We agreed with a muleteer at Sallenche, who provided mules to carry us over the mountains to Martigny. It is a good day’s journey from Sallenche to Chamouni, not on account of the distance, but from the difficulty and perplexity of the road, and the steep ascents and descents with which you are teased alternately the whole way. Some of the mountains are covered with pine, oak, beech, and walnut trees. These are interspersed with apple, plum, cherry, and other fruit trees, so that we rode a great part of the forenoon in shade. Besides the refreshing coolness this occasioned, it was most agreeable to me on another account. The road was in some places so exceedingly steep, that I never doubted but some of us were to fall; I therefore reflected with satisfaction, that those trees would probably arrest our course, and hinder us from rolling a great way. But many pathless craggy mountains remained to be traversed after we had lost the protection of the trees. We then had nothing but the sagacity of our mules to trust to. For my own part, I was very soon convinced that it was much safer on all dubious occasions to depend on their’s than on my own: For as often as I was presented with a choice of difficulties, and the mule and I were of different opinions, if, becoming more obstinate than he, I insisted on his taking my track, I never failed to repent it, and often was obliged to return to the place where the controversy had begun, and follow the path to which he had pointed at first. It is entertaining to observe the prudence of these animals in making their way down such dangerous rocks. They sometimes put their heads over the edge of the precipice, and examine with anxious circumspection every possible way by which they can descend, and at length are sure to fix on that which upon the whole is the best. Having observed this in several instances, I laid the bridle on the neck of my mule, and allowed him to take his own way, without presuming to controul him in the smallest degree. This is doubtless the best method, and what I recommend to all my friends in their journey through life, when they have mules for their companions. We rested some time, during the sultry heat of the day, at a very pleasingly situated village called Serve; and ascending thence along the steepest and roughest road we had yet seen, we passed by a mountain, wherein, they told us, there is a rich vein of copper, but that the proprietors have left off working it for many years. As we passed through one little village, I saw many peasants going into a church.—It was some Saint’s day.—The poor people must have half-ruined themselves by purchasing gold-leaf.—Every thing was gilded.—The virgin was dressed in a new gown of gold paper;—the infant in her arms was equally brilliant, all but the periwig on his head, which was milk-white, and had certainly been fresh powdered that very morning.