Here it is usual to unscrew and take in pieces the chaises, in order to carry them on mules over the mountain:  and to put them together on the other side:  For the Savoy side of the mountain is much more difficult to pass than the other.  But Sir Charles chose not to lose time; and therefore lest the chaise to the care of the inn-keeper; proceeding, with all expedition, to gain the top of the hill.

The way we were carried, was as follows:—­A kind of horse, as it is called with you, with two poles, like those of chairmen, was the vehicle; on which is secured a sort of elbow chair, in which the traveller sits.  A man before, another behind, carry this open machine with so much swiftness, that they are continually running and skipping, like wild goats, from rock to rock, the four miles of that ascent.  If a traveller were not prepossessed that these mountaineers are the surest-footed carriers in the universe, he would be in continual apprehensions of being overturned.  I, who never undertook this journey before, must own, that I could not be so fearless, on this occasion as Sir Charles was, though he had very exactly described to me how every thing would be.  Then, though the sky was clear when we passed this mountain, yet the cold wind blew quantities of frozen snow in our faces; insomuch that it seemed to me just as if people were employed, all the time we were passing, to wound us with the sharpest needles.  They indeed call the wind that brings this sharp-pointed snow, The Tormenta.

An adventure, which any-where else might have appeared ridiculous, I was afraid would have proved fatal to one of our chairmen, as I will call them.  I had flapt down my hat to screen my eyes from the fury of that deluge of sharp-pointed frozen-snow; and it was blown off my head, by a sudden gust, down the precipices:  I gave it for lost, and was about to bind a handkerchief over the woolen-cap, which those people provide to tie under the chin; when one of the assistant carriers (for they are always six in number to every chair, in order to relieve one another) undertook to recover it.  I thought it impossible to be done; the passage being, as I imagined, only practicable for birds:  however, I promised him a crown reward, if he did.  Never could the leaps of the most dexterous of rope-dancers be compared to those of this daring fellow:  I saw him sometimes jumping from rock to rock, sometimes rolling down a declivity of snow like a ninepin, sometimes running, sometimes hopping, skipping; in short, he descended like lightning to the verge of a torrent, where he found the hat.  He came up almost as quick, and appeared as little fatigued, as if he had never left us.