visions sufficient for two years. But intolerance is ever painstaking; their retreat was discovered. Cattanée had a captain who combined the resources of a Herod to the cruelty of a Pelissier, and, lowering his men by ropes, fired piles of brushwood at the entrance to the cavern, suffocated the majority, and slew the remainder. The Vaudois were relentlessly exterminated, without distinction of age or sex. More than three thousand persons, it is said, perished in this frightful massacre; the growth of three hundred and fifty years was destroyed at one blow, and the valley was completely depopulated. Louis XII. caused it to be re-peopled, and after another three centuries and a half, behold the result—a race of monkeys.[1]
We rested a little at a small spring, and then hastened onwards till we nearly arrived at the foot of the Sapenière glacier, when Sémiond said we must turn to the right, up the slopes. This we did, and clambered for half-an-hour through scattered pines and fallen boulders. Then evening began to close in rapidly, and it was time to look for a resting-place. There was no difficulty in getting one, for all around it was a chaotic assemblage of rocks. We selected the under side of one, which was more than fifty feet long by twenty high, cleared it of rubbish, and then collected wood for a fire.
That camp-fire is a pleasant reminiscence. The wine-cask had got through all its troubles; it was tapped, and the Frenchmen seemed to derive some consolation from its execrable contents. Reynaud chanted scraps of French songs, and each contributed his
- ↑ The commune of the Val Louise contains at the present time about 3400 inhabitants. This cretin population has been aptly described by M. Elisée Reelus in the Tour du Monde, 1860. He says—"They attain the highest possible development of their intelligence in their infancy, and—abundantly provided with majestic goitres, which are lengthened and swollen by age—are in this respect like to the ourang-outangs, who have nothing more to acquire after the age of three years. At the age of five years the little cretins have already the placid and mature expression which they ought to keep all their lives. . . . They wear trousers, and coats with tails, and a large black hat."
