attended by an hoil of aflailants almoft as numerous as that by
■which we had been purfued to the cabin.
• We had yet forty miles to travel before we ihould arrive at Al-
ten, though we had already advanced twenty miles from the place
■where we left the river. The ftorm that had prevailed in the
night had not brought fine weather by a diffipation o f the clouds.
The fpace over which we were to go this day prefented a profpeft
almoft as dreary as the day before. It feemed to us that we were
fometimes going higher up in the mountains than we-had hitherto
done : we ftill found fnow as we proceeded. Our fervant was particularly
charmed with the idea of our being fo near the clouds ;
he feemed to imagine that he was already divefted o f a part of his
mortality; and the better to enjoy the illufion, he would fometimes
go out of his way and take a circuit, in order to get higher
up m the atmofphere. At one time he was wholly out of our
fig h t: we began to call him, but he did not hear u s ; we waited
for him, but he did not come; we fired our guns that He might
know whereabouts we were: ftill he did not make his appearance.
If he had been a handfomer youth, we might have been
induced to fufped that Jupiter had fent his eagle to fetch him, as
he did m former times for Ganymede; but his figure prevented
any fuch apprehenfion. He returned to us at Iaft; and on our
interrogating him why he left his company, he faid, that feeing
a beautiful cloud very near him, he had run after it for the pur-
pofe of knowing better than he did what kind of thing it was;
but
but that he found himfelf by degrees fo involved in it, as to lofe
his way, and to be ignorant of the direction we had taken.
When we had any eminence to afcend, we looked at our thermometer
at the bottom, and found th a t it was colder by two degrees
at the fummit of feme of them. The weather all the while
was very unfavourable and incommodious for travelling: it was
exceffively moift, and the clouds with which we were conftantly
iurrounded, communicated fuch a degree of humidity to our tent,
baggage' and clothes, that we could no where enjoy any comfortable
repofe. W e thought it better, without halting, to puih forward
as well as we could. At length, by dint of perfeverance in
our fatiguing progreft, we began to defeend the mountains. After
palling by a catarad, daihing perpendicularly from the fummit o f
fome rocks, which was fed by the melting malfes of fnow and the
moifture of the clouds that crept along the brows of the mountains,
we were prefented with the moft charming landfcapes. We
were ready to fancy ourfelves tranfported as by a magic rod into
another atmofphere, another country, another climate. On the
oppofite fide of thofe mountains, which are the Alps of Lapland,
all is on a gigantic fcale, all is rich and beautiful. Vegetation o f
every kind is both abundant and luxuriant, the herbage thick, and
the trees large. Here they ftart up to view all at once in iuch
frequent and extenfive groupes, as are not to be feen any where in
any of the declivities of the fouthern chain of mountains. We
plunged into th e depths o f a wood where the grais rofe to the
height of our knees: but I cannot expreft the plealure I felt at
feeing