river Reuss, flowing over a flat, though stony bed in the centre. M. and I were still alone with our guide; and here we met a French traveller, of whom Mr. R. told us he had afterwards inquired if he had seen two ladies, to which he rudely answered that he _had met two women_ a little above. This reminded me of an unwilling inclination of the head when I had spoken to this Frenchman in passing, as I do to all whom I meet in lonely places. He did not touch his hat: no doubt an intentional incivility, for, on the Continent, that mark of respect towards strangers is so general as to be often troublesome. Our fellow-travellers overtook us before we had ascended from the Westmoreland hollow, which had appeared to them, as to us, with the face of an old friend. No more bushes now to be seen--and not a single house or hut since we left Hopital. The ascent at times very rapid--hill bare--and very rocky. The Reuss (when seen at our right hand) was taking an open course, like a common mountain torrent, having no continuous glen of its own. Savage pikes in all directions:--but, altogether, the mountain ascent from Urseren not to be compared in awfulness and grandeur with the valley pass from Amsteg. I recollect no particular incidents by the way, except that, when far behind in discourse with a lame, and therefore slow-paced, foot-traveller (who intended to halt for the night at the Hospital of St. Gothard), he pointed out to me a patch of snow on the left side of the road at a distance, and a great stone on the right, which he told me was the spot where six travellers had been overwhelmed by an avalanche last February--they and the huge stone buried beneath the snow, I cannot say how many feet deep. I found our party examining the spot. The hill, from which the avalanche had fallen, was neither precipitous nor, to appearance, very lofty, nor was anything to be seen which could give the notion of peculiar hazard in that place; and this gave us, perhaps, a more vivid impression of what must be the dangers of the Alps, at one season of the year, than the most fearful crags and precipices. A wooden cross placed under the great stone by the brother of one of the deceased (an Italian gentleman) recorded the time and manner of his death. We tasted the cold snow near this spot, the first we had met with by the way-side, no doubt a remnant of the avalanche that had buried those unfortunate travellers. At the top of the ascent of St. Gothard a wide basin--a dreary valley of rocky ground--lies before us. [Footnote 56: Hospenthal.--ED.]