Our journey usually commenced at sunrise. Having taken a cup of coffee, or a glass of delicious new milk, we entered the carriage, enjoying the exquisite freshness and fragrance of the morning air. At about eleven, a two-hours’ rest for the horses brought us to some shady road-side inn, where a breakfast of mountain trout, fresh caught from the stream, and perhaps a chamois cutlet awaited us. Much less tempting fare would, as my readers may imagine, have had ample justice done to it, under such favorable circumstances for exciting an appetite. Between one and two our second start was made. Our route, perhaps, then led through a forest of pines, rendered doubly aromatic by the magnetism of the sun’s beams; or, it might be, the bed of a torrent skirted our path, which we had more than once to cross, on the most picturesque of bridges. The road over this grandly terrible pass is sufficiently wide to admit of two _diligences_ passing abreast, without any danger of falling down the awful precipice, which ever yawns on one side of the road, and sometimes on either. To construct such a route over such a mountain, it required the genius of a Napoleon to conceive and to execute; and each step taken by the Alpine traveller, whether his way lie over the Splügen, the Cenis, or the still finer and more easy Simplon pass, must raise his admiration for the herculean labors of this wonder-working architect. Between five and six, we halted for the night, probably in the vicinity of some cataract, the rushing of whose waters lulled us to that sweet sleep which was ever ready to come to our pillow. As far as my experience goes, these little way-side inns, frequented by _vetturini_ are by far the cleanest, best, and cheapest I ever entered; and from our large city hotels, I have frequently looked back to their homely comforts with regret.