Next day we started to Chamonix. On reaching Martigny we had to quit the train which was going to Simplon. The journey from here has to be accomplished in a wretched carriage, over precipitous roads and rough ground. A peasant, wearing a blue blouse, offered his _patache_ to us, a battered, shabby-looking vehicle with a prodigious rattling framework, drawn by two sorry-horses. We jolted in our shaky, springless car, bounding over big uneven stones; the sky was laden with black clouds running before the wind, and soon rain began to fall. Whilst we were crossing a village where a group of women were washing their linen in a pond, one of the women, an acquaintance of our charioteer, offered him her blue cotton umbrella, big enough to protect a whole family from the downpour. The road narrowed and became rougher and rougher, the foot passengers even had to scramble on the rocks to give us passage. We began to climb a path lined with precipices winding and twisting through the mountain-passes, and here we met an old grey-haired curate mounted on a donkey, who called out to us saying that there was not much room for us to pass each other, and, in fact, the road was the worst to be met with in a civilized country. When we arrived at the summit of the ascent, we saw a big wooden crucifix standing against the sky and near it stood a pole with a placard stuck to it saying, that one-horse conveyance only could pass in this place; and so one of our horses had to be taken out and attached behind to the carriage.