Excerpt from The Valley of Aosta: A Descriptive and Historical Sketch of an Alpine Valley Noteworthy in Story and in Monument As soon as the bad season approaches, the cattle are gradually withdrawn to lower pastures, and so retiring before on-coming snows and winter, they finally arrive at the home village and their own stables. By the end of September, the homeward migration is completed and the villages - half deserted during the summer by their population, which is partly gone to the heights with the cattle and partly to the cities in search of work - are again teeming with life and activity. Thus those who renounce the not always certain comforts of summer will probably find more of human interest to satisfy them at other seasons, and, at the same time, have all the opportunities they want for walks and tramps, - the only person who is restricted to the few months of hot weather being the climber of great heights. The lover of nature will find a rare, keen delight in the fresh mountain air of the spring, when the snow is gone from the bottoms, but still whitens the high pastures; or in the tepid, mellow, and somewhat melancholy light of the autumn sun that wages its losing battle against the invincible sharpness of the frost. The plan that has been followed in dealing with the subject before us, was to separate it into three parts, according to a natural division sug gested by time: the first part deals with the valley as it is now; the second, with the valley of the Roman era; and the third, with the valley as it was in the Middle Ages. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.