Our guide appeared with two mules harnessed to a char a banc, and we proceeded.  The fragment of a village which the traveller passes for Martigny, on his way to Italy, is not the true hamlet of that name, but a small collection of houses that has sprung up since the construction of the Simplon road.  The real place is a mile distant, and of a much more rural and Swiss character.  Driving through this hamlet, we took our way along the winding bank of a torrent called the Drance, the direction, at first, being south.  The road was not bad, but the valley had dwindled to a gorge, and, though broken and wild, was not sufficiently so to be grand.  After travelling a few miles, we reached a point where our own route diverged from the course of the Drance, which came in from the east, while we journeyed south.  This Drance is the stream that produced the terrible inundation a few years since.  The calamity was produced by an accumulation of ice higher in the gorges, which formed a temporary lake.  The canton made noble efforts to avert the evil, and men were employed as miners, to cut a passage for the water, through the ice, but their labour proved useless, although they had made a channel, and the danger was greatly lessened.  Before half the water had escaped, however, the ice gave way, and let the remainder of the lake down in a flood.  The descent was terrific, sweeping before it every thing that came in its way, and although so distant, and there was so much space, the village of Martigny was deluged, and several of its people lost their lives.  The water rose to the height of several feet on the plain of the great valley, before it could disgorge itself into the Rhone.

The ascents now became more severe, though we occasionally made as sharp descents.  The road lay through a broken valley, the mountains retiring from each other a little, and the wheel-track was very much like those we saw in our own hilly country, some thirty years since, though less obstructed by mud.  At one o’clock we reached Liddes, a crowded, rude, and dirty hamlet, where we made a frugal repast.  Here we were compelled to quit the char, and to saddle the mules.  The guide also engaged another man to accompany us with a horse, that carried provender for himself, and for the two animals we had brought with us.  We then mounted, and proceeded.

On quitting Liddes, the road, or rather path, for it had dwindled to that, led through a valley that had some low meadows; after which the ascents became more decided, though the course had always been upward.  The vegetation gradually grew less and less, the tree diminishing to the bush, and finally disappearing altogether, while the grasses became coarse and wiry, or were entirely superseded by moss.  We went through a hamlet or two, composed of stones stained apparently with iron ore, and, as the huts were covered with the same material, instead of lending the landscape a more humanized air, they rather added to its appearance of sterile dreariness.  There were a few tolerably good bits of savage mountain scenes, especially in a wooded glen or two by the wayside; but, on the whole, I thought this the least striking of the Swiss mountains I had ascended.