When the flock is taken to the Alps, the sheep, instead of being driven before the shepherd, regularly follow him as he marches majestically in front,--tall, thin, sunburnt, and dirty,--armed with his long iron-pointed stick. Behind him the whole mountain is covered with a moving mass of gray fleeces; other shepherds and Bergamese dogs, with long woolly hair, the most vigilant of guardians, are scattered at different points in this “living flood of white wool surging like foaming waves.” The sheep do not disperse to feed until the chief shepherd, turning his face round to them, either by a whistle or notes from his pipe, seems to remind them that it is proper to do so. This leader or captain literally marches abroad in the morning piping his flocks forth to the pasture with some love sonnet, and his “fleecy care” seem actually to be under the influence of his music. It is by whistling that thousands of sheep are guided, the straying lambs called back, and the dogs sent out and checked. In September, when the shepherds bring down their flocks from the mountains, their wives and children, who have remained in the plain making hay, the harvest, the vintage, and gathering in of other fruits, go to meet them with songs and waving flags. In the evening the whole village rejoices, dancing goes on, and it is everybody’s festival: “At night returning, every labor sped, He sits him down, the monarch of a shed; Smiles by his cheerful fire, and round surveys His children’s looks, that brighten at the blaze; While his loved partner, boastful of her hoard, Displays her cleanly platter on the board.” The shepherds are happy men, content with their lot, loving their free and nomad mountain life with its long lazy times of rest and its moments of perilous activity. No simpler, honester, braver hearts are to be found anywhere.