October 17, 1784.
We have at length passed the Alps, and are safely arrived at this lovely
little city, whence I look back on the majestic boundaries of Italy,
with amazement at his courage who first profaned them: surely the
immediate sensation conveyed to the mind by the sight of such tremendous
appearances must be in every traveller the same, a sensation of fulness
never experienced before, a satisfaction that there is something great
to be seen on earth--some object capable of contenting even fancy. Who
he was who first of all people pervaded these fortifications, raised by
nature for the defence of her European Paradise, is not ascertained; but
the great Duke of Savoy has wisely left his name engraved on a monument
upon the first considerable ascent from Pont Bonvoisin, as being author
of a beautiful road cut through the solid stone for a great length of
way, and having by this means encouraged others to assist in
facilitating a passage so truly desirable, till one of the great wonders
now to be observed among the Alps, is the ease with which even a
delicate traveller may cross them. In these prospects, colouring is
carried to its utmost point of perfection, particularly at the time I
found it, variegated with golden touches of autumnal tints; immense
cascades mean time bursting from naked mountains on the one side;
cultivated fields, rich with vineyards, on the other, and tufted with
elegant shrubs that invite one to pluck and carry them away to where
they would be treated with much more respect. Little towns flicking in
the clefts, where one would imagine it was impossible to clamber; light
clouds often sailing under the feet of the high-perched inhabitants,
while the sound of a deep and rapid though narrow river, dashing with
violence among the insolently impeding rocks at the bottom, and bells in
thickly-scattered spires calling the quiet Savoyards to church upon the
steep sides of every hill--fill one's mind with such mutable, such
various ideas, as no other place can ever possibly afford.
I had the satisfaction of seeing a chamois at a distance, and spoke with
a fellow who had killed five hungry bears that made depredation on his
pastures: we looked on him with reverence as a monster-tamer of
antiquity, Hercules or Cadmus; he had the skin of a beast wrapt round
his middle, which confirmed the fancy--but our servants, who borrowed
from no fictitious records the few ideas that adorned their talk, told
us he reminded _them_ of _John the Baptist_. I had scarce recovered the
shock of this too sublime comparison, when we approached his cottage,
and found the felons nailed against the wall, like foxes heads or spread
kites in England. Here are many goats, but neither white nor large, like
those which browze upon the steeps of Snowdon, or clamber among the
cliffs of Plinlimmon.
I chatted with a peasant in the Haute Morienne, concerning the endemial
swelling of the throat, which is found in seven out of every ten persons
here: he told me what I had always heard, but do not yet believe, that
it was produced by drinking the snow water. Certain it is, these places
are not wholesome to live in; most of the inhabitants are troubled with
weak and sore eyes: and I recollect Sir Richard Jebb telling me, more
than seven years ago, that when he passed through Savoy, the various
applications made to him, either for the cure or prevention of blindness
by numberless unfortunate wretches that crowded round him, hastened his
quitting a province where such horrible complaints prevailed. One has
heard it related that the goîstre or gozzo of the throat is reckoned a
beauty by those who possess it; but I spoke with many, and all agreed to
lament it as a misfortune. That it does really proceed merely from
living in a snowy country, would be well confirmed by accounts of a
similar sickness being endemial in Canada; but of an American goîstre I
have never yet heard--and Wales, methinks, is snowy enough, and
mountainous enough, God knows; yet were such an excrescence to be seen
_there_, the people would never have done wondering, and blessing
themselves.
The mines of Derbyshire, however, do not very unfrequently exhibit
something of the same appearance among those who work in _them_; and as
Savoy is impregnated with many minerals, I should be apter to attribute
this extension of the gland to their influence over the constitution,
than to that of snow water, which can scarcely be efficacious in a
degree of power equal to the producing so very violent an effect.
The wolves do certainly come down from these mountains in large troops,
just as Thomson describes them: