Читать книгу Happy Days for Boys and Girls - Various - Страница 23

BY the pass of the Great St. Bernard travellers cross the Pennine Alps (Penn, a Celtic word, meaning height) along the mountain road which leads from Martigny, in Switzerland, to Aosta, in Piedmont. On the crest of the pass, eight thousand two hundred feet above the sea level, stands the Hospice, tenanted by about a dozen monks.

This is supposed to be the highest spot in Europe inhabited by human beings. The climate is necessarily rigorous, the thermometer in winter being often twenty-nine degrees below zero, whilst sixty-eight degrees Fahrenheit is about the highest range ever attained in summer. From the extreme difficulty of respiration, few of the monks ever survive the period of their vow, which is fifteen years, commencing at the age of eighteen.

This hospice is said to have been first founded in the year 962, by Bernard, a Piedmontese nobleman. It will be remembered that it was over this pass Napoleon, in May, 1800, led an army of thirty thousand men into Italy, having with them heavy artillery and cavalry.

For poor travellers and traders the hospice is really a place of refuge. During winter, crossing this pass is a very dangerous affair. The snow falls in small particles, and remains as dry as dust. Whirlwinds, called “tourmentes,” catch up this light snow, and carrying it with blinding violence against the traveller, burying every landmark, at once put an end to knowledge of position. Avalanches, too, are of frequent occurrence.

After violent storms, or the fall of avalanches, or any other unusual severity of winter weather, the monks set out in search of travellers who may have been overwhelmed by the snow in their ascent of the pass. They are generally accompanied in their search by dogs of a peculiar breed, commonly known as the St. Bernard’s Dog, on account of the celebrated monastery where these magnificent animals are taught to exercise their wondrous powers, which have gained for them and their teachers a world-wide fame. On their neck is a bell, to attract the attention of any belated wayfarer; and their deep and powerful bay quickly gives notice to the benevolent monks to hurry to the relief of any unfortunate traveller they may find.

Some of the dogs carry, attached to their collars, a flask of spirits or other restorative. Their wonderfully acute sense of smell enables them to detect the bodies of persons buried deeply beneath the surface of the snow, and thus direct the searchers where to dig for them. The animal’s instinct seems to teach it, too, where hidden chasms or clefts, filled with loose snow, are; for it carefully avoids them, and thus is an all-important guide to the monks themselves.

We have stories without number as to what these dogs accomplish on their own account; how they dig out travellers, and bring them, sometimes unaided by man, to the hospice.