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Updated: May 4, 2025
The immediate vicinity of Pallons is fair and fertile, but a short walk up the course of an impetuous torrent brought us to a narrow gorge, beyond which we found a totally different region. Bare slopes of rock that looked grim even in the sunny morning, and a waste valley-bottom, here of considerable width, but sterile and bleak, made up the landscape.
The valley of Fressinière, at the entrance of which Pallons lies, is the centre of those special interests which first prompted the pilgrimage I am recording. With it are specially associated the earliest traditions of Protestantism in France, and here Felix Neff spent the larger part of his brief but memorable career as pastor in the High Alps.
On the second afternoon we reached the lateral valley of Fressinière, the climax of our journey. There was refreshment for soul as well as body in the daintily-clean, bare-floored rooms, redolent of apples set out to dry, into which we were welcomed by Pastor Charpiot and his wife at Pallons. The village is a mere group of Alpine huts, and the only chance of shelter was at the presbytery.
Early in the spring of 1829 he was forced to go to Geneva with the hope of recruiting. There, after two years of suffering, the details of which are painful beyond expression, he died at the age of thirty-one. With our minds full of these memories we set out on the morning after our arrival at Pallons, with Pastor Charpiot as guide, to explore the valley of Fressinière and ascend to Dourmillouse.
For all whom we met he had a cheery greeting or an affectionate inquiry that showed familiar acquaintance with their concerns; and occasionally a word or two suggested a truth or hope, aptly illustrated in some passing incident, no matter how trifling or homely. A storm was gathering in the mountains as we made our way back to Pallons through the deepening shadows of the autumn afternoon.
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