A COLLECTING DAY ABOVE AROLLA 71 
curling ranges of cloud go soaring in shades of coral, ochre, 
amber. Here and there in front of their denser volumes, 
the pinnacles of the mountains are violet, scarred on this 
side and that with the rich white of distant snow, while 
the peaks round the St. Gothard reverse the process and 
are all of warm, rosy ivory, set with irregular jewelled 
ridges of amethyst, against the faint pink and purple of 
the thunderous cloud-masses behind them, a score of miles 
away. And the whole prospect, beautiful beyond our 
poor mortal comprehension, is on so vast a scale of 
grandeur, so inhumanly immense, so contemptuous of 
such dear human details as roads, towns, railways, that 
every time one meets it at a turn in the loop one gasps 
anew with the shock, as under a sudden deluge of icy 
water. 
But at last the shoulder of the hill is turned, and we 
say farewell to the valley of the Rhone. Now the road 
continues directly up the Val d’Hermance—for we are 
here, by kindly fate, still in French-speaking Switzerland. 
To describe the vein-system of the Swiss waters one 
must adopt the most severely scientific terms. In fact 
the venation of the Swiss rivers is perfectly pinnatifid— 
at least, I trust, I am right, as well as impressive, in so 
explaining it. In milder words, the arrangement of 
valleys is as follows: there is, first of all (to put the cart 
before the horse, for the sake of clearness), a great and 
first-class river, such as the Reuss, the Aar, the Inn, the 
Rhone, flowing down a deep and broad valley that it has 
carved through the mountains. This valley lies quite 
low as regards sea-level, and is fed by contributory 
streams that come in at right angles from secondary 
valleys high up in the hills on either side. In their 
upper reaches it is the habit of these to flow along a 
fairly level course, and then to achieve their final descent 
into the main body by a series of crashing leaps that 
