ever saw, with deep pools, short falls, rapids, and tails of swift streams, the very colour for fishing, without a tinge of glacierwater. At the first huts we came to, Delapierre made inquiries, and found it abounded with trout, which, according to accounts, were plentiful, of the weight of 2 or 3 lbs. ; but the natives were too lazy to fish for them. I greatly regretted having left my rod behind at Gressoney; and Delapierre was no less mortified than myself at seeing the trout rise freely in the river without being able to get any of them.

An hour above Pont Bosel is another sudden turn in the track, where it is carried abruptly round a jutting angle of the rock, which here deeply overhangs the valley. A rude staircase was cut in the rock, and only a few crazy rails, or tops of pines, rotted by exposure, offered imaginary protection from the profound precipice. E. and Mora came very cautiously round and down the perilous angle, and gained a better path continuing to Champorcher. While they went on to the hamlet by a wide détour-which keeps the church and castle, on an eminence, so long in view that they never seem nearer-I stopped to sketch the singular rock, behind which the morning sun was streaming up the valley. When I rejoined the party I found them seated on the stones outside one of the humble houses, which were crowded together in a little close street, as if for warmth, the interior having offered no temptation to remain within. Food was scarce-only black bread and eggs were to be had; but as we never tired of them, we made a hearty lunch "al fresco," while Mora, picketed to a stone, was eating hay with an undivided attention and steady voracity which evinced no small mountain experience.

We reached Champorcher at 10 A.M., in 3 hours from Fort Bard, 4 hours having been stated as the estimated distance. The dilapidated tower or keep is the only part which remains of the old castle of the Challants, and, with the spire of

the little church close to it, has a very picturesque appearance at a distance. Until recently the village of Champorcher paid a homage of 120 francs annually to the Countess of Challant, as their seigneur. Lofty mountains of varied tints of red, purple, and ashen-grey environed the little basin of green meadows, with here and there a few châlets. On the slopes, facing the south, we were surprised to see the corn cut, the ground tilled and resown, and the young crops already springing, at an elevation where we could hardly have expected to find any of the cereals. The situation was evidently unusually favourable, from its concentrating all the rays of the sun.

A little before 12 we again started; the inmates of every scattered cottage came out, and the peasants in the pastures tending their cows left their charges to see the unusual sight of a mule, and the still rarer one of an English lady on an English side-saddle. The king of Dahomey, riding through the quiet streets of one of our country towns, would hardly have excited more astonishment than our appearance did in this unsophisticated valley.

A rapid ascent up to the higher meadows, with beautiful views of the Val de Champorcher and its softly-tinted mountains, brought us to the outlet from the head of the valley by the torrent of the Champorcher, entering a chasm under the cool shade of the rocks and overhanging larches. The most difficult and dangerous climb for the mule here commenced, up a tremendously steep face, by rough steps cut in the shaly rock-occasionally a mere narrow ledge scarped on it, and even that in several places all but effaced. With a precipitous fall of many hundred feet below the brink, and nothing to arrest one in case of a false step, as the track got worse and more precarious, I wished E. to dismount; but it was too late, there was no room to do so; and I looked on with no little anxiety, while Mora, with marvellous sureness and sagacity, carried her across places which had barely

afforded me foothold, steadying herself on the smallest inequalities, and holding on to the ledge with scarce a slip. A woman, who was tending cows below, seemed horrorstruck at the attempt, clasping her hands, and lamenting E.'s fate!

The track had been temporarily rendered passable for a visit which the King, with the Duke of Genoa, had made to Cogne on a hunting expedition the year before, on which occasion they carried with them beds, cooks, 20 mules, 18 cows, and about 50 retainers. The King, who is an enthusiastic sportsman, glad to escape, whenever he can, from state affairs and court ceremonials, to the more congenial sports of the field, was said to have been delighted with the grand mountains of Cogne and their noble game. He stayed four days, and the Duke fifteen, hunting the bouquetin and chamois; and here, as everywhere in Piedmont, the Duke was as much regretted as he had been universally beloved. Since their visit the path had crumbled away, and the last spring's avalanches had nearly destroyed great part of it. At length it was safely passed, and we gained a pretty glade, on which were fine clumps of the tall Gentiana asclepiadea, with their large heads of pale ultramarine flowers. Higher still we emerged on a wide-spreading, undulating pastureground, carpeted with the most exquisite greensward, especially striking where the emerald verdure contrasted with a chaos of wild blocks on the right, the shivered fragments of which lay strewn round the base of the singularly-wild Becca de Ratti, a barren, scathed obelisk, which almost overhung us. A number of sunny châlets were grouped together on one part of these Alps; and, being considerably in advance of the rest of the party, I examined them as a resting-place on another visit, and came to the conclusion that a bed in the hay there would be far preferable to the miserable "Sole " at Fort Bard. It would, moreover, make a good division of the long day's work from the latter to Cogne, which is too much

for a lady at one stretch, unless in summer, when there is long daylight.

The views on all sides were magnificent, especially that of the distant ranges behind us, pyramid piled above pyramid in continuous tiers of the richest colouring. That on our left, and to the south, separated us from the Val Soanna; one of its eminences (the Pragelas) was a strange rounded summit, covered with olive-tinted verdure, the torrent foaming in successive cascades at its dark foot. Behind it, and over the higher peak, lies the way into the Val Soanna. Mont Arietta, the highest point of the ridge, was not visible; but on a lofty shelf under it a glacier came in sight, which our guide called the Ruise de Bonch-"ruise" being the patois for glacier. A remarkable rounded hill below it seemed to indicate, from its form and position, that the glacier had once extended as far. An extraordinary and beautiful effect was produced by the afternoon sun, which just cleared the ridge, its rays slanting down the slope over a thick bed of silvery-grey shrubs, and through the tall bare poles of the larches which covered it, their shadows doubling their apparent height. The milk-white torrent thundering down from the glacier, and flashing in the sun, joined by another from the other side, foamed between the enormous rocks in which they were pent up.

While proceeding along the beautiful greensward from the châlets, I spied an immense crop of mushrooms, growing in a grassy hollow, the first time we had met with them in Piedmont. On my setting busily to work to gather them, Delapierre and the guide strongly protested that they were highly poisonous; no one in the country would touch them, though many other fungi were commonly eaten, and they tried hard to dissuade us from poisoning ourselves. There they were, however, the genuine Agaricus campestris, beyond all possibility of mistake, with smooth, snow-white pileus, and fleshy-pink gills showing through the half-split

ring, and the variety edulis, the most sapid of all its manyvarying forms. Delapierre was never above conviction; and, after a short lecture on fungi in general, and the campestris in particular, we all set to work and filled an extempore bag with a great pile of the best and freshest, hanging it on the pommel of the saddle.

A short descent to the stream brought us to the châlets of Dondegna, the last in the Val. A warm nook in an angle of the rocks, sheltered both from the cold wind and the glare of the sun, with a deliciously-clear little burn in front of the patch of turf, made an excellent resting-place for our dinner at half-past two. The staple eggs and ryebread were supplemented by figs and peaches from the Val d'Aosta, which Delapierre had somehow managed to carry so far uninjured. We were quietly discussing them when, to our dismay, we saw Mora, who was picketed at a little distance, deliberately stretch out her legs, lie down on her side, and begin an apparently most enjoyable roll, with bags, saddle, and all on her back. The safety of all our belongings was imperilled, and an accident to the crutch would have been irreparable here; but the scene was irresistibly ludicrous. Delapierre rushed up and administered kick after kick before she desisted, and sat on her haunches, looking drolly at him, with our baggage in the direst confusion. Fortunately little damage was done, and the thermometer was safe; and finding a fire in one of the châlets, by which an old woman was crooning, I boiled water, and noted its temperature, to her great wonderment at the unexpected apparition. The external temperature was 24° Cent.; that of the boiling point, 92°.5.

Our lazy guide asked leave here to exchange with a shepherd, who wished to go over to Cogne, and we gladly assented, as his substitute was a good-looking lusty fellow, and well acquainted with every part of the pass. The way lay over rolling hills of coarse grass, embedded among lofty