MONT BLANC AND THE MER DE GLACE. 23 



" Chillon ! thy prison is a holy place, 



And thy sad floor an altar, for 'twas trod 



Until his very steps have left a trace, 

 Worn, as if the cold pavement were a sod, 



By Bonnivard! may none those marks efface! 

 For they appeal from tyranny to God." 



Prisoner of Chillon. 



The old city of Geneva is separated from the new by 

 the Rhone, whose deep blue waters shoot beneath the 

 six connecting bridges with the swiftness of an arrow. 

 The Rhone enters the lake at the opposite extremity 

 turbid with the sediments brought down by the torrents 

 born of a hundred dissolving glaciers. These sediments, 

 settling in the lake, have filled it up for a distance of 

 thirteen miles, to Bex, from its ancient limits. The ge- 

 ologist can scarcely resist the reflection that this work 

 is not of such magnitude as to defy the powers of imagi- 

 nation to grasp the time required for its performance; 

 and yet this is all that the river has accomplished since 

 the last geological revolution. To the prophetic eye of 

 science it appears equally certain that the work of filling 

 the lake completely must be accomplished in some finite 

 period. 



The Rhone itself issues as a gray torrent of snow- 

 water from an ice-cavern at the foot of the great Rhone- 

 glacier, above which rises the Galenstock to the height 

 of nearly twelve thousand feet. In the language of the 

 ancients, this river was said to issue " from the gates of 

 eternal night, at the foot of the pillar of the sun." From 

 this spot it pursues a journey of five hundred miles to 

 the Mediterranean. 



Never to be forgotten is the first full view of a range 



