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THE Valley of the Tarentaise is not visited by many English or American tourists. For the most part they approach the Alps by way of Geneva, or begin at Chamonix, or they come up from Italy; and when one mentions the Alps," people generally think of Switzerland. Indeed, I daresay that a good many travellers to these parts do not know where the Tarentaise is situated. Its beauties have not been widely advertised; the inns are quite unpretending; and except for a few visitors from the south of France it has not yet been discovered by summer travellers.

The Tarentaise is the name given to the district of Savoy which skirts the French Alps to the south-west, and through it you reach one of the two main routes from Gaul to Italy in old times. If you wished to cross the border, you had to look out for a pass through the barrier of the Alps, and of these there were only two that need be considered, one on either side of the vast range of Mont Blanc, now known respectively as the Great St Bernard and the Little St Bernard. And to climb to the pass of the Little St Bernard you had to find your way up the valley of the Isère river, which forms part of the Taren

taise. The railway through Savoy, starting from Chambéry, brings one now as far as Bourg St Maurice, but it can get no farther, for this ancient town is shut in by high mountains. The hillsides are covered with little hamlets, and here the Savoyard mountaineers live much to themselves, isolated from the main highways of traffic. Once you get beyond Bourg St Maurice, you come upon a simple hard-working people, whose habits and traditions are full of interest. the Isère river be followed until it loses itself in the glaciers of Mont Pourri and its neighbours, a very lovely valley discloses itself - the "Val d'Isère." But the centre of this region is the village of Séez, the ancient Sestum, in the "Val Joli," and the commune of Séez has a long history.

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The inhabitants are mostly peasant proprietors, who cultivate the steep hillsides with extraordinary diligence and success. They can only work in the fields for about six months in the year, as the deep snow keeps them indoors during the winter. They claim that their territory extends beyond what is now the French border, and old people say that if they had their rights they would be in possession of the pastures right

up to, and beyond, the pass of the Little St Bernard-"le Petit," as they call it affectionately. There have been many disputes as to the ownership of this high plateau. The vicissitudes of the kingdom of Savoy caused it to be at one time French territory, at another Italian. But it was finally ruled sixty years ago that the mountaineers of Séez must not claim the right of feeding their cows beyond the pass, where the Italian custom-house stands.

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In summer the cows driven up to the high pastures or alpages, 6000 or 7000 feet above sea-level, being collected in herds or troupeaux of fifty or a hundred, not all belonging to one farmer, but from the same neighbourhood. Half a dozen are the property of one man, twenty of another, and so on. By keeping them together, the task of herding them is made easier and labour is saved. The milk is generally delivered at creameries worked on the co-operative principle, where each owner gets credit according to the amount supplied by his own cows. These are beautiful and valuable beasts, fawn-coloured and with soft dark eyes, not very large, but used nevertheless to draw carts all over the Savoy lowlands, where there are roads for wheeled vehicles. The sound of their tuneful bells, which carries far on the mountain-sides, tells those whose duty it is to look after them where they are to be found.

VOL. CCIX.-NO. MCCLXIII.

The people look as if they led a very hard life. They age rapidly, and the older men and women have rugged and worn faces, although many of the girls are good-looking, not unlike their Italian neighbours. Indeed, the life must be severe in all these Alpine uplands. The soil is as rocky as it is in the county of Galway, and the stones have to be picked off the land before tillage can begin. To gather in the harvest from the hillsides means that the sheaves have to be carried on men's backs, for there are few mule-paths. To watch the men cutting the corn from early dawn, and the women binding it, and then all uniting to carry the sheaves home, while the children are occupied in looking after the cattle, is to realise that these peasants earn their living hardly. The ground is tilled with extraordinary care. Not a rood of fertile soil is wasted; and "catch" crops are taken out, as well as the regular harvest. Much fodder has to be grown for the use of the cows and mules in winter, and the energy is amazing with which the villagers work, not only in the mornings and evenings, but during the scorching heat of a summer day.

Another great industry of these parts, although not so important in the commune of Séez as in the Valley of the Upper Isère (the Haute Tarentaise), is woodcutting. Splendid woods cover many of the hillsides. There are pines in

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trees; and forestry is studied in a really scientific way. The aspect of the countryside, viewed from any of the hills, is exactly like that depicted in old tapestries-the fields varying in rich colour, according to the progress of the crop, and the poplar-trees standing out in their dignified and artificial manner, while the deep green of the pine forests extends up to the snows. The little farms seem to be much better cared for than those on the Italian slopes, probably because the peasants own the land; the woods, too, are more carefully thinned.

In winter the inhabitants of the hamlets on the steep hillsides are confined for the most part to their châlets, where the cows occupy the basement, the living-rooms being on the first floor and approached by little external staircases. The lofts under the roof are used for the storage of food for the cattle and wood for fuel. The snow may be three or four feet deep, and it is no easy matter to move about. Many of the men are expert carpenters, and turn out excellent work during the winter months, while the girls make lace, some of it very good.

Each hamlet has its own tiny chapel, which is generally kept beautifully clean by the women. A visit from the priest is not very frequent, as he can only occasionally reach the more distant villages; and the more devoutly disposed of the vil

their own prayers in the church on Sundays when (as is very often the case) mass cannot be celebrated. Indeed, the people say (whether accurately or not, I do not know) that there are now only two priests for the whole community, both both of whom live at Séez, where there is a big parish church, built in the seventeenth century. It is not an interesting building, but the parish is a very ancient one, now reckoned as in the diocese of Chambéry, but having been in former times under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Aosta, when the patronage was in the gift of the monastery of the Little St Bernard. The only churchyard or cemetery in the district is behind the parish church-a somewhat insanitary situation from the point of view of the Séez shopkeepers, one would think. So, when a death occurs on the hillsides, the body has to be brought down to the mother church for burial, a sort of sleigh or traineau being used for its transport in winter down the snow-covered mule-paths.

The men of the commune are independent in their manners, as befits landowners in their own right; but they are very courteous when they are treated with due respect to their dignity. They do not usually salute a stranger, unless he salutes them first, but they are quite ready for a talk as one passes and to dilate on the laboriousness of their life. Sturdy yeomen, in fact, they