I saw them off, and then plunged fathoms deep into sleep, dreaming of a land flowing with mules and donkeys. At five, I was up, and was surprised to find that the despised Domodossola was a beautiful and interesting old town, with curiously Spanish effects in its shadowy streets, lined with ancient, arcaded houses. I thought to save time and fatigue by taking a carriage to the frontier village of Iselle at the foot of the Pass, and was glad I had done so, for the road was rough and covered inches deep with a deposit of peculiar, grey dust. But things mended when we climbed a hill, turned out of the main valley, and followed the course of the river Diveria into a lateral gorge of the mountains, the real porchway or entrance of the Simplon Pass. [Illustration] CHAPTER VII At Last! "A Jack-o'-lantern, a fairy fire, A dare, a bliss, and a desire." --BLISS CARMAN. "Here a great personal deed has room." --WALT WHITMAN. The further I penetrated into the mountains, the more like a vast engineering workshop did the long Alpine valley become. Yet, curiously enough, instead of destroying romance, this gave a certain majestic romance of its own; the romance of man's struggle to conquer the stupendous forces of Nature with his science. It was as if Vulcan's stithy had been dropped down into a profound ravine of the Alps, and the drone of machinery mingled with the music of the fleeting river--a strange diapason. On the right of the highroad, the flat mountain face opened a black, egg-shaped mouth at me. I got out of the carriage to approach it, and while I stood peering down the dark throat, as if I were a Lilliputian doctor examining the tongue of Giant Gulliver, I was suddenly clapped upon the shoulder. It flashed into my mind that perhaps it was forbidden to stare at the tunnel-in-making; and turning to defend myself from a lash of red tape, with the adage that "a cat may look at a king," I saw a man I had known years ago smiling at me. [Illustration: "I WAS SUDDENLY CLAPPED UPON THE SHOULDER".]