In order to make the pass of the Gemmi, it is necessary to go through the Baths of Leuk.  The ascent from the Rhone bridge at Susten is full of interest, affording fine views of the valley, which is better to look at than to travel through, and bringing you almost immediately to the old town of Leuk, a queer, old, towered place, perched on a precipice, with the oddest inn, and a notice posted up to the effect, that any one who drives through its steep streets faster than a walk will be fined five francs.  I paid nothing extra for a fast walk.  The road, which is one of the best in the country, is a wonderful piece of engineering, spanning streams, cut in rock, rounding precipices, following the wild valley of the Dala by many a winding and zigzag.

The Baths of Leuk, or Loeche-les-Bains, or Leukerbad, is a little village at the very head of the valley, over four thousand feet above the sea, and overhung by the perpendicular walls of the Gemmi, which rise on all sides, except the south, on an average of two thousand feet above it.  There is a nest of brown houses, clustered together like bee-hives, into which the few inhabitants creep to hibernate in the long winters, and several shops, grand hotels, and bathing-houses open for the season.  Innumerable springs issue out of this green, sloping meadow among the mountains, some of them icy cold, but over twenty of them hot, and seasoned with a great many disagreeable sulphates, carbonates, and oxides, and varying in temperature from ninety-five to one hundred and twenty-three degrees Fahrenheit.  Italians, French, and Swiss resort here in great numbers to take the baths, which are supposed to be very efficacious for rheumatism and cutaneous affections.  Doubtless many of them do up their bathing for the year while here; and they may need no more after scalding and soaking in this water for a couple of months.

Before we reached the hotel, we turned aside into one of the bath-houses.  We stood inhaling a sickly steam in a large, close hall, which was wholly occupied by a huge vat, across which low partitions, with bridges, ran, dividing it into four compartments.  When we entered, we were assailed with yells in many languages, and howls in the common tongue, as if all the fiends of the pit had broken loose.  We took off our hats in obedience to the demand; but the clamor did not wholly subside, and was mingled with singing and horrible laughter.  Floating about in each vat, we at first saw twenty or thirty human heads.  The women could be distinguished from the men by the manner of dressing the hair.  Each wore a loose woolen gown.  Each had a little table floating before him or her, which he or she pushed about at pleasure.  One wore a hideous mask; another kept diving in the opaque pool and coming up to blow, like the hippopotamus in the Zoological Gardens; some were taking a lunch from their tables, others playing chess; some sitting on the benches round the edges, with only heads out of water, as doleful as owls, while others roamed about, engaged in the game of spattering with their comrades, and sang and shouted at the top of their voices.  The people in this bath were said to be second class; but they looked as well and behaved better than those of the first class, whom we saw in the establishment at our hotel afterward.