SPARKS FROM A GEOLOGISTS HAMMER. 



MOXT BLANC AND THE HER DE GLACE. 



THE Alps, towering a present reality before our eyes 

 the glaciers, opening their dark crevasses at our feet, 

 and lifting their crystal pinnacles above our heads, these 

 are the scenes which the reader is invited to enjoy. I 

 do not propose to treat him to a dry description of a 

 range of mountains four thousand miles away. He will 

 go with me at once to the land bristling with rocky 

 " needles," and proud in its hoary mountain-tops, which 

 glisten with the ancient rime of a thousand years, the 

 land of Mont Blanc and the Jungfrau, of the Wetterhorn 

 and the Matterhorn and the Finsteraarhorn, and many 

 another sonorous mountain " horn." 



We set out in the morning from Brussels another 

 Paris on a smaller scale, and passing within sight of the 

 historic field of Waterloo "the grave of France, the 

 deadly Waterloo" traverse the Grand Duchy of Lux- 

 embourg, wedged in among the greater nationalities like 

 an imperiled skiff in an ice-floe, and then run down 

 through those beautiful provinces of Alsace and Lorraine, 

 which to-day are weeping with heads bowed low, like lov- 

 ing daughters torn from an affectionate mother. At Metz 



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