Hitherto I Had Suffered Much Inconvenience From The Heat.

The next morning we reached Lans-le-Bourg, the last town of Savoy lying at the foot of Mount Cenis.

After breakfast we began the ascent of Mont Cenis, and I made the whole way from Lans-le-Bourg to the Hospice of Mont Cenis, that is, the whole ascent, a distance of twenty-five Italian miles, on foot. This chaussee is another wonderful piece of work of Napoleon; a broad carriage road, wide enough for three carriages to go abreast, and cut zig-zag with so gentle a slope as to allow a heavy French diligence to pass, with the utmost ease, across a mountain where it was formerly thought impossible a wheel could ever run. This chaussee is passable at all seasons of the year; the mountain is not so high as that of the Simplon and is less liable to impediments from the snow; the obstacles from nature are less, and you can descend in a sledge from the Hospice by gliding down the side of the cone, and thus descending in nine or ten minutes, whereas the ascent requires four hours' time. From Lans-le-Bourg to the Hospice on Mont-Cenis the road is on the flank of an immense mountain and you have no ravines to cross; the road is cut zig-zag on the flank of the mountain and forms a considerable number of very acute angles, as it is made with so gentle a slope that you scarcely feel the difficulty of the ascent. These repeated zig-zags and acute angles formed by the road, and the very slight slope given to the ascent, make the different branches appear to be almost parallel to each other, and it is a very curious and novel sight when a number of carriages are travelling together on this road to see them with their horses' heads turned different ways, yet all following the same course, just like ships on different tacks beating against the wind to arrive at the same port, a comparison that could not fail immediately to occur to a sailor. There is scarcely ever any detention on this road from the fall of snow, as there are a considerable number of persons employed to deblay it as soon as it falls; but here, as well as on the Simplon, there are maisons de refuge at a short distance from each other. We stopped for two hours at the inn at Mont-Cenis, which is about one hundred yards from the Hospice. It was a remarkable fine day, and I enjoyed my walk very much. The mountain air was keen and bracing and particularly delightful after being shut up for some many days in the close valley. We had some excellent trout for dinner. At Mont-Cenis, near the Hospice, is a large lake which is frozen during eight months of the year. Here reigns eternal winter and the mountains are covered with snows that never melt.

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