Let no automobilist, on leaving Turin, come out by way of Pinerolo unless he is prepared for a detour of a hundred kilometres, a rise of 2,000 metres and a drop down again to 1,300 metres at Cesana Tarinese, where he strikes the main road over the Col de Mont Cenis to Modane in France, or via the Col de Mont Genevre to Briançon. The direct road from Turin is via Rivoli and Suse.
Not every traveller in Italy knows the half-hidden out-of-the-way Val d'Aoste, the obvious gateway from Turin to the north via the Col du Saint Bernard. Travellers by rail rush through via the Simplon or Mont Cenis and know not the delights and joys which possess the traveller by road as he plunges into the heart of the Alps through the gateway of the Val d'Aoste.
The Val d'Aoste, less than a hundred kilometres, all counted, has more scenic and architectural surprises than any similar strip in Europe, but it is not a _piste_ to be raced over by the scorching automobilist at sixty miles an hour. On the contrary it can not be done with satisfaction in less than a day, even by the most blasé of tourists. The railway also ascends the valley as far as Aoste, and one may cross over by coach into France or Switzerland by either the Col du Petit Saint Bernard or the Col du Grand Saint Bernard. It is worth doing!
The whole Val d'Aoste is one great reminder of feudal days and feudal ways. Curiously enough, too, in this part of Piedmont the aspect is as much French as Italian, and so too is the speech of the people. At Courmayer, for instance, the street and shop signs are all in French, and _'om_ the diminutive of _homme_ replaces the Italian _uomo_; _cheur_ stands for _coeur_ and _sita_ for _cité_ and _citta_. This patois is universal through the upper valleys, and if one has any familiarity with the patois of Provence it will not be found so very strange. French, however, is very commonly understood throughout Piedmont, more so than elsewhere in north Italy, where, for a fact, a German will find his way about much more readily than a Frenchman.
One blemish lies all over the Val d'Aoste. It was greatly to be remarked by travellers of two or three generations ago and is still in evidence if one looks for it, though actually it is decreasing. Large numbers of the population are of the afflicted class known as _Cretins_, and many more suffer from _goitre_. It is claimed that these diseases come from a squalid filthiness, but the lie is given to this theory by the fact that there is no apparent filthiness. The diseases are evidently hereditary, and at some time anterior to their appearance here they were already known elsewhere. They are then results of an extraneous condition of affairs imported and developed here in this smiling valley through the heedlessness of some one. There are certain neighbourhoods, as at Courmayer and Ivrea, where they do not exist at all, but in other localities, and for a radius of ten kilometres roundabout, they are most prevalent.