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opens down the valley. This singular work is in perfectly sound condition, though built, as a still legible and even sharp inscription indicates, by Caius Aimus and his son, of Padua, in the thirteenth year of Augustus. This inscription is inaccessible; it is placed on a tablet just over the arch on the lower side towards the valley of Aosta. Though it cannot be reached, to which fact it probably owes its preservation, yet it can be readily read from the brink of the precipice on the side of Pont d'Ael, and the following is the inscription:

IMP. CÆSARE AUGUSTO XIII.

COS. DESIGN. C. AVILLIUS C. F. C. AIMUS PATAVINUS
PRIVATUM.

Their name is still preserved in the village and chậteau of
Aimaville.

Travellers in the Val d'Aosta should not fail to visit this interesting work of antiquity, which is placed in a situation where it is impossible to imagine that any benefit could ever have arisen commensurate with the expense of the structure. The surrounding scenery is very grand.

In ascending the valley of Cogne, it is not necessary to retrace one's steps to regain the path high upon the mountain side. A shorter cut from Pont d'Ael leads to it; the valley for a long way above Pont d'Ael is a fearful ravine, utterly impracticable in its depth, which, except at two or three points, is equally impervious to the eye. In some places the narrow path on the edge of the precipices, wretchedly guarded by poles and trees, which a child might throw over, is so obviously dangerous, that none but a practised mountain traveller could pass some places without a shudder. Opposite to one spot, where the path turns suddenly into a deep rift or crue in the mountain side, is a slide, down which trees cut in the forest above are discharged, for the chance of the torrent bringing them down to the Val d'Aosta. Not one in ten escape being broken into splinters; these, however, serve for the usines and founderies for working the iron raised in the Val de Cogne, and which is celebrated in Piedmont.

The difficulties of constructing a road by which the productions of the valley could be brought down, is obvious on observing its precipitous character. The valley, however, opens a little near some usines, and from where the river is crossed to its left bank, a tolerable road leads to Cogne. This road has been made by two brothers, iron-masters, who have. recorded its formation on a tablet, in a rock. There is very little cultivation in the valley, the products of the mines giving occupation to its inhabitants; every stream drives its

tilt hammer, and almost every person is employed in working, smelting, or forging the iron raised.

The hamlets of Silvenoir, Epinel, and Crela, are passed before reaching the village of Cogne, where a villanous inn is the only place of rest; either, in anticipation of an early start across the mountains from Cogne, or, after having traversed them during the long fatiguing day's journey from the Val d'Orca, for the six hours required between Cogne and Aosta, is too much to add to such a day's work either

way.

On leaving Cogne for the pass, a good road continues up to the place where the iron ore is brought down from the mountain. The track by which the miners ascend and the ores lowered, is distinctly seen. In the "Journals of an Alpine Traveller;" the scene has been thus described:

"On our approach to Cogne, I was struck by the appearance of a great quantity of iron ore, heaped upon the roadside, which was here of good breadth and kept in tolerable condition. On the opposite side of the valley, in a mountain, is a mass of iron ore celebrated for its extraordinary richness; the mines are worked at a great height in the mountain side, and I was surprised at the laborious mode adopted for bringing the ore down into the valley, thence to be taken to the founderies and forges. Zigzag paths are made from the adits, upon which barrows on sledges are placed filled with the ore, and these are in succession pushed off by a conductor. When the sliding-barrow has acquired sufficient impetus down the inclined plane forming each line of the man who directs it leaps adroitly into the barrow and descends zigzag descent, the with it, and before the load has acquired an uncontrollable velocity, it is brought up by a bank at each angle of the zigzag path or slide. The conductor then gets out, turns the barrow in the direction of the next slide, pushes it forward, and again, while it is in motion, leaps in, and is taken down to the next angle; and thus, in a series of turns, at last reaches the bottom in the valley. The men have, it appears, to walk up the mountain again, and their empty slides are dragged up. I never saw power so misapplied or wasted." On leaving the little plain of Cogne the road ascends by a steep path on the mountain side, leaving on the right the valley of Vermiana, into which descends an enormous glacier from the mountain called the Grand Paradis. The steep path passes over what appears to be a vast dike in the valley, the torrent flows round it to escape through a ravine at one extremity. On crossing the ridge, the traveller finds himself on a more wild and open ground, leading to the alps and pasturages of Chavanes. Some of the lower chalets are soon reached: further up on this fine alp, which feeds large flocks

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Cand herds during the summer, numerous châlets form the cluster known as the Chalets of Chavanes. Here the scene is rich in the pastoral groups and beauty of the herbage, and sublime in the magnificence of the amphitheatre of mountains and glaciers.

Immediately in front is the great glacier of Cogne, by which an active mountaineer can cross and reach Ponte, in the Val d'Orca, in a day. A less dangerous road, however, is found by leaving the glacier, and turning to the left up a steep and difficult ascent to a narrow col, called the Fenêtre de Cogne, a mere notch in the crest of the mountain. From this place the view of the Alps, which bound the Val de Cogne on the west, is magnificent from the grandeur of their forms and the vast extent of their glaciers.

In the opposite direction, the glaciers which crest the northern side of the Val d'Orca are not less striking and are perhaps more impressive from their greater proximity. They form a vast barrier to the right of the Val Champorcher, which opens into the Val d'Aosta (Route 108.), at Fort Bard.

The descent is extremely difficult, from the steepness of the path and looseness of the soil. This difficulty ends before reaching a little chapel or oratory, built probably as an ex voto by some grateful Catholic for a merciful preservation here. This oratory is placed on the brink of one of several little lakes, formed by the melting of the glaciers. No spot can be more savage than this, or give a more impressive idea of dreary solitude.

The path now skirts, as it leaves it on the right, a dark and enormous mountain mass, and descends rapidly down the valley, but nothing habitable appears. The valley deepens considerably on the left below the path: the eye can trace its course down towards Bard, and a path across the valley is also seen which leads from the Val Champorcher by the Châlets of Dodoney into the valley of Fenis.

After crossing a buttress of the mountains which the path skirts, and which is called the Col de Ponton, it leads to the bank of a torrent just where it issues from a great glacier; then crossing another ridge over a beautiful pasturage, it descends to the borders of a little lake at the foot of the Col de Reale.

From this spot to Fort Bard down the valley of Champorcher, is about 6 hours.

Turning abruptly to the right, the path leads to the Col de Reale in less than an hour, and from this crest one of the finest alpine panoramas is presented. Not only, upon reaching the crest, is the plain of Italy and the far stretch of the maritime Alps, to the southward, spread out like a vast map, put in an opposite direction the entire mass of Monte Rosa is

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better seen than from any other point of view. Every peak, and glacier, and valley, and pass, from the sharp pinnacle of the Cervin (Route 106.), to the Col de Val Dobbia (Route 104.) are seen, whilst the intermediate range of mountains above Dodoney, and the deep valley of Champorcher below, serve as a foreground to this sublime scene. The black and scathed rocks which bound the crest of the pass complete this extraordinary panorama.

Nothing can be imagined more beautiful than the view towards the plains where the deep valley of the Soanna sinks into darkness, whilst about the mountains which bound it, and far over and beyond, the plains of Italy stretch away into indistinctness, and are lost in the distance.

From the crest the descent is rapid. Passing to the left under a beetling mountain, the path skirts a deep ravine, leaves on the right some old adits of a mine worked unprofitably for silver, and, after a tortuous descent of two hours, passes by some châlets. The level of the pine forests is soon reached, and deep in a little plain is seen the church and village of Val Pra, which, instead of being the highest church and village in the Val Soanna, is usually placed, in the authorised maps, nearly as far down as Ronco. If the traveller arrive late at Val Pra, the worthy old peasant Giuseppe Danna will give his best welcome.

At the opposite extremity of this little plain, the path descends by a stunted pine forest, and through the depths of the valley, to the village of Peney, and by one or two little hamlets to the village of Cardonera. There is nothing peculiar in this part of the valley, until just before reaching the hamlet of Bosco del Ronco: there are the remains of a slip from the mountain, which took place in 1833, and strewed the little plain with rocks and stones.

At Ronco there is an inn, which hunger and fatigue may make endurable; below it, a bridge, in a wild and striking situation, leads across a ravine to the village of Ingria. Before reaching it, however, the opening is ed, which leads directly of the valley of Campea to the glaciers of Cogne, shorter by seven hours than the route by the Col de Reale. The only village in the Val Campea, above Ingria, is Campiglia.

passed,

The inhabitants of this valley weara singular sort of shoe or boot; it is made of coarse woollen, tied tight round the ankle, but half as broad again as the foot; it gives an awk

wardness to their gait.

Below Ingria, the valley becomes a ravine of singularly rests, offer alternately, sometimes together, their magnificent wild and grand character. Vast precipices, gorges and fomaterials for alpine scenery. Soon the old towers of Ponte

dare seen in the valley of Orca, beyond the depths of the ravine. Enormous overhanging masses close the proximate part of the valley, whilst above and beyond Ponte the plains of Piedmont appear.

A path down through a forest, and near some quarries, Pleads to the Villa Nuova of Ponte, the cotton works established by the Baron Du Port, and about half a mile beyond is the town of Ponte, six hours from Val Pra in the mountains.

Nothing can exceed the picturesque situation of this place, at the confluence of the Soanna and the Orca, rich in vineyards, inclosed by mountains, offering in combination with the surrounding scenery, the towers and ruins of two feudal castles in the most striking situations, and the head of the valley closed by the snowy peaks of the lofty range which divides the Val d'Orca from the Tarentaise

There are many spots about Ponte which offer views of singular beauty. Few places are so rich in the picturesque : these, too, offer a remarkable variety, for besides the views of Ponte and the valley, from the villages on the surrounding mountains' sides, both the Orca and the Soanna present retreats in their deep and retired courses, which are no were exceeded for picturesqueness. A walk down two or three meadows between Ponte and the Orca, leads to one of these, well worth the traveller's visit, where the bright deep waters of the Orca seems hemmed in by lofty and forest-crowned precipices. Of its tranquillity and beauty, no idea can be formed.

Ponte is a singular old town, with long arcades, beneath which there are shops, and the markets are held. It has a tolerably good inn.

The establishment of the Fabrica, the first cotton works known in Piedmont, has given employment to several thousands of men, women, and children, as printers, spinners, weavers, and dyers; the goods being prepared within the walls of the Fabrica, from the raw material as imported from Genoa, to the completion of every article for the market. The prohibition to the exportation of machinery from England, leads to their obtaining it, at a great cost, from Mulhausen, in Alsace.

Ponte is distant six hours from Turin, to which city, a diligence goes three times a week. There is an excellent carriage road to the capital, which passes through Courgne, a large town on the western side of the Orca; Valperga, celebrated for having one of the noblest campaniles in Piedmont; Rivarolo; Lombardore, where the river Mallone is crossed; and Lemie; besides numerous villages. All those places named, are towns, and some are large. They are situated in the richest part of Piedmont, amidst Indian corn, vines, mul