CIIAMOUNIAUDS.
like English inns, than those in any other
part of the duchy ; the charges are also
very reasonable, considering the distance
from whence most of the articles of consumption
are brought expressly for the use
of the company, indeed, they are cheaper
than in most of the other parts of Savoy or
in Switzerland, where the accommodations
are much inferior. The inhabitants of
Chamouny are somewhat spoiled by the
great influx of foreigners, and have not the
simplicity of manners which characterises
the Savoyards in less frequented districts.
They possess a most annoying kind of ubiquity,
following travellers to the mountains,
and descending with them into the valleys,
to offer fruit and milk, or flowers, which
is a most disagreeable mode of begging, as
you are surrounded by a crowd, wherever
you wish to contemplate in quietude the
grand objects before you.
The Chamouny guides are justly celebrated
for their intelligence and activity,
and for their careful attention to travellers ;
almost all the accidents which have occurred
here, have been caused by inattention
to their advice, or by urging the
guides to undertake excursions when the
season was not favourable. The melancholy
catastrophe of 1820, in the attempt
to ascend Mont Blanc, was owing to the
guides being almost compelled to undertake
the ascent against their judgment. As
the winters commence early, and last till
late in the spring, there is little employment
for the men during that season ; and
the guides being accustomed to a wandering
life in the summer, and to a certain degree of
intellectual excitement, by associating with
well-informed foreigners from every part of
Europe, they would sink into a state of
torpor, were it not for the dangerous resource
of gambling, with which they are
said chiefly to occupy themselves in the
winter months. It would be extremely
difficult to remedy the evil here ; in England
the substitute for gambling would be
smoking and drinking, or politics ; but under
the paternal government o f his Sardinian
Majesty, great care is taken, by the
prohibition of books, that the peasants
shall neither read, nor think, if it be possible
to prevent them. The Chamouniards, however,
from their summer intercourse with the
world, are less under the influence of the
priests, and less superstitious than the pea-
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