tian
Alps (Mont Genevre) leading into the territory of the Taurini (by Susa
or Fenestrelles to Turin), and that of the Graian Alps (the Little St.
Bernard) leading into the territory of the Salassi (to Aosta and
Ivrea). The former route is the shorter; but, after leaving the
valley of the Rhone, it passes by the impracticable and unfruitful
river-valleys of the Drac, the Romanche, and the upper Durance,
through a difficult and poor mountain country, and requires at least
a seven or eight days' mountain march. A military road was first
constructed there by Pompeius, to furnish a shorter communication
between the provinces of Cisalpine and Transalpine Gaul.

The route by the Little St. Bernard is somewhat longer; but after
crossing the first Alpine wall that forms the eastern boundary of
the Rhone valley, it keeps by the valley of the upper Isere, which
stretches from Grenoble by way of Chambery up to the very foot of the
Little St. Bernard or, in other words, of the chain of the higher
Alps, and is the broadest, most fertile and most populous of all the
Alpine valleys. Moreover, the pass of the Little St. Bernard, while
not the lowest of all the natural passes of the Alps, is by far the
easiest; although no artificial road was constructed there, an
Austrian corps with artillery crossed the Alps by that route in 1815.
And lastly this route, which only leads over two mountain ridges, has
been from the earliest times the great military route from the Celtic
to the Italian territory. The Carthaginian army had thus in fact no
choice. It was a fortunate coincidence, but not a motive influencing
the decision of Hannibal, that the Celtic tribes allied with him in
Italy inhabited the country up to the Little St. Bernard, while
the route by Mont Genevre would have brought him at first into the
territory of the Taurini, who were from ancient times at feud with
the Insubres.

So the Carthaginian army marched in the first instance up the Rhone
towards the valley of the upper Isere, not, as might be presumed, by
the nearest route up the left bank of the lower Isere from Valence to
Grenoble, but through the "island" of the Allobroges, the rich, and
even then thickly peopled, low ground, which is enclosed on the north
and west by the Rhone, on the south by the Isere, and on the east
by the Alps. The reason of this movement was, that the nearest route
would have led them through an impracticable and poor mountain-
country, while