62 A HISTORY OF 



huge caverns beneath are so many magazines or conservatories of wa- 

 ter for the peculiar service of man ; and those orifices by which the 

 water is discharged upon the plain, are so situated as to enrich and 

 render them fruitful, instead of returning through subterraneous chan- 

 nels to the sea, after the performance of a tedious and fruitless circu- 

 lation.* 



However this be, certain it is, that almost all our great rivers tinrl 

 . their source among mountains ; and, in general, the more extensive 

 the mountain, the greater the river : thus the river Amazons, the 

 greatest in the world, has its source among the Andes, which are the 

 highest mountains on the globe ; the river Niger travels a long course 

 of several hundred miles from the Mountains of the Moon, the high- 

 est in all Africa ; and the Danube and the Rhine proceed from the 

 Alps, which are probably the highest mountains of Europe. 



It need scarce be said, that, with respect to height, there arc 

 many sixes of mountains, from the gentle rising upland, to the tall 

 craggy precipice. The appearance is in general different in those 

 of different magnitudes. The first are clothed with verdure to the 

 very tops, and only seem to ascend to improve our prospects, or sup- 

 ply us with a purer air : but the lofty mountains of the other class 

 have a very different aspect. At a distance their tops are sec'ti, in 

 wavy ridges, of the very colour of the clouds, and only to be distin- 

 guished from them by their figure ; which, as I have said, resemble the 

 billows of the sea.t As we approach, the mountain assumes a decpei 

 colour : it gathers upon the sky, and seems to hide half the horizon 

 behind. Its summits also are become more distinct, and appear with a 

 broken and perpendicular line. What at first seemed a single hill, is now 

 found to be a chain of continued mountains, whose tops running aloug 

 in ridges, are embosomed in each other ; so that the curvatures of one 

 are fitted to the prominences of the opposite side, and form a winding 

 valley between, often of several miles in extent ; and all the way con- 

 tinuing nearly of the same breadth. 



Nothing can be finer, or more exact, than Mr. Pope's description 

 of a traveller straining up the Alps. Every mountain he comes to 

 he thinks will be the last; he finds, however, an unexpected hill rise 

 before him ; and that being scaled, he finds the highest summit almost 

 at as great a distance as before. Upon quitting the plain, he might 

 have left a green and fertile soil, and a climate warm and pleasing. 

 As he ascends, the ground assumes a more russet colour; the grass 

 becomes more mossy, and the weather more moderate. Still as he 

 ascends, the weather becomes more cold, and the earth more barren, 

 In this dreary passage he is often entertained with a little valley of sur- 

 prising verdure, caused by the reflected heat of the sun collected into 

 a narrow spot on the surrounding heights. But it much more fre- 

 quently happens that he sees only frightful precipices beneath, and lakes 

 of amazing depths, from whence rivers are formed, and fountains derhe 

 their original. On those places next the highest summits, vegetation 

 is scarcely carried on ; here and there a few plants of the most hardy 

 kind appear. The air is intolerably cold ; either continually refrige- 



Nature Displayed, vol. iii. p. 88. f Lettres Philosophiqiies sur la Fotmafio:i,&c. n. 196 



