The just pride and elegant flattery of the French historians has often led them to compare Napoleon's passage of the Great St Bernard to Hannibal's passage of the Pennine Alps: but without detracting from the well-earned fame of the French general, it may safely be affirmed that his achievement will bear no sort of comparison with that of the Carthaginian hero. When Napoleon began the ascent of the Alps from Martigny, on the shores of the Rhone, above the lake of Geneva, he found the passage of the mountains cleared by the incessant transit of two thousand years. The road, impracticable for carriages, was very good for horsemen and foot passengers, and was daily traversed by great numbers of both in every season of the year. Comfortable villages, on the ascent and the descent, afforded easy accommodation to the wearied soldiers both by night and by day; the ample stores of the monks at the summit, and the provident foresight of the French generals, had provided a meal to every man and horse that passed. No hostile troops opposed their passage: the guns were drawn up in sledges made of hollowed firs; and in four days from the time that they began the ascent from the banks of the Rhone, the French troops, without losing a man, stood on the Doria Baltea, the increasing waters of which flowed towards the Po, amidst the gardens and vineyards, and under the sun of Italy. But the case was very different, when Hannibal crossed from the shores of the Durance to the banks of the Po. The mountain sides, not yet cleared by centuries of laborious industry, presented a continual forest, furrowed at every hollow by headlong Alpine torrents; bridges there were none to cross these perpetually recurring obstacles; provisions, scanty at all times in those elevated solitudes, were then nowhere to be found, having been hid by the affrighted inhabitants on the approach of the invaders; and a powerful army of mountaineers occupied the entrance of the defiles, defended with desperate valour the gates of their country, and, when dispersed by the superior discipline and arms of Hannibal's soldiers, still beset the ridges above their line of march, and harassed his troops by continual hostility. When the woody region was passed, and the vanguard emerged into the open mountain pastures, which lead to the verge of perpetual snow, fresh difficulties awaited them. The turf, from the gliding down of newly fallen snow on those steep declivities, was so slippery, that it was often scarcely possible for the men to keep their feet; the beasts of burden lost their footing at every step, and rolled down in great numbers into the abysses beneath; the elephants became restive amidst privations and a climate to which they were totally unaccustomed; and the strength of the soldiers, worn out with incessant marching and fighting, began to sink before the continued toil of the ascent. Horrors, formidable to all, but in an especial manner terrible to African soldiers, awaited them at the summit. It was now the end of October; winter in all its severity had already set in on those lofty solitudes; the mountain sides, silent and melancholy even at the height of summer, when enamelled with flowers and dotted with flocks, presented then an unbroken sheet of snow; the blue lakes which are interspersed over the level valley at their feet, were frozen over, and undistinguishable from the rest of the dreary expanse, and a boundless mass of snowy peaks arose on all sides, presenting apparently an impassable barrier to their further progress.