It was now time to undertake the ascent of the Alps, and to commence operations on a scale so grand, that all former experience in scaling a height, was little better than useless. Many of the soldiers at the sight of the mountains, instead of rising with the occasion, sunk with it into a fainting state; and others objected to venture into the snow, on the ground that they did not understand the drift of it. Hannibal represented the whole affair as a mere nothing; and added, that the passage over the Alps was not such very up-hill work after all, for that men, women, and even children, had often been quite up to the work he now proposed to cut out for his army. "Soldiers!" he exclaimed, "you have no choice, except between certain famine on one side of the Alps, or fertile plains, which you may see plainly enough in your mind's eye, on the other." Hannibal having made this brief speech, was rewarded with loud cheers; the army followed him, and proceeding to the passes, he found them lined with Gauls; but he tore the lining out in the most merciless fashion.
On reaching the Valley of the Tarentaise, Hannibal was offered guides, whom, however, he distrusted; and refusing, therefore, to be led away by specious promises, he sent his baggage by way of experiment; intending, when he heard of the safe arrival of his soldiers' trunks, to despatch by the same route their entire body. When the elephants came within a stone's throw of the Gauls, the latter hurled down rocks in vast masses on the affrighted beasts, and snowballed them with the snow from the loftiest part of the mountains. The assailants, however, completely missed their aim, for Hannibal threw himself upon them, and succeeded in completely crushing them.
[Illustration: Hannibal crossing the Alps.]
It was a fine October morning when the Carthaginian general set out to cross the Alps by the road over the Little St. Bernard, and after a nine days' march, which was at that time a nine days' wonder, he reached the top of the mountain. The fatigue endured by Hannibal and his army cannot be described, and the toils of the journey were aggravated by the chance of their falling into the toils and snares of the enemy. Little passed their lips in the shape of food, and very little passed their lips in a contrary direction, for they were afraid to speak, lest their words should disturb the impending avalanche. The way was rugged, save where it was carpeted by the snow; but even where it was trodden hard enough to serve as a sort of track or guide, they could scarcely trust to it, for it gave them the slip every now and then in the most unsatisfactory manner. On the tenth day they began their descent: and they, perhaps, little thought at the moment that in quitting the top of the Alps they were coming down to posterity. The two first days slid away merrily enough over the ice and snow, but on the third they arrived at a point where the ground had slipped out of its place, and left to the enterprising travellers a far from eligible opening.