one of the elevated valleys of the Alps, situated at the foot of Mount Blanc. See Alps and Blanc.

The first strangers whom a curiosity to visit the glaciers drew to Chamouni (M. Saflure observes), certainly considered this valley as a den of robbers; for they came armed cap-a-pee, attended with a troop of domestics armed in the same manner: they would not venture into any house; they lived in tents which they had brought along with them; fires were kept burning, and centinels on guard the whole night over. It was in the year 1741 that the celebrated traveller Pocock, and another English gentleman called Wyndham, undertook this interesting journey. It is remembered by the old men of Chamouni, and they still laugh at the fears of the travellers, and at their unnecessary precautions. For 20 or 25 years after this period, the journey was made but seldom, and then chiefly by Englishmen, who lodged with the curate: for, when I was there in 1760, and even for four or five years afterwards, there was no habitable house except one or two miserable inns, like those in villages that are little frequented. But now that this expedition has gradually become so fashionable, three large and good inns, which have been successively built, are hardly sufficient to contain the travellers that come during the summer from all quarters.

This concourse of strangers, and the money they leave behind them at Chamouni, have somewhat affected the ancient simplicity of the inhabitants, and even the purity of their manners. Nobody, however, has anything to fear from them: the most inviolable fidelity is observed with respect to travellers; they are only exposed to a few importunate solicitations, and some small artifices, dictated by the extreme eagerness with which the inhabitants offer their services as guides.

The hope of obtaining this employment brings together, round a traveller, almost all the men in every village through which he passes, and makes him believe that there are a great many in the valley; but there are very few at Chamouni in summer. Curiosity, or the hope of making money, draws many to Paris and into Germany: besides, as the shepherds of Chamouni have the reputation of excelling in the making of cheese, they are in great request in the Tarentaise, in the valley of Aoste, and even at greater distances; and they receive there, for four or five months in summer, very considerable wages. Thus the labours of the field devolve almost entirely on the women, even such as in other countries fall solely on the men; as mowing, cutting of wood, and threshing: even the animals of the same sex are not spared, for the cows there are yoked in the plough. The only labours that belong exclusively to the men are the seeking for rock crystal, and the chace. Happily they are now less employed than formerly in the first of these occupations. I say happily, for many of them perished in this pursuit. The hope of enriching themselves quickly by the discovery of a cavern filled with fine crystals, was so powerful a motive, that they exposed themselves in the search to the most alarming dangers; and hardly a year passed without some of them perishing in the snows, or among the precipices.

The principal indication of the grottos, or crystal ovens, as they are here called, are veins of quartz, which appear on the outside of the rocks of granite, or of the laminated rock. These white veins are seen at a distance, and often at great heights, on vertical and inaccessible places. The adventurers endeavour to arrive at these, either by fabricating a road across the rocks, or by letting themselves down from above suspended by ropes. When they reach the place, they gently strike the rock; and if the stone returns a hollow sound, they endeavour to open it with a hammer, or to blow it up with powder. This is the principal method of searching; but young people, and even children, often go in quest of these crystals over the glaciers, where the rocks have lately fallen down. But whether they consider these mountains as nearly exhausted, or that the quantity of crystal found at Madagascar has too much lowered the price of this fossil, there are now but few people that go in search of it; and perhaps there is not a single person at Chamouni that makes it his only occupation. They go however occasionally, as to a party of pleasure.

But the chace of the Chamois goat, as dangerous, and perhaps more so than the seeking for crystal, still occupies many inhabitants of the mountains, and carries off, in the flower of their age, many men whose lives are most valuable to their families. And when we are informed how this chace is carried on, we will be astonished that a course of life, at once so laborious and perilous, should have irresistible attractions for those who have been accustomed to it.

The Chamois hunter generally sets out in the night, that he may reach by break of day the most elevated pastures where the goats come to feed, before they arrive. As soon as he discovers the place where he hopes to find them, he surveys it with his glass. If he finds none of them there, he proceeds always ascending: whenever he descryes any, he endeavours to get above them, either by stealing along some gully, or getting behind some rock or eminence. When he is near enough to distinguish their horns, which is the mark by which he judges of the distance, he rests his piece on a rock, takes his aim with great composure, and rarely misses. This piece is a rifle-barrelled carbine, into which the ball is thrust, and these carbines often contain two charges, though they have but one barrel; the charges are put one above another, and are fired in succession. If he has wounded the chamois, he runs to his prey, and for security he hamstring it; then he considers his way home; if the road is difficult, he skins the chamois, and leaves the carcass; but, if it is practicable, he throws the animal on his shoulders, and bears him to his village, though at a great distance, and often over frightful precipices: he feeds his family with the flesh, which is excellent, especially when the creature is young, and he dries the skins for sale.

But if, as is the most common case, the vigilant chamois perceives the approach of the hunter, he immediately takes flight among the glaciers, through the snows, and over the most precipitous rocks. It is particularly difficult to get near these animals when there are several together; for then one of them, while the rest are feeding, stands as a sentinel on the point of some rock that commands a view of the avenues leading to the pasture; and as soon as he perceives any object of alarm, he utters a sort of hiss, at which the others instantly gather round him to judge for themselves of the nature of the danger: if it is a wild beast, or a hunter, the most experienced puts himself at the head of the flock; and away they fly, ranged in a line, to the most inaccessible retreats.

It is here that the fatigues of the hunter begin: infatuated by his passion for the chace, he is insensible to danger; he passes over snows, without thinking of the horrid precipices they conceal; he entangles himself among the most dangerous paths, and bounds from rock to rock, without knowing how he is to return. Night often surprizes him in the midst of his pursuit; but he does not for that reason abandon it; he hopes that the same cause will arrest the flight of the chamois, and that he will next morning overtake them. Thus he passes the night, not at the foot of a tree, like the hunter of the plain; not in a grotto, softly reclined on a bed of moss, but at the foot of a rock, and often on the bare points of shattered fragments, without the smallest shelter. There, all alone, without fire, without light, he draws from his bag a bit of cheese, with a morsel of oat bread, which make his common food; bread so dry, that he is sometimes obliged to break it between two stones, or with the hatchet he carries with him to cut out fleps in the ice. Having thus made his solitary and frugal repast, he puts a stone below his head for a pillow, and goes to sleep, dreaming on the rout which the chamois may have taken. But soon he is awakened by the freshness of the morning; he gets up, benumbed with cold; surveys the precipices which he must traverse in order to overtake his game; drinks a little brandy, of which he is always provided with a small portion, and sets out to encounter new dangers. Hunters sometimes remain in these solitudes for several days together, during which time their families, their unhappy wives in particular, experience a state of the most dreadful anxiety: they dare not go to rest for fear of seeing their husbands appear to them in a dream; for it is a received opinion in the country, that when a man has perished, either in the snow, or on some unknown rock, he appears by night to the person he held most dear, describes the place that proved fatal to him, and requests the performance of the last duties to his corpse.

"After this picture of the life which the chamois hunters lead, could one imagine that this chace would be the object of a passion absolutely unsurmountable? I knew a well-made, handsome man, who had just married a beautiful woman:—My grandfather, said he to me, lost his life in the chace; so did my father; and I am persuaded, that I too shall die in the same manner: this bag which I carry with me when I hunt I call my grave-cloaths, for I am sure I..." Chamouni will have no other; yet if you should offer to make my fortune on condition of abandoning the chase of the chamois, I could not consent. I made some excursions on the Alps with this man; his strength and address were astonishing; but his temerity was greater than his strength; and I have heard, that two years afterwards, he missed a step on the brink of a precipice, and met with the fate he had expected.

"The few who have grown old in this employment bear upon their faces the marks of the life they have led. A savage look, something in it haggard and wild, makes them be known in the midst of a crowd, even when they are not in their hunting drees. And undoubtedly it is this ill look which makes some superstitious peasants believe that they are foresters, that they have dealings with the devil in their solitudes, and that it is he who throws them down the rocks. What then can be the passionate inducement to this course of life? It is not avarice, at least it is not an avarice consistent with reason; the most beautiful chamois is never worth more to the person that kills it than a dozen of francs, even including the value of its flesh; and now that the number is so much diminished, the time lost before one can be taken is much more than its value. But it is the very dangers that attend the pursuit, those alternations of hope and fear, the continual agitation and exercise which these emotions produce in the mind, that instigate the hunter; they animate him as they do the gamekeeper, the warrior, the sailor, and even to a certain degree, the naturalist of the Alps; whose life, in some measure, pretty much resembles that of the hunter whose manners we have described."

But there is another kind of hunting, which is neither dangerous nor laborious, nor fatal to any one but to the poor animals that are the objects of it.—These are the marmots, animals that inhabit the high mountains; where in summer they scoop out holes, which they line with hay, and retire to at the beginning of autumn; here they grow torpid with the cold, and remain in a sort of lethargy, till the warmth of the spring returns to quicken their languid blood, and to recall them to life. When it is supposed that they have retired to their winter abode, and before the snow has covered the high pastures where their holes are made, people go to unharrow them. They are found from 10 to 12 in the same hole, heaped upon one another, and buried in the hay. Their sleep is so profound, that the hunter often puts them into his bag, and carries them home without their awaking. The flesh of the young is good, though it takes of oil, and smells somewhat of musk; the fat is used in the cure of rheumatisms and pains, being rubbed on the parts affected; but the skin is of little value, and is sold for no more than five or six sous. Notwithstanding the little benefit they reap from it, the people of Chamouni go in quest of this animal with great eagerness, and its numbers accordingly diminish very sensibly.

It has been said, that marmots, in order to transport the hay into their holes, use one of their number laid on his back as a cart; but this is fabulous, for they are seen carrying the hay in their mouths. Nor is it for food that they gather it, but for a bed, and in order to shut out the cold, and to guard the avenues of their retreat from enemies. When they are taken in autumn, Chamouni, their bowels are quite empty, and even as clean as if they had been washed with water; which proves that their torpidity is preceded by a fast, and even by an evacuation; a wise contrivance of Nature for preventing their accumulated feces from growing putrid, or too dry, in the long lethargy they are exposed to. They also continue a few days after their revival without eating, probably to allow the circulation and digestive power to recover their activity. At first, leaving their holes, they appear stupid and dazzled with the light: they are at this time killed with sticks, as they do not endeavour to fly, and their bowels are then also quite empty. They are not very lean when they awake, but grow more so for a few days after they first come abroad. Their blood is never congealed, however profound their sleep may be; for at the time that it is deepest, if they are bled, the blood flows as if they were awake.

In these countries the period is so short between the dissolution of the snow and its return, that grain has hardly time to come to maturity. Mr Saffire mentions a very useful and ingenious practice, invented by mountaineers of the Argentiere, for enlarging this period. "I observed (says he), in the middle of the valley, several large spaces where the surface of the snow exhibited a singular appearance, somewhat resembling a piece of white cloth spotted with black. While I was endeavouring to divine the cause of this phenomenon, I discovered several women walking with measured pace, and sowing something in handfuls that was black; and which being scattered, regularly diverging, on the surface of the snow, formed that spotted appearance that I had been admiring. I could not conceive what seed should be sown on snow five feet deep; but my guide, astonished at my ignorance, informed me, that it was black earth spread upon the snow to accelerate its melting; and thus to anticipate, by a fortnight or three weeks, the time of labouring the fields and sowing. I was struck with the elegant simplicity of a practice so useful, the effects of which I already saw very evidently in places which had not been thus treated above three days.

"As to the inhabitants of Chamouni, the men, like those of most high valleys, are neither well-made nor tall; but they are nervous and strong, as are also the women. They do not attain to a great age; men of 80 are very rare. Inflammatory diseases are the most fatal to them; proceeding, no doubt, from obstructed perspiration, to which the inconstant temperature of the climate exposes them.

"They are in general honest, faithful, and diligent in the practice of religious duties. It would, for instance, be in vain to persuade them to go any where on a holiday before hearing mass. They are economical, but charitable. There are among them neither hospitals nor foundations for the poor; but orphans and old people, who have no means of subsistence, are entertained by every inhabitant of a parish in his turn. If a man is prevented by age or infirmities from taking charge of his affairs, his neighbours join among themselves and do it for him.

"Their mind is active and lively, their temper gay, with an inclination to raillery: they observe, with singular acuteness, the ridiculous in strangers, and turn it it into a fund of very facetious merriment among themselves; yet they are capable of serious thinking: many of them have attacked me on religious and metaphysical subjects; not as professing a different faith from theirs, but on general questions, which showed they had ideas independent of those they were taught."