LAKES. 95 



last inasmuch as lakes are usual accompaniments of 

 mountain scenery, and form part of the machinery by 

 which nature works for the transmission of those waters 

 which are distilled by, and gathered into the hills ; 

 as well as for the provision of those vapours with 

 which the air feeds these huge alembics of the earth. 

 In what is, unscientifically enough, called the new world, 

 and particularly in Canada, these inland waters have 

 a character somewhat different from that which they 

 assume in the portion of the globe of which our island 

 forms a part; extending to the magnitude, and ex- 

 hibiting most of the phenomena of seas, and standing 

 in less immediate and visible connexion with moun- 

 tain ranges, to which they owe their birth. In Europe, 

 the principal lakes are those of Switzerland ; to which, 

 with their surrounding scenery, those in the northern 

 parts of our own island bear, in all respects, a close 

 resemblance. 



Here, they present to the eye an appearance which 

 at once indicates their origin ; and exhibits, in imme- 

 diate connexion with each other, the various parts 

 of that eternal process by which the vivifying prin- 

 ciple is preserved from stagnation, and the spirit of 

 fruitfulness poured over the earth. Embosomed in 

 deep valleys, and shut in by circling hills, fed by 

 the streams and torrents that pour from the uplands, 

 opening chasms in the mountains, and wearing fissures 

 in the cliffs ; or by the countless streams that pene- 

 trate towards the earth's centre, till, turned by some 

 stratum of rock, they burst upward, in springs, amid 

 the hidden depths, and presenting a surface from 

 which, in turn, the air may gather exhalations, and 



