XI. L’HOTEL DU MONT BLANC 435

oppressed by quiet heat in the early part of the day, then burst in upon by wild wind blowing up the valley about noon, or later; a diurnal storm which raises the dust in whirlwinds, and wholly prevents the growth of trees in any beautiful forms, their branches being daily tormented into every irregular and fretful curve they can be strained to, and their leaves wrung round on the stalks, so that half their vitality is torn out of them.

Strangely, and, so far as I know, without notice by scientific men of the difference, the Italian valleys are, in the greater number of them, redeemed from this calamitous law. I have not lately been in either Val d’Aosta,¹ or the Valtelline, nor ever stayed in the upper valley of the Adige; but neither in the Val Anzasca, the Val Formazza, the Val d’Isella, or the southern St. Gothard, is there any trace of the action of malignant wind like this northern one, which I suppose to be, in the essence of it, the summer form of the bise. It arises, too fatally, punctual to the noon, in the brightest days of spring all over western Savoy.

Be that as it may, in the fields neighbouring the two villages which mark the eastern and western extremities of the chain of Mont Blanc,-Sallenches, namely, and Martigny, where I have passed many of the most serviceable days of my life,-this noon wind, associated with inundation, is one of the chief agents in producing the character of the whole scene, and in forming the tempers of the inhabitants. Very early my mind became fixed on this their physical distress, issuing finally not in the distortion of growing trees only, but in abortion of human form and mind, while yet the roots of beauty and virtue remained always of the same strength in the race; so that, however decimated by cretinism, the Savoyard and Valaisan retain to this day their vigorous personal character, wherever the conditions of ordinary health are observed for them.

¹ [Where, however, a similar wind prevails.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]