uggling peasants, very bold and desperate, who make a
traffic of selling tobacco, salt, and other merchandize, which have not
payed duty, and sometimes lay travellers under contribution. I did not
doubt but there was a gang of these free-booters at hand; but as no
more than two persons appeared, I resolved to let them know we were
prepared for defence, and fired one of my pistols, in hope that the
report of it, echoed from the surrounding rocks, would produce a proper
effect: but, the mountains and roads being entirely covered with snow
to a considerable depth, there was little or no reverberation, and the
sound was not louder than that of a pop-gun, although the piece
contained a good charge of powder. Nevertheless, it did not fail to
engage the attention of the strangers, one of whom immediately wheeled
to the left about, and being by this time very near me, gave me an
opportunity of contemplating his whole person. He was very tall,
meagre, and yellow, with a long hooked nose, and small twinkling eyes.
His head was eased in a woollen night-cap, over which he wore a flapped
hat; he had a silk handkerchief about his neck, and his mouth was
furnished with a short wooden pipe, from which he discharged wreathing
clouds of tobacco-smoke. He was wrapped in a kind of capot of green
bays, lined with wolf-skin, had a pair of monstrous boots, quilted on
the inside with cotton, was almost covered with dirt, and rode a mule
so low that his long legs hung dangling within six inches of the
ground. This grotesque figure was so much more ludicrous than terrible,
that I could not help laughing; when, taking his pipe out of his mouth,
he very politely accosted me by name. You may easily guess I was
exceedingly surprised at such an address on the top of the mountain
Brovis: but he forthwith put an end to it too, by discovering himself
to be the marquis M--, whom I had the honour to be acquainted with at
Nice. After having rallied him upon his equipage, he gave me to
understand he had set out from Nice the morning of the same day that I
departed; that he was going to Turin, and that he had sent one of his
servants before him to Coni with his baggage. Knowing him to be an
agreeable companion, I was glad of this encounter, and we resolved to
travel the rest of the way together. We dined at La Giandola, and in
the afternoon rode along the little river Roida, which runs in a bottom
between frightful precipices, and in several places forms natur