3-021-625 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The new overland route to India: Mont Cenis Railway - St. Michel, 1869. 'St. Michel...is the point where the French railway through Savoy (now belonging to the Paris, Lyons, and Mediterranean Company, which has absorbed the Victor Emmanuel Company) arrives at its termination; and here...the Mont Cenis line begins. It is a few miles beyond St. Jean de Maurienne, the chief town of the district. St. Michel is but a village. In the parish church, which is seen in our view, with its pointed steeple, there is in the reredos of the altar a full-sized figure of St. Michael, with a sword in one hand and a pair of scales in the other, indicating that the town owes its name to that saint. The people of this place are still proud of their ancestors, the Allobroges, who repulsed Caesar in this neighbourhood. The mountain sides are terraced into small steps of cultivation, in which grain and vines are produced. The high snowy peak is called the "Perron des Encombres," from the debris which comes down its steep sides. The lower point of bare rock to the left is known as the "Roc de Beaune".' From "Illustrated London News", 1869.