and propriety among the lower people of Switzerland, or that those of our own country, including a great proportion of those classing themselves among the aforesaid respectables, are lamentably behindhand in the commonest externals of decorum.

One thing which was far from pleasurable, was to observe that so many of the peasantry were more or less afflicted with goître- a deformity they did not even attempt in any degree to conceal, their throats being quite exposed to view. Although many causes have been assigned for this malady, the true one has never yet been exactly ascertained. While some attribute it chiefly to the bad quality of the water, which consists more or less of melted snow, others impute it to fogs and vapours and the stagnation of the air within the valleys. Others, again, pretend that it is occasioned entirely by the muscles of the throat being over-strained in carrying heavy loads upon the head; but this is a very extravagant notion, for, at that rate, goître ought to prevail among the Welsh women in London, who carry in that manner baskets so heavily laden with vegetables that one of them would be a stout burden for a jackass. In all probability, climate and beverage together have more to do with this disease than any thing else has.

Females more especially are subject to this malady and the disfigurement it occasions. It is also remarked that children born of parents who have goître, are

2

liable to be similarly affected, which would not be the case were it occasioned, mechanically, by over-pressure or exertion of the muscles of the throat. It is said that small stones have sometimes been extracted from such tumours, yet little credit, I should imagine, ought to be given to such tales. With respect to remedies, again, the use of coffee, has been reported to have been found serviceable; and if such really be the case, it is, no doubt, because the injurious quality of the water is corrected by boiling. Like other diseases, this varies in degree in different individuals; for while some are but slightly affected, others are rendered positively hideous objects by it; and in this latter stage, it seems also to influence the mind, reducing its victims to the condition of mere idiots. These unfortunate creatures are, generally, otherwise greatly deformed in body, and their countenances exhibit early in life all the marks of old age, the more repulsive because unnatural—the effect, not of senility and gradual bodily decay, but of disease. In some, the tumour is so great as not only to render them hideous, but that it must be, I apprehend, a source of considerable annoyance, if not of pain, both from its size and weight.

As we advanced from Sion, the appearance of the country and of the people improved: every thing bespoke industry and its effects. An air of cheerfulness and comfort were almost every where to be perceived, that might justify the envy of Merry Old England itself

50

A HINT TO FOLKS AT HOME.

which name, by the by, is not the most appropriate imaginable for a country whose inhabitants are devoted, almost exclusively, to the two absorbing passions of politics and money-getting-to say nothing of the sulky airs of that trumpery gentility which infects so large a proportion of the middling classes, who, amidst all their vaunted comforts, willingly sacrifice real enjoyment to ridiculous parade and an affectation of refinement that renders them miserable at home and contemptible abroad. Dixi!

CHAP. IV.

MARTIGNY.

BEX.

FALL OF THE PISSEVACHE. RHAPSODY ON CATHOLICISM. -LAKE OF GENEVA.

MARTIGNY, our next stage, has been rendered memorable by a calamitous event which happened some years back, and which demolished a considerable part of the town- I allude to the terrible inundation, or rather irruption, of a lake on some of the mountains encircling the place; which, without any previous intimation, suddenly poured down its waters with resistless impetuosity, sweeping away all before it, the terror-struck inhabitants knowing not whither to flee for safety. Dreadful was the loss both of lives and property occasioned by this extraordinary occurrence, which in an instant, as it were, converted one of the most sequestered rural towns imaginable into a scene of utter distress and desolation. A similar accident is said to have occurred in the sixteenth century; and, indeed, when we consider the nature of the country, so far from being astonished at such a circumstance, we ought rather to wonder that similar disasters are not much more frequent. Whenever the snows upon the mountains, where they have been accumulating during a succession of years, happen to be thawed more than usual by a

protracted summer, the water rushes down in foaming torrents, whose beds frequently unite, and then the resistless element sweeps on with accelerated force, in tremendous volumes. Should their course be impeded, so that they can find no outlet, they spread themselves out into a reservoir, where, should the thaw cease, they settle and subside gradually, or else form a lake; but should the snow go on melting, they must continue to rise, until they either overflow the natural mounds of the hollow where they lodge, or else suddenly burst through them, and discharge themselves upon the lower grounds.

About a couple of miles beyond Martigny, we come to the celebrated cascade distinguished by the very unpoetical, not to say offensive and unmentionable name of Pissevache, a column which falls quite vertically from a height of upwards of 100 feet, and appears to burst from beneath the overarching rock. We were lucky in happening to visit it in the early part of the day, when the sun striking upon it produces singularly beautiful

irides:

"Glorious as heaven's own bow
With its dies of varied glow,
When to the patriarch of old

That heaven's wrath was past, it told."

Although it might savour of conceit, a poet might be excused for imagining that he beheld the naiads and genii of the stream here disporting, weaving the falling