ALP1XU SCULPTURE. 177 



informed me that such was the tradition of the neighbor- 

 hood. This man conversed with intelligence, and as I drew 

 his attention to the rolled stones, which rest not only above 

 the river, but above the road, and inferred that the river 

 must once have been there to have rolled those stones, he 

 saw the force of the evidence perfectly. In fact, in former 

 times, and subsequent to the retreat of the great glaciers, 

 a rocky barrier crossed the valley at this place, damming 

 the river which came from the mountains higher up. A 

 lake was thus formed which poured its waters over the bar- 

 rier. Two actions were here at work, both tending to 

 obliterate the lake the raising of its bed by the deposition 

 of detritus, and the cutting of its dam by the river. In 



Erocess of time the cut deepened into the Via Mala; the 

 ike was drained, and the river now flows in a definite 

 channel through the plain which its waters once totally 

 covered. 



From Tusis I crossed to Tiefenkasten by the Schieu 

 Pass, and thence over the Julier Pass to Pontresina. There 

 are three or four ancient lake-beds between Tiefenkasten 

 and the summit of the Julier. They are all of the same 

 type a more or less broad and level valley-bottom, with a 

 barrier in front through which the river has cut a passage, 

 the drainage of the lake being the consequence. These 

 lakes were sometimes dammed by barriers of rock, sometimes 

 by the moraines of ancient glaciers. 



An example of this latter kind occurs in the Rosegg val- 

 ley, about twenty minutes below the end of the Rosegg 

 glacier, and about an hour from Pontresina. The valley 

 here is crossed by a pine-covered moraine of the noblest 

 dimensions; in the neighborhood of London it might be 

 called a mountain. That it is a moraine, the inspection of 

 it from a point on the Surlei slopes above it will convince 

 any person possessing an educated eye. Where, moreover, 

 the interior of the mound is exposed, it exhibits moraine- 

 matter detritus pulverized by the ice, with boulders en- 

 tangled in it. It stretched quite across the valley, and 

 at one time dammed the river up. But now the barrier is 

 cut through, the stream having about one-fourth of the 

 moraine to its right, and the remaining three-fourths to 

 its left. Other moraines of a more resisting character hold 

 their ground as barriers to the present day. In the Val di 

 Campo, for example, about three-quarters of an hour from 



