ing very little money, but greatly ministering to
cleanliness and comfort, which might very readily be provided. But the
people themselves are indifferent to them, and they need the requisite
stimulus of "pressure from without." One of the most prominent
defects--common to all the inns of Dauphiny--having been brought
under the notice of the landlady, she replied, "C'est vrai, monsieur;
mais--il laisse quelque chose a desirer!" How neatly evaded! The very
defect was itself an advantage! What would life be--what would hotels
be--if there were not "something left to be desired!"

The view from the inn at the bridge is really charming. The little
river which runs down the valley, and becomes lost in the distance, is
finally fringed with trees--alder, birch, and chestnut. Ridge upon
ridge of mountain rises up behind on the right hand and the left, the
lower clothed with patches of green larch, and the upper with dark
pine. Above all are ranges of jagged and grey rocks, shooting up in
many places into lofty peaks. The setting sun, shining across the face
of the mountain opposite, brings out the prominent masses in bold
relief, while the valley beneath hovers between light and shadow,
changing almost from one second to another as the sun goes down. In
the cool of the evening, we walked through the fields across the
plain, to see the torrent, visible from the village, which rushes from
the rocky gorge on the mountain-side to join its waters to the
Romanche. All along the valleys, water abounds--sometimes bounding
from the heights, in jets, in rivulets, in masses, leaping from rock
to rock, and reaching the ground only in white clouds of spray, or, as
in the case of the little river which flows alongside the inn at the
bridge, bursting directly from the ground in a continuous spring;
these waterfalls, and streams, and springs being fed all the year
through by the immense glaciers that fill the hollows of the mountains
on either side the valley.

Though the scenery of Bourg d'Oisans is not, as its eulogists allege,
equal to that of Switzerland, it will at least stand a comparison
with that of Savoy. Its mountains are more precipitous and abrupt, its
peaks more jagged, and its aspect more savage and wild. The scenery of
Mont Pelvoux, which is best approached from Bourg d'Oisans, is
especially grand and sublime, though of a wild and desolate character.
The road from Bourg d'Oisans to Briancon also presents some
magnificent scene