Indeed, All The Way From The Sardinian Frontier
We Had Been Dogged By Beggars Continually.
Parents seemed to look upon
their children as valuable only for this purpose; the very baby in
arms is taught to make a pitiful little whine, and put out its fat
hand, if your eye rests on it.
The fact is, they are poor - poor
because invention, enterprise, and intellectual vigor - all that
surrounds the New England mountain farmer with competence and
comfort - are quenched and dead, by the combined influence of a
religion and government whose interest it is to keep people stupid
that they may be manageable. Yet the Savoyards, as a race, it seems to
me, are naturally intelligent; and I cannot but hope that the liberal
course lately adopted by the Sardinian government may at last reach
them. My heart yearns over many of the bright, pretty children, whose
little hands have been up, from time to time, around our carriage. I
could not help thinking what good schools and good instruction might
do for them. It is not their fault, poor little things, that they are
educated to whine and beg, and grow up rude, uncultured, to bring
forth another set of children just like themselves; but what to do
with them is the question. One generally begins with giving money; but
a day or two of experience shows that it would be just about as
hopeful to feed the locusts of Egypt on a loaf of bread. But it is
hard to refuse children, especially to a mother who has left five or
six at home, and who fancies she sees, in some of these little eager,
childish faces, something now and then that reminds her of her own.
For my part, I got schooled so that I could stand them all, except the
little toddling three-year olds - they fairly overcame me. So I
supplied my pocket with a quantity of sugar lozenges, for the relief
of my own mind. I usually found the little fellows looked exceedingly
delighted when they discovered the nature of the coin. Children are
unsophisticated, and like sugar better than silver, any day.
In this _auberge_ was a little chamois kid, of which fact we were
duly apprised, when we got out, by a board put up, which said, "Here
one can see a live chamois." The little live representative of
chamoisdom came skipping out with the most amiable unconsciousness,
and went through his paces for our entertainment with as much
propriety as a New England child says his catechism. He hopped up on a
table after some green leaves, which were then economically used to
make him hop down again. The same illusive prospect was used to make
him jump over a stick, and perform a number of other evolutions. I
could not but admire the sweetness of temper with which he took all
this tantalizing, and the innocence with which he chewed his cabbage
leaf after he got it, not harboring a single revengeful thought at us
for the trouble we had given him. Of course the issue of the matter
was, that we all paid a few sous for the sight - not to the chamois,
which would have been the most equitable way, but to those who had
appropriated his gifts and graces to eke out their own convenience.
"Where's his mother?" said I, desiring to enlarge my sphere of natural
history as much as possible.
"_On a tue sa mere_" - "They have killed his mother," was the
reply, cool enough.
There we had the whole story. His enterprising neighbors had invaded
the domestic hearth, shot his mother, and eaten her up, made her skin
into chamois leather, and were keeping him till he got big enough for
the same disposition, using his talents meanwhile to turn a penny
upon; yet not a word of all this thought he; not a bit the less
heartily did he caper; never speculated a minute on why it was, on the
origin of evil, or any thing of the sort; or, if he did, at least
never said a word about it. I gave one good look into his soft, round,
glassy eyes, and could see nothing there but the most tranquil
contentment. He had finished his cabbage leaf, and we had finished our
call; so we will go on.
It was now drawing towards evening, and the air began to be sensibly
and piercingly cold. One effect of this mountain air on myself is, to
bring on the most acute headache that I ever recollect to have felt.
Still, the increasing glory and magnificence of the scenery overcame
bodily fatigue. Mont Blanc, and his army of white-robed brethren, rose
before us in the distance, glorious as the four and twenty elders
around the great white throne. The wonderful gradations of coloring in
this Alpine landscape are not among the least of its charms. How can I
describe it? Imagine yourself standing with me on this projecting
rock, overlooking a deep, piny gorge, through which flow the brawling
waters of the Arve. On the other side of this rise mountains whose
heaving swells of velvet green, cliffs and dark pines, are fully made
out and colored; behind this mountain, rises another, whose greens are
softened and shaded, and seem to be seen through a purplish veil;
behind that rises another, of a decided cloud-like purple; and in the
next still the purple tint changes to rosy lilac; while above all,
like another world up in the sky, mingling its tints with the passing
clouds, sometimes obscured by them, and then breaking out between
them, lie the glacier regions. These glaciers, in the setting sun,
look like rivers of light pouring down from the clouds. Such was the
scene, which I remember with perfect distinctness as enchaining my
attention on one point of the road.
We had now got up to the valley of Chamouni. I looked before me, and
saw, lying in the lap of the green valley, a gigantic pile of icy
pillars, which, seen through the trees, at first suggested the idea of
a cascade.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 60 of 119
Words from 60164 to 61189
of 120793
