A Ride on Horseback to Florence Through France and Switzerland. Vol. 2 of 2

Valley of the Rhone-St. Maurice-The Theban legion-The Valais-The village buried-The Rhone overflowed-Former inundation-The old villager saved-St. Bernard-Story of its founder-Martigny-Ri

s stony defile, and beneath its covered wooden bridge, to the lake. Our route skirted its precipices, and is very lovely where, at the entrance of the valley of the Simmenthal, the wooded base of the Niesen and the Stockhorn'sr crags leave barely space for the road and the torrent, which a one arched bridge spans. We found at Erlenbachr Mr. --, who was to be our companion on this day's journey, and, to our regret, this day's only; as he is light-hearted and light-footed, all annoyance, and most fatigue, finding him invulnerable. Near the village was an extensi

far from new, hung round my bed-room, which the servant, with German phlegm, said "could not derange me as I lay in bed," and I had some trouble to get removed in consequence. These wooden mansions are like a sounding board, for, while I was dressing this morning, I heard distinctly, as if she had been in the room, a lady in the next admonishing her daughter, and D-- and Mr. -- conversing at breakfast below; forming a tower of Babel colloquy. We had such coffee as the French call eau trouble, its few grounds floating to the top; and dismissed the unborn chickens presented for eggs. Our acquaintance parted from us here, hiring a car

away on the other side of the torrent and the valley. "Is that

, y

s we are

the road pointed to the steep sheep-track which dips suddenly down to the torrent's edge, and a narrow path which followed its windings. Not much liking the itinerary, we asked whether horses might not pass over, but the German, who spoke a little English, saying, "Peoples, only peoples," down obediently we went, passing under the bridge, and pausing in the loveliest ravine in the world, with its clear rushing water and mountain sides covered with pines, those near us brilliant in light and black in shadow; and the faint mist shedding a blue tinge over the further and higher forests; the bold arch flung over at a considerable elevation, still surrounded by

e not likely to arrive that way at Saanen. One of the men left his work to conduct us back to the bridge without parapets, and up a narrow, slippery, and perpendicular road, ranging over t

y assemblage of torrent and mountain-one range all snow, the rest with a robe of green pastures and a crown of pine forests. Fed the horses at Chatea

ion on the side of the precipice; the road rises and falls continually, cut through the rock and the pines, and high over the torrent. It continues thus for some miles, the stream and valley then widen, and grow calmer in their beauty. No one along these new roads, undivided by league-stones, has an idea of distance. We were told two leagues for the last fifteen miles, and we were weary and the sun low when we came in sight of Gruyères, and admired its old castle and town high on the

castle, and the inn yclept h?tel

ut not choosing to pay the fine levied here, as well as at Geneva, on entertainments during undue hours,

heard it was the anniversary of the Virgin Mary's quitting th

y, Septe

ere we then rested them in the shade. Persecuted by the small vineyard flies and musquitoes, of which we were free in the mountains, wearied by the horses kicking the whole

Septe

hey gave up the idea, leaving her with three new shoes and a hoof with none. This was an impediment to the journey quite unlooked for, and rather disturbed our equanimity. Saturday, D-- bribed the farriers back, and after breakfast and go?ter they returned to look at her and to talk, and at four o'clock the business

y dint of telling it, that I should think the conquest of the grey horse would re

ill, and Clarens with her foot in the water, and the peak of Jaman above the spire of Montreux, the mountains not like those of the Simmenthal, everyw

it one visit more. The view of the castle is far grander from the shore than lake, as its uniformity is broken by the three massive towers and the keep which surmounts them, and it wears the sober grey whi

isle, till D--, who accuses me of always admiring scenery backwards, cricked his neck. The tiny habitation has no

enter the valley of the Rhone, wild and muddy, with his eighty-four tributary streams, already received in his passage through the mountains. L'

fend this already well closed pass. I thought it one of the most striking spots I had seen in Switzerland. You know the legend, that here in the year 302, the Theban legion was massacred by command of the Emperor Maximilian, and the place called St. Maurice, from the name of the chief of these martyrs, who refused to abjure Christianity. When we had crossed the bridge, the grandeur and the beauty merged in the muddy street of this most filthy town; the contrast between the Vaud we had l

mong the rubbish is a roofless cottage, almost buried. We were told that the bursting of a glacier in 1835 caused this desolation; a torrent of mud descended from the Dent du Midi, floating on its surface the blocks of stone which ruined the valley, sacrificing no lives, as its progress was slow, but

the finest I have seen, from the volume of its foaming water, and the violence with which it leaps from crag to crag through the ravine it has hollowed till it makes its last bound of one hundred and twenty feet, and from the basin which receives it, the spray mounts like steam. As, excepting the elevated causeway on which

torrent, descending from the Tête Noire, and issuing from the black

once a stronghold of the bishops of Sion, built on the summit of a solitary rock, not far fro

where fire and candles only made darkness visible. We cut up the doubtful meat only in mercy to the next comers. I imagine this has bee

t formed an obstacle, behind which the waters of the Dranse, stopped in their flow, accumulated to a lake, and at last yielding to the mighty pressure, gave passage to the scourge, which in an hour and a half had

like the smoke of a conflagration. It went on to tear from their foundations eighty houses at Martigny; it

recks cast there by the former inundation of 1595. He would have been too feeble to climb it for safety; he stood there by chance when th

the overflow of the Rhone has cut the road between Sion and Sierre, and stopped the diligence. The monks of St. Bernard have

romantic story of the founder. The castle of Menthon, for I must tell you this story, is built on the height which overlooks the lake of Annecy, in Savoy. An heir was born to its noble possessors on the 15th of June, 923. From

air young bride was adorned, and the guests assembled, for there was to be feasting at the castle of Menthon. As the hour for the ceremony drew nigh, it became matter of marvel that the bridegroom should so long remain abs

eated beside them near the hearth of their hall. They had called up hope till despair came in its place, and believing him dead at last, they set forth

rom France and Germany to Italy. They found a man old before age, worn with fatigues and hardships, and knelt before him to ask his blessing, and to beg he would say masses for the peace of their son's

pped on the mount Jou, the little St. Bernard, and founded hospitals on each of the mountains which now bear his name, instituting for each one a congregation of monks. He told his past life and his vocation to the parents who had found him; they wept together, and then

o years, and afterwards in Lombardy, whence he trav

The unfortunate peasants scarce look like human beings. I did not see two with throats undeformed by enormous goitres. Cretins abound in the valley, and those not belonging to the idiot tribe have an expression of abjectness and misery not much higher in the scale. They are mostly of dwarfish stature, and the women wear the small straw hat with turned-up brim, ornamented with brilliant ribands of gold and silver tissue, which show off in all their ugliness their unwholesome complexions and ill-formed features. At Ridd

ht, Valerie. The first ruined, but nobly; turret and tower and battlement standing as in the fine old age which succeeds a strong manhood. Below, as we approached the fortified wall, which, flanked by its look-out towers, surrounds the city

castle of Seyon, arrived with his suite his nephew Baron Anthony of Thurn Gestelenbourg,-whom his high alliance and extensive domains rendered one of the most important of the nobles. He had some difference with his uncle respecting the hereditary fief of the mayoralty of Sion, purchased by the bishop, and to whose rights and revenues he put forth claims which the old man would not acknowledge. The dispute grew warm and loud: whether

The baron of Thurn vainly sold to Savoy his domain of Gestelenbourg. The Valaisans became its masters. The baron of Brandis, a powerful noble of the Simmenthal, through his mother, who was a Weissembourg, marched his vassals to aid Anthony. His ill-placed friendship cost him his life, and his dispersed troops sped homeward by the mountain passes. It was then that the village of An der

d expressed fears that these also would fall into the hands of the all-grasping Rarons. These barons of Raron, as the nobles of most ancient date and largest possessions, were the sole persons whose power counterbalanced that of the bi

ection for the house of Savoy. What these habits were may be inferred from a list of laws passed by the nobles, magistrates, and citizens in council, when his power was at its zenith. They commanded "that men should be stationed to enforce the cleansing o

on and conquest of the valley of Ossola by the Swiss troops, the baron had been h

l satisfaction for words which, as they affected their honour, could not be passed by unnoticed. Berne replied, that since

day when the inhabitants of Brieg had assembled, to give loose to their ever-increasing discontent, a few Savoyard soldiers arrived in the village from

es, entangling them with thorns and brambles, to represent suffering justice encompassed by the trammels of tyranny; and in proof of their determination to free her, each drove a nail deep into the stem of the birch tree. They bound the figure, thus encircled, to a tree on the high road (it was called La Mazza), and lingered near the spot to mark what might follow. Those wh

one man who loves his country sufficiently t

of the scene s

: whom dost thou dread? Is he of the race of

t, remained motionless; and the speaker continued to enumerate

d at last, "the

bent low to the grou

ned the orator; "you who will s

sent from village to village, "that the Mazza was about to visit t

unanimous consent, the ill-omened Mazza before all the unfortified castles of Raron and his partizans. The multitude forced a way, and pillaged from vault to battlement. Had Raron remained in the country, he too, doubtless, would have fallen sacrifice to th

on the passions of the already-excited people, till rising again they marched on and destroyed his castle at Sierre,-took a fortress, held by the bishop, at Leuk,-and besiege

t of that burning summer aided its efforts by paralyzing those of the besiegers, till at last conquered by famine and forced to open their gates, the soldiers as they marched forth saw lighted behind them the flames, which, consuming the castle, illuminated the entire valley. The insurrection became so serious, that Amedée of Challant, fearing for Chablais, concluded a truce, which peace soon followed; but although the baron of Raron had placed sole confidence in the duke of Savoy, the latter, when renewing his ancient treaties, made no stipulations in his favour, delivered to the bishop neither Tourbillon nor Majorie, ceding both for a sum of money to the chapter. The Valaisans pillaged and destroyed them: Seyon remained alone; the riches of the Rarons were plundered; their powe

e debate concerning his cause was still pending, sought the Oberland, and gathering round his banner all the brave youth of Frutigen, the Simmenthal, and Saanen, marched at nightfall from the latter village, and along a narrow valley, which bears the name of Gsteig. The dawn was hardly red on the mountains when they climbed the steep paths of the Sanetsch, near th

t Wischard of Raron should be reinstated in his lordships, and receive as indemnity for his losses the sum of 10,000 florins. Yet, notwithstanding this, Wischard of Raron died far from his own land; h

n which stands Tourbillon. We passed a picturesque monk in his robe of brown serge, with a fine face and shaven crown; and a squinting specimen of t

slets and peninsulas innumerable, circling round the peaked mounds, which, varying in height from fifty to two hundred feet, their crags gay with vegetation, crowd the valley,-first created, Ebel says, by the violent Rhone cutting a deep pa

ging to the ill-fated Raron. Found the Soleil infinitely better than the Poste at Martigny, and cleaner than report describes the inn at Sion. The number of cretins at this place is fearful, and you must see them to feel their degradation, and ours, that beings, so below brutes, should indeed belong to our species-large heads and old faces on the frail bodies of children, and with the weak limbs of a cripple,-goitres, of an enormous size, swelling the throat and hanging over the strangely-formed chests, and sometimes all the faculties wanting-the ear deaf; the tongue dumb; the eye having no "speculation" in its glare; and the enjoyment to lie rolling in filth, or basking in the sun, l

of the Lower Valais at Sion: it is curious that the t