I shall never forget, to my dying day, the effect produced upon me by the first half of this ascent. The day was as bright and beautiful as ever shone out of heaven. Hot it was, but not intensely so, for the sun's power was yet trivial; and as the winds were hushed, except when from time to time a light breeze rustled among the foliage of the pine-woods, the stillness that prevailed around struck me as something quite sublime. In proportion as we rose, likewise, above the level of the valley, every sight and sound appeared to acquire a new charm. Beneath were wreaths of mist, rolling themselves slowly up the sides of the opposite mountains. Under their canopy villages and hamlets were reposing, from the chimneys of which long thin streaks of smoke curled upwards as if to join the cloud; while here and there a solitary cottage, a chapel, and even a gilt crucifix, gleamed to peculiar advantage from its own quiet nook. I have spoken of the silence as being quite sublime. Not that it was unbroken; for up the mountain's side came, by fits and starts, the tinkling of the bells, which in this country are suspended to the necks of the cattle when they are feeding; intermixed with an occasional whoop, or snatch of a song, or merry whistle from the cow-herd; while the branches over-head,--for we sat down in the skirts of a low pine wood,--were crowded with little birds, whose sweet but not loud notes completed one of the most exquisite concerts to which, in any part of the world, I have ever listened. And then the landscape,--what a picture was there. Bold conical hills, swelling one over another like waves of the sea, overtopped and looked down upon a succession of valleys, each more striking, both for richness and beauty, than the first; and forming altogether such a scene as must be witnessed to be felt, or even understood.