Here we baited, and our progress afterwards was slow and difficult. The snow on the road was deep and hummocky, and the strain upon the horses very great. Having crossed the Arve at the Pont-Pelissier, we both alighted, and I went on in advance. The air was warm, and not a whisper disturbed its perfect repose. There was no moon, and the heavy clouds, which now quite overspread the heavens, cut off even the feeble light of the stars. The sound of the Arve, as it rushed through the deep valley to my left, came up to me through crags and trees with a sad murmur. Sometimes on passing an obstacle, the sound was entirely cut off, and the consequent silence was solemn in the extreme. It was a churchyard stillness, and the tall black pines, which at intervals cast their superadded gloom upon the road, seemed like the hearse-plumes of a dead world. I reached a wooden hut, where a lame man offers bâtons, minerals, and _eau de vie_, to travellers in summer. It was forsaken, and half buried in the snow. I leaned against the door, and enjoyed for a time the sternness of the surrounding scene. My conveyance was far behind, and the intermittent tinkle of the horses' bells, which augmented instead of diminishing the sense of solitude, informed me of the progress and the pauses of the vehicle. At the summit of the road I halted until my companion reached me; we then both remounted, and proceeded slowly towards Les Ouches. We passed some houses, the aspect of which was even more dismal than that of Nature; their roofs were loaded with snow, and white buttresses were reared against the walls. There was no sound, no light, no voice of joy to indicate that it was the pleasant Christmas time. We once met the pioneer of a party of four drunken peasants: he came right against us, and the coachman had to pull up. Planting his feet in the snow and propping himself against the leader's shoulder, the bacchanal exhorted the postilion to drive on; the latter took him at his word, and overturned him in the snow. After this we encountered no living thing. The horses seemed seized by a kind of torpor, and leaned listlessly against each other; vainly the postilion endeavoured to rouse them by word and whip; they sometimes essayed to trot down the slopes, but immediately subsided to their former monotonous crawl. As we ascended the valley, the stillness of the air was broken at intervals by wild storm-gusts, sent down against us from Mont Blanc himself. These chilled me, so I quitted the carriage, and walked on. Not far from Chamouni, the road, for some distance, had been exposed to the full action of the wind, and the snow had practically erased it. Its left wall was completely covered, while a few detached stones, rising here and there above the surface, were the only indications of the presence and direction of the right-hand wall. I could not see the state of the surface, but I learned by other means that the snow had been heaped in oblique ridges across my path. I staggered over four or five of these in succession, sinking knee-deep, and finally found myself immersed to the waist. This made me pause; I thought I must have lost the road, and vainly endeavoured to check myself by the positions of surrounding objects. I turned back and met the carriage: it had stuck in one of the ridges; one horse was down, his hind legs buried to the haunches, his left fore leg plunged to the shoulder in snow, and the right one thrown forward upon the surface. _C'est bien la route?_ demanded my companion. I went back exploring, and assured myself that we were over the road; but I recommended him to release the horses and leave the carriage to its fate. He, however, succeeding in extricating the leader, and while I went on in advance seeking out the firmer portions of the road, he followed, holding his horses by their heads; and half an hour's struggle of this kind brought us to Chamouni.