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2 4 2 M A U R I E N N E C O S T U M E . B O U R G S T . M A U B ÍC E . 2 4 3
costume. The head-dresses of the women
consist of a tiara placed over the forehead,
the hair being closelv o turned back : the
tiara is composed of stripes of silk and gold
lace, and must be expensive. It has rather
a graceful appearance, and is worn by all the
women, both at home, and when working in
the fields ; the hair behind is turned up, and
put through a kind of heart-shaped coronet,
made of rolls of ribband and ornamented
with large silver p in s ; this is fixed on the
crown of the head. This dress is common
to the people of the higher part of the
Maurienne, and theTarentaise above Ayme.
Approaching to the Bourg St. Maurice, the
rocks are principally dark schist, in many
parts invested with an incrustation of dark
porous tuffa, formed by depositions from
the water that runs over them.
The road from Moutiers to the Bourg
St. Maurice being very bad for a carriage,
it was past nine o’clock when we arrived at
our inn in the latter place, though we left
Moutiers at half-past tw o : the distance is
about sixteen miles. We had heard a good
character of our host and his inn, and were
not disappointed ; he was a respectable
looking man, much like a substantial English
farmer. Though we were now on the
extreme confines of the cultivated world,
immediately under the central range of the
Alps, the accommodations were much better
than in many of the more fertile parts of
Savoy. Bourg St. Maurice being the last
market-town in the Tarentaise, on the road
to Piedmont, all persons who cross the
Little St. Bernard must sleep here, and
start from hence early in the morning. My
principal object in coming here, was to
cross the Alps in this direction, and visit
the baths of Cormayeur in Piedmont, where
I proposed to stay two days, leaving the
char at St. Maurice to await our return. Cormayeur
is nearly under the southern side of
Mont Blanc, where that colossal mountain
presents an escarpement of rock almost perpendicular,
from the base to near the summit.
The examination of the rocks in the
valley below, called the Allée Blanche, was
what I had long wished to accomplish. We
rose early the following morning, but the
weather, which had been very rainy, still
continued threatening, and on enquiring for
mules, we found that the road was so seldom
travelled by ladies, that a side-saddle
could not be procured for Mrs. B., and the
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