rival it in sublimity and grandeur, that of the Simplon was for a long time the wonder of the world for the extraordinary engineering skill exhibited in constructing a road in such a place, and for the magnificence of the scenery displayed to the view of the traveller in passing through it.

Florence and John had traversed several of the passes of the Alps on former occasions, but this only prepared them to enjoy more highly the scenery of the Simplon now. Sometimes the road passed along the brink of a precipice, walled up on the lower side a hundred feet, they thought, or more, and bounded on the other by a perpendicular precipice, or at least by a very steep rocky declivity, that towered more than a thousand feet above. Sometimes it passed over bridges that stretched across frightful chasms, with a wild torrent tumbling over a rocky bed far below, and sometimes it passed through a tunnel cut in the rocks, where some vast spur or promontory projected from the mountain side so far, that it was easier to cut through it than to wall up a road way around it.

In some of these wild places the children stood up in the carriage as they passed along, so as to be able the better to survey the wonders of the scene around them.

At one place when so standing John saw a

lammergeir. The lammergeir is a monstrous bird of prey that lives on the loftiest peaks of the Alps, building its nest on inaccessible precipices, and soaring over all the forests and valleys below in search of lambs or kids or other animals which it can bear away in its talons. John told Florence that the lammergeirs sometimes carried off children. In some parts of the way the road of the Simplon is exposed to avalanches of ice and snow which slide down from the mountains above, bringing with them an immense quantity of stones, and other earth, and trees torn by them from the mountain side. To protect the roads from these avalanches, very strong roofs of timber are built over them, the roofs being so placed as to form a sort of continuation of the slope of the mountain side above, so as to carry the avalanche over, and shoot it off into the abyss below. It is frightful to pass under one of these sheds while an avalanche is coming down over it.

At the summit of the pass the country was cold, desolate and gloomy. And well it might be so, since the elevation of the ground, where the road passes through, is more than nine thousand feet, which is a third higher than the summit of Mount Washington.

And yet it is through a sort of valley that the

road passes the summit of the ridge, for the mountains on each side rise thousands of feet higher still.

Although the children enjoyed the first part of the pass very much, yet when they reached the wild and dismal solitudes of the highest portion of it their minds were filled with a kind of awe, which was very much akin to terror, and they were both extremely pleased when they found that the road was beginning to descend again on the other side. The torrents and streams too now began to flow the way they were going, as if wishing to keep them company on their journey. This showed very conclusively that they had passed the summit level.

Before long they began to obtain glimpses of the great valley into which the road of the Simplon comes out. This valley is several miles wide, and though it is bordered on both sides by precipitous mountains and rocks, the surface of it is smooth and level like a garden. Indeed it is supposed that it once was a vast lake, which has been filled up for a great distance by the deposits from the river Rhone which flows through it. The lower part of the valley is not yet filled, though the river is pushing the land forward continually, and will in due time, if the world lasts long enough, fill the whole.

The part