EMERGE FROM WINTER.

Waikato Times, Volume 119, Issue 19880, 8 May 1936, Page 9

EMERGE FROM WINTER.

MONKS OF ST. BERNARD. FIRST TOURISTS ARRIVE. LONDON, April 15. I talked to-day on the Continental telephone to men for whom Easter is the end of long months of hibernation, writes Mr Duxley Barker in the Evening Standard. From these London offices my trunk call reached out across the Continent to Geneva, and from thence was directed hy a dozen rapid voices, all seeming to question simultaneously and never to answer, through the Swiss towns and villages, up into the mountains. At last, after a minute’s tumult, of French, and the grating noises indigenous to any long-distance call, there was a sudden quiet, and a man’s smooth voice said: “This is the Hospice of the Grand St. Bernard. lam one of ihe monks.” I was talking to the famous St. Bernard monastery, from which, since the fourteenth century, the monks and the great St. Bernard dogs have set out to rescue travellers caught in the deep snow of the pass. Snow Until June. All the winter the hospice has been in scant communication with the outside world, and for several weeks it was entirely cut oiT, T was told, except for the telephone. The snow will not clear away until the end of .Tune, but this week-end the first of the year’s tourists arrived. They were a score or so of Germans men and women, and thev reached the hospice hy the only possible means of transport—slds. Even In this small community, hibernating In the snow, the winter has not lacked excitement. “A month aeo.” said the monk, “one ! of the bitches had a litter of eisrht nupples. and thev all live. That, is Imnnrtanf. my friend. Tt brines the fotni number of nur does to over ?0. “Other news? Well, we have been happv. We have warmth In the hospice, and food, plentv of food, cnmicrh fenrl for the passine hv of an 1 nrmv. The snow has been thick and well packed. that ski-imr ha-? beep excellent. Tt. remains so. anrl we are really still in the midst of winter bn* when Easter comes then Jhe summon fs nearer, and nur visitors are on their way. Winter Visitors. “Purine the winter, truly, we have had a few travellers, all on skis. They have been peasants, nerhaps. from SwM'/erlanrl ~r T -'alv. c-nfnsr to see fhefr “Or perhaps thev have been smue-na-en|s lb- other side of the nass elors. Yes. I here are a Tot nf smue- : ’ •••- Hus vear. Mnsflv thev smn~c!e ■••. free and sntrar. davs hn V » Rnr throuc-h. Tf thev have Peep nonr and hi need we have cjvo n them »•’” and feed The hospice dees