ocks and mountains, we prepared for descending on the other
side by the Leze, which is an occasional sledge made of two pieces of
wood, carried up by the Coulants for this purpose. I did not much
relish this kind of carriage, especially as the mountain was very
steep, and covered with such a thick fog that we could hardly see two
or three yards before us. Nevertheless, our guides were so confident,
and my companion, who had passed the same way on other occasions, was
so secure, that I ventured to place myself on this machine, one of the
coulants standing behind me, and the other sitting before, as the
conductor, with his feet paddling among the snow, in order to moderate
the velocity of its descent. Thus accommodated, we descended the
mountain with such rapidity, that in an hour we reached Limon, which is
the native place of almost all the muleteers who transport merchandize
from Nice to Coni and Turin. Here we waited full two hours for the
mules, which travelled with the servants by the common road. To each of
the coulants we paid forty sols, which are nearly equal to two
shillings sterling. Leaving Limon, we were in two hours quite
disengaged from the gorges of the mountains, which are partly covered
with wood and pasturage, though altogether inaccessible, except in
summer; but from the foot of the Col de Tende, the road lies through a
plain all the way to Turin. We took six hours to travel from the inn
where we had lodged over the mountain to Limon, and five hours from
thence to Coni. Here we found our baggage, which we had sent off by the
carriers one day before we departed from Nice; and here we dismissed
our guides, together with the mules. In winter, you have a mule for
this whole journey at the rate of twenty livres; and the guides are
payed at the rate of two livres a day, reckoning six days, three for
the journey to Coni, and three for their return to Nice. We set out so
early in the morning in order to avoid the inconveniencies and dangers
that attend the passage of this mountain. The first of these arises
from your meeting with long strings of loaded mules in a slippery road,
the breadth of which does not exceed a foot and an half. As it is
altogether impossible for two mules to pass each other in such a narrow
path, the muleteers have made doublings or elbows in different parts,
and when the troops of mules meet, the least numerous is obliged to
turn off into one of these doublings, and there halt until the o