50 TRAVEL, ADVENTURE, AND SPORT. 



been accustomed to know only as so many giants of 

 the horizon. The other hills had sunk into perfect 

 insignificance, or rather looked pretty much the same 

 as they do in the relief models at the map-shops. 

 The entire length of the Lake of Geneva, with the 

 Jura beyond, was very clearly defined; and beyond 

 these again were the faint blue hills of Burgundy. 

 Turning round to the south-east, I looked down on 

 the Jarclin, along the same glacier by which the visitor 

 to the Couvercle lets his eye travel to the summit of 

 Mont Blanc. Eight away over the Col du Geant we 

 saw the plains of Lombardy very clearly, and one of 

 the guides insisted upon pointing out Milan ; but I 

 could not acknowledge it. I was altogether more 

 interested in finding out the peaks and gorges com- 

 paratively near the mountain, than straining my eyes 

 after remote matters of doubt. Of the entire coup 

 d'oeil no descriptive power can convey the slightest 

 notion. Both Mont Blanc and the Pyramids, viewed 

 from below, have never been clearly pictured, from 

 the utter absence of anything by which proportion 

 could be fixed. From the same cause, it is next to 

 impossible to describe the apparently boundless un- 

 dulating expanse of jagged snow-topped peaks that 

 stretched away as far as the horizon on all sides 

 beneath us. "Where everything is so almost incom- 

 prehensible in its magnitude, no sufficiently graphic 

 comparison can be instituted. 



The first curiosity satisfied, we produced our stores, 



