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Updated: June 21, 2025
We were shown the entrance to a line of caverns in the hills above Couvet, and were informed that it was possible to pierce completely through the range, and pass out at the other side within sight of Yverdun.
Shortly after we first left Couvet, a gaunt elderly female, with a one-bullock char, had joined our party, and tried to bully us into giving up the cave and going instead to a neighbouring summit, whence she promised us a view of unrivalled extent and beauty. She told us that there was nothing to be seen in the glacière, and that it was a place where people lost their lives.
The landlord of the inn informed us, with much pride, that Couvet was the birthplace of the man who invented a clock for telling the time at sea; by which, no doubt, he meant the chronometer, invented by M. Berthoud. At Motiers, the next village, Rousseau wrote his Lettres de la Montagne, and thence it was that he fled from popular violence to the island on the Lake of Bienne.
The beauties of the surrounding mountains, with their fitful alternations of pasture and wood, and grey face of rock, are not marred by the outward appearance, at least, of that which Bishop Heber lamented in a country where 'every prospect pleases. An old lady is commemorated in the annals of Couvet as an example of the healthiness of the situation, who saw seven generations of her family, having known her great-grandfather in her early years, and living to nurse great-grandchildren in her old age.
We had brought no alpenstocks to Couvet, so we sent the guide off into the woods, where we had heard the sound of an axe, to get three stout sticks from the woodmen; but he returned with such wretched, crooked little things, that A. went off herself to forage, and, having found an impromptu cattle-fence, came back with weapons resembling bulbous hedge-stakes, which she skinned and generally modified with a powerful clasp-knife, her constant companion.
He had not heard of the glacière, but from what I told him he was inclined to think that Couvet would be the best station for our purpose, especially as the 'Ecu' at that place was, in his eyes, a commendable hostelry. Some one in Geneva, also, had believed that Couvet was as likely as anything else in the valley; so at Couvet we descended.
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