CHAPTER IV
1842
On May 18th we quitted Vevey in a new carriage my father had purchased. "How strange," wrote he, "that the place we dislike as a resting-place should be quitted with so much regret; and, on leaving, all its merits appear so vivid, while its désagréments fade away, but so it was."
We drove up the Rhone Valley as far as Brigue, whence we started over the Simplon Pass, 6562 ft. We were given six post-horses to draw our carriage, "two, at least, more than necessary, but such is the tariff, and no one may object. The landlord of our inn told me that on some occasions they had attached as many as fourteen horses to a carriage—but all this is Swiss imposition. With the same carriage we have since passed over the Stelvio, 9272 ft., or nearly half a mile in perpendicular height, and with only four horses."
On the Italian side, from the village of Simplon, we started at 5 a.m. "Here," wrote my father, "we witnessed the solitary instance that I can remember of not taking advantage of the traveller, but then, we were no longer in Switzerland. As the whole way was a descent they attached only two horses to the carriage instead of three, which they might have done, and only charged me for the two. I am glad to mention such an instance, as it is rarely met with, not even in honest Tyrol, where down the whole descent of the Stelvio I was obliged to have three horses, such being the number fixed by tariff for my description of carriage."
My father mentions the flowers at the summit of the Simplon Pass. "Vegetable nature even there had not given up the contest, for never did I see more beautiful auriculas than those there growing in bunches, fighting their way through the snows. On
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