The services of these men are useful in a variety of
ways, but in none more than in offering the advice which long familiarity
with the signs of the heavens, the temperature of the air, and the
direction of the winds, enables them to give. The Baron de Willading, and
his friend, immediately dispatched a messenger for a mountaineer, of the
name of Pierre Dumont, who enjoyed a fair name for fidelity, and who was
believed to be better acquainted with all the difficulties of the ascent
and descent, than any other who journeyed among the glens of that part of
the Alps. At the present day, when hundreds ascend to the convent from
curiosity alone, every peasant of sufficient strength and intelligence
becomes a guide, and the little community of the lower Valais finds the
transit of the idle and rich such a fruitful source of revenue, that it
has been induced to regulate the whole by very useful and just ordinances;
but at the period of the tale, this Pierre was the only individual, who,
by fortunate concurrences, had obtained a name among affluent foreigners,
and who was at all in demand with that class of travellers.
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