THE BRIDGE OF ST. MAURICE: SWITZERLAND. BY MRS. BUSHBY. T the entrance to the Swiss canton of Le Valais, separating it from the Canton de Vaud, stands a massive stone bridge with one single wide arch, of which the accomplished author of the Pleasures of Memory, by a poetical license, says, "I enter'd where a key unlocks a kingdom, The mountains closing, and the road, the river, Filling the narrow space." This key is the BRIDGE OF ST, MAURICE, spanning the Rhone, and resting on one side on the Dent de Morcles; on the other on the Dent de Midi; twoAlpine hills, whose bases approach so very closely, as almost to shut in the valley beyond them. A tower, now used as a custom-house, stands at one extremity of the Bridge, while the opposite end, belonging to Le Valais, is flanked by the castle of St. Maurice, near which is a cavern called, "Le trou des Fées." This picturesque bridge is said to have been built in 1482, by a bishop named Joducus Sillenus, according to some-Justus de Silinen, according to others on the spot where a Roman bridge had previously existed. Immediately beyond it, on the site of the Roman Agaunum, once the capital of the Nantuates, lies the village or town of St. Maurice, which looks, says a recent traveller, "like a stone basket hanging to a perpendicular wall." Not far from this place, tradition points out a spot where the Theban Legion, under the command of St. Maurice, were massacred by order of the Emperor Maximian, A. D. 302, because they refused to abjure Christianity. The Abbey founded in honour of this martyr, St. Maurice, and the oldest Christian religious structure in Switzerland, was pillaged by the Lombards, about the end of the sixth century, and again by the Saracens about three centuries later; nevertheless, its treasury contains many old manuscripts, and relics and a museum of ancient art, in which are to be seen some gifts from Charlemagne, and from the Burgundian queen, Bertha. On the banks of the Rhone, near St. Maurice, stand the recently erected Baths of Lavey, over a warm sulphureous spring, which has been discovered in the bed of the river at that place; and rather more than two leagues from the bridge which shuts in the canton of Le Valais, on the road to Martigny, is the much-admired waterfall of the Sallenche, one of the finest cascades in Switzerland. It is a foaming and impetuous torrent, dashing over immense masses of black craggy rocks, and forming a fine feature in the scenery, visible, as it is, from a considerable distance. The masses of rock in the immediate neighbourhood of St. Maurice, are awfully grand and imposing, but are surpassed in wildness by the Diablerets, a chain of mountains stretching to the north-east, which received their inauspicious name, from a popular idea in the olden time that they formed one of the porches of hell. Still more are they surpassed in magnificence by the Great St. Bernard, and Mont Blanc, that "monarch of mountains," which is situated between the valleys of Chamouni and Entrèves. Mont Blanc has three principal summits; the Dôme du Gouté, being the most westerly; the Tacul, on the east ; and in the middle, the great Mont Blanc itself. It is likewise bordered in all directions by lofty peaks, called Aiguilles, or Needles; and by enormous glaciers. The highest summit of the Great St. Bernard is called Mont Velan, and the most elevated part of the passage of that mountain is a long narrow valley, in the centre of which is a lake. At the eastern extremity of this lake stands the celebrated Hospice, a massive stone building 8,200 feet above the level of the sea, somewhat sheltered on the north-west by Mont Chenelletaz, and by Mont Mort on the opposite side. A temple dedicated to Jupiter was built by the Romans, at, or near, the place where this mountain-shelter now stands, and the mountain itself was thence called Mons Jovis, a name corrupted in time into Mons Joux, and eventually superseded by that which it now bears. The original founder of a hospital at this great elevation, is said to have been an uncle of Charlemagne, called Bernard but the founder of the present monastery and hospice, in 962, was one Bernard, of a noble Savoy family, afterwards canonized; who also was the founder of the Hospice on the Little St. Bernard; a spot to which is attached an historical interest, as being on the route taken by Hannibal on his celebrated passage of the Alps. The Hospice of the Great St. Bernard is capable of affording shelter to some hundreds of persons; nor is its shelter restricted to the living alone; it is extended even to the dead; for in the Morgue, or Dead-house, belonging to the convent, are placed the bodies of those unfortunate people, travellers and others, who have been found frozen to death on the mountain, the victims of storms or avalanches. There is a pretty little poem by a French author, Chênedolle, on a traveller losing himself amidst the snows of the Great St. Bernard. But perhaps it may be better to translate it. In torrents thick falls from the upper air, And, dreary harbinger of woe, Covers St. Bernard's summits old and bare. |