3-074-708 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

St. Bernard dogs finding a traveller in the snow, 1883. 'There is deep snow around the convent [of St. Bernard] during four months of the year, and some drifts on the Pass are as deep as 30 ft...there are generally about half a dozen of the famous breed of dogs, which is supposed to be a cross between the Newfoundland and the Pyrenean wolf-hound. The romantic stories of a dog going alone, with a bottle of wine or other comfortable provision tied to his neck, to look for lost travellers in the snow, are entirely fabulous; but the dogs are useful as guides to show the safe path through the snow, and it would often be difficult to get about, in perilous places, without their assistance in this way. Upon more than one occasion, parties of three or four monks have perished together by an avalanche falling upon them...in February and March every year several thousand poor Swiss labourers and artisans go over the St. Bernard Pass on foot to get employment in the towns of North Italy...Refuges are erected at intervals on the road approaching the summit, where these poor wayfarers, if overtaken by a storm or by darkness, can remain during the night; and the monks, with their faithful dogs, come down in the morning to help those in need'. From "Illustrated London News", 1883.