130 ^lUD, 



still traco at onco on eitlier side the old monntainoiis 

 banks, descending into the plain as abruptly and unmis- 

 takably as thoy still descend to the water's edge at 

 Montreux and Vevey. But the silt of the Khone, brought 

 down in great sheets of glacier mud (about which more 

 anon) from the Furca and the JungCrau and the Monte 

 Rosa chain, has completely filled in the upper nine miles 

 of the old lake basin with a level mass of fertile alluvium. 

 There is no doubt about the fact : you can see it for 

 yourself with half an eye from that specular mount (to 

 give the Devil his due, I quote Milton's Satan) : the mud 

 lies even from bank to bank, raised only a few inches 

 above the level of the lake, and as lacustrine in effect as 

 the veriest geologist on earth could wish it. Indeed, the 

 process of filling up still continues unabated at the present 

 day where the mud-laden Ehone enters the lake at 

 Bouveret, to leave it again, clear and blue and beautiful, 

 under the bridge at Geneva. The little delta which the 

 river forms at its mouth shows the fresh mud in sheets 

 gathering thick upon the bottom. Every day this new 

 mud-bank pushes out farther and farther into the water, 

 so that in process of time the whole basin will be filled 

 in, and a level plain, like that which now spreads from 

 Bex and Aigle to Villeneuve, will occupy the entire bed 

 from Montreux to Geneva. 



Turn mentally to the upper feeders of the Po itself, 

 and you find the same causes equally in action. You 

 have stopped at Pallanza — Garoni's is so comfortable. 

 Well, then, you know how every Alpine stream, as it 

 flows, full-gorged, into the Italian lakes, is busily engaged 

 in filling them up as fast as ever it can with turbid mud 



