This journey led us over high ground, and for fifteen leagues along the base of the loftiest Alps, which reared their bare or snow-clad ridges and pikes, in a clear atmosphere, with fleecy clouds now and then settling upon and gathering round them.

We heard and saw several avalanches; they are announced by a sound like thunder, but more metallic and musical.

This warning naturally makes one look about, and we had the gratification of seeing one falling, in the shape and appearance of a torrent or cascade of foaming water, down the deep-worn crevices of the steep or perpendicular granite mountains.

Nothing can be more awful than the sound of these cataracts of ice and snow thus descending, unless it be the silence which succeeds.

The elevations from which we beheld these operations of Nature, and saw such an immense range of primitive mountains stretching to the east and west, were covered with rich pasturage and beautiful flowers, among which was abundance of the monkshood, a flower which I had never seen but in the trim borders of our gardens, and which here grew not so much in patches as in little woods or forests, towering above the other plants.