126 FLOWER-FIELDS OF ALPINE SWITZERLAND 



d'Arpette, and the Catogne, that curious mountain 

 that can be seen from Vevey and Lausanne, a 

 sugarloaf-Hke cone, blocking the very centre of the 

 Rhone Valley. 



What a happy thing it is that in this neighbour- 

 hood the mountains are reminiscent of nothing 

 except their own giant individualities. How 

 vexing when this is otherwise — when, I mean, 

 there is a lion rock, or a weeping woman, or a 

 head of Napoleon in the landscape ; as when Mark 

 Twain discovered that one of the aiguilles flanking 

 Mont Blanc "took the shapely, clean-cut form of 

 a rabbit's head." At Chateau d'Oex, for instance, 

 the outline of the Gummfluh is a really creditable 

 profile likeness of the great Gladstone with his 

 collar, and that of the Rubli next door presents 

 the profile of O'Connell, the Irish patriot. Apart 

 from the damage inflicted upon the landscape by 

 the intrusion of party politics, such huge examples 

 of Nature's unconscious incursions into portraiture, 

 when once they have made themselves plain, 

 become a distressing obsession ; and especially is 

 this so for the artist who attempts to paint these 

 mountains without producing a puzzle-picture. 

 Fortunately, there are some places which up to 

 the present seem to know nothing of such un- 



