ularly down upon the point which we had passed half an hour
ago. Nothing can be more bare or desolate than the rocky mountain ridge
in which this ascent terminates, and on which vegetation seems at its
last gasp. A dance of Satyrs might be appropriately introduced to
complete the wildness of a sketch from this spot, but that it does not
afford a single berry or blade of grass to regale them, even if they
could live like their cousins the goats. A large family of peasants, as
wild and merry as these "hairy sylvans," accompanied us up the mountain
with their cattle, on their way to the summer chalets, exhibiting the
laughing side of human nature in a manner which it is delightful to
witness in the poor.

"Pleased with a feather, tickled with a straw,"

and grateful for the slightest civility, they seemed to consider the
mere change of place as a festival. The wife had twitched off her
husband's cocked hat, which she wore in frolic; the bare-legged children
appeared ready to dance to their own voices as they walked; and the very
infant, committed in his cradle to the entire discretion of the family
donkey, was equally pleased and satisfied with his own situation, as he
headed the patriarchal cavalcade.

The view of the Mediterranean and the coast of France, which this point
commands, is prodigious; and the intermediate ranges of mountains which
shut out Nice, and which appeared elevated peaks when seen from its
citadel, seem from this spot only masses of wavy ground. From hence a
descent much steeper than the ascent and almost equally long, conducted
us into the rich and well-inhabited valley in which Sospello stands. The
inn at this place is rather below mediocrity; the mistress sturdy and
rapacious in her demands, and shameless in retracting them when forced
to do so.

From the valley of Sospello, which appears as completely insulated by
nature from the society of the world as Rasselas's happy valley, we
wound next morning up another eight miles of ascent as steep and tedious
as the last. On a wild heath between the tops of two mountains called
the Col de Brouais, in which this ascent terminated, we unexpectedly
discovered a hut tenanted by an old gend'arme, a pet lamb, a kid, and
two tame hares, to all which quadrupeds we were introduced by the master
with great glee, while waiting for the carriage under his roof. We were
so much pleased and diverted by the whimsical manner in which this merry
contented mortal lived