After the rest and the wine, and the bad bread and the tolerably bad cheese, we proceeded on our journey. From that time on it was a succession of wonderful views, a panorama sometimes beautiful, sometimes awesome, sometimes soothing, and sometimes frightful. But no matter which it was, it was never insipid. There was a positive character to each view, something that you must observe, whether or no, and something that seen left an impression that many years will not efface. The Pass Tête Noir is an experience that will last a life time. [Sidenote: A SATISFACTORY FALL.] We made a sharp turn in the road at one point, and a view burst upon us that was worth a journey across the Atlantic to see. We were hanging over a chasm full six thousand feet deep--that is, to the first impediment to a full and satisfactory fall. Should you go down that six thousand feet you would [Illustration: ON THE ROAD TO CHAMONIX.] strike upon a ledge and bound off a number of thousand feet more before you finally came to the bottom. Across this yawning gulf was a mountain, the twin of the one on whose sides we were hanging, covered with evergreen trees to a certain way up to the top, which was crowned with the pure white of the eternal snow and ice. There were a thousand shades of color as the eye commenced at the level we were on and traveled up to the top, all brought out gloriously by the sunlight of noon-day. One of the party took in the whole view and very properly went into a rapture. "Is there anything under heaven so magnificent as this combination of colors!" she exclaimed, holding her breath in an ecstacy. Then up spoke the faro bankeress as she took it all in at a glance: "What a dress it would make, could one only have them colors brought out in silk!" The scenery, always grand and imposing, changes with every bend in the road, and always gives a view better than the preceding one. We are now at an altitude where the fragrant spruce lines the narrow roadway, and covers the hillside with everlasting green. Way over there, where the cold gray of the rocks is hidden under a mantle of green, on which the sun and clouds make ever-changing pictures, is a bright, flashing stream, dancing and sparkling in the sunlight, as it falls tumultuously from rock to rock, now losing itself in a chasm hundreds of feet deep, then springing out again further down, until at length it worries and frets itself over the crags and cliffs till it reaches the valley, and flows tranquilly and smoothly along to the lake. It typifies life, with its early struggles, its constant striving for the rest and quiet that comes at last. Now we approach the summit of the mountains. All around, as far as the eye can reach, is nothing but a series of rough, jagged crags, the peaks of the irregular range of mountains. Not the forest-covered hills we have been riding through, but vast piles of everlasting snow, which even the fierce and angry sun is unable to make any impression upon.