owded round him, hastened his
quitting a province where such horrible complaints prevailed. One has
heard it related that the goistre 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 goistre 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:

Burning for blood; boney, and gaunt, and grim.--

But it is now the fashionable philosophy every where to consider this
creature as the original of our domestic friend, the dog. It was a long
time before my heart assented to its truth, yet surely their hunting
thus in packs confirms it; and the Jackall's willingness to connect with
either race, shews one that the species cannot be far removed, and that
he makes the shade between the wolf and rough haired shepherd's cur.

Of the longevity of man this district affords us no pleasing examples.
The peasants here are apparently unhealthy, and they say--short-lived.
We are told by travellers of former days, that there is a region of the
air so subtle as to extinguish the two powers of taste and smell; and
those who have crossed the Cordilleras of the Andes say, that situations
have been explored among their points in South America, where those
senses have been found to suffer a temporary suspension. Our _voyageurs
aeriens_[Footnote: Our aerostatic travellers] may now be useful to
settle that question among others, and Pambamarca's heights may remain
untrodden.

As for Mount Cenis, I never felt myself more hungry, or better enjoyed a
good dinner, than I did upon it's top: but the trout in the lake there