Saturday, June 13.
Having found that a conveyance to Briancon was beyond our finances,
and that they would not take us any distance at a reasonable charge,
we determined to walk the whole fifty miles in the day, and half-way
down the mountains, sauntering listlessly accordingly left Bourg
d'Oisans at a few minutes before five in the morning. The clouds
were floating over the uplands, but they soon began to rise, and
before seven o'clock the sky was cloudless; along the road were
passing hundreds of people (though it was only five in the morning)
in detachments of from two to nine, with cattle, sheep, pigs, and
goats, picturesque enough but miserably lean and gaunt: we leave
them to proceed to the fair, and after a three miles' level walk
through a straight poplar avenue, commence ascending far above the
Romanche; all day long we slowly ascend, stopping occasionally to
refresh ourselves with vin ordinaire and water, but making steady
way in the main, though heavily weighted and under a broiling sun,
at one we reach La Grave, which is opposite the Mont de Lans, a most
superb mountain. The whole scene equal to anything in Switzerland,
as far as the mountains go. The Mont de Lans is opposite the
windows, seeming little more than a stone's throw off, and causing
my companion (whose name I will, with his permission, Italianise
into that of the famous composer Giuseppe Verdi) to think it a mere
nothing to mount to the top of those sugared pinnacles which he will
not believe are many miles distant in reality.
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