He Was A Tall, Spare Man, With
Black Eyes, Black Hair, And Features Expressive Of Shrewdness, Energy,
And Determination.
Either from paralysis, or some other cause, he was
subject to a spasmodic twitching of the features, producing very
Much
the effect that heat lightning does in the summer sky - it seemed to
flash over his face and be gone in a wink; at first this looked to me
very odd, but so much do our ideas depend on association, that after I
had known him for some time, I really thought that I liked him better
with, than I should without it. It seemed to give originality to the
expression of his face; he was such a good, fatherly man, and took
such excellent care of me and the mule, and showed so much
intelligence and dignity in his conversation, that I could do no less
than like him, heat lightning and all.
This valley of Chamouni, through which we are winding now, is every
where as flat as a parlor floor. These valleys in the Alps seem to
have this peculiarity - they are not hollows, bending downward in the
middle, and imperceptibly sloping upward into the mountains, but they
lie perfectly flat. The mountains rise up around them like walls
almost perpendicularly.
"_Voila!_" says my guide, pointing to the left, to a great, bare
ravine, "down there came an avalanche, and knocked down those houses
and killed several people."
"Ah!" said I; "but don't avalanches generally come in the same places
every year?"
"Generally, they do."
"Why do people build houses in the way of them?" said I.
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