y surrounded by naked and ragged rocks. The path led through its
centre, always ascending on an inclined plane, and disappeared through a
narrow gorge around the brow of a beetling cliff. Pierre pointed out the
latter as the pass by far the most dangerous on this side the Col, in the
season of the melting snows, avalanches frequently rolling from its crags.
There was no cause for apprehending this well-known Alpine danger,
however, in the present moment; for, with the exception of Mont-Velan, all
above and around them lay in the same dreary dress of sterility. Indeed,
it would not be easy for the imagination to conceive a more eloquent
picture of desolation than that which met the eyes of the travellers, as,
following the course of the run of water that trickled through the middle
of the inhospitable valley, the certain indication of the general
direction of their course, they reached its centre.

The time was getting to be that of early twilight, but the sombre color of
the rocks, streaked and venerable by the ferruginous hue with which time
had coated their sides, and the depth of the basin, gave to their
situation a melancholy gloom passing the duskiness of the hour. On the
other hand, the light rested bright and gloriously on the snowy peak of
Velan, still many thousand feet above them, though in plain, and
apparently, in near view; while rich touches of the setting sun were
gleaming on several of the brown, natural battlements of the Alps, which,
worn with eternal exposure to the storms, still lay in sublime confusion
at a most painful elevation in their front. The azure vault that canopied
all, had that look of distant glory and of grand repose, which so often
meets the eye, and so forcibly strikes the mind, of him who travels in the
deep valleys and embedded lakes of Switzerland. The glacier of Valsorey
descended from the upper region nearly to the edge of the valley, bright
and shining, its lower margin streaked and dirty with the _debris_ of the
overhanging rocks, as if doomed to the fate of all that came upon the
earth, that of sharing its impurities.

There no longer existed any human habitation between the point which the
travellers had now attained and the convent, though more modern
speculation, in this age of curiosity and restlessness, has been induced
to rear a substitute for an inn in the spot just described, with the hope
of gleaning a scanty tribute from those who fail of arriving in season to
share