Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland Part 7

Having squeezed ourselves out again through the narrow hole, we now pa.s.sed between the two gigantic columns, and found that the sea of ice became still broader and bolder. I much regret that I neglected to take any measurements in this part of the cave; but farther down, where it was certainly not so broad, I found the width of the ice to be 75 feet.

It was throughout of the crystalline character which prevails in all the large ma.s.ses in the glacieres I have visited. For some distance beyond the columns, we found neither stalact.i.tes nor stalagmites--indeed, I forgot to look at the roof--until we came to the edge of a glorious ice-fall, down which Christian said it was impossible to go--no one had ever been farther than where we now stood. I have seen no subterranean ice-fall so grand as this, round and smooth, and perfectly unbroken, pa.s.sing down, like the rapids of some river too deep for its surface to be disturbed, into darkness against which two candles prevailed nothing.

The fall in the Upper Glaciere of the Pre de S. Livres was strange enough, but it was very small, and led to a confined corner of the cavern; whereas this of the Schafloch rolls down majestically, cold and grey, into a dark gulf of which we could see neither the roof nor the end, while the pieces of ice which we despatched down the steep slope could be heard going on and on, as M. Soret says, _a une tres-grande distance_. The shape, also, of the fall was very striking. Beginning at the left wall of the cave, the edge ran out obliquely towards the middle, when it suddenly turned and struck straight across to the right-hand wall, so that we were able to stand on a tongue, as it were, in the middle of the top of the fall. To add to the effect, precisely from this tongue or angle a fine column of ice sprang out of the very crest of the fall, rising to or towards the roof, and to this we clung to peer down into the darkness.

The rope we had brought was not long, and the idea was hopeless of cutting steps down this great fall, leading we knew not where, with an incline which it frightened Christian even to look at. I began to consider, however, whether it was not possible to make our way down the left branch of the ice, which fell rather towards the side wall than into the dark gulf below. On examining more closely, I found that a large stone, or piece of rock, projected from the face of this branch of the fall, about 12 feet from the top, and to this I determined to descend, as a preliminary to further attempts, the candles not showing us what there was beyond. Accordingly, I tied on the rope, and planted Christian where he had a safe footing, telling him to hold tight if I slipped, for he seemed to have little idea what the rope was meant for.

The ice was very hard, and cutting steps downwards with a short axe is not easy work; so when I came within 3 or 4 feet of the rock, I forgot the rope, and set off for a short glissade. Christian, of course, thought something was wrong, and very properly put a prompt strain upon the rope, which reduced his Herr to a spread-eagle sort of condition, in which it was difficult to explain matters, so as to procure a release.

When that was accomplished, I saw it would be easy to reach the point where the ice met the wall, so I called to Christian to come down, which he did in an unpremeditated, avalanche fas.h.i.+on; and then, by cutting steps here and there, and making use of odd points of rock, we skirted down the edge of the great fall, and reached at last the lower regions.

When I came to read Dufour's account of his visit in 1822, I found that the ice must have increased very much since his time. He uses sufficiently large words, speaking of the _vaste, horrible et pourtant magnifique_--of the _horreur du sejour_, and the _grandeur des demeures souterraines_; but he only calls the glorious ice-fall a _plan incline_, and says that the whole was less remarkable for the amount of ice, than for the characteristics indicated by the words I have quoted. He says that it required _une a.s.sez forte dose de courage_ to slip down to the stone of which I have spoken; the fact being that at the time of my visit it would have been impossible to do so with any chance of stopping oneself, for the flat surface of the stone was all but even with the ice. M. Soret, who saw the cave in 1860, determined that cords were then absolutely necessary for the descent, which he did not attempt; and the only Englishman I have met who has seen this cave, tells me that he and his party went no farther than the edge of the fall.[62] Probably each year's acc.u.mulation on the upper floor of ice has added to the height and rapidity of the fall; but at any rate, when Dufour was there, _des militaires_--as he das.h.i.+ngly tells--were not to be stopped, and he and his party--such of them as had not been already stopped by the precipices outside--let themselves slip down to the stone, and thence descended as we did.

We soon found that the larger ice-fall looked extremely grand when seen from below, and that in a modified form it reached far down into the lower cave, and terminated in a level sea of ice; but, before making any further investigations into its size, we pressed on to look for the end of the cave. This soon appeared, and as a commentary on Christian's a.s.sertion that no one had ever been beyond the head of the fall, I called his attention to some initials smoked on the wall by means of a torch. There was an abrupt piece of rock-floor between this end and the termination of the ice. The western wall was ornamented with a long arcade of lofty columns of very white ice, looking strangely ghostlike by the light of two candles, crystallised, and with the porcelain appearance I have described before. We could not measure the height of these columns, but we found that they extended continuously, so as to be in fact one sheet of columns, connected by shapes of ice now graceful and now grotesque, for 27 yards. The ice from their feet flowed down to join the terminal lake, which formed a weird sea 28 yards by 14. My notes, written on the spot, tell me that between this lake, which I have called terminal, and the end of the cave, there is a sheet of ice 48 yards long, but it has entirely vanished from my recollection.

I now sent Christian back with a ball of string, up the steps we had cut for the descent, with directions to get as near as he could to the top of the main fall, and then send down a stone tied to the string, as I wished to determine the length of the fall. While he was making his way up, I amused myself by chopping and carving at the ice at various points to examine its structure, until at length a _Jodel_ from above announced that Christian had reached his post; and a vast amount of hammering ensued, of which I could not understand the meaning. Presently he called out that 'it' was coming, and a.s.suredly it did come. There was a loud crash on the upper part of the fall, and a shower of fragments of ice came whizzing past, and almost dislodged me; while the sound of pieces of ice bounding and gliding down the slope seemed as if it never would cease. It turned out to mean that my friend had not been able to find a stone; so he had smashed a block of ice from the column which presided over the fall, and having attached the string to this, had hurled the whole apparatus in my direction, fortunately not doing as much damage as he might have done. My end of the string was not to be seen, so he repeated the experiment, with a piece of wood in place of the block of ice, and this time it succeeded. We found that from top to bottom of the fall was 45 yards. There was all the appearance of immense thickness, especially towards the upper part.

Christian had placed his candle in a niche in the column, while he arranged the string for measuring the fall, and the effect of the spark of light at the top of the long steep slope was extremely strange from below. The whole scene was so remarkable, that it required some effort to realise the fact that I was not in a dream. Christian stood at the top invisible, jodeling in a most unearthly manner, and developing an astonis.h.i.+ng falsetto power, only interrupting his performance to a.s.sure me that he was not coming down again; so I was obliged to measure the breadth of the fall by myself. I chose a part where the ice was not very steep, and where occasional points of rock would save some of the labour of cutting steps; but even so it was a sufficiently tedious business.

The string was always catching at something, and mere progression, without any string to manage, would have been difficult enough under the circ.u.mstances. It was completely dark, so a candle occupied one hand, and, as every step must be cut, save where an opportune rock or stone appeared, an axe occupied the other; then there was the string to be attended to, and both hands must be ready to clutch at some projecting point when a slip came, and now and then a ruder rock required circ.u.mvention. Add to all this, that hands and feet had not been rendered more serviceable by an hour and a half of contact with ice, and it will easily be understood that I was glad when the measurement was over. At this point the breadth was 25 yards, and, a few feet above the line in which I crossed, all traces of rock or stone disappeared, and there was nothing but unbroken ice. I had of course abundant opportunities for examining the structure of the ice, and I found in all parts of the fall the same large-grained material, breaking up, when cut, into the usual prismatic nuts.

I now rejoined Christian, and we worked our way upwards to the mouth of the cave, penitently desisting from stoning a remaining raven. We observed at the very mouth, by watching the flame of the candles, a slight current outwards, extremely feeble, and on our first arrival I had fancied there was a current, equally slight, inwards, but neither was perceptible beyond the entrance of the cave. M. Soret was fortunate enough to witness a curious phenomenon, at the time of his visit to the Schafloch, in September 1860, which throws some light upon the atmospheric state of the cave. The day was externally very foggy, and the fog had penetrated into the cavern; but as soon as M. Soret began to descend to the glaciere itself, properly so called, he pa.s.sed down out of the fog, and found the air for the rest of the way perfectly clear.[63]

M. Soret states that he has not absolute confidence in his thermometrical observations, but as he had more time than I to devote to such details, inasmuch as he did not pa.s.s down into the lowest part of the cave, I give his results rather than my own, which were carelessly made on this occasion:--On a stone near the first column of ice, 037 C.; on a stick propped against the column on the edge of the great ice-fall, 237 C.; in a hole in the ice, filled with water by drops from the roof, 0 C. approximately.[64] The second result is sufficiently remarkable. My own observations would give nearer 33 F.

than 32 as the general temperature of the cave.

Christian was so cold when we had finished our investigations, that he determined to take his second refreshment _en route_, and, moreover, time was getting rather short. We had started from Gonten at half-past nine in the morning, and reached the glaciere about half-past twelve.

It was now three o'clock, and the boat from Gonten must reach the steamer at half-past six precisely, so there was not too much time for us; especially as we were to return by a more mountainous route, which involved further climbing towards the summit of the Rothhorn, and was to include a visit to the top of the Ralligflue. On emerging from the cave, we were much struck by the beauty of the view, the upper half of the Jungfrau, with its glittering attendants and rivals, soaring above a rich and varied foreground not unworthy of so glorious a termination. There was not time, however, to admire it as it deserved, and we set off almost at once up the rocks, soon reaching a more elevated table-land by dint of steep climbing. The ground of this table-land was solid rock, smoothed and rounded by long weathering, and fissured in every direction by broad and narrow creva.s.ses 2 or 3 feet deep, at the bottom of which was luxuriant botany, in the shape of ferns, and mallows, and monkshood, and all manner of herbs. The learned in such matters call these rock-fallows _Karrenfelden_. When we had crossed this plateau, and came to gra.s.s, we found a gorgeous carpet of the huge couched blue gentian (_G. acaulis_, Fr. _Gentiane sans tige_), with smaller patterns put in by the dazzling blue of the delicate little flower of the same species (_G. verna_ ); while the white blossoms of the gra.s.s of Parna.s.sus, and the frailer white of the _dryade a huit petales_, and the modest waxen flowers of the _Azalea proc.u.mbens_ and the _airelle ponctuee_ (_Vaccineum vitis idaea_), tempered and set off the prevailing blue. There were groves, too, rather lower down, of Alpine roses (the first I had come across that year), not the fringed or the green-backed species which botanists love best, but the honest old rust-backed rhododendron, which every Swiss traveller has been pestered with in places where the children are one short step above mere mendicity, but, equally, which every Swiss traveller hails with Medean delight when he comes upon it on the mountain-side. We were now, too, in the neighbourhood of the first created Alpen rose. The story is, that a young peasant, who had climbed the precipices behind Oberhausen for rock-flowrets, as the price of some maiden's love, fell at the moment when he had secured the flowers, and was killed. From his blood the true Alpen rose sprang, and took its colour.

We were now pa.s.sing along the summit of one of the lower spurs of the Rothhorn range, and making for the peak of the Ralligflue, which lay considerably below us. In descending near the line of crest, we found a large number of very deep fissures, narrow and black, some of them extending to a great distance across the face of the hill; sometimes they appeared as mere holes, down which we despatched stones, sometimes as unpleasant creva.s.ses almost hidden by flowers and the shrubs of rhododendron. In many of these we dimly discovered acc.u.mulated snow at the bottom, and we observed that the Alpine roses which overhung the snow-holes were by far the deepest coloured and most beautiful we could find.

To reach the Ralligflue, we had to cross a smooth green lawn completely covered with the sweet vanilla orchis (_O. nigra_), which perfumed the air almost too powerfully. No one can ever fully appreciate the grandeur of the lion-like Niesen till he has seen it from this verdant little paradise, on the slope near the Bergli Chalet, with a diminutive limpid lake in the meadow at his feet, and the blue lake of Thun below. The Kanderthal and the Simmenthal lie exposed from their entrance at the foot of the Niesen; and when the winding Kanderthal is lost, the Adelbodenthal takes up the telescope, and guides the eye to the parent glaciers. This view I was fortunately able to enjoy rather longer than that from the mouth of the Schafloch; for we had made such rapid way, that Christian found there was time for a meal of milk in the chalet, and meanwhile left me lying in perfect luxury on the sweet gra.s.s.

From the Ralligflue a long and remarkably steep zigzag leads to the lower ground, and down this Christian ran at full speed, jodeling in a most trying manner; indeed, at one of the sudden turns of the path he went off triumphantly into a falsetto so unearthly, that he lost his legs, and landed in a promiscuous sort of way on a lower part of the zigzag, after which he was slower and less vocal.

We eventually reached Gonten so soon, that there was time to cool and have a bath in the lake; and when that was nearly finished, Christian brought a plate of cherries and a detachment of the village, and I ate the cherries and held a levee in the boat--very literally a levee, as the dressing was by no means accomplished when the deputation arrived. My late guide, now, as he said, a friend for life, made a speech to the people, setting forth that he had done that day what he had never thought to do; for, often as he had been to the entrance of the Schafloch--five or six times at the least--he had never before reached the end of the cave. And to whom, he asked, did he owe it? All previous Herrschaft under his charge had cried _Immer zuruck!_ but this present Herr had known but one cry, _Immer vorwarts!_ Luckily the steamer now approached, so the speech came to an end, and he shook hands affectionately, with a vigour that would certainly have transmitted some of the dye, if that material had not become a part of the skin which it coloured. Then the village also shook hands, having evidently understood what Christian said, notwithstanding the fact that it was intelligible German, and I returned to Thun and Berne.

No. 53 was still the only bed disengaged, for it was very late when I reached Berne; but on my vehement protestations against that unquiet chamber, the landlord most obligingly converted a sofa in his own sitting-room into a temporary bed, and made it over to me. This room was separated by a door of ground-gla.s.s from another sitting-room brilliantly lighted, in which a number of German young gentlemen were feting the return of a comrade after the national manner. The landlord said he thought it must soon be over, for he doubted whether they could last much longer; but their powers of endurance were greater than he had supposed. It will readily be imagined that German songs with a good chorus, the solo parts being very short, and received with the utmost impatience by the chorus, were even less soporific in their effect than the flirtations--though boisterous beyond all conventional propriety--of German housemaids and waiters.[65]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 55: See p. 258.]

[Footnote 56: Acta SS. Bolland. May 9.--If possessed of the characteristics of his race--'tall and proud'--his activity belies the first line of the old saying,

'Lang and lazy, Little and loud; Red and foolish, Black and proud:'

though possibly the personal habits which a modern spirit loves to point out, as the great essential of hermit-life, united with the family characteristic of the early Seton to verify the last line of the saying.]

[Footnote 57: _Bibl. Univ. de Geneve_, First Series, xxi. 113. See also _Edinburgh Philosophical Journal_, viii. 290.]

[Footnote 58: _Philosophical Magazine_, Aug. 1829.]

[Footnote 59: Colonel Dufour guessed the elevation of the cave, in 1822, at two-thirds the height of the Niesen, and forty years after, as General Dufour, he published the result of the scientific survey of Switzerland, which makes it 1,780 metres; so that his early guess was not a bad one.]

[Footnote 60: There is a hint of something of this kind in an editorial note in the _Journal des Mines_ (now _Annales des Mines_) of Prairial, an. iv. pp. 71, 72, in connection with the glaciere near Besancon.]

[Footnote 61: M. Soret, who visited the Schafloch in September 1860, and communicated his notes to M. Thury, speaks of many columns in this part of the glaciere, where we found only two. 'L'un d'entre eux,' he says, 'presentait dans sa partie inferieure une pet.i.te grotte ou cavite, a.s.sez grande pour qu'un homme put y entrer en se courbant.']

[Footnote 62: See also the note at the end of this chapter.]

[Footnote 63: 'Toute la couche superieure au plan de niveau pa.s.sant par le seuil etait chargee de brouillard; toute la couche inferieure a ce niveau etait parfaitement limpide.' (_Thury_, p. 37.)]

[Footnote 64: Respectively, 32666, 36266, and 32, Fahrenheit.]

[Footnote 65: Since I wrote this chapter, my attention has been called to a tourist's account of the Schafloch in _Once a Week_ (Nov. 26, 1864), in an article called _An Ice-cavern in the Justis-Thal._ The writer says--'We proceeded to the farther end of the cavern, or at least as far as we thought it prudent, to ascertain where the flooring of ice rounded off into the abyss of unfathomable water we heard trickling below.' One of the party 'having taken some large stones with him, he began hurling them into the profound mystery. Presently a heavy double-ba.s.s gurgle issued forth with ominous depth of voice, indicating the danger of farther progress. Having thus ascertained that if either of us ventured farther he would most probably not return by the way he went, the signal of retreat was given, and in about forty minutes, after encountering the same amusing difficulties which had enlivened our descent, aeneas-like we gained the upper air.' It will be seen from my account of what we found in the 'abyss of unfathomable water,' that a little farther exploration might have effected a change in the writer's views.]

CHAPTER X.

THE GLACIeRE OF GRAND ANU, ON THE MONTAGNE DE L'EAU, NEAR ANNECY.

M. Thury's list contained a bare mention of two glacieres on the M.

Parmelan, near Annecy, without any further information respecting them, beyond the fact that they supplied ice for Lyons. Their existence had been apparently reported to him by M. Alphonse Favre, but he had obtained no account of a visit to the caves. Under these circ.u.mstances, the only plan was to go to Annecy, and trust to chance for finding some one there who could a.s.sist me in my search.

After spending a day or two in the library at Geneva, looking up M.

Thury's references, with respect to various ice-caves, and trying to discover something more than he had found in the books there, I started for Annecy at seven in the morning in the banquette of the diligence. On a fresher day, no doubt the great richness of the orchards and corn-fields would have been very striking; but on this particular morning the fields were already trembling with heat, and the trees and the fruit covered with dust; and there was nothing in the grouping of the country through which the road lay to refresh the baked and half-choked traveller. The voyage was to last four and a half hours, and it soon became a serious question how far it would be possible to face the heat of noon, when the earlier morning was so utterly unbearable.

Before very long, a counter-irritant appeared in the shape of a fellow-traveller, whose luggage consisted of a stick and an old pair of boots. The man was not pleasant to be near in any way, and he was evidently not at all satisfied with the amount of room I allowed him. He kept discontentedly and doggedly pus.h.i.+ng his spare pair of boots farther and farther into my two-thirds of the seat, and once or twice was on the point of a protest, in which case I was prepared to tell him that as he filled the whole banquette with his smell, he ought in reason to be satisfied with less room for himself; but instead of speaking, he brought out a tobacconist's parcel and began to open it. Tobacco-smoke is all very well under suitable circ.u.mstances, but it is possible to be too hot and dusty and bilious to be able to stand it, and I watched his proceedings with more of annoyance than of resignation. The parcel turned out, however, to be delightful snuff, tastefully perfumed and very refres.h.i.+ng; and the politeness with which the owner gave a pinch to the foreign monsieur, after apportioning a handful to the driver and conductor, won him a good three inches more of seat. The inevitable cigar soon came; but it was a very good one, and no one could complain: all the same, I could not help feeling a malicious satisfaction when the _douaniers_ on the French frontier investigated the spare boots--guiltless, one might have thought, of anything except the extremity of age and dirt--and drew from them a bundle or two of smuggled cigars, the owner trying in vain to look as if he rather liked it.

The Hotel de Geneve is probably the least objectionable of the hotels of Annecy; but the Poste-bureau is at the Hotel d'Angleterre, and it was much too hot for me to fight with the waiters there, and carry off my knapsack to another house. It is generally a mistake--a great mistake--to sleep at a house which is the starting-place and the goal of many diligences. All the night through, whips are cracking, bells jingling, and men are shouting hoa.r.s.ely or blowing hoa.r.s.er horns.

Moreover, the Hotel d'Angleterre had apparently needed a fresh coat of paint and universal papering for many years, and the latter need had at this crisis been so far grappled with that the old paper had been torn down from the walls and now lay on the various floors, while large pies of malodorous sizing had been planted at the angles of the stairs. The natural _salle-a-manger_ was evidently an excellent room, with oleander balconies, but it was at present in the hands of joiners, and a card pointed the way to the 'provisionary _salle-a-manger'_--not a bad name for it--in the neighbourhood of the kitchen.

There was one redeeming feature. The people of the house were nice-looking and well-dressed. But experience has taught me to view such a phenomenon in French towns of humbler rank with somewhat mixed feelings. When the house is superintended with a keen and watchful eye by a young lady of fas.h.i.+onable appearance, who takes a personal interest in a solitary traveller, and suggests an evening's _course_ on the lake, or a morning's drive to some good view, and makes herself most winning and agreeable; who takes the words, moreover, out of the mouth of a man meditating an ordinary dinner, and a.s.sures him that she knows exactly what he wants, and he shall be well satisfied, with a sisterly air that makes the idea of francs and sous not sordid only, but impossible; I have slowly learned to expect that this fas.h.i.+on and condescension will appear in the bill. Prettiness is a very expensive item in such a case; and as these three were all combined to a somewhat remarkable degree at the Hotel d'Angleterre, the eventual bill made me angry, and I should certainly try the Hotel de Geneve on any future visit to Annecy.

The first thing to be done was to determine the position of the Mont Parmelan. I was prepared to find the people of the town denying the existence of such a mountain; but, as it was visible from the door of the hotel, they could not go quite so far as that. The small crowd at the door repudiated the glacieres with one voice, and pointed out how unlikely it was that Lyons should be supplied with ice from Annecy; nevertheless, I continued to ask my way in spite of protestation, till at length a lame man pa.s.sed by, who said monsieur was quite right--he himself knew two glacieres on the Mont Parmelan very well. He had never seen either of them, but he knew them as well as if he had. It was useless to go to them now, he added, for the owners extracted all the ice early in the year, and stored it in holes in the lower part of the mountain. He had no idea by what route they were to be approached from Annecy, or on which side of the Mont Parmelan they lay.

I now looked on the local map, and determined that the best plan would be to take the Bonneville diligence as far as Charvonnaz, the point on the road which seemed to lie nearest to the roots of the Mont Parmelan, and then be guided by what I might learn among the peasants. Everyone said there was no chance of getting to anything by that means; but as the hotel people saw that it was of no use to deny the glacieres any longer, they proposed to take me to a man who knew the M. Parmelan well, and could tell me all about it. This man proved to be a keeper of voitures,--an ominous profession under the circ.u.mstances,--and he a.s.sured me that I could make a most lovely _course_ the next day, through scenery of unrivalled beauty; and he eloquently told on his fingers the villages and sights I should come to. I suggested--without in the least knowing that it was so--that the drive might be all very well in itself, but it would not bring me to the glacieres; on which he a.s.sured me that he knew every inch of the mountain, and there was not such a thing as a glaciere in the whole district. At this moment, a gentlemanlike man was brought up by the waiter, and introduced to me as a monsieur who knew a monsieur who knew the proprietor of one of the glacieres, and would he happy to conduct me to this second monsieur: so, without any very ceremonious farewell to the owner of the proffered voiture, we marched off together down the street, and eventually turned into a _cafe_, whose master was the monsieur for whom we were in search.

Know the glaciere?--yes, indeed! he had ice from it one year every morning. His wife and he had made a _course_ to the campagne of M. the Maire of Aviernoz, and he--the cafetier--had descended for miles, as it were, down and down, till he came to an underground world of ice, wonderful, totally wonderful: there he perceived so immense a cold, that he drank a bottle of rhoom--a whole bottle--and drank it from the neck, _a l'Anglaise_. And when they had gone so far that great dread came upon them, they rolled a stone down the ice, and it went into the darkness--boom, boom, boom,--and he put on a power of ventriloquism which admirably represented the strange suggestive sound. Hold a moment!

had monsieur a crayon? Yes, monsieur had; so the things were impetuously swept off a round marble table, and the excited little man drew a fancy portrait of the glaciere. The way to reach it? Go by diligence to Charvonnaz--exactly what I had determined upon--and walk up to Aviernoz, where his good friend the maire would make me see his beautiful glaciere, through the means of a letter which he went to write. It was absurd to see this hot little man sign himself 'Dugravel, _glacier_,'

that being the style of his profession, naturally recalling the contradictory conduct of the Latin noun _lucus_.

The bones of S. Francis of Sales lie in the church of S. Francois in Annecy, and I made a pilgrimage in search of them through very unpleasant streets. After a time, the Italian west front of the church appeared; but the main door led into a demonstrative bakery, and the door of the north aisle was obscured by oleanders and a striped awning, and over it appeared the legend, '_Entree de l'Hotel_.' As a man politely explained, they had built S. Francis another church, and utilised the old one. The town itself seemed to be of the squalid style of antiquity--old, no doubt, but very dirty. It is pervaded by streams, which crop up among the houses, and flow through dark alleys and vaulted pa.s.sages, rarely coming into daylight, and suggesting all manner of dark crimes. The red-legged French kettledrums are, if possible, more insolent here than in other places, and it is evident that the dogs are not yet reconciled to the annexation, for the guard swept through the streets amid a perfect tornado of howls from the negligent scavengers of the place. For my own part, I was not pleased with the change of rule, when I found that since Annecy has become French, the _vin d'Asti_ has become dear, as being now a foreign wine.

The diligence for Bonneville was to leave Annecy at half-past four in the morning; so I told them to call me at four, intending to breakfast somewhere on the way. But of course, when four o'clock came, I had to call myself, and in a quarter of an hour a knock at the door announced half-past four. I pounced upon the man, and remonstrated with him, but he a.s.sured me it did not matter; and when I reminded him that the diligence was to leave at half-past four, he observed philosophically that it was quite true, and I had better make haste, for the poste was very punctual. At the door of the bureau a loaded diligence stood, marked _Annecy--Aix_, and I asked had the Bonneville diligence gone? It did not go till six, the clerk told me; but I reminded him he had said half-past four when I asked him last night. Half-past four?--true, here was the carriage standing at the door. But that was for Aix, not Bonneville, I pointed out to him. Pardon--it was marked Aix, but was in fact meant for Bonneville.