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with naught to break the holy stillness of nature, save the fierce pantings of the horses and animals, as with reeking sides they strained up the ascent. Now and then a fearful cry startled the eagle on his high circuit, as a whole company slipped together, and with their muskets in their hands, fell into the all-devouring gorge that yawned hundreds of feet below their path. It was a wild sight, the plunge of a steed and his rider over the precipice. One noble horse slipped just as the dragoon had dismounted, and as he darted off with his empty saddle, and for a moment hung suspended in mid heaven, it is said, he uttered one of those fearful blood-freezing cries the wounded war-horse is known sometimes to give forth on the field of battle. The roar of the lion after his prey, and the midnight howl of the wolf that has missed his evening repast of blood, is a gentle sound compared to it. Once heard, it lives in the memory and brain for ever.

To understand the route of the army better, one should divide the pass into three parts. First comes the dark, deep defile, with the path cut in the side of the mountain, and crossing backwards and forwards over the gorge, on bridges of a single arch, and often two and three hundred feet high. The scenery in this gorge is horrible. It seems as if nature had broken up the mountains in some sudden and fierce convulsion; and the very aspect of everything is enough to daunt one without the aid of avalanches or hurricanes of snow. After leaving this defile, the path goes for a few miles through the valley of Schams, and then winds up the cliffs of La Raffla, covered with pine trees. It then strikes up the bare face of the mountain, going sometimes at an angle of forty-five degrees, till it reaches the summit; which, lying above the region of trees, stands naked and bald in the wintry heavens. This is the old road-the new one goes by a different route, and in summer-time can be traversed with carriages. Such was the road, filled with snow and avalanches, this army of fifteen thousand men marched over in mid winter. They went over in separate columns. The progress and success of the first we have already shown. The second and third made the attempt the second and third of December, and achieved the ascent in safety, the weather being clear and frosty. Many, however, died of cold. Their success encouraged Macdonald to march the whole

remaining ariny over at once, and for this purpose he placed himself at their head, and on the 5th of December commenced the ascent. But fresh snow had fallen the night before, covering up the entire path, so that the road had all to be made over again. The guides refused to go on, but Macdonald would not delay his march, and led his weary soldiers breast deep in the snow, up the bleak, cold mountain. They were six hours in going less than six miles. They could not make a mile an hour in their slow progress. They had not advanced far in the defile before they came upon a huge block of ice, and a newly-fallen avalanche, that entirely filled up the path. The guides halted before these obstacles and refused to go on; and the first that Macdonald knew, his army had turned to the right-about, and were marching back down the mountain, declaring the passage to be closed.

Hastening forward, he cheered up the men, and walking himself at the head of the column with a long pole in his hand, to sound the depth of the treacherous mass he was treading upon, he revived the drooping spirits of the soldiers. "Soldiers," said he, "your destinies call you into Italy; advance and conquer-first the mountains and the snow, then the plains and the armies." Ashamed to see their leader hazarding his life at every step where they refused to go, the soldiers returned cheerfully to their toil, and cut their way through the solid hill of ice. But they had scarcely surmounted this obstacle, when the voice of the hurricane on its march was again heard, and the next moment a cloud of driving snow obliterated every thing from their view. The path was filled up, and all traces of it swept utterly away. Amid the screams of the guides, the confused commands of the officers, and the howling of the hurricane, was heard the rapid thunder-crash of avalanches as they leaped away, at the bidding of the tempest, down the precipices. Then commenced again the awful struggle of the army for life. The foe they had to contend with was an outward one, though not of flesh and blood. To sword-cut, bayonet-thrust, and the blaze of artillery, the strong Alpine storm was alike invulnerable. On the serried column and the straggling line, it thundered with the same reckless powOver the long black line of soldiers, the snow lay like a winding-sheet, and the dirge seemed already chanted for the dead

er.

army.

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No one who has not seen an Alpine storm can imagine the reckless energy with which it rages through the mountains. The light snow, borne aloft on its bosom, was whirled and scattered like an ocean of mist over all things. The drifts were piled like second mountains in every direction, and seemed to form instantaneously, as by the touch of a magician's wand. The blinding fury of the tempest baffled all efforts to pierce the mystery and darkness that enveloped the host clinging in despair to the breast of the mountain. The storm had sounded its trumpet for the charge, but no answering note of defiance replied. The heroes of so many battle fields stood in still terror before this new and mightier foe. Crowding together as if proximity added to their security, the broken ranks crouched and shivered to the blast that pierced their very bones with its chilling power. But this was not all the piercing cold, and drifting snow, and raving tempest, and concealed pit-falls, leading to untrodden abysses, were not enough to complete the scene of terror. Suddenly, from the summit of the Splugen, avalanches began to fall, whose path crossed that of the army. Scaling the breast of the mountain with a single leap, they came with a crash on the shivering column, and bore it away to the destruction that waited beneath. Still, with undaunted front and unyielding will, the bold Macdonald struggled on in front, inspiring by his example, as he never could have done by his commands, the officers and men under him. Prodigies were wrought where effort seemed useless. The first avalanche, as it smote through the column, paralyzed for a moment every heart with fear; but they soon began to be viewed like so many discharges of artillery, and the gaps they made, like the gaps a discharge of grape-shot frequently makes in the lines on a field of battle. Those behind closed up the rent with unfaltering courage. Hesitation was death. The only hope was in advancing, and the long and straggling line floundered on in the snow, like a huge anaconda winding itself over the mountain. Once, as an avalanche cut through the ranks, bearing them away to the abyss, a young man was seen to wave an adieu to his young comrade left behind, as he disappeared over the crag. The surviving companion stept into the path where it had swept, and before he had crossed it, a laggard block of ice came

thundering down, and bore him away to join his comrade in the gulf where his crushed form still lay throbbing. The extreme density of the atmosphere, filled as it was with snow, gave tenfold horror to these mysterious messengers of death, as they came down the mountain declivities. A low rumbling would be heard amid the pauses of the storm, and as the next shriek of the blast swept by, a rushing, as if a counter-blast smote the ear; and before the thought had time to change, a rolling, leaping, broken mass of snow burst through the thick atmosphere, and the next moment, crushed, with the sound of thunder, far, far below, bearing along a part of the column to its deep, dark resting-place.

On the evening of the 6th December, the greater part of the army had passed the mountain, and the van had pushed even to Lake Como. From the 26th of November to the 6th of December, or nearly two weeks, had Macdonald been engaged in this perilous pass. A less energetic, indomitable man would have failed; and he himself escaped utter destruction, almost by a miracle. As it was, he left between one and two hundred men in the abysses of the Splugen, who had slipped from the precipices or been carried away by avalanches, during the toilsome march. More than a hundred horses and mules had also been hurled into those untrodden abysses, to furnish food for the eagle, and raven, and beasts of prey.

This passage of the Splugen, by an army of fifteen thousand men, in the dead of winter, and amid hurricanes of snow and falling avalanches, stands unrivalled in the history of the world, unless the passage of the Pragel by Suwarrow be its counterpart. It is true, Bonaparte spoke disparagingly of it, because he wished his passage over the St. Bernard in summer time, to stand alone beside Hannibal's famous march over the same mountain. With all his greatness, Bonaparte had some miserably mean traits of character. He could not bear to have one of his generals perform a greater feat than himself, and so he deliberately lied about this achievement of Macdonald. In his despatches to the French government, he made it out a small affair, while he had the impu dence to declare that this "march of Macdonald produced no good effect." Now one of three things is true: Bonaparte either was ignorant of his true situation, and commanded the passage

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of the Splugen to be made under a false alarm; or else it was a mere whim, in which his recklessness of the lives and comfort of his countrymen is deserving of greater condemnation than his ignorance; or else he has uttered a falsehood as gross as it is mean. The truth is, Bonaparte thought posterity could be cheated as easily as his cotemporaries. In the dazzling noon-day of his fame, he could make a flattering press say what he liked, and the world would believe it; but the tumult and false splendour of his life have passed away, and men begin to scrutinize this demigod a little more closely; and we find that his word cannot be relied on in the least, when speaking of the character and deeds of others. He is willing to have no planet cross his orbit, and will allow no glory except as it is reflected from him. But notwithstanding his efforts to detract from the merit of this act of Macdonald, posterity will put it in its true light, and every intelligent reader of the accounts of the two passages of the St. Bernard and the Splugen, will perceive at a glance that Bonaparte's achievement is mere child's play beside that of Macdonald.