OLD ALPINE JOTTINGS. 449 



that the chasms were cracks produced by earthquakes; 

 and if only one or two of them existed, this hypothesis 

 might perhaps postpone that closer examination which 

 infallibly explodes it. But such chasms exist by hun- 

 dreds in the Alps, and we could not without absurdity 

 invoke in each case the aid of an earthquake to split 

 the dam and drain the waters. Xear Pontresina there 

 is a good example of a rocky barrier with a lake-bed 

 behind it, while, within the hearing of the village, a 

 river rushes through a chasm which intersects the 

 barrier. I have often stood upon the bridge which 

 spans this gorge, and have clearly seen the marks of 

 aqueous erosion from its bottom to its top. The rock 

 is not of a character to preserve the finer traces of 

 water action, but the larger scoopings and hollowings 

 are quite manifest. Like all others that I have seen, 

 it is a chasm of erosion. 



The same idea may be extended to the Alps them- 

 selves. This land was once beneath the sea, and from 

 the moment of its first emergence from the waters until 

 now, it has felt incessantly the tooth of erosion. No 

 doubt the strains and pressures brought into play when 

 the crust was uplifted produced fissures and contor- 

 tions, which gave direction to ice and water, the real 

 moulders of the Alps. When the eye has been educated 

 on commanding eminences to take in large tracts of 

 the mountains, and when the mind has become capable 

 of resisting the tendency to generalise from exceptional 

 cases, conjecture grows by degrees into conviction that 

 no other known agents tnan ice and water could have 

 given the Alps their present forms. The plains at their 

 feet, moreover, are covered by the chips resulting from 

 their sculpture. Were they correctly modelled so as to 

 bring their heights and inclinations in just proportions 

 immediately under the eye, this undoubtedly is the 



