like those of chairmen, was the vehicle;
on which is secured a sort of elbow chair, in which the traveller sits.
A man before, another behind, carry this open machine with so much
swiftness, that they are continually running and skipping, like wild
goats, from rock to rock, the four miles of that ascent. If a traveller
were not prepossessed that these mountaineers are the surest-footed
carriers in the universe, he would be in continual apprehensions of being
overturned. I, who never undertook this journey before, must own, that I
could not be so fearless, on this occasion as Sir Charles was, though he
had very exactly described to me how every thing would be. Then, though
the sky was clear when we passed this mountain, yet the cold wind blew
quantities of frozen snow in our faces; insomuch that it seemed to me
just as if people were employed, all the time we were passing, to wound
us with the sharpest needles. They indeed call the wind that brings this
sharp-pointed snow, The Tormenta.

An adventure, which any-where else might have appeared ridiculous, I was
afraid would have proved fatal to one of our chairmen, as I will call
them. I had flapt down my hat to screen my eyes from the fury of that
deluge of sharp-pointed frozen-snow; and it was blown off my head, by a
sudden gust, down the precipices: I gave it for lost, and was about to
bind a handkerchief over the woolen-cap, which those people provide to
tie under the chin; when one of the assistant carriers (for they are
always six in number to every chair, in order to relieve one another)
undertook to recover it. I thought it impossible to be done; the passage
being, as I imagined, only practicable for birds: however, I promised him
a crown reward, if he did. Never could the leaps of the most dexterous
of rope-dancers be compared to those of this daring fellow: I saw him
sometimes jumping from rock to rock, sometimes rolling down a declivity
of snow like a ninepin, sometimes running, sometimes hopping, skipping;
in short, he descended like lightning to the verge of a torrent, where he
found the hat. He came up almost as quick, and appeared as little
fatigued, as if he had never left us.

We arrived at the top in two hours, from Lanebourg; and the sun was
pretty high above the horizon. Out of a hut, half-buried in snow, came
some mountaineers, with two poor sledges, drawn by mules, to carry us
through the Plain of Mount Cenis, as it is called, which is about four
Ita