The night was fine, and as I settled down in more comfortable quarters, a brilliant meteor sailed across full 60° of the cloudless sky, leaving a trail of light behind which lasted for several seconds. It was the herald of a splendid spectacle. Stars fell by hundreds, and, not dimmed by intervening vapors, they sparkled with greater brightness than Sirius in our damp climate. [Illustration: THE BLANKET BAG] The next morning, after walking up the valley to examine the Viso, I returned to Abries, and engaged a man from a neighboring hamlet for whom the ex-harbormaster had sent—an inveterate smoker, and thirsty in proportion, whose pipe never left his mouth except to allow him to drink. We returned up the valley together, and slept in the hut of a shepherd whose yearly wage was almost as small as that of the herdsman spoken of in Hyperion by Longfellow; and the next morning, in his company, proceeded to the summit of the pass which I had crossed in 1860; but we were baffled in our attempt to get near the mountain. A deep notch with precipitous cliffs cut us off from it: the snow-slope, too, which existed in the preceding year on the Piedmontese side of the pass, was now wanting, and we were unable to descend the rocks which lay beneath. A fortnight afterward the mountain was ascended for the first time by Messrs. Mathews and Jacomb, with the two Crozes of Chamounix. Their attempt was made from the southern side, and the ascent, which was formerly considered a thing totally impossible, has become one of the most common and favorite excursions of the district. We returned crest-fallen to Abries. The shepherd, whose boots were very much out of repair, slipped upon the steep snow-slopes and performed wonderful but alarming gyrations, which took him to the bottom of the valley more quickly than he could otherwise have descended. He was not much hurt, and was made happy by a few needles and a little thread to repair his abraded garments: the other man, however, considered it willful waste to give him brandy to rub in his cuts, when it could be disposed of in a more ordinary and pleasant manner. The night of the 14th of August found me at St. Veran, a village made famous by Neff, but in no other respect remarkable, saving that it is supposed to be the highest in Europe. The Protestants _now_ form only a miserable minority: in 1861 there were said to be one hundred and twenty of them to seven hundred and eighty Roman Catholics. The poor inn was kept by one of the former, and it gave the impression of great poverty. There was no meat, no bread, no butter, no cheese: almost the only things that could be obtained were eggs. The manners of the natives were primitive: the woman of the inn, without the least sense of impropriety, stayed in the room until I was fairly in bed, and her bill for supper, bed and breakfast amounted to one-and-sevenpence.