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talked of nothing but what was directly or indirectly connected with money and as soon as they heard that we were walking, for economy as much as pleasure, took no more notice of us. All the while these people were in the room no one felt inclined to talk: but the instant they left everybody's spirits sprung up like Jacks in boxes, the weight being removed; and we finished with a famous evening, even to accomplishing a charade.

Sunday, 14th.-It was quite dark when we rose, and snowing heavily. We left at six, and continued to ascend, in a deep drift and bitter wind, for an hour and a half. The silence and desolate aspect of the mountains in all directions were awful. The rocks bordering the road were fringed with enormous icicles, four and six feet long, and in very fantastic forms, After a very laborious journey of nearly three hours we got to the Simplon convent of St. Bernard, which is, in appearance, very like the convent, but larger. We were received with the greatest affability by the superior who was astonished to see two travellers on the road so early in such weather. Having had the snow brushed off us, we were ushered into the refectory, where we had a capital breakfast of coffee, toast, and honey. In about an hour two Frenchmen came in and we settled to go on together. Just as we were leaving an English party came up from Brieg, and the gentleman was so charmed with our yellow umbrella that he begged of us to let him purchase it. This we were not sorry to do, for what with our collections along the road we were carrying quite enough. The snow was still falling, when we set off again, and a little way on we found the Geneva malle-poste drifted up and unable to proceed. The conducteur was in a great state. He said if this was the beginning of the winter snow, they would not be able to move either one way or the other. We wished him luck and passed on, cutting off the turns of the road by sliding down the intermediate slope. D, in one instance, went a little too far, and shot away thirty or forty feet until he was quite buried in the snow, and had to be hooked out with our alpenstocks. As we got lower the snow began to abate, and the views were then magnificent. We made a very speedy descent to Brieg in three hours, by cutting off the bends: it is six leagues by the road: and there lunched. The Frenchmen bargained for a char to go to Sion, and we got there at half-past seven, stopping at the Hotel de la Croix Blanche. Being four in party they made great reductions at the inns, in whatever we wanted, for fear of losing us.

Monday, 15th.-All breakfast time at Sion there was a heavy snow falling. We, however, crept out to see the cathedral, and then set off, in a return char for Martigny. The appearance of the country was very remarkable, the trees and vines being in full foliage with a deep snow upon the ground. We went to our old hotel at Martigny to lunch, and got places in a cart to take us on to Bex. The journey was very ludicrous, as we were tumbled and jolted about in all directions, but it served to make great fun. On our way we stopped to see the source of the Trient, and the large cascade; indeed, we made the man halt whenever we chose, for as long as we pleased. The villages, walls, and pavements, in these parts, are all built of dark marble, and have somewhat of a dreary appearance, coupled with the traces of devastating avalanches, everywhere visible. The Hotel de l'Union, at Bex, where we stopped, is said to be one of the best in Switzerland. We had an excellent meal for two francs a-head, including some of the birds we had seen at the Simplon. They are very delicate eating, and

are said to live on the grapes. The beds here had eider-down coverlids, like those of the St. Bernard.

Tuesday, 16th.-The weather was so cheerless that we left Bex at seven in a diligence for Villeneuve, on the lake of Geneva, where we arrived at ten. Here we resumed our knapsacks, and at the Castle of Chillon bade adieu to our French companions. We entered the castle and saw the dungeon of the Prisoner of Chillon, with Byron's name cut on the pillar. We also saw the hanging room, with the cross gibbet still existing, and the hole whence the bodies were shot into the lake, which is very deep close to the walls. A franc for both of us was considered a good remuneration for these sights, as there were several other visitors. The weather was now fine: and we proceeded on our march, falling in with a good-tempered Swiss, who took us on a dray as far as Vevay. From this we walked on to Lausanne, and stopped at the Lion d'Or a famous inn, but very dear. We ought, by good rights, to have gone on to Ouchy, which may be called the lake port of Lausanne, where there is a moderate and cozy little inn on the water's edge.

Wednesday, 17th.-By seven o'clock we were out and on the Berne road, to see the tomb of John Kemble in the cemetery. We then came back for our knapsacks and walked down to Ouchy, where we had an excellent breakfast and a bottle of wine, for three francs the two. One window of our room overlooked the sparkling lake, and another the esplanade, on which some recruits were exercising, and some of their manœuvres were exceedingly comical. This was much better than our grand expensive chamber at Lausanne. About twelve the steamboat Guillaume Tell came up and took us both on board. The voyage was very interesting, and the whole of the journey along the lake full of objects to interest; but the wind was so strong, that the lake was rough even to making the passengers sick. We got to Geneva a little after four, and went back to the Hotel de Leman. Switzerland was bristling with soldiers, principally volunteers. All the fortifications of Geneva were being put into order, and every open place was filled with recruits. It had something to do with Prince Louis Napoleon, but I do not exactly recollect what. We went outside the town, to watch the sunset on the Alps once more; and then to bed.

Thursday, 18th.-We passed the morning in strolling about the town and reading letters, which we found waiting at the postoffice for us. As we were on the ramparts, learning the names of the different bastions from a small map, a sentinel came up and marched us to the guard-room, having taken us for spies. Here we were kept for some time, until one of the officers arrived. He was very grand on his entrance; but, on explaining who we were, and shewing our passports, he became uncommonly polite, and vented all his indignation on the sentinel. On the promenade we found a key, which, by the advice of a woman, we took to the Hotel de Ville, where there is a depôt of lost keys. All keys found are hung up there, and people who have lost them go to seek them. In the evening we went down to the estaminet of the hotel, and won a game of poule, at billiards, which paid our day's expenses. So we started into the town, and bought some views, and bits of Chamonix rocks: and afterwards, some cheap Swiss merchandize, of an uncommonly sharp little fellow, who sold things in the cafés. We also booked our places for Paris. The fare was cheaper than ever-thirty-nine francs ten sous, all the way, in the banquette ! Friday, 19th. After an early breakfast we started for Paris, at seven o'clock. The banquette had no head to it, and the morning was

very cold; so we got out on the Jura, and walked on a-head, with the conducteur, to a little village, where we lunched capitally, all together, for fifteen sous each. At Les Rousses our luggage underwent a strict search, and it was afterwards sealed with little bits of lead, which did away with some other examination further on. It now got so cold that the conducteur put us inside. This was very comfortable, for there were little plots of snow all along the road. We had a great to-do about our passports at a little town on the Jura, which had not been visée'd by the French official at Milan. They were going to send us back, but we got hold of the mayor and asked him to sup with us. As there were no passengers in the diligence but ourselves, we stopped as long as we liked; and made everything comfortable before we left. We took some travellers in, after supper. I do not think I slept a wink all night, as the intérieure was too full to allow of stretching myself out at length.

Saturday, 20th.-Got to Dole at seven to breakfast, where we changed our diligence as before. We did not leave here until twelve, so, as we had seen all the place before, this was rather slow. We had a regular banquette to the new diligence; but the weather was gloomy, and we knew the road. We reached Dijon in the evening, and had a better opportunity of seeing it than before, as the shops were very gaily lighted up. The appearance of the country had much altered since we came. The vintage was over, and all the vineyards brown and desolate. At night we built our old style of house amongst the baggage, and borrowing some sheep-skins from the conducteur, who had several, slept like dormice.

Sunday, 21st.-A very fine day: but no more grapes to be gathered on the road, so our living became a little more expensive, as we had to buy them. Some persons, who were in the coupé, left at Sens, and the conducteur let us go inside, having been bribed by D with some cigars, which he bought at Geneva, three for a sou. This was very comfortable, for each night got colder than the preceding one, and we felt it the more severely after the heat in Italy.

Monday, 22nd.-Had breakfast at Melun, and this time at the hotel, by way of a grand wind-up to ur toour, as it was the last meal we should make upon the road. Arrived in Paris, once more, at four in the afternoon, at the Messageries Royales, having run our expenses to such a nice point that we actually had not money enough left to pay for a cab to the lodgings of a fellow-student, at whose rooms we had left our things when we gave up our own.

So ended our tour: and I am not altogether without hopes that this plain account of it, tracking each day's work, and giving a tolerably fair notion of each day's expense, may induce others to make it when the autumn comes round again. We saw a great deal in this little journey-enough to talk and think about for many winters' evenings afterwards: and the few souvenirs of the different places we passed through, are still amongst my most treasured curiosities.

The journey should, of course, be undertaken by two persons,—not only for the sake of society, but for economy; as many little expenses do for both, which would have to be paid just the same for one: and the three most important items in the knapsack should be a knife, a ball of string, and some sticking-plaster. A soldier's old knapsack can always be procured in Paris, and a common round tin candlebox, in a ticking cover, should be strapped to the top, in place of the

carton fixed there. It is useful to hold the toilet things only wanted for a night, since, when the knapsack becomes fully packed, undoing it, and doing it up again, may be a matter of some trouble. The dandy oil-skin and Macintosh knapsacks sold at the trunk-shops in London, are utterly useless.

Possibly we took the trip when the autumn was a little too advanced. But the comparatively short days were still long enough for the quantity of walking required in each: and the vintage compensated for a great deal. The best detail of the road is to be found in Murray's "Handbooks;" all the other "Guides" are catchpenny affairs, copied from one another, and almost legendary in their descriptions, or filled up with spun-out pictures of scenery, when the originals are before you. These things are generally as uninteresting to read as a newspaper account of the sheriff's liveries, or the re-decorations of a theatre; and might always give up their space, with advantage, for something better.

Pedestrians must not expect to find everything couleur de rose. Trivial annoyances of every description will be constantly starting up, but if temper is lost, they become ten times worse: a firm resolve should be taken to laugh at everything, with the certainty that however vaxatious the occurrence may be at the time, it will only serve to talk about the more merrily when you get home again. After I was robbed by the brigands in 1840-with an account of which I made my debut in the "Miscellany," I was left all the next day-a wet Sunday, at Terrara, without any of my clothes, or travelling nick-nacks and minor comforts, in the dreary hotel of a gloomy city, with no notion of how I should get back to England. I have found myself in Venice without a franc, from arriving there before the poste restante letters I expected. I have been kept back by passports; shut up all night in a dirty corps de garde; and even been "invited" by the procureur du Roy, to attend at the Palais de Justice, and justify certain heedless acts against order committed in my student days; but when all these troubles were gone and past, I would not but have had them happen for any consideration. In the reminiscences of them I have found a great proportion of the pleasures of travelling.

Should there be no necessity for making Paris the starting place, a more extended trip may be taken, and with very little additional expense-increasing in about the same proportion, according to the time. taken up-by going up the Rhine, and from Frankfort to Schaffhausen, thence to Zurich, and by the Regi, the lake of Lucerne, at Gothard, and Bellinzona to Milan-taking Chamonix into the line of return instead of Bex and Lausanne. By this means, a vast number of interesting localities may be visited, beginning with Ostend, or Antwerp, and Brussells; and with the present moderate and expeditious facilities for travelling, the whole round may be accomplished under two months. Reports of continental disturbances should never keep any one at home. Whatever may be going on, the traveller, depend upon it, will almost always find a good table d'hôte at the hotels, a look of welcome in the shops, and a comfortable place in the diligence or railway, in the cities: and on the mountains the glacier will be equally wonderful, and the valley equally picturesque, whether a republic or a monarchy, or nothing at all, characterizes the country at the time.

VOL. XXIV.

N N

THE WILD BEAST TAMER.

BY ABRAHAM ELDER, ESQ.

A FEW years ago there was a Company formed under the title of "The Baker Street Colonization Society." It having originated among a few gentlemen living in that locality. The object was to purchase land in Upper Canada. The shareholders in the company being entitled to so much land per share upon their arrival at the company's territories. In the due course of time this society gave birth to a fine bantling in the shape of a large ship laden with emigrants, whose freight was bound for the new settlement of Smithville, so called after the chairman of "The Baker Street Society."

Now, instead of troubling our readers with an account of the adventures of these emigrants in their voyage to the scene of their future labours, we will content ourselves with giving a brief description of two of the principal personages of the party. First comes Mr. Rogers, the secretary-the official agent of the parent society, on whom devolved the keeping of accounts and the correspondence between the Smithville settlement, and the managing committee in Baker Street. He was a small dilapidated looking man, and bore every appearance of having been reared in a smoky office in the city; his face was the colour of whity brown paper, with rather a prominent hook-nose, the bridge of which had a twist to the right, while the tip of his nose, when at rest, looked towards the left: but, by some peculiar arrangement of muscles, he had the power of twisting it backwards and forwards, according to the emotions of his mind. His clothes always appeared to hang loose and unfitting upon him. All his motions were of a shuffling shambling character. He altogether appeared to have been blighted from the want of fresh air and sunshine, during the early part of his life.

Mr. Gogan, the other gentleman that we intend to pourtray, was his very opposite-a huge, coarse, vulgar, bloated man, with a large head, red face, and luxuriant foxy whiskers. A sort of man that

seizes upon your seat if you rise for a moment, and pokes his elbow in your face if you chance to sit next him at dinner. He is the stage-coach passenger that insists upon the window being up if his companions want air, and insists upon its being down if they complain of a draught.

The others consisted of younger sons of merchants, or persons who have failed in business, and saved a small wreck of their property, and emigrated to retrieve their fortunes, or hide their poverty in a distant land. There were also several ladies of the party, Mr. Jones brought his Mrs. Jones, and four Miss Jones's, besides which there were other ladies.

The expedition, like many others of this nature, arrived too late at the scene of action, and a Canadian winter to start with is no great joke. They were barely able to erect a joint log-house for the aristocracy of the party, and another for the mere labouring portion of their community-distinctions, fated in that country soon to merge into a semblance of equality.

The log-house, belonging to "The Baker Street Society" shareholders, consisted only of a common sitting-room, a ladies' dormi

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