took a little time " to breathe and cool,"
and finally decided that the exploit was not worth
their while, since the honours of victory would be
divided. But this was in the days when an ordinary
traveller's tale was apt to be quenched by the remark :
" Dear sir, that's pretty well ; but take my word for
it, 'tis nothing to the Glaciers of Savoy ! "
The vale itself, says Shelley, is filled with a mass
of undulating ice: its appearance was "as if frost
had suddenly bound up the waves and whirlpools of
a mighty torrent." " The waves," he continues, " are
elevated about twelve or fourteen feet from the
surface of the mass, which is intersected by long gaps
of unfathomable depth, the ice of whose sides is more
beautifully azure than the sky. In these regions
everything changes and is in motion ; this vast mass
of ice has one general progress which ceases neither
day nor night ; it breaks and bursts for ever ; some
undulations sink while others rise : it is never the
same," We are reminded of the fantastic theories of
a time long preceding De Saiissure. It looks as if
Shelley were referring to the accounts pubhshed in

CHAMOUNI 97
the Mercure Suisse for 1743, soon after Pococke's
return from Chamouni. A few sentences may be
taken from some of these letters as they appear in an
unpublished English version of Gruner now in the
writer's possession : " The surface of the ice is rent
in places. The clefts are of various dimensions, the
largest being about twenty feet long, and from four
to five feet in breadth." It will be remembered that
these observations are very inaccurate, especially
with regard to the crevasses and to the periods after
which there has been a recovery of the bodies of
persons who have perished in them. " These rents
are generally in the weakest part of the ice in the
scoop of the waves, and run as they do, awry and
sideways. We judged of the thickness of the ice by
these clefts, and found it apparently from five to six
feet, but in other places it may be from fifty to sixty
feet. These rents always take place with an explo
sion like thunder. The water under the ice appears
through these clefts. Our guides pushed a stick into
the water, and let it go, but it rose again of itself,
from which it may be inferred that the waters touched
the ceiling of the ice. If a person has the misfortune
to fall into one of these chasms, which sometimes
happens to the crystal-diggers, the body is found
within a few days after, thrown out upon the ice, quite
fresh, especially when there has been some rain, or
G

98 TOUR OF 1816
the weather has grown milder. The reason of the
bodies being thrown up again in this manner seems
to be that on an increase of water the fluid, finding
no vent below, seeks its way out above through these
rents, and pushes whatever comes in its way before
it. The inhabitants insist that the glaciers have a
regular increase and decrease, and probably this is
the case ; but it is the prevailing opinion that they
rather increase than decrease." When Marie Couttet
escaped from his terrible fall into the crevasse on the
Grand Plateau, the bodies of the guides who were
lost were not recovered for more than forty years
afterwards. Even the scientific M. de la Condamine
described the Mer de Glace as being alternately
melted and congealed, and spoke of "the subter
ranean torrent which supports this enormous mass,
and changes its appearance as well as its level from
day to day."
Shelley writes very positively on the subject of
glacier-motion. " De Saussure the naturalist " had
maintained that there were periods of advance and
retreat : " The people of the country hold an opinion
entirely different, but as I judge more probable."
M. Bourrit and some of his friends appealed to
experience. The old people at Chamouni used to
say that they remembered the time when the
glaciers were very much smaller, and when they

CHAMOUNI 99
could walk behind the Mer de Glace by passages
" now choked with hills of snow not fifty years old."
This may have been merely a reflection of a story
told by the Greffier of Chamouni, who said that
the Mer de Glace covered a road by which the vil
lagers used to go to the Court at Courmayeur
four centuries ago. M. Patience, of the Great House
at Courmayeur, was positive that several of the
glaciers had left their old beds since he first came
up to hunt bouquetins on Mont Mallet. M. Bourrit
noticed a great increase in the ice-fields on the
Talefre and at the back of the Aiguilles de Charmoz,
where within his recollection there had been a
Golconda for the crystal-men and good store of
genipi, or yarrow, of which the bouquetins and
chamois were so fond. Shelley was alarmed at the
prospect of a return of the Glacial Age. He would
not discuss the gloomy theory of Buffon, that the
polar ice-caps might creep on till they joined the cen
tral snow-fields ; but if the snow, he argues, is con
tinually heaped up above, while the ice remains un-
melted in the transient and variable summers below,
surely the glaciers will be augmented, "at least
until they overwhelm this vale." Such theories,
said Dr. Moore, are well-fabricated and goodly to
behold ; and nothing is more vexatious than to see
them upset by the dash of a pen, as a house falls

100 TOUR OF x8i6
down in the pantomime at a slap from the Har
lequin's wand. If the glaciers go on increasing ad in
finitum, the great globe will become " an appendage
of Mont Blanc " : the authors of the theory must
regret that they were sent into the world so soon ;
" because, if their birth had been delayed nine or ten
thousand years, they would have seen the glaciers in
much greater glory, Mont Blanc being but a Lilliputian
at present in comparison to what it will be then."
Shelley bids his friend Peacock, who asserted
" the supremacy of Ahriman," to imagine the King
of Evil enthroned among those desolate snows : he
sits in the palaces of Death and Frost, and casts
around us his first essays of usurpation, " avalanches,
torrents, rocks, and thunders, and above all, these
deadly glaciers, at once the proof and symbol of
his reign." We ought, perhaps, to observe how
Byron dealt with the same idea in " Manfred," which
was finished in the February of 1817. The three
Fates or Destinies appear on the summit of the
Jungfrau on their way to the " Hall of Arimanes,"
and the description of their place of meeting is
evidently taken from Shelley's account of the Mer
de Glace : O'er the savage sea,
The glassy ocean of the mountain-ice.
We skim its rugged breakers, which put on
The aspect of a tumbling tempest's foam,
Frozen in a moment, a dead whirlpool's image,

CHAMOUNI loi
And this most steep fantastic pinnacle.
The fretwork of some earthquake.
In another part of his sketch Shelley has employed
a curious classical metaphor which bears some
analogy to the speech of Mother Earth in the
" Prometheus Unbound " :
Thy touch runs down
Even to the adamantine central gloom
Along these marble nerves : 'tis life, 'tis joy.
And through my withered old and icy frame
The warmth of an immortal youth shoots down
Circling.
Shelley is speaking of the incessant noise that
fills the air in the neighbourhood of the Mer de
Glace. The echo from the rocks, and the din of the
ice and snow, which fall from the cliffs or roll from
the summits, never seem to pause for a moment.
He refers, in a somewhat inaccurate way, to the
belief of the ancient Stoics, that the Cosmos and its
Maker formed the perfect Unity. But when he
compares Mont Blanc to the God of the Stoics we
should remember that it was only our Earth, and
not the whole Universe, which they regarded as a
Leviathan, breathing in storms and spouting in
tides, and warmed with volcanic fire. " One would
think," he says, " that Mont Blanc was a vast animal,
and that the frozen blood for ever circulated through
his stony veins."

102 TOUR OF x8i6
They dined on the grassy sward near the hut,
" surrounded by this scene," in a clear and piercing
air, and returned by the way that they came, not
caring to follow the steep descent that would have
brought them to the source of the Arveiron
again. Before returning to Montalegre, Shelley seems
to have somewhat relented towards the " Marchands
Naturalistes." " We have bought," he says, " some
specimens of minerals and plants, and two or three
crystal seals at Mont Blanc, to preserve the remem
brance of having approached it." David Payot was
the principal cutter of these seals, which were
generally made of the spar from Dauphine, and as
he lived at Praz d'Avaz, or the "Lower Meadows,"
we may suppose that Shelley made this part of
his purchase on returning from the Glacier des
Bossons. The best general collection was that
which belonged to Carrier, whose catalogue of
" sixty-six specimens from Chamouni " may be seen
in the Journal des Mines for 1809. A great part of
his specimens came from the Montanvert and the
Aiguilles behind it, where the guides had found
many "fours a cristaux" in the quartz. One of
the best filled had been discovered close to the
Fountain of Caillet. The bed of the Arveiron was
rich in jasper and porphyry, auriferous sand, and

CHAMOUNI 103
the potstone and serpentine out of which letter-
weights and lamps were carved. But the interest of
the collection was somewhat spoiled by the intrusion
of such foreign visitors as the bits from the
Simplon and the St. Gothard, the Valais and the
Val d'Aosta, and the inevitable painted onyx from
the manufactories of Oberstein on the Rhine. The
plants arranged for the Hortus Siccus included all
the varieties from the " Jardin " high up on the
Mer de Glace and the oasis of the Talefre, such as
the gentians, and the creeping azaleas, and rhodo
dendrons that haunt the margin of the ice. " The
most interesting of my purchases," writes Shelley,
" is a large collection of all the seeds of rare Alpine
plants, with their names written upon the outside of
the papers that contain them : these I mean to
colonise in my garden in England, and to permit you
to make what choice you please from them." We do
not suppose that many of them emerged into the
light among the rough hillocks of the garden at
Marlow. He ends with an affectionate thought of
Wordsworth's two odes to his favourite flower.
" They are companions," he wrote, " which the
Celandine, the classic Celandine, need not despise ;
they are as wild and more daring than he, and will
tell him tales of things even as touching and sublime
as the gaze of a Vernal Poet " :

IC4 TOUR OF x8i6
Ere a leaf is on a bush
In the time before the thrush
Has a thought about her nest.
Thou wilt come with half a call.
Like a careless prodigal :
Telling tales about the sun.
When we've little warmth or none.
******
Blithe of heart from week to week
Thou dost play at hide-and-seek :
While the patient primrose sits
Like a beggar in the cold.
Thou, a flower of wiser wits,
Slipst into thy sheltering hold :
Bright as any of the train.
When ye all are out again !

A LIST OF THE PRINCIPAL WORKS TO WHICH
REFERENCE HAS BEEN MADE ^
I. Annales et Journal des Mines. (Journal. Nos. 4, 5, 7, 10,
26, &c. 1794-1809). Paris, 1794-1870.
2. BoORRiT, Marc-Theodore. Nouvelle description generate et
particuliere des Glacieres, Vallees de Glace, et Glaciers, qui
forment la grande chalne des Alpes de Savoye, de Suisse, et
d'ltalie. Par M. Bourrit, Chantre de I'Eglise Cath^drale de
Geneve, et Pensionnaire du Roi de France. Geneve, 1787.
8vo. 3 vols.
3. Byron, George Gordon Noel, Lord Byron. The Prisoner of
Chillon, and other Poems. London, J. Murray. 1816. 8vo.
4.  Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. Canto the Third. London,
J. Murray. 1816. 8vo.
5.  Manfred, a Dramatic Poem. London, J. Murray.
1817. 8vo.
6.  Lord Byron's Poetical Works. London, J. Murray.
1837. 8vo.
7. Coolidge, W. A. B. Swiss Travel and Swiss Guide-books.
London, Longmans. 1889. 8vo.
8. Dumas, Alexandre. Impressions de Voyage. Suisse. Paris,
Levy. 1851. i2mo, 3 vols.
9. Eckermann, Johann Peter. Gesprache mit Goethe in den
letzen Jahren seines Lebens. Leipzig. 1836-48. 8vo.
3 vols.
10.  Conversations of Goethe with Eckerman and Sorel.
Translated from the German by John Oxenford. London,
Bell. 1874. 8vo.

I06 WORKS CITED
II. Eden, Frederick Morton. Abstract of a Tour performed
in 1790 by Sir Fred. M. Eden and Charles J. Harford.
(MS. unpublished.)
12. Gibbon, Edward. The History of the Decline and Fall of the
Roman Empire. With an Introductory Memoir of the
Author by William Youngman. London, 1837. 8vo.
13. Gray, Thomas. The Poems of Mr. Gray. To which are
prefixed Memoirs of his Life and Writings. By W. Mason.
London, 1775. 4to.
14. Gruner, Gottlieb Sigmund. Die Eisgebirge des Schweizer-
landes. Bern, 1760. 8vo.
15.  Histoire Naturelle des Glacieres de la Suisse. Tra-
duite par M. de Keralio. Paris, 1770. 4to.
16.  The Icy Mountains of Swisserland, described by the
Sieur Gottlieb Sigmund Gruner, Advocate to the Two-
Hundreds in the Republick of Bern, translated from the
German. (MS. unpublished, s.a.) Fol. 3 vols.
17. Hugo, Victor. En Voyage : Alpes et Pyrenees. Paris, 1890.
8vo.
i8. Koch, Frederic. Memoires pour servir k I'histoire de la
Campagne de 1814. Paris, 1819. 8vo. 2 vols.
19. La Condamine, Charles-Marie de. Journal d'un Voyage ea
Italie (Memoires presentees a I'Academie). Paris, 1762. 4to.
20.  Journal of a Tour to Italy, containing amongst many
other interesting and curious particulars Remarks on the
Mountains and Ice-valleys of Swisserland, &c, London,
1763. i2mo.
21. Leschevin, Philippe-Xavier. Voyage a Geneve et dans la
Vallee de Chamouni en Savoie. Paris et Geneve, 1812.
i2mo.
22. Medwin, Thomas. The Shelley Papers. Memoir of Percy
Bysshe Shelley. By T. Medwin, Esq. And Original Poems
by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Now first collected. London,
1833. 8vo.
23. Mercuke Suisse. Relations des premiers voyages faits aux
Glaciers de la Vallee de Chamouni en 1742. Mai et Juin,
1742. Neufchatel, 1743. Fol.

WORKS CITED 107
24. Montague, Mary Wortley, Lady. Letters of the Right
Honourable Lady M  y W  y M  e ; written during
her Travels in Europe, Asia and Africa, to persons of dis
tinction, men of letters, &c., in difierent parts of Europe.
London, 1778. 8vo. 2 vols.
25. Moore, John. A View of Society and Manners in France,
Switzerland, and Germany, with Anecdotes relating to some
Eminent Characters. By John Moore, M.D. Dublin, 1780.
lemo. 2 vols.
26. Moore, Thomas. Lord Byron's Life, Letters, and Journals.
Edited by Thomas Moore. London, 1830. 4to. 2 vols.
27. Paccard, Michel. Premier voyage fait a la cime de la plus
haute montagne du continent ; par M. le Docteur Paccard.
(Lausanne.) 1786. 8vo.
28. Plantin, Johann Baptist. Helvetia Antiqua et Nova.
Bern, 1656. 8vo.
29. Ray, John. Observations topographical, moral, and phy
siological, made in a journey through part of the Low
Countries, Germany, Italy, and France : with a Catalogue of
Plants.not native of England.found spontaneously growing in
thoseparts,andtheirvirtues,&c. London, Martyn. 1673. 8vo.
30. Saussure, Horace-Benedict de. Voyages dans les Alpes,
precedes d'un Essai sur 1' histoire naturelle des Environs de
Geneve. Neufchatel, 1779-86-96. 4to. 4 vols.
31. Shelley, Percy Bysshe. Alastor, or the Spirit of Solitude,
and other Poems. London, Baldwin, 1816. 8vo.
32.  The Revolt of Islam, a Poem in Twelve Cantos.
London, Oilier, 1818. 8vo.
33.  Prometheus Unbound. A Lyrical Drama in four Acts,
with other Poems. London, Oilier, 1820. 8vo.
34.  The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley.
The text carefully revised, with notes and a memoir, by
William Michael Rossetti. London, 1881. 8vo. 3 vols.
35. Shelley, Mary WoUstonecraft. Frankenstein, or the
Modem Prometheus. London, Lackington, 1817. 8vo.
36.  Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus. London,
Colburn, 1831. 8vo.

io8 WORKS CITED
37. Shelley, Mary WoUstonecraft. Shelley Memorials.
Edited by Lady Shelley. London, 1859. 8vo.
38. Trelawny, Edward John. Recollections of the Last Days
of Shelley and Byron. London, 1858. 8vo.
39. Wollstonecraft, Mary. Letters written during a short
residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. London,
1796. 8vo,
40. Wordsworth, William. Poems by W. Wordsworth, author
of Lyrical Ballads. London, 1807. i2mo. 2 vols.
41.  The Excursion, being a portion of The Recluse, a
Poem. London, 1814. 4to.
42.  Memorials ofaTour on the Continent, 1820. London,
1822. 8vo.
43.  The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth. A new
edition. London, 1836. 8vo. 6 vols.
44.  The Recluse, by William Wordsworth. London,
Macmillan, 1S88. i2mo.

(EXTRACTS.)
HISTORY OF A SIX WEEKS' TOUR
THROUGH A PART OF FRANCE, SWITZERLAND,
GERMANY, AND HOLLAND
WITH LETTERS DESCRIPTIVE OF A SAIL ROUND THE
LAKE OF GENEVA, AND OF THE GLACIERS
OF CHAMOUNI

LONDON-: 1817

Extracts from

Journal, 1814.
Letters, i8i6.

A SIX WEEKS' TOUR
/. PREFACE
Nothing can be more unpresuming than this little
volume. It contains the account of some desultory
visits by a party of young people to scenes which
are now so familiar to our countrymen that few
facts relating to them can be expected to have
escaped the many more experienced and exact ob
servers who have sent their journals to the press.
In fact, they have done little else than arrange the
few materials which an imperfect journal and two or
three letters to their friends in England afforded.
They regret, since their little history is to be offered
to the public, that these materials were not more
copious and complete. This is a just topic of censure
to those who are less inclined to be amused than to
condemn. Those whose youth has been past as
theirs (with what success it imports not) in pursuing,
like the swallow, the inconstant summer of delight
and beauty which invests this visible world, will per-

112 A SIX WEEKS' TOUR
haps find some entertainment in following the author
with her husband and sister, on foot through part
of France and Switzerland, and in sailing with her
down the castled Rhine, through scenes beautiful in
themselves, but which, since she visited them, a
great poet has clothed with the freshness of a diviner
nature. They will be interested to hear of one who
has visited Meillerie, and Clarens, and Chillon, and
Vevey, classic ground peopled with tender and
glorious imaginations of the present and the past.
They have perhaps never talked with one who
has beheld in the enthusiasm of youth the glaciers,
and the lakes, and the forests, and the fountains of
the mighty Alps. Such will perhaps forgive the
imperfections of their narrative for the sympathy
which the adventures and feelings which it recounts,
and a curiosity respecting scenes already rendered
interesting and illustrious, may excite.
The poem entitled " Mont Blanc " is written by
the author of the two letters from Chamouni and
Vevey. It was composed under the immediate im
pression of the deep and powerful feelings excited
by the objects which it attempts to describe ; and,
as an undisciplined overflowing of the soul, rests its
claim to approbation on an attempt to imitate the
untameable wildness and inaccessible solemnity from
which those feelings sprang.

DOVER 113
//. INTRODUCTION
It is now nearly three years since this journey took
place, and the journal I then kept was not very
copious ; but I have so often talked over the incidents
that befell us, and attempted to describe the scenery
through which we passed, that I think few occur
rences of any interest will be omitted.
We left London July 28th, 18 14, on a hotter day
than has been known in this climate for many years.
I am not a good traveller, and this heat agreed very
ill with me, till on arriving at Dover I was refreshed
by a sea-bath. As we very much wished to cross
the Channel with all possible speed, we would not
wait for the Packet of the following day, (it being
then about . four in the afternoon,) but hiring a
small boat, resolved to make the passage the same
evening, the seamen promising us a voyage of two
hours. The evening was most beautiful; there was but
little wind, and the sails flapped in the flagging
breeze : the moon rose, and night came on, and with
the night a slow heavy swell and a fresh breeze,
which soon produced a sea so violent as to toss the
boat very much. I was dreadfully sea-sick, and as
is usually my custom when thus affected, I slept
during the greater part of the night, awaking only
H

114 A SIX WEEKS' TOUR
from time to time to ask where we were, and to
receive the dismal answer each time, "Not quite
half-way." The wind was violent and contrary ; if we could
not reach Calais, the sailors proposed making for
Boulogne. They promised only two hours' sail from
shore, yet hour after hour passed and we were still
far distant, when the moon sunk in the red and
stormy horizon, and the fast-flashing lightning be
came pale in the breaking day.
We were proceeding slowly against the wind,
when suddenly a thunder-squall struck the sail, and
the waves rushed into the boat : even the sailors
acknowledged that our situation was perilous ; but
they succeeded in reefing the sail ; the wind was now
changed, and we drove before the gale directly to
Calais. As we entered the harbour I awoke from a
comfortless sleep, and saw the sun rise, broad, red,
and cloudless, over the pier.
///. FRANCE.
Exhausted with sickness and fatigue, I walked over
the sands with my companions to the hotel. I
heard for the first time the confused buzz of voices
speaking a different language from that to which I
had been accustomed, and saw a costume very unlike

FRANCE 115
that worn on the opposite side of the Channel ; the
women with high caps and short jackets ; the men
with earrings ; ladies walking about with high bon
nets or coiffures lodged on the top of the head, the
hair dragged up underneath, without any stray curls
to decorate the temples or cheeks. There is, how
ever, something very pleasing in the manners and
appearance of the people of Calais, that prepossesses
you in their favour. A national reflection might
occur, that when Edward III. took Calais, he turned
out the old inhabitants, and peopled it almost en
tirely with our own countrymen ; but unfortunately
the manners are not English.
We remained during that day and the greater part
of the next at Calais : we had been obliged to leave
our boxes the night before at the English Custom
house, and it was arranged that they should go by
the Packet of the following day, which detained by
contrary wind did not arrive until night. S. and I
walked among the fortifications on the outside of the
town ; they consisted of fields where the hay was
making. The aspect of the country was rural and
pleasant. On the 30th of July, about three in the afternoon,
we left Calais in a cabriolet drawn by three horses.
To persons who had never before seen anything
but a spruce English chaise and postboy, there was

n6 A SIX WEEKS' TOUR
something irresistibly ludicrous in our equipage. A
cabriolet is shaped somewhat like a post-chaise,
except that it has only two wheels, and consequently
there are no doors at the sides ; the front is let down
to admit the passengers. The three horses were
placed abreast, the tallest in the middle, who was
rendered more formidable by the addition of an un
intelligible article of harness, resembling a pair of
wooden wings fastened to his shoulders ; the har
nesses were of rope ; and the postillion, a queer
upright little fellow with a long pigtail, craque'e'd his
whip and clattered on, while an old forlorn shepherd
with a cocked hat gazed on us as we passed.
The roads are excellent, but the heat was intense,
and I suffered greatly from it. We slept at Boulogne
the first night, where there was an ugly but remark
ably good-tempered Femme de chambre.
We had ordered horses to be ready during the
night, but we were too fatigued to make use of them.
The man insisted on being paid for the whole post.
"Ah ! madame," said the Femme de chambre,
" Pensez-y ! C'est pour de'dommager les pauvres
chevaux d^ avoir perdu leur douce sommeil."
The first appearance that struck our English eyes
was the want of inclosures; but the fields were
flourishing with a plentiful harvest. We observed
no vines on this side Paris.

FRANCE 117
The weather still continued very hot, and travelling
produced a very bad effect upon my health ; my
companions were induced by this circumstance to
hasten the journey as much as possible ; and accord
ingly we did not rest the following night, and the
next day, about two, arrived in Pcuis.
In this city there are no hotels where you can
reside as long or as short a time as you please, and
we were obliged to engage apartments at an hotel
for a week They were dear, and not very pleasant.
As usual in France, the principal apartment was a
bedchamber; there was another closet with a bed,
and an antechamber which we used as a sitting-
room. The heat of the weather was excessive, so tuat we
were unable to walk except in the afternoon. On
the first evening we walked to the gardens of the
Tuileries; they are formal, in the French fashion,
the trees cut into shapes, and without grass. I
think the Boulevards infinitely more pleasant. This
street nearly surrounds Paris, and is eight miles in
extent ; it is very wide, and planted on either side
with trees. At one end is a superb cascade, which
refreshes the senses by its continual splashing : near
this stands the Gate of St. Denis, a beautiful piece
of sculpture. I do not know how it may at present
be disfigured by the Gothic barbarism of the con-

nS A SIX WEEKS' TOUR
querors of France, who were not contented with
retaking the spoils of Napoleon, but with impotent
malice destroyed the monuments of their own defeat.
When I saw this Gate it was in its splendour, and
made you imagine that the days of Roman greatness
were transported to Paris.
After remaining a week in Paris, we received a
small remittance that set us free from a kind of im
prisonment there which we found very irksome.
But how should we proceed? After talking pver
and rejecting many plans, we fixed on one, eccentric
enough, but which from its romance was very
pleasing to us. In England we could not have put
it in execution without sustaining continual insult
and impertinence : the French are far more tolerant
of the vagaries of their neighbours. We resolved
to walk through France ; but as I was too weak for
any considerable distance, and my sister could not
be supposed to be able to walk as far as S. each day,
we determined to purchase an ass, to carry our port
manteau and one of us by turns.
Early therefore on Monday, August 8, S. and C.
went to the ass-market and purchased an ass, and
the 'rest of the day, until four in the afternoon, was
spent in making preparations for our departure, during
which Madame I'Hote paid us a visit, and attempted to
dissuade us from our design. She represented to us

,,^^-..^'"^>^ :¦" .' /^ ,— - .¦W<£^''^'-'^

"- ""!j_'^te::^S5r^'"vs.^_i:^.^:,^^s^-

FRANCE 119
that a large army had been recently disbanded, that
the soldiers and officers wandered idle about the
country, and that " Les dames seraient certainement
enlevees." But we were proof against her arguments,
and packing up a few necessaries, leaving the rest to
go by the diligence, we departed in a fiacre from the
door of the hotel, our little ass following.
We dismissed the coach at the barrier. It was
dusk, and the ass seemed totally unable to bear one
of us, appearing to sink under the portmanteau,
although it was small and light. We were, however,
merry enough, and thought the leagues short. We
arrived at Charenton about ten.
Charenton is prettily situated in a valley through
which the Seine flows, winding among banks varie
gated with trees. On looking at this scene, C.
exclaimed, "Oh! this is beautiful enough; let us
live here." This was her exclamation on every new
scene, and as each surpassed the one before, she
cried, " I am glad we did not stay at Charenton, but
let us live here."
Finding our ass useless, we sold it before we
proceeded on our journey, and bought a mule for
ten napoleons. About nine o'clock we departed.
We were clad in black silk. I rode on the mule,
which carried also our portmanteau ; S. and C. fol
lowed, bringing a small basket of provisions. At

120 A SIX WEEKS' TOUR
about one we arrived at Grosbois, where under the
shade of trees we ate our bread and fruit and drank
our wine, thinking of Don Quixote and Sancho.
The country through which we passed was highly
cultivated but uninteresting; the horizon scarcely
ever extended beyond the circumference of a few
fields, bright and waving with the golden harvest.
We met several travellers ; but our mode, although
novel, did not appear to excite any curiosity or
remark. This night we slept at Guignes, in the
same room and beds in which Napoleon and some of
his Generals had rested during the late war. The
little old woman of the place was highly gratified in
having this little story to tell, and spoke in warm
praise of the Empress Josephine and Marie-Louise,
who had at different times passed on that road.
As we continued our route, Provins was the first
place that struck us with interest. It was our stage
of rest for the night ; we approached it at sunset.
After having gained the summit of a hill, the
prospect of the town opened upon us as it lay in the
valley below ; a rocky hill rose abruptly on one
side, on the top of which stood a ruined citadel with
extensive walls and towers ; lower down but
beyond was the cathedral, and the whole formed a
scene for painting. After having travelled for two
days through a country perfectly without interest, it

FRANCE 121
was a delicious relief for the eye to dwell again on
some irregularities and beauty of country. Our fare
at Provins was coarse, and our beds uncomfortable,
but the remembrance of this prospect made us
contented and happy.
We now approached scenes that reminded us
of what we had nearly forgotten, that France had
lately been the country in which great and ex
traordinary events had taken place. Nogent, a town
we entered about noon the following day, had been
entirely desolated by the Cossacks. Nothing could
be more entire than the ruin which these barbarians
had spread as they advanced; perhaps they re
membered Moscow and the destruction of the
Russian villages ; but we were now in France, and
the distress of the inhabitants, whose houses had
been burned, their cattle killed, and all their wealth
destroyed, has given a sting to my detestation of
war, which none can feel who have not travelled
through a country pillaged and wasted by this
plague, which in his pride man inflicts upon his
fellow. We quitted the Great Route soon after we had
left Nogent, to strike across the country to Troyes.
About six in the evening we arrived at St Aubin, a
lovely village embosomed in trees ; but on a nearer
view we found the cottages roofless, the rafters

123 A SIX WEEKS' TOUR
black, and the walls dilapidated ; a few inhabitants
remained. We asked for milk, they had none to
give ; all their cows had been taken by the Cossacks.
We had still some leagues to travel that night, but
we found that they were not post leagues, but the
measurement of the inhabitants, and nearly double
the distance. The road lay over a desert plain, and
as night advanced we were often in danger of losing
the track of wheels, which was our only guide.
Night closed in, and we suddenly lost all trace of the
road ; but a few trees, indistinctly seen, seemed to
indicate the position of a village. About ten we
arrived at Trois Maisons, where after a supper
on milk and sour bread we retired to rest on
wretched beds : but sleep is seldom denied, except to
the indolent, and after the day's fatigue, although
my bed was nothing more than a sheet spread upon
straw, I slept soundly until the morning was con
siderably advanced.
S. had hurt his ankle so considerably the preceding
evening, that he was obliged during the whole of the
following day's journey to ride on our mule. Nothing
could be more barren and wretched than the track
through which we now passed ; the ground was
chalky and uncovered even by grass, and where there
had been any attempts made towards cultivation, the
straggling ears of corn discovered more plainly the

FRANCE 123
barren nature of the soil. Thousands of insects, which
were of the same white colour as the road, infested
our path ; the sky was cloudless, and the sun
darted its rays upon us, reflected back by the earth,
until I nearly fainted under the heat. A village
appeared at a distance, cheering us with a prospect
of rest. It gave us new strength to proceed ; but it
was a wretched place, and afforded us but little
relief. It had been once large and populous, but
now the houses were roofless, and the ruins that
lay scattered about, the gardens covered with the
white dust of the torn cottages, the black burnt
beams, and squalid looks of the inhabitants, pre
sented in every direction the melancholy aspect of
devastation. One house, a cabaret, alone remained ;
we were here offered plenty of milk, bacon, sour
bread, and a few vegetables, which we were to dress
for ourselves.
As we prepared our dinner the people of the
village collected around us, squalid with dirt. They
seemed, indeed, entirely detached from the rest of the
world, and ignorant of all that was passing in it.
There is much less communication between the
various towns of France than in England. The use
of passports may easily account for this : these
people did not know that Napoleon was deposed,
and when we asked why they did not rebuild their

124 ^ SIX WEEKS' TOUR
cottages, they replied that they were afraid that the
Cossacks would destroy them again upon their
return. Echemine (the name of this village) is in
every respect the most disgusting place I ever met
with. Two leagues beyond, on the same road, we came
to the village of Pavilion, so unlike Echemine that
we might have fancied ourselves in another quarter
of the globe; here everything denoted cleanliness
and hospitality ; many of the cottages were destroyed,
but the inhabitants were employed in repairing them.
What could occasion so great a difference ?
Still our road lay over this track of uncultivated
country, and our eyes were fatigued by observing
nothing but a white expanse of ground, where
no bramble or stunted shrub adorned its barrenness.
Towards evening we reached a small plantation of
vines : it appeared like one of those islands of
verdure that are met with in the midst of the sands
of Lybia, but the grapes were not yet ripe. S. was
totally incapable of walking, and C. and I were very
tired before we arrived at Troyes.
We rested here for the night, and devoted the
following day to a consideration of the manner in
which we should proceed. S'. sprain rendered our
pedestrianism impossible. We accordingly sold our
mule, and bought an open voiture that went on four

FRANCE I2S
wheels, for five napoleons, and hired a man with a
mule for eight more, to convey us to Neuchatel in
six days.
The suburbs of Troyes were destroyed, and the
town itself dirty and uninviting. I remained at the
inn writing, while S. and C. arranged this bargain
and visited the cathedral of the town ; and the next
morning we departed in our voiture for Neuchatel.
A curious instance of French vanity occurred on
leaving this town. Our Voiturier pointed to the
plain around, and mentioned that it had been the
scene of a battle between the Russians and the
French. " In which the Russians gained the
victory ? " " Ah no, Madame," replied the man,
" the French are never beaten." " But how was it
then," we asked, " that the Russians had entered
Troyes soon after ? " " Oh ! after having been
defeated they took a circuitous route, and thus
entered the town."
Vandceuvres is a pleasant town, at which we
rested during the hours of noon. We walked in the
grounds of a nobleman, laid out in the English taste,
and terminated in a pretty wood ; it was a scene
that reminded us of our native country. As we left
Vandceuvres the aspect of the country suddenly
changed ; abrupt hills, covered with vineyards inter
mixed with trees, enclosed a narrow valley, the

126 A SIX WEEKS' TOUR
channel of the Aube. The view was interspersed by
green meadows, groves of poplar and white willow,
and spires of village churches which the Cossacks
had yet spared. Many villages, ruined by the war,
Occupied the most romantic spots.
In the evening we arrived at Bar-sur-Aube, a
beautiful town, placed at the opening of the vale
where the hills terminate abruptly. We climbed the
highest of these, but scarce had we reached the top
when a mist descended upon everything, and the rain
began to fall : we were wet through before we could
reach our inn. It was evening, and the laden clouds
made the darkness almost as deep as that of mid
night ; but in the West an unusually brilliant and
fiery redness occupied an opening in the vapours,
and added to the interest of our little expedition : the
cottage lights were reflected in the tranquil river, and
the dark hills behind, dimly seen, resembled vast
and frowning mountains.
As we quitted Bar-sur-Aube, we at the same
time bade a short farewell to hills. Passing through
the towns of Chamont, Langres, (which was situated
on a hill and surrounded by ancient fortifications,)
Champlitte, and Gray, we travelled for nearly three
days through plains, where the country gently
undulated and relieved the eye from a perpetual
flat, without exciting any peculiar interest. Gentle

FRANCE 127
rivers, their banks ornamented by a few trees, stole
through these plains, and a thousand beautiful
summer insects skimmed over the streams. The
third day was a day of rain, and the first that had
taken place during our journey. We were soon wet
through, and were glad to stop at a little inn to dry
ourselves. The reception we received here was very
unprepossessing ; the people still kept their seats
round the fire, and seemed very unwilling to make
way for the dripping guests. In the afternoon,
however, the weather became fine, and at about six
in the evening we entered Besan9on.
Hills had appeared in the distance during the
whole day, and we had advanced gradually towards
them, but were unprepared for the scene that broke
upon us as we passed the gate of this city. On
quitting the walls the road wound underneath a high
precipice ; on the other side the hills rose more
gradually, and the green valley that intervened
between them was watered by a pleasant river;
before us arose an amphitheatre of hills covered with
vines, but irregular and rocky. The last gate of the
town was cut through the precipitous rock that
arose on one side, and in that place jutted into the
road. This 'approach to mountain scenery filled us with
delight ; it was otherwise with our Voiturier : 'he

128 A SIX WEEKS' TOUR
came from the plains of Troyes, and these hills so
utterly scared him, that he in some degree lost his
reason. After winding through the valley, we began
to ascend the mountains which were its boundary :
we left our voiture and walked on, delighted with
every new view that broke upon us.
When we had ascended the hills for about a mile
and a half, we found our Voiturier at the door of a
wretched inn, having taken the mule from the
voiture and obstinately determined to remain for
the night at this miserable village of Mort. We
could only submit, for he was deaf to all we could
urge, and to our remonstrances only replied, "Je
ne puis pas."
Our beds were too uncomfortable to allow a thought
of sleeping in them : we could only procure one
room, and our hostess gave us to understand that
our Voiturier was to occupy the same apartment. It
was of little consequence, as we had previously
resolved not to enter the beds. The evening was
fine, and after the rain the air was perfumed by
many delicious scents. We climbed to a rocky seat
on the hill that overlooked the village, where we
remained until sunset. The night was passed by
the kitchen fire in a wretched manner, striving to
catch a few moments of sleep, which were denied to
us. At three in the morning we pursued our journey.

FRANCE 129
Our road led to the summit of the hills that
environ Besan9on. From the top of one of these
we saw the whole expanse of the valley filled with
a white undulating mist, which was pierced, (like
islands,) by the piny mountains. The sun had just
risen, and a ray of red light lay upon the waves of
this fluctuating vapour. To the West, opposite the
sun, it seemed driven by the light against the rocks
in immense masses of foaming cloud, until it became
lost in the distance, mixing its tints with the fleecy
sky. Our Voiturier insisted on remaining two hours at
the village of Nog, although we were unable to
procure any dinner, and wished to go on to the next
stage. I have already said that the hills scared his
senses, and he had become disobhging, sullen, and
stupid. While he waited we walked to the neigh
bouring wood : it was a fine forest, carpeted beauti
fully with moss, and in various places overhung by
rocks, in whose crevices young pines had taken root
and spread their branches for shade to those below ;
the noon heat was intense, and we were glad to
shelter ourselves from it in the shady retreats of
this lovely forest.
On our return to the village we found, to our
extreme surprise, that the Voiturier had departed
nearly an hour before, leaving word that he expected I

130 A SIX WEEKS' TOUR
to meet us on the road. S.' sprain rendered him
incapable of much exertion ; but there was no
remedy, and we proceeded on foot to Maison
Neuve, an auberge four miles and a half distant.
At Maison Neuve the man had left word that he
should proceed to Pontarlier, the frontier town of
France, six leagues distant, and that if we did not
arrive that night he should the next morning leave
the voiture at an inn, and return with the mule to
Troyes. We were astonished at the impudence of
this message, but the boy of the inn comforted us
by saying that by going on a horse by a cross road,
where the voiture could not venture, he could easily
overtake and intercept the Voiturier, and accordingly
we dispatched him, walking slowly after. We
waited at the next inn for dinner, and in about two
hours the boy returned. The man promised to wait
for us at an auberge two leagues farther on. S.'
ankle had become very painful, but we could procure
no conveyance, and as the sun was nearly setting
we were obliged to hasten on. The evening was
most beautiful, and the scenery lovely enough to
beguile us of our fatigue : the horned moon hung in
the light of sunset that threw a glow of unusual
depth of redness over the piny mountains and the
dark deep valleys they enclosed ; at intervals in the
woods were beautiful lawns interspersed with pictur-

SWITZERLAND AND THE RHINE 131
esque clumps of trees, and dark pines overshadowed
our road.
In about two hours we arrived at the promised
termination of our journey, but the Voiturier was not
there : after the boy had left him, he again pursued
his journey towards Pontarlier. We were enabled,
however, to procure here a rude kind of cart, and in
this manner arrived late at Pontarlier, where we
found our conductor, who blundered out many false
hoods for excuses ; and thus ended the adventures
of that day.
IV. SWITZERLAND AND THE RHINE
On passing the French barrier a surprising difference
may be observed between the opposite nations that
inhabit either side. The Swiss cottages are much
cleaner and neater, and the inhabitants exhibit the
same contrast. The Swiss women wear a great deal
of white linen, and their whole dress is always
perfectly clean. This superior cleanliness is chiefly
produced by the difference of religion : travellers in
Germany remark the same contrast between the
Protestant and Catholic towns, although they be but
a few leagues separate.
The scenery of this day's journey was divine,
exhibiting piny mountains, barren rocks, and spots

133 A SIX WEEKS' TOUR
of verdure surpassing imagination. After descending
for nearly a league between lofty rocks, covered with
pines and interspersed with green glades, where the
grass is short and soft and beautifully verdant, we
arrived at the village of St. Sulpice.
The mule had latterly become very lame, and the
man so disobliging, that we determined to engage a
horse for the remainder of the way. Our Voiturier
had anticipated us, without in the least intimating
his intention : he had determined to leave us at this
village and taken measures to that effect. The man
we now engaged was a Swiss, a cottager of the better
class, who was proud of his mountains and his
country. Pointing to the glades that were inter
spersed among the woods, he informed us that they
were very beautiful and were excellent pasture ; that
the cows thrived there, and consequently produced
excellent milk, from which the best cheese and butter
in the world wete made.
The mountains after St. Sulpice became loftier
and more beautiful. We passed through a narrow
valley between two ranges of mountains, clothed
with forests, at the bottom of which flowed a river
from whose narrow bed on either side the boundaries
of the vale arose precipitously. The road lay about
half-way up the mountain, which formed one of the
sides, and we saw the overhanging rocks above us.

'. f.

\ '•'

--y--*r

!<> *

SWITZERLAND AND THE RHINE 133
and below enormous pines, and the river, not to be
perceived but from its reflection of the light of
heaven far beneath. The mountains of this beauti
ful ravine are so little asunder that in time of war
with France an iron chain is thrown across it. Two
leagues from Neuchatel we saw the Alps: range
after range of black mountains are seen extending
one before the other, and far behind all, towering
above every feature of the scene, the snowy Alps.
They were an hundred miles distant, but reach so
high in the heavens that they look like those accumu
lated clouds of dazzling white that arrange themselves
on the horizon during summer. Their immensity
staggers the imagination, and so far surpasses all
conception that it requires an effort of the under
standing to believe that they indeed form a part of
the earth.
From this point we descended to Neuchatel, which
is situated in a narrow plain, between the mountains
and its immense lake, and presents no additional
aspect of peculiar interest.
We remained the following day at this town,
occupied in a consideration of the step it would now
be advisable for us to take. The money we had
brought with us from Paris was nearly exhausted,
but we obtained about £^8 in silver upon discount
from one of the bankers of the city, and with this we

134 A SIX WEEKS' TOUR
resolved to journey towards the Lake of Uri, and
seek in that romantic and interesting country some
cottage where we might dwell in peace and solitude.
Such were our dreams, which we should probably
have realised had it not been for the deficiency of
that indispensable article money, which obliged us
to return to England.
A Swiss, whom S. met at the post-office, kindly
interested himself in our affairs, and assisted us to
hire a voiture to convey us to Lucerne, the principal
town of the Lake of that name, which is connected
with the Lake of Uri. The journey to this place
occupied rather more than two days. The country
was flat and dull, and excepting that we now and
then caught a glimpse of the divine Alps, there was
nothing in it to interest us. Lucerne promised
better things, and as soon as we arrived, (August
23rd,) we hired a boat, with which we proposed to
coast the lake until we should meet with some suit
able habitation, or perhaps even going to Altorf,
cross Mont St. Gothard, and seek in the warm cli
mate of the country to the south of the Alps an air
more salubrious, and a temperature better fitted for
the precarious state of S.' health than the bleak
region to the north. The Lake of Lucerne is
encompassed on all sides by high mountains that
rise abruptly from the water ; sometimes their bare

SWITZERLAND AND THE RHINE 135
fronts descend perpendicularly and cast a black
shade upon the waves ; sometimes they are covered
with thick wood, whose dark foliage is interspersed
by the brown bare crags on which the trees have
taken root. In every part where a glade shows it
self in the forest it appears cultivated, and cottages
peep from among the woods. The most luxuriant
islands, rocky and covered with moss and bending
trees, are sprinkled over the lake. Most of these are
decorated by the figure of a saint in wretched wax
work. The direction of this lake extends first from east
to west, then turning a right angle, it lies from north
to south ; this latter part is distinguished in name
from the other, and is called the Lake of Uri. The
former part is also nearly divided midway, where the
jutting land almost meets, and its craggy sides cast
a deep shadow on the little strait through which you
pass. The summits of several of the mountains
that inclose the lake to the south are covered by
eternal glaciers.
Brunnen is situated on the northern side of the
angle which the lake makes, forming the extremity
of the Lake of Lucerne. Here we rested for the
night, and dismissed our boatmen. Nothing could
be more magnificent than the view from this spot.
The high mountains encompassed us, darkening

136 A SIX WEEKS' TOUR
the waters ; at a distance on the shores of Uri we
could perceive the Chapel of Tell, and this was the
village where he matured the conspiracy which was
to overthrow the tyrant of his country ; and indeed
this lovely lake, these sublime mountains and wild
forests, seemed a fit cradle for a mind aspiring to
high adventure and heroic deeds. Yet we saw no
glimpse of his spirit in his present countrymen. The
Swiss appeared to us then, and experience has con
firmed our opinion, a people slow of comprehension
and of action ; but habit has made them unfit for
slavery, and they would, I have little doubt, make
a brave defence against any invader of their
freedom. Such were our reflections, and we remained until
late in the evening on the shores of the lake, con
versing, enjoying the rising breeze, and contemplating
with feelings of exquisite defight the divine objects
that surrounded us.
The following day was spent in a consideration of
our circumstances, and in contemplation of the scene
around us. A furious vent d'ltalie, (south wind,)
tore up the lake, making immense waves, and carry
ing the water in a whirlwind high in the air, when it
fell Hke heavy rain into the lake. The waves broke
with a tremendous noise on the rocky shores. This
conflict continued during the whole day, but it became

SWITZERLAND AND THE RHINE 137
calmer towards the evening. S. and I walked on
the banks, and sitting on a rude pier, S. read aloud
the account of the Siege of Jerusalem from Tacitus.
In the meantime we endeavoured to find an
habitation, but could only procure two unfurnished
rooms in an ugly big house, called the Chateau.
These we hired at a guinea a month, had beds
moved into them, and the next day took possession.
But it was a wretched place, with no comfort or
convenience. It was with difficulty that we could
get any food prepared : as it was cold and rainy, we
ordered a fire : they lighted an immense stove which
occupied a corner of the room ; it was long before it
heated, and when hot, the warmth was so unwhole
some that we were obliged to throw open our
windows to prevent a kind of suffocation ; added to
this, there was but one person in Brunnen who
could speak French, a barbarous kind of German
being the language of this part of Switzerland. It
was with difficulty, therefore, that we could get
our most ordinary wants supplied.
These immediate inconveniences led us to a more
serious consideration of our situation. The ;£'28
which we possessed was all the money that we
could count upon with any certainty, until the
following December. S.' presence in London was
absolutely necessary for the procuring any further

138 A SIX WEEKS' TOUR
supply. What were we to do ? We should soon be
reduced to absolute want. Thus after balancing
the various topics that offered themselves for dis
cussion, we resolved to return to England.
Having formed this resolution, we had not a
moment for delay: our little store was sensibly
decreasing, and ^28 could hardly appear sufficient
for so long a journey. It had cost us £60 to cross
France from Paris to Neuchatel; but we now
resolved on a more economical mode of travelling.
Water-conveyances are always the cheapest, and
fortunately we were so situated, that by taking advan
tage of the rivers of the Reuss and Rhine we could
reach England without travelling a league on land.
This was our plan ; we should travel eight hundred
miles ; and was this possible for so small a sum ?
But there was no other alternative, and indeed S.
only knew how very little we had to depend upon.
We departed the next morning for the Town of
Lucerne. It rained violently during the first part of
our voyage, but towards its conclusion the sky be
came clear, and the sunbeams dried and cheered
us. We saw again, and for the last time, the rocky
shores of this beautiful lake, its verdant isles, and
snow-capt mountains.
We landed at Lucerne, and remained in that town
the following night, and the next morning, (August

SWITZERLAND AND THE RHINE 139
27th,) departed in the diligence-par-eau for Loffen
burg, a town on the Rhine, where the falls of that
river prevented the same vessel from proceeding any
farther. Our companions in this voyage were of
the meanest class, smoked prodigiously, and were
exceedingly disgusting. After having landed for
refreshment in the middle of the day, we found, on
our return to the boat, that our former seats were
occupied ; we took others, when the original posses
sors angrily, and almost with violence, insisted upon
our leaving them. Their brutal rudeness to us, who
did not understand their language, provoked S. to
knock one of the foremost down : he did not return
the blow, but continued his vociferations until the
boatmen interfered, and provided us with other
seats. The Reuss is exceedingly rapid, and we descended
several falls, one of more than eight feet. There is
something very delicious in the sensation when at
one moment you are at the top of a fall of water,
and before the second has expired you are at the
bottom, still rushing on with the impulse which the
descent has given. The waters of the Rhone are
blue, those of the Reuss are of a deep green. I
should think that there must be something in the
beds of these rivers, and that the accidents of the
banks and sky cannot alone cause this difference.

140 A SIX WEEKS' TOUR
Sleeping at Dettingen, we arrived the neSct morn
ing at Loffenburg, where we engaged a small canoe
to convey us to Mumph. I give these boats this
Indian appellation, as they were of the rudest con
struction — long, narrow, and flat-bottomed: they
consisted merely of straight pieces of deal board,
unpainted, and nailed together with so little care
that the water constantly poured in at the crevices,
and the boat perpetually required emptying. The
river was rapid, and sped swiftly, breaking as it
passed on innumerable rocks just covered by the
water; it was a sight of some dread to see our frail
boat winding among the eddies of the rocks which it
was death to touch, and when the slightest inclina
tion on one side would instantly have overset it.
We could not procure a boat at Mumph, and we
thought ourselves lucky in meeting with a return
cabriolet to Rheinfelden. But our good fortune
was of short duration ; about a league from Mumph
the cabriolet broke down, and we were obliged to-
proceed on foot. Fortunately we were overtaken by
some Swiss soldiers, who were discharged and
returning home, who carried our box for us as far
as Rheinfelden, when we were directed to proceed
a league farther to a village where boats were
commonly hired. Here, although not without some
difficulty, we procured a boat for Basle, and pro-

GERMANY 141
ceeded down a swift river, while evening came on,
and the air was bleak and comfortless. Our voyage
was, however, short, and we arrived at the place of
our destination by six in the evening.
V. GERMANY
Before we slept, S. had made a bargain for a boat
to carry us to Mayence, and the next morning,
bidding adieu to Switzerland, we embarked in a
boat laden with merchandise, but where we had
no fellow-passengers to disturb our tranquillity by
their vulgarity and rudeness. The wind was vio
lently against us, but the stream, aided by a slight
exertion from the rowers, carried us on ; the sun
shone pleasantly, S. read aloud to us " Mary Woll-
Stonecraft's Letters from Norway," and we passed
our time delightfully.
The evening was such as to find few parallels
in beauty ; as it approached, the banks, which had
hitherto been flat and uninteresting, became exceed
ingly beautiful. Suddenly the river grew narrow,
and the boat dashed with inconceivable rapidity
round the base of a rocky hill covered with pines ; a
ruined tower, with its desolated windows, stood on
the summit of another hill that jutted into the river ;
beyond, the sunset was illuminating the distant moun-

142 A SIX WEEKS' TOUR
tains and clouds, casting the reflection of its rich and
purple hues on the agitated river. The brilliance
and contrasts of the colours on the circling whirl
pools of the stream was an appearance entirely new
and most beautiful ; the shades grew darker as the
sun descended below the horizon, and after we had
landed, as we walked to our inn round a beautiful
bay, the full moon arose with divine splendour,
casting its silver light on the before-purpled waves.
The following morning we pursued our journey
in a slight canoe, in which every motion was
accompanied with danger ; but the stream had lost
much of its rapidity, and was no longer impeded by
rocks, the banks were low and covered with willows.
We passed Strasburg, and the next morning it
was proposed to us that we should proceed in the
diligence-par-eau, as the navigation would become
dangerous for our small boat.
There were only four passengers besides our
selves. Three of these were students of the Stras
burg University: Schwitz, a rather handsome,
good-tempered young man ; Hoff", a kind of shape
less animal, with a heavy ugly German face ; and
Schneider, who was nearly an idiot, and on whom
his companions were always playing a thousand
tricks. The remaining passengers were a woman
and an infant.
The country was uninteresting, but we enjoyed

GERMANY 143
fine weather, and slept in the boat in the open air
without any inconvenience. We saw on the shores
few objects that called forth our attention, if I
except the town of Mannheim, which was strikingly
neat and clean. It was situated at about a mile
from the river, and the road to it was planted on
each side with beautiful acacias. The last part of
this voyage was performed close under land, as the
wind was so violently against us that, even with
all the force of a rapid current in our favour, we
were hardly permitted to proceed. We were told,
(and not without reason,) that we ought to congra
tulate ourselves on having exchanged our canoe for
this boat, as the river was now of considerable
width, and tossed by the wind into large waves.
The same morning a boat, containing fifteen
persons, in attempting to cross the water, had upset
in the middle of the river, and every one in it
perished. We saw the boat, turned over, floating
down the stream. This was a melancholy sight,
yet ludicrously commented on by the Batelier;
almost the whole stock of whose French consisted
in the word "seulement." When we asked him
what had happened, he answered, laying particular
emphasis on this favourite dissyllable, " Cest
seulement un bateau, qui e'tait seulement renverse', et
tous les peuples sont seulement noye's."
Mayence is one of the best fortified towns in

144 A SIX WEEKS' TOUR
Germany. The river, which is broad and rapid,
guards it to the east, and the hills for three leagues
around exhibit signs of fortifications. The town
itself is old, the streets narrow, and the houses
high: the cathedral and towers of the town stiU
bear marks of the bombardment which took place
in the Revolutionary War.
We took our places in the diligence-par-eau for
Cologne, and the next morning (September 4th)
departed. This conveyance appeared much more
like a mercantile English affair than any we had
before seen ; it was shaped hke a steamboat, with a
cabin and a high deck. Most of our companions
chose to remain in the cabin ; this was fortunate for
us, since nothing could be more horribly disgusting
than the lower order of smoking drinking Germans
who travelled with us ; they swaggered and talked,
and what was hideous to English eyes, kissed one
another: there were, however, two or three mer
chants of a better class, who appeared well-informed
and polite.
The part of the Rhine down which we now
glided is that so beautifully described by Lord
Byron in, his Third Canto of " Childe Harold." We
read these verses with delight, as they conjured
before us these lovely scenes with the truth and
vividness of painting, and with the exquisite addition

GERMANY 145
of glowing language and a warm imagination. We
were carried down by a dangerously rapid current,
and saw on either side of us hills covered with vines
and trees, craggy cliffs crowned by desolate towers,
and wooded islands where picturesque ruins peeped
from behind the foliage, and cast the shadows of
their forms on the troubled waters which distorted
without deforming them. We heard the songs of
the vintagers, and if the sight was not so replete
with enjoyment as I now fancy it to have been ; yet
memory, taking all the dark shades from the picture,
presents this part of the Rhine to my remembrance
as the loveliest paradise on earth.
We had sufficient leisure for the enjoyment of these
scenes, for the boatmen, neither rowing nor steering,
suffered us to be carried down by the stream, and
the boat turned round and round as it descended.
While I speak with disgust of the Germans who
travelled with us, I should in justice to these Bor
derers record, that at one of the inns here we saw
the only pretty woman we met with in the course
of our travels. She is what I should conceive to be
a truly German beauty; grey eyes, slightly tinged
with brown, and expressive of uncommon sweetness
and frankness. She had lately recovered from a fever,
and this added to the interest of her countenance by
adorning it with an appearance of extreme delicacy.

146 A SIX WEEKS' TOUR
On the following day we left the hiUs of the Rhine,
and found that for the remainder of our journey we
should move sluggishly through the flats of Holland :
the river also winds extremely, so that after cal
culating our resources we resolved to finish our
journey in a land-diligence. Our water-conveyance
remained that night at Bonn, and that we might lose
no time, we proceeded post the same night to Cologne,
where we arrived late; for the rate of travelling in
Germany seldom exceeds a mile and a half an hour.
Cologne appeared an immense town as we drove
through street after street to arrive at our inn. Before
we slept we secured places in the diligence, which
was to depart next morning for Cleves.
Nothing in the world can be more wretched than
travelling in this German diligence: the coach is
clumsy and comfortless, and we proceeded so slowly,
stopping so often, that it appeared as if we should
never arrive at our journey's end. We were allowed
two hours for dinner, and two more were wasted in
the evening while the coach was being changed. We
were then requested, as the diligence had a greater
demand for places than it could supply, to proceed in
a cabriole, which was provided for us. We readily
consented, as we hoped to travel faster than in the
heavy diligence ; but this was not permitted, and we
jogged on all night behind this cumbrous machine.

^^^^^"^mm^® ^^^ g@iL@sif^i.

HOLLAND 147
In the morning we stopped, and for a moment
indulged a hope that we had arrived at Cleves, which
was at the distance of five leagues from our last
night's stage; but we had only advanced three
leagues in seven or eight hours, and had yet eight
miles to perform. However, we first rested about
three hours at this stage, where we could not obtain
breakfast or any convenience, and at about eight
o'clock we again departed, and with slow although
far from easy travelling, faint with hunger and fatigue,
we arrived by noon at Cleves.
VI. HOLLAND
Tired by the slow pace of the diligence, we resolved
to post the remainder of the way. We had now,
however, left Germany, and travelled at about the
same rate as an English post-chaise. The country
was entirely flat, and the roads so sandy, that the
horses proceeded with difficulty. The only ornaments
of this country are the turf fortifications that sur
round the towns. At Nimeguen we passed the flying
bridge, mentioned in the letters of Lady Mary
Montague. We had intended to travel all night, but
at Tiel, where we arrived at about ten o'clock, we
were assured that no post-boy was to be found who
would proceed at so late an hour, on account of the

148 A SIX WEEKS' TOUR
robbers who infested the roads. This was an obvious
imposition ; but as we could procure neither horses
nor driver, we were obliged to sleep here.
During the whole of the following day the road lay
between canals, which intersect this country in every
direction. The roads were excellent, but the Dutch
have contrived as many inconveniences as possible.
In our journey of the day before, we had passed by
a windmill, which was so situated with regard to the
road, that it was only by keeping close to the oppo
site side and passing quickly that we could avoid the
sweep of its sails.
The roads between the canals were only wide
enough to admit of one carriage, so that when we
encountered another we were obliged sometimes to
back for half a mile, until we should come to one of
the drawbridges which led to the fields, on which one
of the cabriolets was rolled, while the other passed.
But they have another practice which is still more
annoying : the flax when cut is put to soak under the
mud of the canals, and then placed to dry against the
trees which are planted on either side of the road ;
the stench that it exhales, when the beams of the sun
draw out the moisture, is scarcely endurable. We
saw many enormous frogs and toads in the canals ;
and the only sight which refreshed the eye by its
beauty was the delicious verdure of the fields, where

HOLLAND 149
the grass was as rich and green as that of England,
an appearance not common on the Continent.
Rotterdam is remarkably clean: the Dutch even
wash the outside brickwork of their houses. We
remained here one day, and met with a man in a very
unfortunate condition : he had been born in Holland,
and had spent so much of his life between England,
France, and Germany, that he had acquired a slight
knowledge of the language of each country, and
spoke all very imperfectly. He said that he under
stood English best, but he was nearly unable to
express himself in that.
On the evening of the 8th of August [September]
we sailed from Rotterdam, but contrary winds obliged
us to remain nearly two days at Maasluys, a town
about two leagues from Rotterdam. Here our last
guinea was expended, and we reflected with wonder
that we had travelled eight hundred miles for less
than thirty pounds, passing through lovely scenes,
and enjoying the beauteous Rhine and all the brilliant
shows of earth and sky, perhaps more, travelling as
we did in an open boat, than if we had been
shut up in a carriage and passed on the road under
the hifls.
The Captain of our vessel was an Englishman, and
had been a King's Pilot. The bar of the Rhine [Maas]
a little below Maasluys is so dangerous that without

ISO A SIX WEEKS' TOUR : HOLLAND
a very favourable breeze none of the Dutch vessels
dare attempt its passage ; but although the wind was
a very few points in our favour, our Captain resolved
to sail, and although half repentant before he had
accomplished his undertaking, he was glad and proud
when, triumphing over the timorous Dutchmen, the
bar was crossed, and the vessel safe in the open sea.
It was in truth an enterprise of some peril ; a heavy
gale had prevailed during the night, and although it
had abated since the morning, the breakers at the
bar were still exceedingly high. Through some
delay, which had arisen from the ship having got
aground in the harbour, we arrived half an hour after
the appointed time. The breakers were tremendous,
and we were informed that there was the space of
only two feet between the bottom of the vessel and
the sands. The waves, which broke against the
sides of the ship with a terrible shock, were quite
perpendicular, and even sometimes overhanging in
the abrupt smoothness of their sides. Shoals of
enormous porpoises were sporting with the utmost
composure amidst the troubled waters.
We safely passed this danger, and after a naviga
tion unexpectedly short, arrived at Gravesend on the
morning of the 13th of September, the third day after
our departure from Maasluys. M.

LETTERS WRITTEN DURING A RESIDENCE
OF THREE MONTHS IN THE ENVIRONS
OF GENEVA, IN THE SUMMER OF THE
YEAR 1816.
LETTER I
H6tel de Secheron, Geneva,
May 17, 1816.
We arrived at Paris on the 8th of this month, and
were detained two days for the purpose of obtaining
the various signatures necessary to our passports,
the French Government having become much more
circumspect since the escape of Lavalette. We had
no letters of introduction or any friend in that city,
and were therefore confined to our hotel, where we
were obliged to hire apartments for the week,
although when we first arrived we expected to be
detained one night only ; for in Paris there are no
houses where you can be accommodated with apart
ments by the day.
The manners of the French are interesting.

152 LETTER I
although less attractive, at least to Englishmen,
than before the last invasion of the Allies : the
discontent and sullenness of their minds perpetually
betrays itself. Nor is it wonderful that they should
regard the subjects of a government which fills their
country with hostile garrisons, and sustains a
detested dynasty on the throne, with an acrimony
and indignation of which that government alone
is the proper object. This feeling is honourable
to the French, and encouraging to all those of
every nation in Europe who have a fellow-feeling
with the oppressed, and who cherish an unconquer
able hope that the cause of liberty must at length
prevail. Our route after Paris, as far as Troyes, lay
through the same uninteresting tract of country
which we had traversed on foot nearly two years
before, but on quitting Troyes we left the road
leading to Neuchatel, to follow that which was to
conduct us to Geneva. We entered Dijon on the
third evening after our departure from Paris, and
passing through Dole, arrived at Pohgny. This
town is built at the foot of Jura, which rises
abruptly from a plain of vast extent. The rocks of
the mountain overhang the houses. Some difficulty
in procuring horses detained us here until the
evening closed in, when we proceeded by the light

LETTER I 153
of a stormy moon to Champagnolles, a little village
situated in the depths of the mountains. The road
was serpentine and exceedingly steep, and was over
hung on one side by half-distinguished precipices,
whilst the other was a gulf filled by the darkness of
the driving clouds. The dashing of the invisible
mountain streams announced to us that we had quitted
the plains of France, as we slowly ascended, amidst
a violent storm of wind and rain, to Champagnolles,
where we arrived at twelve o'clock, the fourth night
after our departure from Paris.
The next morning we proceeded, still ascending
among the ravines and valleys of the mountain.
The scenery perpetually grows more wonderful and
sublime : pine forests, of impenetrable thickness and
untrodden, nay inaccessible expanse, spread on
every side. Sometimes the dark woods descending
follow the route into the valleys, the distorted trees
struggling with knotted roots between the most
barren clefts ; sometimes the road winds high into
the regions of frost, and then the forests become
scattered, and the branches of the trees are loaded
with snow, and half of the enormous pines them
selves buried in the wavy drifts. The Spring, as
the inhabitants informed us, was unusually late, and
indeed the cold was excessive ; as we ascended the
mountains, the same clouds which rained on us in

154 LETTER I
the valleys poured forth large flakes of snow thick
and fast. The sun occasionally shone through these
showers, and illuminated the magnificent ravines
of the mountains, whose gigantic pines were some
laden with snow, some wreathed round by the lines
of scattered and lingering vapour, others darting
their dark spires into the sunny sky, briUiantly clear
and azure.
As the evening advanced, and we ascended higher,
the snow, which we had beheld whitening the over
hanging rocks, now encroached upon our road, and
it snowed fast as we entered the village of Les
Rousses, where we were threatened by the apparent
necessity of passing the night in a bad inn and dirty
beds. For from that place there are two roads to
Geneva ; one by Nion, in the Swiss territory, where
the mountain route is shorter, and comparatively
easy at that time of the year, when the road is for
several leagues covered with snow of an enormous
depth; the other road lay through Gex, and was
too circuitous and dangerous to be attempted at so
late an hour in the day. Our passport, however,
was for Gex, and we were told that we could not
change its destination ; but all these police laws, so
severe in themselves, are to be softened by bribery,
and this difficulty was at length overcome. We
hired four horses, and ten men to support the

LETTER I 15s
carriage, and departed from Les Rousses at six
in the evening, when the sun had already far de
scended, and the snow pelting against the windows
of our carriage, assisted the coming darkness to
deprive us of the view of the Lake of Geneva and
the far-distant Alps.
The prospect around, however, was sufficiently
sublime to command our attention : never was scene
more awfully desolate. The trees in these regions
are incredibly large, and stand in scattered clumps
over the white wilderness ; the vast expanse of
snow was chequered only by these gigantic pines
and the poles that marked our road : no river or
rock-encircled lawn relieved the eye, by adding the
picturesque to the sublime. The natural silence of
that uninhabited desert contrasted strangely with
the voices of the men who conducted us, who with
animated tones and gestures called to one another
in a patois composed of French and Italian, creating
disturbance where but for them there was none.
To what a different scene are we now arrived !
To the warm sunshine and to the humming of sun-
loving insects. From the windows of our hotel we
see the lovely lake, blue as the heavens which it
reflects, and sparkling with golden beams. The
opposite shore is sloping, and covered with vines,
which however do not so early in the season add

156 LETTER I
to the beauty of the prospect. Gentlemen's seats
are scattered over these banks, behind which rise
the various ridges of black mountains, and towering
far above, in the midst of its snowy Alps, the
majestic Mont Blanc, highest and queen of all.
Such is the view reflected by the lake ; it is a bright
summer scene without any of that sacred solitude
and deep seclusion that delighted us at Lucerne.
We have not yet found out any very agreeable
walks, but you know our attachment to water
excursions. We have hired a boat, and every
evening at about six o'clock we sail on the lake,
which is delightful, whether we glide over a glassy
surface or are speeded along by a strong wind.
The waves of this lake never afflict me with that sick
ness that deprives me of all enjoyment in a sea voyage ;
on the contrary, the tossing of our boat raises my
spirits and inspires me with unusual hilarity. Twilight
here is of short duration, but we at present enjoy the
benefit of an increasing moon, and seldom return
until ten o'clock, when, as we approach the shore, we
are saluted by the delightful scent of flowers and new-
mown grass, and the chirp of the grasshoppers, and
the song of the evening birds.
We do not enter into society here, yet our time
passes swiftly and delightfully. We read Latin and
Italian during the heats of noon, and when the sun

LETTER II 157
declines we walk in the garden of the hotel, looking
at the rabbits, relieving fallen cockchafei's, and
watching the motions of a myriad of lizards, who
inhabit a southern wall of the garden. You
know that we have just escaped from the glootn of
winter and of London ; and coming to this delightful
spot during this divine weather, I feel as happy as a
new-fledged bird, and hardly care what twig I fly
to, so that I may try my new-found wings. A more
experienced bird ma}^ be more difficult in its choice
of a bower ; but in my present temper of mind, the
budding flowers, the fresh grass of spring, and the
happy creatures about me that live and enjoy these
pleasures, are quite enough to aflford me exquisite
delight, even though clouds should shut out Mont
Blanc from my sight. Adieu ! M.

LETTER II
Campagne C. (Chapuis), near Coligny,
June 1.
You will perceive from my date that we have changed
our residence since my last. We now inhabit a little
cottage on the opposite shore of the lake, and have
exchanged the view of Mont Blanc and her snow}'
Aiguilles for the dark frowning Jura, behind whose
range we every evening see the sun sink, and dark-

158 LETTER II
ness approaches our valley from behind the Alps,
which are then tinged by the glowing rose-like hue
which is observed in England to attend on the clouds
of an autumnal sky when daylight is almost gone.
The lake is at our feet, and a little harbour contains our
boat, in which we still enjoy our evening excursions
on the water. Unfortunately we do not now enjoy
those brilliant skies that hailed us on our first arrival
to this country. An almost perpetual rain confines us
principally to the house; but when the sun bursts forth
it is with a splendour and heat unknown in England.
The thunder-storms that visit us are grander and
more terrific than I have ever seen before. We watch
them as they approach from the opposite side of the
lake, observing the lightning play among the clouds
in various parts of the heavens and dart in jagged
figures upon the piny heights of Jura, dark with
the shadow of the overhanging cloud, while perhaps
the sun is shining cheerily upon us. One night we
enjoyed a finer storm than I had ever before beheld.
The lake was lit up, the pines on Jura made visible,
and all the scene illuminated for an instant, when a
pitchy blackness succeeded, and the thunder came
in frightful bursts over our heads amid the darkness.
But while I still dwell on the country around
Geneva, you will expect me to say something of the
town itself : there is nothing, however, in it that can

LETTER II 159
repay you for the trouble of walking over its rough
stones. The houses are high, the streets narrow,
many of them on the ascent, and no public building
of any beaut}- to attract your eye, or any architecture
to gratify your taste. The town is surrounded by a
wall, the three gates of which are shut exactly at ten
o'clock, when no bribery (as in France) can open
them. To the south of the town is the promenade
of the Genevese, a grassy plain planted with a few
trees and called Plainpalais. . . . Another Sunday
recreation for the citizens is an excursion to the top
of Mont Salfeve. This hill is within a league of the
town, and rises perpendicularly from the cultivated
plain. It is ascended on the other side, and I should
judge from its situation that your toil is rewarded
by a delightful view of the course of the Rhone and
Arve and of the shores of the lake. We have not
yet visited it.
There is more equality of classes here than in
England. This occasions a greater freedom and
refinement of manners among the lower orders than
we meet with in our own country. The peasants of
Switzerland may not, however, emulate the vivacity
and grace of the French. They are more cleanly,
but they are slow and inapt. I know a girl of twenty,
who although she had lived all her life among \-ine-
yards, could not inform me during what month the

i6o LETTER II
vintage took place, and I discovered she was utterly
ignorant of the order in which the months succeed
to one another. She would not have been surprised
if I had talked of the burning sun and delicious
fruits of December, or of the frosts of July. Yet
she is by no means deficient in understanding.
The Genevese are also much inclined to Puritanism.
It is true that from habit they dance on a Sunday,
but as soon as the French Government was abolished
in the town, the Magistrates ordered the theatre to
be closed, and measures were taken to pull down the
building. We have latterly enjoyed fine weather, and
nothing is more pleasant than to listen to the even
ing song of the vine-dressers. They are all women,
and most of them have harmonious although mascu
line voices. The theme of their ballads consists of
shepherds, love, flocks, and the sons of kings who
fall in love with beautiful shepherdesses. Their
tunes are monotonous, but it is sweet to hear them
in the stillness of the evening, while we are enjoying
the sight of the setting sun, either from the hill
behind our house or from the lake.
Such are our pleasures here, which would be greatly
increased if the season had been more favour
able, for they chiefly consist in such enjoyments
as sunshine and gentle breezes bestow. We have

LETTER III i6i
not yet made any excursion in the environs of the
town, but we have planned several, when you shall
again hear of us : and we will endeavour, by the
magic of words, to transport the ethereal part of you
to the neighbourhood of the Alps and mountain-
streams, and forests, which while they clothe the
former darken the latter with their vast shadows.
Adieu ! M.
LETTER III
To T. P., Esq.
Montalegre, near Coligny, Geneva.
July 12.
It is nearly a fortnight since I have returned from
Vevey. . . . But I will give you an abstract of our
voyage, which lasted eight days, and if you have a
map of Switzerland, you can follow me.
We left Montalegre at half-past two on the 23rd
of June. The lake was calm, and after three hours
of rowing we arrived at Hermance, a beautiful little
village containing a ruined tower, built, the villagers
say, by Julius Caesar. There were three other towers
similar to it, which the Genevese destroyed for their
own fortifications in 1560. We got into the tower
by a kind of window. The walls are immensely
solid, and the stone of which it is built so hard that
it yet retained the mark of chisels. The boatmen I.

i62 LETTER III
said that this tower was once three times higher
than it is now. There are two staircases in the
thickness of the walls, one of which is entirely de
molished, and the other half-ruined and only
accessible by a ladder. The town itself, now an
inconsiderable village inhabited by a few fishermen,
was built by a Queen of Burgundy, and reduced
to Its present state by the inhabitants of Berne,
who burnt and ravaged everything they could
find. Leaving Hermance, we arrived at sunset at the
village of Nerni. After looking at our lodgings,
which were gloomy and dirty, we walked out by the
side of the lake. It was beautiful to see the vast
expanse of these purple and misty waters broken by
the craggy islets near to its slant and " beached
margin." There were many fish sporting in the
lake, and multitudes were collected close to the
rocks to catch the flies which inhabited them.
On returning to the village, we sat on a wall beside
the lake, looking at some children who were playing
at a game like ninepins. The children here appeared
in an extraordinary way deformed and diseased.
Most of them were crooked, and with enlarged
throats ; but one little boy had such exquisite grace
in his mien and motions as I never before saw
equalled in a child. His countenance was beautiful

LETTER III 163
for the expression with which it overflowed. There
was a mixture of pride and gentleness in his eyes
and lips, the indications of sensibility, which his edu
cation will probably pervert to misery or seduce to
crime ; but there was more of gentleness than of pride,
and it seemed that the pride was tamed from its origi
nal wildness by the habitual exercise of milder feel
ings. My companion gave him a piece of money,
which he took without speaking, with a sweet smile of
easy thankfulness, and then with an unembarrassed
air turned to his play. All this might scarcely be ;
but the imagination surely could not forbear to
breathe into the most inanimate forms some likeness
of its own visions, on such a serene and glowing
evening, in this remote and romantic village, beside
the calm lake that bore us hither.
On returning to our inn, we found that the servant
had arranged our rooms, and deprived them of the
greater portion of their former disconsolate appear
ance. They reminded my companion of Greece :
it was five years, he said, since he had slept in such
beds. The influence of the recollections excited by
this circumstance on our conversation gradually
faded, and I retired to rest with no unpleasant
sensations, thinking of our journey to-morrow, and
of the pleasure of recounting the little adventures of
it when we return.

i64 LETTER III
The next morning we passed Yvoire, a scattered
village with an ancient castle, whose houses are
interspersed with trees, and which stands at a little
distance from Nerni, on the promontory which
bounds a deep bay some miles in extent. So soon
as we arrived at this promontory, the lake began to
assume an aspect of wilder magnificence. The
Mountains of Savoy, whose summits were bright
with snow, descended in broken slopes to the lake :
on high, the rocks were dark with pine-forests,
which become deeper and more immense, until the
ice and snow mingle with the points of naked rock
that pierce the blue air ; but below, groves of
walnut, chestnut, and oak, with openings of lawny
fields, attested the milder climate.
As soon as we had passed the opposite promon
tory, we saw the River Drance, which descends
from between a chasm in the mountains, and makes
a plain near the lake, intersected by its divided
streams. Thousands of Besolets, beautiful water-
birds, like sea-gulls, but smaller, with purple on
their backs, take their station on the shallows,
where its waters mingle with the lake. As we
approached Evian, the mountains descended more
precipitously to the lake, and masses of intermingled
wood and rock overhung its shining spire.
We arrived at this town about seven o'clock, after

LETTER in 165
a day which involved more rapid changes of atmo
sphere than I ever recollect to have observed before.
The morning was cold and wet ; then an easterly
wind, and the clouds hard and high ; then thunder
showers, and wind shifting to every quarter ; then a
warm blast from the south, and summer clouds
hanging over the peaks, with bright blue sky
between. About half an hour after we had arrived
at Evian, a few flashes of lightning came fron a dark
cloud directly overhead, and continued after the
cloud had dispersed.
The appearance of the inhabitants of Evian is
more wretched, diseased, and poor, than I ever
recollect to have seen. The contrast indeed between
the subjects of the King of Sardinia and the citizens
of the independent republics of Switzerland, affords
a powerful illustration of the blighting mischiefs of
despotism, within the space of a few miles. They
have mineral waters here: " Eaux savonneuses,"
they call them. In the evening we had some diffi
culty about our passports, but so soon as the
Syndic heard my companion's rank and name, he
apologised for the circumstance. The inn was good.
During our voyage, on the distant height of a hill
covered with pine-forests, we saw a ruined castle
which reminded me of those on the Rhine.
We left Evian on the following morning, with a

i66 LETTER III
wind of such violence as to permit but one sail to be
carried. The waves also were exceedingly high, and
our boat so heavily laden, that there appeared to be
some danger. We arrived however safe at Meillerie,
after passing with great speed mighty forests which
overhung the lake, and lawns of exquisite verdure,
and mountains with bare and icy points, which rose
immediately from the summit of the rocks, whose
bases were echoing to the waves. . . .
We dined there, and had some honey, the best I
have ever tasted, the very essence of the mountain-
flowers, and as fragrant. Probably the village de
rives its name from this production. . . . Groves of
pine, chestnut, and walnut overshadow it ; magnifi
cent and unbounded forests to which England affords
no parallel. In the midst of these woods are dells
of lawny expanse, inconceivably verdant, adorned
with a thousand of the rarest flowers and odorous
with thyme.
The lake appeared somewhat calmer as we left
Meillerie, sailing close to the banks, whose magnifi
cence augmented with the turn of every promontory.
But we congratulated ourselves too soon : the wind
gradually increased in violence, until it blew
tremendously; and as it came from the remotest
extremity of the lake, produced waves of a frightful
height, and covered the whole surface with a chaos

LETTER III 167
of foam. One of our boatmen, who was a dreadfully
stupid fellow, persisted in holding the sail at a time
when the boat was on the point of being driven
under water by the hurricane. On discovering his
error, he let it entirely go, and the boat for a
moment refused to obey the helm ; in addition, the
rudder was so broken as to render the management
of it very difficult ; one wave fell in, and then another.
My companion, an excellent swimmer, took off"
his coat, I did the same, and we sat with our arms
crossed, every instant expecting to be swamped.
The sail was however again held, the boat obeyed
the helm, and still in imminent peril from the im
mensity of the waves, we arrived in a few minutes
at a sheltered port, in the village of St. Gingoux.
I felt in this near prospect of death a mixture of
sensations, among which terror entered, though but
subordinately. My feelings would have been less
painful had I been alone; but I know that my
companion would have attempted to save me, and I
was overcome with humiliation, when I thought that
his life might have been risked to preserve mine.
When we arrived at St. Gingoux, the inhabitants,
who stood on the shore, unaccustomed to see a
vessel as frail as ours, and fearing to venture at
all on such a sea, exchanged looks of wonder
and congratulation with our boatmen, who as well

168 LETTER III
as ourselves were well pleased to set foot on
shore. St. Gingoux is even more beautiful than Meillerie ;
the mountains are higher, and their loftiest points of
elevation descend more abruptly to the lake. On
high, the aerial summits still cherish great depths of
snow in their ravines, and in the paths of their
unseen torrents. One of the highest of these is
called Roche de St. JuHen, beneath whose pinnacles
the forests become deeper and more extensive ; the
chestnut gives a peculiarity to the scene, which is
most beautiful, and will make a picture in my
memory, distinct from all other mountain scenes
which I have ever before visited.
As we arrived here early, we took a voiture to visit
the mouth of the Rhone. We went between the
mountains and the lake, under groves of mighty
chestnut-trees, beside perpetual streams, which are
nourished by the snows above and form stalactites
on the rocks over which they fall. We saw an im
mense chestnut-tree which had been overthrown by
the hurricane of the morning. The place where the
Rhone joins the lake was marked by a line of
tremendous breakers ; the river is as rapid as when
it leaves the lake, but is muddy and dark. We
went about a league farther on the road to La
Valais, and stopped at a castle called La Tour

LETTER III 169
de Bouverie, which seems to be the frontier of
Switzerland and Savoy, as we were asked for our
passports, on the supposition of our proceeding to
Italy. On one side of the road was the immense Roche
de St. Julien, which overhung it ; through the gate
way of the castle we saw the snowy mountains of La
Valais, clothed in clouds, and on the other side was
the willowy plain of the Rhone, in a character of
striking contrast with the rest of the scene, bounded
by the dark mountains that overhang Clarens,
Vevey, and the lake that rolls between. In the
midst of the plain rises a little isolated hill, on
which the white spire of a church peeps from among
the tufted chestnut woods.
As my companion rises late, I had time before
breakfast, on the ensuing morning, to hunt the
waterfalls of the river that fall into the lake at St.
Gingoux. The stream is indeed, from the declivity
over which it falls, only a succession of waterfalls,
which roar over the rocks with a perpetual sound,
and suspend their unceasing spray on the leaves and
flowers that overhang and adorn its savage banks.
The path that conducted along this river sometimes
avoided the precipices of its shores, by leading
through meadows ; sometimes threaded the base of
the perpendicular and caverned rocks. I gathered in

170 LETTER III
these meadows a nosegay of such flowers as I never
saw in England, and which I thought more beautiful
for that rarity.
On my return, after breakfast, we sailed for
Clarens, determining first to see the three mouths of
the Rhone, and then the Castle of Chillon ; the day
was fine, and the water calm. We passed from the
blue waters of the lake over the stream of the Rhone,
which is rapid even at a great distance from its
confluence with the lake ; the turbid waters mixed
with those of the lake, but mixed with them un
willingly. . . .
We passed on to the Castle of Chillon, and visited
its dungeons and towers. These prisons are exca
vated below the lake; the principal dungeon is
supported by seven columns, whose branching capitals
support the roof. Close to the very walls, the lake
is eight hundred feet deep ; iron rings are fastened to
these columns, and on them were engraven a multi
tude of names, partly those of visitors, and partly
doubtless of the prisoners, of whom now no memory
remains, and who thus beguiled a solitude which
they have long ceased to feel. One date was as
ancient as 1670.
Close to this long and lofty dungeon was a narrow
cell, and beyond it one larger and far more lofty and
dark, supported upon two unornamented arches.

LETTER III 171
Across one of these arches was a beam, now black
and rotten, on which prisoners were hung in secret.
1 never saw a monument more terrible of that cold
and inhuman tyranny, which it has been the delight
of man to exercise over man. . . . The Gendarme, who
conducted us over this castle, told us that there was
an opening to the lake, by means of a secret spring,
connected with which the whole dungeon might be
filled with water before the prisoners could possibly
escape. We proceeded with a contrary wind to Clarens,
against a heavy swell. I never felt more strongly
than on landing at Clarens, that the spirit of old
times had deserted its once cherished habitation. . . .
On the following day we went to see the Castle of
Clarens, a square strong house, with very few
windows, surrounded by a double terrace that over
looks the valley, or rather the plain of Clarens. The
road which conducted to it wound up the steep ascent
through woods of walnut and chestnut. . . .
We sailed from Clarens to Vevey. Vevey is a
town more beautiful in its simplicity than any I
have ever seen. Its market-place, a spacious square
interspersed with trees, looks directly upon the
mountains of Savoy and La Valais, the Lake and
the Valley of the Rhone. . . . From Vevey we came to
Ouchy, a village near Lausanne. The coasts of the

172 LETTER HI
Pays de Vaud, though full of villages and vineyards,
present an aspect of tranquillity and peculiar beauty
which well compensates for the solitude which I am
accustomed to admire. The hills are very high and
rocky, crowned and interspersed with woods. Water
falls echo from the cliffs, and shine afar. In one
place we saw the traces of two rocks of immense
size, which had fallen from the mountain behind.
One of these lodged in a room where a young
woman was sleeping, without injuring her. The
vineyards were utterly destroyed in its path, and the
earth torn up.
The rain detained us two days at Ouchy. We
however visited Lausanne, and saw Gibbon's house.
We were shown the decayed summer-house where
he finished his History, and the old acacias on the
terrace, from which he saw Mont Blanc, after having
written the last sentence. There is something grand,
and even touching, in the regret which he expresses
at the completion of his task. It was conceived amid
the ruins of the Capitol. The sudden departure of
his cherished and accustomed toil must have left him,
like the death of a dear friend, sad and solitary. . . .
When we returned, in the only interval of sunshine
during the day, I walked on the pier, which the lake
was lashing with its waves. A rainbow spanned the
lake, or rather rested one extremity of its arch upon

LETTER IV 173
the water and the other at the foot of the Mountains
of Savoy. Some white houses, I know not if they
were those of Meillerie, shone through the yellow
fire. On Saturday the 30th of June we quitted Ouchy,
and after two days of pleasant sailing arrived on
Sunday evening at Montalegre.

LETTER IV
To T. P., Esq.
H&tel de Londres, Chamouni,
July 22, 1816.
Whilst you, my friend, are engaged in securing a
home for us, we are wandering in search of recollec
tions to embellish it. I do not err in conceiving that
you are interested in details of all that is majestic or
beautiful in nature ; but how shall I describe to you
the scenes by which I am now surrounded? To
exhaust the epithets which express the astonishment
and the admiration, the very excess of satisfied
astonishment where expectation scarcely acknow
ledged any boundary, is this to impress upon your
mind the images which fill mine now even till it
overflow? I too have read the raptures of travellers;
I will be warned by their example; I will simply
detail to you all that I can relate, or all that, if

174 LETTER IV
related, would enable you to conceive of what we
have done or seen since the morning of the 20th,
when we left Geneva.
We commenced our intended journey to Chamouni
at half-past eight in the morning. We passed through
the champaign country, which extends from Mont
Saleve to the base of the higher Alps. The country
is sufficiently fertile, covered with corn-fields and
orchards, and intersected by sudden acclivities with
flat summits. The day was cloudless and excessively
hot, the Alps were perpetually in sight, and as we
advanced, the mountains which form their outskirts
closed in around us. We passed a bridge over a
stream which discharges itself into the Arve. The
Arve itself, much swollen by the rains, flows con
stantly to the right of the road.
As we approached Bonneville through an avenue
composed of a beautiful species of drooping poplar,
we observed that the corn-fields on each side were
covered with inundation. Bonneville is a neat little
town, with no conspicuous peculiarity, except the
white towers of the prison, an extensive building
overlooking the town. At Bonneville the Alps com
mence, one of which, clothed by forests, rises almost
immediately from the opposite bank of the Arve.
From Bonneville to Cluses the road conducts
through a spacious and fertile plain, surrounded on

LETTER IV 175
all sides by mountains, covered like those of Meillerie
with forests of intermingled pine and chestnut. At
Cluses the road turns suddenly to the right, following
the Arve along the chasm which it seems to have
hollowed for itself among the perpendicular moun
tains. The scene assumes here a more savage and
colossal character : the valley becomes narrow, afford
ing no more space than is sufficient for the river and
the road. The pines descend to the banks, imitating
with their irregular spires the pyramidal crags which
lift themselves far above the regions of forest into
the deep azure of the sky and among the white
dazzling clouds. The scene, at the distance of half
a mile from Cluses, differs from that of Matlock
in little else than in the immensity of its proportions,
and in its untameable inaccessible solitude, inhabited
only by the goats which we saw browsing on the
rocks. Near Magland, within a league of each other, we
saw two waterfalls. They were no more than moun
tain rivulets, but the height from which they fell, at
least of twelve hundred feet, made them assume a
character inconsistent with the smallness of their
stream. The first fell from the overhanging brow of
a black precipice on an enormous rock, precisely
resembling some colossal Egyptian statue of a female
deity. It struck the head of the visionary image, and

176 LETTER IV
gracefully dividing there, fell from it in folds of foam
more like to cloud than water, imitating a veil of the
most exquisite woof. It then united, concealing
the lower part of the statue, and hiding itself in
a winding of its channel, burst into a deeper
fall, and crossed our route in its path towards the
Arve. The other waterfall was more continuous and
larger. The violence with which it fell made it look
more like some shape which an exhalation had
assumed, than like water, for it streamed beyond the
mountain, which appeared dark behind it, as it might
have appeared behind an evanescent cloud.
The character of the scenery continued the same
until we arrived at St. Martin, (called in the maps
Sallanches,) the mountains perpetually becoming
more elevated, exhibiting at every turn of the road
more craggy summits, loftier and wider extent of
forests, darker and more deep recesses.
The following morning we proceeded from St.
Martin on mules to Chamouni, accompanied by two
guides. We proceeded, as we had done the preced
ing day, along the valley of the Arve, a valley
surrounded on all sides by immense mountains,
whose rugged precipices are intermixed on high with
dazzUng snow. Their bases were still covered with
the eternal forests, which perpetually grew darker

" ,v>

LETTER IV 177
and more profound as we approached the inner
regions of the mountains.
On arriving at a small village, at the distance of a
league from St. Martin, we dismounted from our
mules, and were conducted by our guides to view a
cascade. We beheld an immense body of water fall
two hundred and fifty feet, dashing from rock to rock,
and casting a spray which formed a mist around it,
in the midst of which hung a multitude of sun-bows
which faded or became unspeakably vivid as the
inconstant sun shone through the clouds. V^Hien we
approached near to it the rain of the spray reached
us, and our clothes were wetted by the quick-faUing
but minute particles of water. The cataract fell from
above into a deep craggy chasm at our feet, where
changing its character to that of a mountain stream
it pursued its course towards the Arve, roaring over
the rocks that impeded its progress.
As we proceeded, our route still lay through the
valley, or rather, as it had now become, the vast
ravine which is at once the couch and the creation of
the terrible Arve. We ascended, winding between
mountains whose immensity staggers the imagina
tion. We crossed the path of a torrent, which three
days since had descended from the thawing snow and
torn the road away.
We dined at Servoz, a little viflage where there are
M

178 LETTER IV
lead and copper mines, and where we saw a cabinet
of natural curiosities, like those of Keswick and Beth
gelert. We saw in this cabinet some chamois' horns,
and the horns of an exceedingly rare animal called
the bouquetin, which inhabits the deserts of snow to
the south of Mont Blanc : it is an animal of the stag
kind ; its horns weigh at least twenty-seven English
pounds. It is inconceivable how so small an animal
could support so inordinate a weight. The horns are
of a very peculiar conformation, being broad, massy,
and pointed at the ends, and surrounded with a
number of rings which are supposed to afford an
indication of its age : there were seventeen rings on
the largest of these horns.
From Servoz three leagues remain to Chamouni.
Mont Blanc was before us, the Alps with their
innumerable glaciers on high all around closing in
the complicated windings of the single vale : forests
inexpressibly beautiful, but majestic in their beauty,
intermingled beech and pine and oak, overshadowed
our road or receded : whilst lawns, of such verdure as
I have never seen before, occupied these openings,
and gradually became darker in their recesses. Mont
Blanc was before us, but it was covered With cloud ;
its base, furrowed with dreadful gaps, was seen above.
Pinnacles of snow intolerably bright, part of the
chain connected with Mont Blanc, shone through the

LETTER IV 179
clouds at intervals on high. I never knew, I never
imagined, what mountains were before. The im
mensity of these aerial summits excited, when they
suddenly burst upon the sight, a sentiment of ecstatic
wonder, not unallied to madness : and remember, this
was all one scene, it all pressed home to our regard
and our imagination. Though it embraced a vast
extent of space, the snowy pyramids which shot into
the bright blue sky seemed to overhang our path ;
the ravine, clothed with gigantic pines and black with
its depth below, so deep that the very roaring of the
untameable Arve, which rolled through it, could not
be heard above, all was as much our own as if we
had been the creators of such impressions in the
minds of others as now occupied our own. Nature
was the poet, whose harmony held our spirits more
breathless than that of the divinest.
As we entered the Valley of Chamouni, (which in
fact may be considered as a continuation of those
which we have followed from Bonneville and Cluses,)
clouds hung upon the mountains at the distance
perhaps of 6ocx3 feet from the earth, but so as effec
tually to conceal not only Mont Blanc, but the other
Aiguilles, as they call them here, attached and sub
ordinate to it. We were travelling along the valley,
when suddenly we heard a sound as of the burst of
smothered thunder rolling above; yet there was

I So LETTER IV
something earthly in the sound, that told us it could
not be thunder. Our guide hastily pointed out to us
a part of the mountain opposite, from whence the
sound came. It was an avalanche. We saw the
smoke of its path among the rocks, and continued to
hear at intervals the bursting of its fall. It fell on
the bed of a torrent, which it displaced, and presently
we saw its tawny-coloured waters also spread them
selves over the ravine which was their couch.
We did not, as we intended, visit the Glacier des
Bossons to-day, although it descends within a few
minutes' walk of the road, wishing to survey it at
least when unfatigued. We saw this glacier, which
comes close to the fertile plain, as we passed : its
surface was broken into a thousand unaccountable
figures : conical and pyramidical crystallisations,
more than fifty feet in height, rise from its surface,
and precipices of ice of dazzling splendour overhang
the woods and meadows of the vale. This glacier
winds upwards from the valley, until it joins the
masses of frost from which it was produced above,
winding through its own ravine like a bright belt
flung over the black region of pines. There is more
in all these scenes than mere magnitude of pro
portion : there is a majesty of outline : there is an
awful grace in the very colours which invest these
wonderful shapes, a charm which is peculiar to them.

LETTER IV 181
quite distinct even from the reality of their unutter
able greatness. July 24.
Yesterday morning we went to the source of the
Arveiron. It is about a league from this village ; the
river rolls forth impetuously from an arch of ice, and
spreads itself in many streams over a vast space of
the valley, ravaged and laid bare by its inundations.
The glacier by which its waters are nourished, over
hangs this cavern and the plain, and the forests of
pine which surround it, with terrible precipices of
solid ice ; on the other side rises the immense
Glacier of Montanvert, fifty miles in extent, occupying
a chasm among mountains of inconceivable height,
and of forms so pointed and abrupt, that they seem
to pierce the sky. From this glacier we saw, as we
sat on a rock, close to one of the streams of the
Arveiron, masses of ice detach themselves from
on high and rush with a loud dull noise into the
vale. The violence of their fall turned them into
powder, which flowed over the rocks in imitation of
waterfalls, whose ravines they usurped and filled.
In the evening I went with Ducree, my guide, the
only tolerable person I have seen in this country, to
visit the Glacier des Bossons. This glacier, like that
of Montanvert, comes close to the vale, overhanging
the green meadows and the dark woods with the

1 82 LETTER IV
dazzling whiteness of its precipices and pinnacles,
which are like spires of radiant crystal, covered with
a network of frosted silver. These glaciers flow
perpetually into the valley, ravaging in their slow but
irresistible progress the pastures and the forests
which surround them, performing a work of desola
tion in ages, which a river of lava might accomplish
in an hour, but far more irretrievably ; for where the
ice has once descended, the hardiest plant refuses
to grow; if even, as in some extraordinary in
stances, it should recede after its progress has once
commenced. The glaciers perpetually move onward,
at the rate of a foot each day, with a motion that
commences at the spot where, on the boundaries of
perpetual congelation, they are produced by the
freezing of the waters which arise from the partial
melting of the eternal snows. They drag with them
from the regions whence they derive their origin, all
the ruins of the mountain, enormous rocks, and
immense accumulations of sand and stones. These
are driven onwards by the irresistible stream of solid
ice; and when they arrive at a declivity of the
mountain sufficiently rapid, roll down scattering
ruin. I saw one of these rocks which had descended
in the spring, (winter here is the season of silence
and safety,) which measured forty feet in every
direction.

LETTER IV 183
The verge of a glacier like that of Bossons
presents the most vivid image of desolation that it is
possible to conceive. No one dares to approach it ;
for the enormous pinnacles of ice which perpetually
fall, are perpetually reproduced. The pines of the
forest, which bound it at one extremity, are over
thrown and shattered to a wide extent at its base.
There is something inexpressibly dreadful in the
aspect of the few branchless trunks, which nearest
to the ice-rifts still stand in the uprooted soil. The
meadows perish, overwhelmed with sand and stones.
Within this last year, these glaciers have advanced
three hundred feet into the valley. De Saussure, the
naturalist, says that they have their periods of in
crease and decay : the people of the country hold an
opinion entirely different; but as I judge, more
probable. It is agreed by all, that the snow on the
summit of Mont Blanc and the neighbouring moun
tains perpetually augments, and that ice in the form
of glaciers subsists without melting in the VaUey of
Chamouni during its transient and variable summer.
If the snow which produces this glacier must aug
ment, and the heat of the valley is no obstacle to the
perpetual existence of such masses of ice as have
already descended into it, the consequence is obvious;
the glaciers must augment and will subsist, at least
until they have overflowed this vale.

i84 LETTER IV
I will not pursue Buffon's sublime but gloomy
theory, that this globe which we inhabit will at some
future period be changed into a mass of frost by
the encroachments of the polar ice and of that
produced on the most elevated points of the earth.
Do you, who assert the supremacy of Ahriman,
imagine him throned among these desolating snows,
among these palaces of Death and Frost, so sculp
tured in this their terrible magnificence by the
adamantine hand of Necessity, and that he casts
around him, as the first essays of his final usurpa
tion, avalanches, torrents, rocks, and thunders, and
above all these deadly glaciers, at once the proof
and symbols of his reign ; add to this, the degra
dation of the human species, who in these regions
are half deformed or idiotic, and most of whom are
deprived of anything that, can excite interest or
admiration. This is a part of the subject more
mournful and less sublime; but such as neither
the poet nor the philosopher should disdain to
regard. This morning we departed, on the promise of a
fine day, to visit the Glacier of Montanvert. In that
part where it fills a slanting valley, it is called the
Sea of Ice. This valley is 950 toises, or 7600 feet,
above the level of the sea. We had not proceeded
i'ar before the rain began to fall, but we persisted

MB^'%m-':^m

LETTER IV 185
until we had accomplished more than half of our
journey, when we returned wet through. Chamouni, July 25.
We have returned from visiting the Glacier of
Montanvert or, as it is called, the Sea of Ice, a scene
in truth of dizzying wonder. The path that winds
to it along the side of the mountain, now clothed
with pines, now intersected with snowy hollows, is
wide and steep. The Cabin of Montanvert is three
leagues from Chamouni, half of which distance is
performed on mules, not so sure-footed but that on
the first day the one which I rode fell in what the
guides call a Mauvais Pas, so that I narrowly
escaped being precipitated down the mountain. We
passed over a hollow covered with snow, down
which vast stones are accustomed to roll. One had
fallen the preceding day, a little time after we had re
turned : our guides desired us to pass quickly, for it is
said that sometimes the least sound will accelerate their
descent. We arrived at Montanvert, however, safe.
On all sides precipitous mountains, the abodes of
unrelenting frost, surround this vale : their sides are
banked up with ice and snow, broken, heaped high,
and exhibiting terrific chasms. The summits are
sharp and naked pinnacles, whose overhanging
steepness will not even permit snow to rest upon

l86 LETTER IV
them. Lines of dazzling ice occupy here and there
their perpendicular rifts, and shine through the
driving vapours with inexpressible brilliance: they
pierce the clouds like things not belonging to this
earth. The vale itself is filled with a mass of
undulating ice, and has an ascent sufficiently gradual
even to the remotest abysses of these horrible
deserts. It is only half a league, (about two miles,)
in breadth, and seems much less. It exhibits an
appearance as if frost had suddenly bound up the
waves and whirlpools of a mighty torrent. We
walked some distance upon its surface. The waves
are elevated about twelve or fifteen feet from the
surface of the mass, which is intersected by long
gaps of unfathomable depth, the ice of whose sides
is more beautifully azure than the sky. In these
regions everything changes, and is in motion.
This vast mass of ice has one general progress,
which ceases neither day nor night; it breaks and
bursts for ever ; some undulations sink while others
rise ; it is never the same. The echo of rocks, or
of the ice and snow which fall from their over
hanging precipices or roll from their aerial summits,
scarcely ceases for one moment. One would think
that Mont Blanc, like the God of the Stoics, was a
vast animal, and that the frozen blood for ever
circulated through his stony veins.

LETTER IV 187
We dined, M., C, and I, on the grass in the open
air, surrounded by this scene. The air is piercing
and clear. We returned down the mountain, some
times encompassed by the driving vapours, some
times cheered by the sunbeams, and arrived at
our inn by seven o'clock. Montalegre, July 28.
The next morning we returned through the rain
to St. Martin. The scenery had lost something
of its immensity, thick clouds hanging over the
highest mountains; but visitings of sunset inter
vened between the showers, and the blue sky shone
between the accumulated clouds of snowy whiteness
which brought them, the dazzling mountains some
times glittered through a chasm of the clouds above
our heads; and all the charm of its grandeur
remained. We repassed Pont Pelissier, a wooden
bridge over the Arve and the ravine of the Arve.
We repassed the pine forests which overhang the
defile, the Chateau of St. Michel, a haunted ruin,
built on the edge of a precipice and shadowed over
by the eternal forest. We repassed the Vale of
Servoz, a vale more beautiful, because more
luxuriant, than that of Chamouni. Mont Blanc
forms one of the sides of this vale also, and the
other is inclosed by an irregular amphitheatre of
enormous mountains, one of which is in ruins, and

i88 LETTER IV
fell fifty years ago into the higher part of the valley :
the smoke of its fall was seen in Piedmont, and
people went from Turin to investigate whether a
volcano had not burst forth among the Alps. It
continued falling many days, spreading, with the
shock and thunder of its ruin, consternation into
the neighbouring vales. In the evening we arrived
at St. Martin. The next day we wound through
the valley which I have described before, and
arrived in the evening at our home.
We have bought some specimens of minerals and
plants and two or three crystal seals at Mont
Blanc, to preserve the remembrance of having
approached it. There is a Cabinet of Histoire
Naturelle at Chamouni, just as at Keswick, Matlock,
and Clifton, the proprietor of which is the very
vilest specimen of that vile species of quack, that
together with the whole army of Aubergistes and
guides, and indeed the entire mass of the population,
subsist on the weakness and credulity of travellers
as leeches subsist on the sick. The most interest
ing of my purchases is a large collection of all the
seeds of rare Alpine plants, with their names written
upon the outside of the papers that contain them.
These I mean to colonise in my garden in England,
and to permit you to make what choice you please
from them. They are companions which the

LETTER IV 189
Celandine, the classic Celandine, need not despise ;
they are as wild and more daring than he, and will
tell him tales of things even as touching and sublime
as the gaze of a vernal poet.
Did I tell you that there are troops of wolves
among these mountains? In the winter they
descend into the valleys, which the snow occupies
six months of the year, and devour everything that
they can find out of doors. A wolf is more power
ful than the fiercest and strongest dog. There are
no bears in these regions. We heard, when we
were at Lucerne, that they were occasionally found
in the forests which surround that lake. Adieu. S.

MONT BLANC
LINES WRITTEN IN THE VALE OF CHAMOUNI

The everlasting universe of things
Flows through the mind, and rolls its rapid waves,
Now dark, — now glittering, — now reflecting gloom, —
Now lending splendour, where from secret springs
The source of human thought its tribute brings
Of waters, — with a sound but half its own.
Such as a feeble brook will oft assume
In the wild woods, among the mountains lone.
Where waterfalls around it leap for ever,
Where woods and winds contend, and a vast river
Over its rocks ceaselessly bursts and raves.

Thus thou, — Ravine of Arve, — dark deep ravine, —
Thou many-coloured, many-voiced vale.
Over whose pines and crags and caverns sail

MONT BLANC 191
Fast cloud-shadows and sunbeams ; awful scene.
Where Power in likeness of the Arve comes down
From the ice-gulfs that gird his secret throne.
Bursting through these dark mountains like the
flame
Of lightning through the tempest ; — thou dost lie.
Thy giant brood of pines around thee clinging,
Children of elder time, in whose devotion
The chainless winds still come and ever came
To drink their odours, and their mighty swinging
To hear, an old and solemn harmony ;
Thine earthly rainbows stretched across the sweep
Of the ethereal waterfall, whose veil
Robes some unsculptured image ; the strange sleep
Which, when the voices of the desert fail,
Wraps all in its own deep eternity ;
Thy caverns echoing to the Arve's commotion,
A loud lone sound no other sound can tame ;
Thou art pervaded with that ceaseless motion.
Thou art the path of that unresting sound,
Dizzy Ravine ! And, when I gaze on thee,
I seem, as in a trance sublime and strange.
To muse on my own separate phantasy.
My own, my human Mind, which passively
Now renders and receives fast influencings.
Holding an unremitting interchange
With the clear Universe of Things around ;

192 MONT BLANC
One legion of wild thoughts, whose wandering
wings
Now float above thy darkness, and now rest
Where that or thou art no unbidden guest.
In the still cave of the witch Poesy,
Seeking, among the shadows that pass by,
Ghosts of all things that are some shade of thee.
Some phantom, some faint image ; till the breast
From which they fled recalls them, thou art there !
Ill
Some say that gleams of a remoter world
Visit the soul in sleep, that death is slumber,
And that its shapes the busy thoughts outnumber
Of those who wake and live. I look on high ;
Has some unknown Omnipotence unfurled
The veil of life and death ? or do I lie
In dream, and does the mightier world of sleep
Spread far around and inaccessibly
Its circles ? For the very spirit fails.
Driven like a homeless cloud from steep to steep
That vanishes among the viewless gales !
Far, far above, piercing the infinite sky,
Mont Blanc appears, — still, snowy, and serene.
Its subject mountains their unearthly forms
Pile round it, ice and rock ; broad vales between
Of frozen floods, unfathomable deeps.

MONT BLANC 193
Blue as the overhanging heaven, that spread
And wind among the accumulated steeps ;
A desert peopled by the storms alone.
Save when the eagle brings some hunter's bone,
And the wolf tracks her there. How hideously
Its shapes are heaped around ! — rude, bare, and
high.
Ghastly and scarred and riven ! Is this the
scene
Where the old Earthquake-daemon taught her young
Ruin ? Were these their toys ? or did a sea
Of fire envelope once this silent snow ?
None can reply : all seems eternal now.
The wilderness has a mysterious tongue
Which teaches awful doubt, — or faith so mild,
So solemn, so serene, that Man may be.
But for such faith, with Nature reconciled ;
Thou hast a voice, great Mountain, to repeal
Large codes of fraud and woe ; not understood
By all, but which the wise and great and good
Interpret, or make felt, or deeply feel
IV
The fields, the lakes, the forests, and the streams.
Ocean, and all the living things that dwell
Within the daedal earth, lightning, and rain.
Earthquake and fiery flood and hurricane.

194 MONT BLANC
The torpor of the year when feeble dreams
Visit the hidden buds, or dreamless sleep
Holds every future leaf and flower, the bound
With which from that detested trance they leap.
The works and ways of man, their death and birth.
And that of him, and all that his may be.
All things that move and breathe, with toil and
sound
Are born and die, revolve, subside and swell.
Power dwells apart in its tranquillity
Remote, serene, and inaccessible :
And this, the naked countenance of earth.
On which I gaze, even with these primaeval
mountains
Teach the adverting mind. The glaciers creep.
Like snakes that watch their prey, from their far
fountains.
Slow rolling on ; there, many a precipice
Frost and the sun in scorn of mortal power
Have piled : dome, pyramid, and pinnacle,
A city of death, distinct with many a tower
And wall impregnable of beaming ice.
Yet not a city, but a flood of ruin
Is there, that from the boundaries of the sky
Rolls its perpetual stream ; vast pines are strewing
Its destined path, or in the mangled soil

MONT BLANC 195
Branchless and shattered stand; the rocks, drawn
down
From yon remotest waste, have overthrown
The Hmits of the dead and living world,
Never to be reclaimed. The dwelling-place
Of insects, beasts, and birds, becomes its spoil ;
Their food and their retreat for ever gone,
So much of life and joy is lost. The race
Of man flies far in dread ; his work and dwelling
Vanish, like smoke before the tempest's stream.
And their place is not known. Below, vast caves
Shine in the rushing torrents' restless gleam.
Which from those secret chasms in tumult welling
Meet in the vale ; and one majestic River,
The breath and blood of distant lands, for ever
Rolls its loud waters to the ocean-waves.
Breathes its swift vapours to the circling air.

Mont Blanc yet gleams on high : the power ^ there,
The still and solemn power, of many sights
And many sounds, and much of hfe and death.
In the calm darkness of the moonless nights.
In the lone glare of day, the snows descend
Upon that Mountain ; none beholds them there,
Nor when the flakes bum in the sinking sun.

196 MONT BLANC
Or the star-beams dart through them. Winds
contend
Silently there, and heap the snow, with breath
Rapid and strong, but silently. Its home
The voiceless lightning in these solitudes
Keeps innocently, and like vapour broods
Over the snow. The secret Strength of Things
Which governs thought, and to the infinite dome
Of heaven is as a law, inhabits thee ;
And what were thou and earth and stars and sea,
If to the human mind's imaginings,
Silence and solitude were vacancy ?

INDEX

ACROCERAUNIA, 49
Ahriman, 100, 184
Aiguilles, 9, 85, 94-6, 99
Alps, 4, 12-13, 27-9, 34, 46, 65,
69, 70-1, 74, 82-3, 86, 112, 133-
4, 1SS-61, 174, 188
AnccEur, 20
Argos, 5S
Arve, 9-11, 59, 69-72, 77, 85-6,
159. 174-9. 186, 190-1, 195
Arveiron, 9, 10, 68, 92, 102, i8i
Aube, 24, 126
Bala, Lake, 53
Balmat, Jacques, 91-2
Balme, 74-5
Bar-sur-Aube, z6, 126
Barce, 24
Basle, 38, 140
Bear, 83-4, 91
Becassine, 55
Bellerive, 48
Berne, 52, 63, 162
Besanpon, 28-30, 43, 127-9
Besolet (tern), 55, 164
Bethgelert, 75-84, 178
Blair, Charles, 93-4
Blucher, 24-5, 62
Bonn, 39-41, 146
Bonnant, 71, 86
Bonneville, 69-73, ''74> ^79
Bonnivard, 62-4
Bossons, Glacier des, 9, 68, 88-9,
102, 181-3, 194
Boulogne, 18, 114, 116
Bouquetin (ibex), 82-3, 99, 178
Bourmont, General, 21-2

Bourrit, M. Th.,75, 78-9, 83, 87-9,
93-4. 99. lOS ,
Bouverie, Tour de la, 61, 168
Brunnen, 11, 36-7, 135-7
Buffon, 99, 184
Byron, Lord, 3-6, 14, 40, 46-66,
144, 161-9
Cesar's Toweks, 21, 43, 52, 161
Caillet, Fountain of, 92, 102
Calais, 17-8, 114-S
Carrier, 91
Celandine, 103, 189
Chablais, 34
Chamois, 82-3, 91, 99, 178
Chamouni, i, 12, 50, 53, 6S-9,
75, 80-1, 83-9r, 94-8, 112, 174-
89, 185-9
Champagnolles, 46, 153
Champlitte, 126
Chapuis, 48
Charenton, 19, 20, 119
Chaumont, 26, 126
Chfede, 79, 80
Chfene, 69
Chillon, 14, 61-4, 112, 170
Chimari, 49
Clarens, 4-7, 57, 61, 64, 112, 169-71
Cleves, 42, 146-7
Cluses, 69-73, 81, 174-5, 179
Coligny, 48
Coliseum, So
Cologne, 42, 144, 146
Contamines, 69
Coolidge, W. A. B., 89, 93-4, 105
Cossacks, 21-6, 121-6
Courmayeur, 99

198

INDEX

Couteran, 89, 94
Couttet, 98
Coxe, W., 93
DAUPHiNfi, 70, 102
Deyverdim, 65
Dent du Midi, 70, 72
Dent d'Oche, 56
Deschamps, Joseph, 80, 82
Desportes, F^lix, 94
Dettingen, 140
Dijon, 45, 152
Diodati, 40, 48
D61e, 45, 152
Donati, 71
Doubs, 28, 33
Dover, 17, 113
Drance, 55, 164
Ducrfe, 88
Dumas, 53, 64, 91-2, 105
Echemine, 23, 124
Eckermann, 29, 105
Eden, F. M., 74, 77, 90, 94, 106
Ehrenbreitstein, 40
Evian, 56, 164-5
Faucigny, 69, 70, 81
Ferra, 53
Fish, 52-3, 162
Florian, 92
Foully, 81, 84
Frankenstein, 37, 39, 47-8, 74-5,
85-7. 92, 95. i°7
Geneva, 34, 43, 50, 62, 155-9
¦  , Lake of, 46, 50-67, rs5,
161-73
Genipi (yarrow), 99
Gex, 46, 154
Gibbon, 65-6, 106, 172
Glaciers, 9, 68, 87-7, 102, 180-3
Glarus, 82
Godwin, W., 16
Goethe, 29, 37-8, 93
Gray, 126
Gray, Thomas, 34, 53, 84, 106
Greece, 49, 54, 163
Gria, 87-8
Grisons, 84
Grosbois, 120

Gnmer, G. S., 97, 106
Guignes, 20-1, 120
Gwynniad, 53
Hermance, 52, 161-2
Horace, 16, 56
Hugo, Victor, ir, 63, 106
Ibex (Ibsch), 82-3, 99, 178
Jura, 27, 33, 45, 48-9, 84, 152,
157-8
Jurine, L., 81
Koch, F., 106
La Condamine, 27, 98, 106
Lambard, 91
Langres, 26-7, 81, 126
La Rothifere, 24-5
Lausanne, 65-7, 171-2
Lavallette, 45, 151
Leschevin, 72, 81, 93, 106
Les Rousses, 13, 46, 154-5
Loffenburg, 38, 139-40
Lucerne, 11, 35-8, 84, 134-8, 156,
189
Maasluys, 44, 149
Macdonald, Marshal, 25
Magland, 75-6, 175
Mannheim, 39, 143
Marlow, 103
Marne, 26
Martigny, 91
Matlock, 74-5, 175, 188
Mayence, 39, 141, 143
Medwin, T., 19, 40, 80, 106
Meillerie, 4-6, 52, 56-61, 67, 112,
166, 173, 175
M6noge, 69
Mercure Suisse, 97, 106
Milton, 3, 6, 48
Mines, 81, 85, 102, 178
Mer de Glace, 60, 92-103, 181,
184^5
Mont Argentiire, 47
Blanc, 6-9, 27-9, 45-9, 65,
69, 70, 74-7, 82-92, 100-2,
156-^. 172. 178-96
Brezon, 70

INDEX

199

Mont Cenis, 27, 84
Chatelard, 81
Is^ran, 82
Mallet, 99
Morche, 72
Rosenberg, 71
Salfeve, 50, 60, 69, 159, 174
Varens, 78
Vaudagne, 85
Montague, Lady Mary W., 42-4,
107, 147
Montalegre, 8, 48-51, 68, 102,
161, 173
Montagne Maudite, 70
Montanvert, 68, 89, 92-3, 102,
181-7
Monties, 84-5
Montreux (Clarens), i, 3-7, 57,
61, 64, 112, 169-71
Moore, J., 53, 74, 95-6, 99, 107
Mormant, 20
Mort, 29, 128
Mumph, 140
Nant d'Arpenaz, 10, 11, 75-6,
175-6
Nayin, 87
Sauvage, 86
Nangy, 69
Napoleon, 15, 20-5, 45, 57, 118,
120, 123
Napoli di Romania, 55
Necker, J. , 79
Nerni, 52, 162-4
Neuchatel, 24, 28-35, 53. i^S. I33.
138. 152
Nimeguen, 43-4, 147
Nion, 46, 154
Noe, 31, 129
Nogent, 21-2, 121
Ouches, 87
Ouchy, SI, 65, 171-3
Oudinot, Marshal, 26
Paccard, Dr., 91-2, 107
Paccard Museum, 90
Pahlen, Count de, 22
Paradis, Marie, 91
Paris, 15, 18-20, 45, 53, 116-8,
133. 138, 150-3

Passi, 78
Pavilion, 23, 124
Payot, D,, 90, 102
Payot, P., 92
Peacock, T. L. , 50, 68, 84, 100,
161, 173, 184
Piedmont, 161, i88
Pilatus, II, 12
Plainpalais, 48, 50, 159
Plantin, J. B., 82, 107
Platow, Hetman, 21
Pliny, 47, 68
Pococke, R., 78, 93, 97
Poligny, 45-6, 152
Pontarlier, 31-2, 45, 130-1
Pontecoulant, L. D., 94
Pont Paissier, 7, 9, 77, 85-6, 187
Praz d'Avaz, 102
Prieur^, 89
Provins, 20, 76, 120-1
Pyrenees, 20, 76
Quixote, 19, 20, 48, 120
RAY, J., 18, 60, 82-3
Reposoir, 73
Reuss, 38, 138-9
Rheinfelden, 39, 40
Rhine, i, 4, 13, 14, 38-41, 56, 103,
112, 138-9, 144-6, 149, 165
Rhone, 53, 59, 61, 159, 168-71
Rossetti, W. M., 9
Rotterdam, 41-2, 44, 149
Rousseau, 16, 34, 50-2, 57, 64-5
Rouai, 25
St. Aubin, 22, 121
St. Bernard, 57, 69, 70
St. Denis, 18, 117
St. Gervais, 77, 79, 86
St Gingoux, 57, 59-61, 167-9
St. Gothard, 36, 103, 134
St. Julien, 168-9
St. Martin, 76-7, 88-9, 176-7,
187-8
St. Quiriace, 21
St. Sulpice, 33, 132
St. Victor, 6s
St. Michel, Chateau, 85, 187
Ste. Germaine, 26
Sallanches, 69, 77-8, 89, 176
Salzburg, 83

INDEX

Sardinia, 34, 71, 161
Saussure, De, 70, 89-93, 96,98, 107,
183
Savoy, 34, 61-3, 65, 69, 73, 82, 96,
164, 169
Schiller, 35
Schwytz, 36
Sfecheron, 13, 46, 151, 155-6
Seine, 19, 23-4, 53, 119
Servoz, 71, 74, 77-8, 80-6, 177-8,
187
Shakespeare, 3, 4
Shelley, M., 16-20, 24, 31, 42-3,
69, 107-8. {See Frankenstein)
Shelley, P. B.
First tour, 1-44, 111-50
Early Poems, 6-14, 30-1, 36,
49, 60, 67, 70, loi, 190
Journey to Geneva, 45-50,
151-61
A Sail round the Lake, 51-67,
161-73
Journey to Chamouni, 68-88,
173-9
Glaciers of Chamouni, 88-103,
179-89
References to Milton, 3, 6, 48
To Shakespeare, 3, 5
To Wordsworth, 2-6, 103-4,
189
Soleure, 35
Spezia, 58
Stolzenfels, 40
Strasburg, 39, 142
Tacitus, 16, 38, 47, 137
Taconnay, 87-8
Tairraz, 87, 91
Talfefre, 99, 103

Tell, 38, 136
Teneriffe, 27
Tennyson, 76
Tiel, 147
Tournier, 91
Trelawny, E. J., 58, 108
Trelliard, General, 20-1
Tripolitza, 55
Trois-Maisons, 122
Troyes, 20-5, 28, 45, 121, 124-5,
128, 130, 152
Turin, 70, 188
Tyrol, .82
Ullesvtater, 53
Uri, 36-7, 134-6
Valais, 61, 65, 83-4, 95, 103, 168-
9. 171
Valmy, Comte de, 20-1
Val Travers, 35
Vandceuvres, 25-6, 125
Vaud, Pays de, 47, 61, 172
Verviers, 33
Vevey, 50, 53, 64-7, 112, 161, 169,
171
Villeneuve, 61
Voirol, Col, 22
Walpole, H., 53, 84 I ^
White Mountain, 27
Windham, 93
Wolf, 84, 189
Wollstonecraft, M., 16, 39, 108,
141
Wordsworth, 2-6, 18, 41, 103, 108,
189
Yvron, 20

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