These facts of themselves, and I presume they cannot be contested, give a totally different colouring, from that which is commonly entertained, to the conception of the enterprise of the First Consul, so far as the difficulties of the ascent were concerned.  If the little community can transport stores for 8,000 souls to the convent, there could be no great difficulty in one, who had all France at his disposal, in throwing an army across the pass.  When we quitted Martigny, I began to study the difficulties of the route, and though the road as far as Liddes has probably been improved a little within thirty years, taking its worst parts, I have often travelled, in my boyhood, during the early settlement of our country, in a heavy, high, old-fashioned coach over roads that were quite as bad, and, in some places, over roads that were actually more dangerous, than any part of this, as far as Liddes.  Even a good deal of the road after quitting Liddes is not worse than that we formerly travelled, but wheels are nearly useless for the last league or two.  As we rode along this path, C——­ asked me in what manner I would transport artillery up such an ascent.  Without the least reflection I answered, by making sledges of the larches, which is an expedient that I think would suggest instantly itself to nineteen men in twenty.  I have since understood from the Duc de ——­, who was an aide of Napoleon, on the occasion of the passage, that it was precisely the expedient adopted.  Several thousand Swiss peasants were employed in drawing the logs, thus loaded, up the precipices.  I do not think it absolutely impracticable to take up guns limbered, but the other plan would be much the easiest, as well as the safest.  In short, I make no doubt, so far as mere toil and physical difficulties are concerned, that a hundred marches have been made through the swamps and forests of America, in every one of which, mile for mile, greater natural obstacles have been overcome than those on this celebrated passage.  The French, it will be remembered, were unresisted, and had possession of the col, a garrison having occupied the convent for more than a year.

The great merit of the First Consul was in the surprise, the military manner in which the march was effected, and the brilliant success of his subsequent movements.  Had he been defeated, I fancy few would have thought so much of the simple passage of the mountain, unless to reproach him for placing the rocks between himself and a retreat.  As he was not defeated, the audace of the experiment, a great military quality sometimes, enters, also, quite properly into the estimate of his glory.

The guide pointed to a place where, according to his account of the matter, the horse of the First Consul stumbled and pitched him over a precipice, the attendants catching him by his great-coat, assisted by a few bushes.  This may be true, for the man affirmed he had heard it from the guide who was near Napoleon at the time, and a mis-step of a horse might very well produce such a fall.  The precipice was both steep and high, and had the First Consul gone down it, it is not probable he would ever have gone up the St. Bernard.