Several men and children passed close by, some with heads bent down and backs curved under the hod of white wood containing supplies for some villa or pension, whose balconies could be perceived mid-way. "To the Rigi-Kulm?' asked Tartarin, to assure himself that he was in the right direction; but his extraordinary equipment, and particularly the knitted comforter which shrouded his face, alarmed those he addressed, and every one of them, after staring at him with wide-open eyes, hurried upwards without replying. These meetings soon became few and far between the last human being he encountered was an old woman who was washing some linen in the trunk of a tree under the shade of an enormous red umbrella fixed in the ground. 'Rigi-Kulm?' asked the Alpinist. The old woman raised to his a terrified and idiotic face, bearing a goitre which hung from her neck, as large as the bell of a Swiss cow: then, after having taken a long look at him, she burst into a peal of inextinguishable laughter, which stretched her mouth from ear to ear, puckering up her little eyes; and every time that she opened them again, the sight of Tartarin standing before her, his ice-axe on his shoulder, seemed to redouble her mirth. 'Tron de l'air l' growled the Tarasconnais, 'it's lucky she's a woman'; and bursting with rage he continued his route, losing his way in a pine wood, where his boots slipped upon the soaking moss. Beyond that, the scene changed. No more paths, no trees nor pastures. A few mournful slopes, bare, but sustaining great boulders, which he was obliged to scale on hands and knees for fear of falling; morasses full of yellow mud, which he crossed slowly, testing the quagmire with his alpenstock, and lifting his feet like a knife-grinder. Every moment he consulted the compass which hung as a charm to his watch-chain; but, whether owing to the altitude or to the variations of the temperature, the needle seemed defective. He had no means by which he could take his bearings, for the thick yellow fog that prevented him from seeing ten paces in any direction was penetrated by a thick, cold sleet which made the ascent more and more laborious. Suddenly he halted, the ground was white in front. Take care of your eyes! He had come to the snow-line! Immediately he drew his glasses from their case and adjusted them firmly! The moment was a solemn one. Somewhat nervous, but proud all the same, Tartarin felt that at one bound he had ascended 3000 feet towards the peaks and their dangers. He advanced with great precaution, thinking of the crevasses and the ratures of which he had read, and in his heart of hearts cursing the people of the auberge who had advised him to ascend straight up without a guide. Night would surprise him on the mountain. Could he find a hut, or only the projection of a rock, to shelter himself? Suddenly he perceived, on the wild and desolate platform, a kind of wooden chalet, bound with a placard bearing enormous letters, which he deciphered with difficulty: PHO-TO-GRA-PHIE DU RI-GI-KULM. At the same moment the immense hotel with its three hundred windows became visible to him a little farther on between the great lamps, which burned brightly in the fog. Alphonse Daudet. By kind permission of Messrs. Dent and Son. COLLINS [Mr. Charles Allston Collins was a brother of Mr. Wilkie Collins and married a daughter of Charles Dickens. He began life as a Pre-Raphaelite painter, and wrote many essays and novels.] Vision MR. PINCHBOLD made no answer, and Mr. Fudge, looking hastily The First round at him, saw that his friend had raised himself slightly from his seat, and was gazing out on the road before them with such fixed intensity, as caused Mr. Fudge involuntarily to look in the same direction. 'What-look-what are they?' asked Mr. Pinchbold, speaking in a breathless voice, and laying his hand on his companion's arm. Mr. Fudge drew the rein tightly, hardly knowing what he did, and the carriole stopped. 'Are they clouds?' continued Mr. Pinchbold, in the same tone. Our travellers seemed now to have reached the tops of everything, and had, indeed, climbed to a high place on the Jura mountains. From the point where they stood the road began slightly to slope downwards, and turning by-and-by to the right it was lost over the brow of an abrupt descent. A little to the left of this turn, and consequently exactly opposite the position occupied by the two Englishmen, there was at a distance of two or three hundred yards a great opening or chasm in the rocks, which rose on either side of it to a great altitude. The chasm was shaped like the letter V. chasm there was nothing to be seen. Beyond that Nothing? What is that vast sea of dense white, extendingflat as the surface of a lake-for miles and miles away; and yet miles itself from the opening in the rocks between which it shows so strangely? What is that? And over it, in the remoter distance yet, what forms are those that rise above the dense white sea? What are those vast spectral shapes that show so faint, and yet so clear, so distant, yet so plain? Are they clouds? No; no clouds, though like those forms in shape and colour, have ever looked like that; no clouds have hung so still, no clouds proclaimed such silence all round, no clouds have struck two human souls with awe and dread such as lay upon the hearts of those two Englishmen, who almost fear to break the stillness as they say together in the hushed voices of those who speak before the dead 'THE ALPS!' It would be difficult-impossible perhaps to convey to the reader any idea of the effect of the vision imperfectly described in the last chapter, upon the two gentlemen whose fortunes we have been following so long. It is but once in a lifetime-sometimes, perhaps, not that-that men can feel such sensations. Travelling by that road on the diligence with many companions, arriving at La Faucille from Switzerland instead of from France, coming upon this scene even at a time when the rare atmospheric phenomena witnessed by our travellers should be wanting-all would be spoilt. There may have been something, too, in the mere fact that these two Englishmen came upon this wonderful sight without any preparation, and had not been told that they would come into the presence of the Alps that day at all. Be this as it may, the fact must be recorded, that this sight was more than they could bear to look upon, and that they both, by mutual consent, went aside into the house to recover themselves a little, as a man with his hand upon the coffin-lid of his friend might turn away for a time to gather strength before he looked upon the dead. Charles Allston Collins. A Cruise upon Wheels. Hannibal's Crossing of the Alps VI THE ALPS IN HISTORY HANNIBAL [I HAVE here freely translated the famous narrative in Livy (Book XXXI. XXXV.-xxxvii.), who, like Polybius, does not name the pass, and has thus left a very perplexing problem for the modern historian. The controversy has raged almost to the height of passion. Perhaps the most probable suggestion is that of Mr. Douglas Freshfield-the Col de l'Argentière between Barcelonnette and Cuneo (Alpine Journal, xi. 267). The Mont Genèvre, popular with many historians, is not an impossible conjecture (Geographical Journal, April 1911, vol. xxxvii. No. 4). A case has been lately argued for the Col de Chapin near to Mont Cenis (Hannibal's March, by Spenser Wilkinson.) The utmost that we can say with assurance is that Hannibal crossed a pass in the Western Alps (see Arnold's Second Punic War)]. On the ninth day Hannibal's army reached the summit of the main ridge of the Alps, making their way over country where there were few tracks, and where they often lost their way. They were frequently misled by treacherous guides. When they decided not to trust the guides of the country, they often made even worse blunders, for they would march into the wrong valleys and again and again lose their way, from hasty or ill-founded conjectures as to their route. They built a stationary camp on the topmost ridge of the Alps, and there the army, now utterly fatigued by the prolonged toil of marching and fighting, was given a complete rest for two days. During that period a considerable number of the baggage animals who had fallen or slipped by the road found their way into the camp by following the tracks of the army. While the army was still exhausted with so many difficulties there came a great fall of snow-just at the time in the late autumn |