Monday morning, still enveloped in the clouds, but the storm apparently over. Found it no use trying to make a visit to the Rhone glacier; the clouds were so thick we could scarcely hope to find it, and the recent snow so deep nothing could be seen. Was disappointed also by these same clouds in getting a view of the high Bernese Alps, particularly Finster-Aarhorn and the glaciers, from this side, but determined not to wait here longer; so set off at half past ten in company with a native of Valais, who was traveling towards home and served as guide; traveled through deep snow, climbed up to the summit of the pass, more than a thousand feet higher, where at first we were so completely enveloped in the clouds that we seemed actually to be traveling through them and on them; dug a specimen or two of Soldanella out of the snow to serve as souvenirs. At length the wind arose and now and then sent a hole in the clouds to give me some glimpses of the desolate yet grand scenery through which we were passing. Soon I got a view of the valley of the Rhone almost at its commencement, with the river flowing through like a mere rivulet; looked down upon Oberwald, the highest village in Valais, a collection of little châlets all huddled together as if to keep themselves warm,--as indeed they have need; got out of winter and snow and into the valley at the little village of Obergesteln, and walked, on the same day, through a quick succession of most retired little Swiss villages of the humblest sort, to Brieg, on the Simplon road, near the mountain of that name, which I reached at nine o’clock in the evening, making a journey of forty miles, a portion through the snow, in ten hours and a half. I would like to tell you much about the upper Valais, a region seldom visited by travelers, but have not time; people kind and simple; got nothing to eat on the way except hard and dry brown bread, that may have been baked ten days; passed the villages where avalanches had fallen in former years and crushed many people; the scenery much more picturesque than I expected, but was most interested in the people and their little villages; women mowing, reaping, and doing every sort of the hardest labor; all awfully afflicted with goitre, scarce a person wholly free from it; actually saw one woman with a goitre not quite as large as her own head certainly, but about the size of that of the child she held in her arms, apparently a year old; saw one cretin. Stopped a few moments at the principal auberge in the village of Viesch; found the priest with two of his parishioners playing a game of cards together. A stranger being a curiosity in that region, one person accosted me very politely, and took me up the valley a little way to see the glacier and mountains. Reached Brieg utterly worn out, but got a good supper and bed; this being just where the famous Simplon road commences the ascent of the mountains, there are many travelers and a good hotel, though dear.