es, with beautiful green swells of land
above it and below it. The horses went upon the run. The postilion had a
little handle close by his seat--a sort of crank--that he could turn
round and round, and so bring a brake to bear against the wheels, and
thus help to hold the carriage back. When he began to go down a slope he
would turn this crank round and round as fast as he could, till it was
screwed up tight, cheering the horses on all the time; and then he would
take his whip and crack it about their ears, and so we go down the
hills, and wheel round the great curves, almost on the run, and could
look down on the fields and meadows and houses in the valley, a thousand
feet below us. It was the grandest ride I ever had.

"But I have been so long writing this letter that I am beginning to be
tired of it, though I have not got yet to Geneva; so I am going to stop
now. The rest I will tell you when I see you.

"Your affectionate cousin,

"ROLLO."

"P.S. There is one thing more that I will tell you, and that is, that
we went through a castle at one place in the valley. It was a castle
built by the French to guard their frontier. Indeed, there were two
castles. The road passes directly through one of them, and the other is
high up on the rocks exactly above it. The valley is so narrow, and the
banks are so steep, that there is no other possible place for the road
except through the lower castle. The road has to twist and twine about,
too, just before it comes to the castle gates, and after it goes away
from them on the other side, so that every thing that passes along has
some guns or other pointing at them from the castle for more than a
mile. I don't see how any enemy could possibly get into France this way.

"There was also a place where the Rhone goes under ground, or, rather,
under the rocks, and so loses itself for a time, and then after a while
comes out again. It is a place where the river runs along in the bottom
of a very deep and rocky chasm, and the rocks have fallen down from
above, so as to fill up the chasm from one side to the other, and all
the water gets through underneath them. We looked down into the chasm as
the diligence went by, and saw the water tumbling over the rocks just
above the place where it goes down. I should have liked to stop, and to
climb down there and see the place, but I knew that the diligence would
not wait."

CHAPTER IV.

THE TOWN.

The valley descri