as well as to refresh our mules, at a little cottage-inn near the village of Servoy, in the neighbourhood of which are mines of lead and copper, together with many large buildings and furnaces for the preparation of the ore.  We here met another party also going to Chamouny.  They had preferred travelling in little carriages drawn by mules, which they were obliged to quit continually, by the uneven nature of the road; and they did not arrive till some time after us.  We here found that one of our party was mounted on the mule which had lately had the honor of carrying the Ex-Empress Maria Louisa, who passed this way on her tour to Chamouny.  She is said to have appeared very thoughtful; but the guides praised both her courage and her beauty.

We breakfasted with the other travellers, under the shade of an orchard, near the inn; and the repast was much more luxurious than we could have supposed from the rustic appearance of the place.  As soon as the guides informed us that they were ready to attend us, we continued our journey to Chamouny, making another little detour to visit the glacier des Bossons.  Here we were astonished at the singular appearance which was exhibited by a vast number of pyramids and towers of ice, many of them upwards of 100 feet in height, and which remained at this season almost in the centre of a valley richly cultivated and well inhabited.

The definition of the word glacier has given rise to several arguments.  I shall therefore insert that given by the celebrated M. de Saussure, in his Tour amongst the Alps, of which he was one of the first and most able explorers.  He says, “The word glacier designates any one of those cavities, natural or artificial, which preserve the ice, or guard it from the rays of the sun.”  This glacier is only three quarters of a league from Chamouny, or the priory, where we soon arrived.  The valley of Chamouny is about eighteen English miles long, and hardly one in breadth.  It is as varied a scene as can possibly be imagined; and no where can the contrast between nature in its wild and in its cultivated state, make a more forcible impression on the mind.

Many of the farms here are very neat.  They sow the grain in May, and reap in August.

We remarked several small chapels and crosses where promises of indulgence for thirty days are held out to those persons who shall repeat there a certain number of prayers.  One of these chapels, more spacious than the rest, was constructed by a bishop of Sion.  The village of Chamouny is not large, but contains several extremely good inns, which, since the opening of the Continent, have had their full share of English travellers, whose names, in the books of the hotel where we lodged, more than doubled those of all other nations who had visited the various grand scenes with which this country abounds; and the most lucrative employment here is that of a guide.  Strangers are often much imposed on