I slept at the village of Simplon, where I was told that it is always cold, and certainly I found it so. The people were cleaner and honester, and spoke better French than I had met with the preceding days in the Vallais. Next morning I resumed my walk towards Italy: the descent on this side is highly romantic, but after winding among savage rocks and subterranean passages, and looking against mountains crowned with snow, I was delighted to come out of the confined pass at Dovedro, and find myself in a fertile valley full of corn-fields, vineyards, and villages. In one part of this day’s walk, I observed a quantity of snow which had fallen the preceding winter, and being afterwards thickly covered with earth, was sprinkled with vegetation. After this opening the valley again contracts into another wild and rocky pass, though not with the frowning horrors of the preceding: this leads into the comparatively open Val Ocella, one league along which brought me to Duomo d’Ossola.
I have now left Switzerland, but I will not begin another subject without a few general observations. The country churches are generally small and poor buildings, each with a square tower at the west end, which terminates in a high gable. They are, I believe, always of stone; the cottages always of wood. These latter are generally elevated on a stone basement of six or eight feet in height. There are two stories below the roof, and one in it. The wood-work is not painted all over, and sometimes not at all; but there are frequently broad horizontal bands ornamented with painting, as well as with carving. The roofs span the long way of the building, and project five or six feet all round; they are consequently immensely large; and they are covered with shingles, or with slates. On one side, or often on both, is a gallery under the shelter of the roof, and the whole of this covered way forms an admirable place for drying flax, and sometimes corn: the flax, by the bye, is dressed without steeping.
I did not find any building at Duomo d’Ossola to excite much attention. There is a _Via Crucis_, that is, an ascent leading to a church or convent, on which is a series of chapels, representing the circumstances of our Saviour’s passion. Each chapel is here a small room filled with figures, carved in wood and painted: as much light is admitted as will shew them distinctly, and two or three holes are left, with gratings of wire, through which one may peep to see the imagery. These things are very common in Italy, but not all on so expensive a scale: the chapels are generally much smaller, like watch-boxes, and are adorned only with a painting exhibited in the same manner: sometimes they are mere arched recesses, to protect the series of pictures. This history is not confined to the facts related in the scriptures, but is heightened by tradition or invention. It is regularly a part of the story, not only that our Saviour himself carried the cross, nearly if not quite all the way, but that he fell down under it three times; and the circumstance is improved, if we may use the methodist expression in speaking of Roman Catholic superstition, by the inscriptions placed underneath. Little stations of this sort are also frequent by the road-sides, with a saint painted at the bottom of the niche.