22 SPARKS FROM A GEOLOGIST'S HAMMER. 



which emanate from a thousand hotels and boarding- 

 houses. 



Geneva, for beauty of situation, stands first in the list 

 of cities; and of all the lakes in the world, there is not 

 one so enchantingly framed in mountain magnificence, 

 so sweetly toned down to the grassy beach on which it 

 ripples, as the historic and richly storied lake of Geneva. 

 The amphitheater which surrounds the lake is dotted 

 with many a classic and luxurious villa. The villa Dio- 

 dati, on the southern shore, was once the residence of 

 Lord Byron. On the north shore is Ferney, a village 

 created by Voltaire; and his unostentatious chateau may 

 still be visited there. At Pregny is the magnificent new 

 villa of Adolf Rothschild, from which the welcome visitor 

 enjoys a view of Geneva lake and city and of the am- 

 phitheater of mountains, backed in the far southeast by 

 the snowy range of Mont Blanc, displaying a charm of 

 landscape which causes one to wonder if any resources 

 of beauty or magnificence are reserved for the enchant- 

 ments of the heavenly land. 



At the eastern extremity of the lake, on an isolated 

 rock connected by a bridge with the shore, stands the 

 Castle of Chillon, now only a military arsenal, but for 

 nearly a thousand years a stronghold in whose gloomy 

 dungeons have been incarcerated the victims of petty 

 tyranny and religious bigotry. Here, in 830, Louis le 

 Debonnaire imprisoned the Abbe* of Corcier. Here many 

 of the eai-ly reformers were chained to the dungeon 

 walls, and in more recent times prisoners of state have 

 trod the stony floors; and here are shown, to this day, 

 the footprints of Bonnivard, consigned to six years of 

 imprisonment by the tyrannical duke of Savoy in 1530. 



