From the valley of Sospello, which appears as completely insulated by nature from the society of the world as Rasselas's happy valley, we wound next morning up another eight miles of ascent as steep and tedious as the last. On a wild heath between the tops of two mountains called the Col de Brouais, in which this ascent terminated, we unexpectedly discovered a hut tenanted by an old gend'arme, a pet lamb, a kid, and two tame hares, to all which quadrupeds we were introduced by the master with great glee, while waiting for the carriage under his roof. We were so much pleased and diverted by the whimsical manner in which this merry contented mortal lived among his menagerie, that we sent the horses on to Breglio, and complied with his eager desire of entertaining us at his cabaret, if a hut the size of a tea-caddy, without another human habitation visible for four miles, could be so called. He produced, to our surprise, bread, milk, cheese, fresh curd, eggs, fruit, and preserves, all clean and neatly served, and was equally surprised at our giving him two francs a head, which tender he at first remonstrated against with great naivete as too extravagant. The trouble which he had taken in fetching most of these articles from a distance of five miles appeared not to enter into this honest fellow's calculation. The French were encamped in some force on the Col de Brouais at the time of the session of the Comtat of Nice and of Savoy by the king of Sardinia in 1796. It was, also, about four years previous to our visit, infested by a band of robbers, to whom its lofty situation afforded great facilities: these were, however, swept off and conveyed to the galleys by the exertions of the mountain patrole, of whom our host was one, and the whole of the country is now perfectly safe and undisturbed. After contemplating for a short time the principal summit of the Col de Tende, which from this point appears at its full height, we dived into the intervening valley of Breglio by a rapid descent, like the road into a mine. The trout stream, which runs past this place in its way to Vintimiglia, is such as would cause a traveller fond of fishing, to regret the want of his rod and tackle. After leaving Breglio we ascended the course of this river till it narrowed into a defile between two rocks; on entering which the town of Saorgio appears, after a mile or two, piled on the top and shelving side of the precipice to the right in a singular manner. The architect who planned it must have taken his idea from a colony of swallows' nests in a sand-rock, for it seems hardly possible to get to or from it without wings: to judge of it from the road, there is no room or footing for streets; a man might jump down the chimney of his neighbour's house, or be dashed to pieces on its roof, by leaping from his own ground floor; and the fall of a house in the upper tier would probably open a clear downward passage to the valley. A