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CHAPTER XI.

Excursion to Chamouni and Mont Blanc-Genevese Society and
Manners-Scenery of the Lake of Geneva-Travelling with
Vetturino-Chillon--Upper Valley of the Rhone-Sion-The
Simplon Road-Scenery of the Simplon-Lake Maggiore 233

JOURN A L.

CHAPTER I.

Passage across the Atlantic-The Old World-Liverpool-Manners of Servants-Stage Coaches-Chester-Eaton HallNorth Wales-Conway-Menai Bridge-Caernarvon-Llanberis-Scenery of Wales-General remarks.

JUNE 24, 1833. Only sixteen days from NewYork; and we are entering St. George's Channel. A gentle west wind took us up as we left the harbour of New-York, and has borne us all the way across the Atlantic without once frowning upon us, or once deserting us, (but for twenty hours,) and all this, with less motion of the ship than I have more than once experienced, in passing through Long Island Sound. I have been frequently reminded of the phrase which seamen often apply to it" the great pond;" but I do not relish that familiarity with the mighty element. On the contrary, I am yet true to the landsman's feeling about

VOL. I.-B

the sea; and it seems to me as if I had passed over some mysterious realm of undefined extent and unknown peril. Nor yet for the landsman's feeling do I propose to take any shame to myself; in truth I would not lose it. Well do I remember how-often and often in my boyhood-I used to put my ear to the conch shell, the only object I had then seen from the ocean shore, and imagined -nay, I believed, that I heard the sound of its eternal winds and waves yet lingering in that mysterious shell. I do not believe that anything in this world, can ever give me a more awful feeling of the sublime than did that sound. And the idea that I should yet traverse that "world of waters" from which it came, involved something fearful, if not impossible, as would now the project of a passage to a distant planet.

In this all-knowing, un-wondering, matter-offact age, men cross the ocean, I believe, with as much indifference as they pull on their boots for a day's journey. But not so, I confess, have I crossed it, nor would I. A sense, as of some unfathomable mystery, has haunted me from day to day.

"And loose along the world of waters borne,"

is a fine line of Montgomery's, and conveys some

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