Now for all these reasons--the presence of the railway, the electric works at Chedde and St. Gervais, and the dullness of the actual bottom of the valley between St. Gervais and the "gate of the hills" at Cluses--one would scarcely choose to travel by this orthodox route from Geneva up to Chamonix--though fine enough in places, and almost everywhere full of interest--provided one were offered a prettier alternative, and one not otherwise too heavily handicapped in point of greater distance or fatigue. Such a route, in fact, there is, though for pedestrian, or horseman, only, which, beautiful throughout, attains supreme and final excellence in the section that lies beyond Sixt. Probably very few tourists of the annual thousands who visit Chamonix are ever sufficiently adventurous to shoulder pack, or _rucksack_, and thus desert the broad valley of the Avre, with its rather obvious graces, for the shy and retiring loveliness of the valley of the Giffre. The steam-tramway along the road may, I think, legitimately be taken as far as Samoëns, where it ends; for it is at Samoëns that the interest of the walk begins. Sixt, beyond Samoëns, is a charming old village, at the junction of two wild Alpine streams that descend respectively from the Buet (10,201 feet) and the Pointe de Tanneverge (9,784 feet). Here in the Middle Ages was a small Augustinian abbey, the domestic buildings of which are now utilized for a simple, but clean, hotel, and the chapel of which is now the parish church. The dining-room is the old refectory; and painted round the wall-plate of its wooden ceiling may still be read its history: "... hoc opus fecit fieri Hubit' de Mon XI Abbas de Six Ano. Dni. MDCXXII. Deus converset. I.H.S. Maria."