pport.

II

HANNIBAL'S CROSSING OF THE ALPS[70] (218 B.C.)

From the Druentia, by a road that lay principally through plains,
Hannibal arrived at the Alps without molestation from the Gauls who
inhabit those regions. Then, tho the scene had been previously
anticipated from report (by which uncertainties are wont to be
exaggerated), yet the height of the mountains when viewed so near, and
the snows almost mingling with the sky, the shapeless huts situated on
the cliffs, the cattle and beasts of burden withered by the cold, the
men unshorn and wildly drest, all things, animate and inanimate,
stiffened with frost, and other objects more terrible to be seen than
described, renewed their alarm.

To them, marching up the first acclivities, the mountaineers appeared
occupying the heights overhead, who, if they had occupied the more
concealed valleys, might, by rushing out suddenly to the attack, have
occasioned great flight and havoc. Hannibal orders them to halt, and
having sent forward Gauls to view the ground, when he found there was
no passage that way, he pitches his camp in the widest valley he could
find, among places all rugged and precipitous. Then, having learned
from the same Gauls, when they had mixed in conversation with the
mountaineers, from whom they differed little in language and manners,
that the pass was only beset during the day, and that at night each
withdrew to his own dwelling, he advanced at the dawn to the heights,
as if designing openly and by day to force his way through the defile.
The day then being passed in feigning a different attempt from that
which was in preparation, when they had fortified the camp in the same
place where they had halted, as soon as he perceived that the
mountaineers had descended from the heights, and that the guards were
withdrawn, having lighted for show a greater number of fires than was
proportioned to the number that remained, and having left the baggage
in the camp, with the cavalry and the principal part of the infantry,
he himself with a party of light-armed soldiers, consisting of all the
most courageous of his troops, rapidly cleared the defile, and took
posts on those very heights which the enemy had occupied.

At dawn of light the next day the camp broke up, and the rest of the
army began to move forward. The mountaineers, on a signal being given,
were now assembling from their forts to their usual station, when
they suddenly behold part of the e