The valley of the river Dranse, which is followed by the traveler from Martigny, in the Rhone valley, to very near the summit, more than eight thousand feet above the sea, is full of romantic beauty and wildness, closed in by snow-covered mountains of fantastic shapes, their steep slopes partly covered with dark pine forests. Nestling on the rocks or sleeping in the valleys there are a few straggling settlements, with heavy-visaged natives, apparently of a different race from the Swiss, and entirely untouched by modern life. They live in tottering, wooden houses of the quaintest shapes, dark brown with age, and with wooden barns on stilts attached to them. Only a few villages, as Orsières, Liddes, and Bourg St. Pierre on the Swiss side, and St. Rémy on the Italian side, have stone houses along their narrow main thoroughfares.
During the summer months these roads are daily traversed by a motley crowd of tourists from all parts of the world, traveling on foot, or in private carriages or postal diligences, for the road is kept in capital order. Many wayfarers stop at the modest inns to rest and take a glass of _kirsch_, or even to seek shelter in the old houses when storms spring up suddenly, blowing furiously down the valleys; or they may repose on the rotten thresholds of the houses side by side with old matrons working at their spinning-wheels or with young girls knitting stockings, and converse with them in their French patois. The men are frequently employed as guides, and all are in constant intercourse with modern people from the great capitals of both continents, yet they do not depart from their ancient manners and ways.
The uncommon tenacity of these mountaineers is surprising, as the St. Bernard traffic is by no means new. True, the new carriage-road connecting central Europe, by way of Switzerland, with Italy was opened only in the first days of August, 1905, when the King of Italy himself was present, together with the authorities of the neighboring countries. But the St. Bernard has been a highway for thousands of years; it has seen many armies in war-time and many caravans with merchandise in times of peace. More than two hundred years before Christ, the great Hannibal passed over it with his Carthaginian legions; over the winding road which Hannibal had constructed Julius Cæsar led his Roman army down the valley of the Dranse for the conquest of Gallia and Germania. Emperor Augustus II improved and rebuilt the road, portions of which are still seen by the side of the new carriage-road wherever the latter has not been built on the foundation of the Roman highway.