1 879-1880.] 421 



the valley of Lauterbrunnen, where the Staubbach waterfall is 

 precipitated over a rock more than 900 feet high ; then over Lake 

 Brienz and the Brunig Pass to Lucerne, where the Righi mountain, 

 6,000 feet high, was ascended by a railway ; then along the pictu- 

 resque lake of the Four Cantons, and up the valley of the Reuss, 

 passing Altorf, where William Tell shot the apple on his son's 

 head ; over the celebrated Devil's Bridge to Andermatt, near the 

 commencement of the St. Gothard tunnel ; then over the Furca 

 Pass, 8,150 feet above the level of the sea, to the Rhone glacier; 

 then along the valley of the Rhone to Brie and Martigny ; over 

 Tete Noir Pass to Chamounix, at the foot of Mont Blanc. The 

 reader then described his passage of the Mer-de- Glace, and the 

 route by diligence through the valley of the Arne to Geneva ; 

 thence over the lake of Geneva to the Castle of Chillon, and back 

 to Lausanne. An interesting account was given of the Rhone 

 glacier. Under the influence of the sun the ice was melting 

 rapidly, and the debris which came tumbling down when a portion 

 of the ice gave way, resembled in structure our local deposits of 

 boulder clay — earth and stones mixed together, as if it had been 

 tumbled out of a waggon. The infant Rhone issues from a cave 

 in the ice. The delicate ultramarine tint of the ice in the cave 

 renders it a scene of surpassing beauty. The deep, narrow valley 

 of the Rhone, lying between the Bernese Alps on the north and 

 the Pennine Alps on the south, was considered to have been 

 scooped out by a former extension of the Rhone glacier, which 

 must, originally have reached the Jura mountains, 120 miles 

 distant. The Lake of Geneva was scooped out by the same 

 glacier. Blocks of granite had been carried from the Alps and 

 deposited on the slope of the Jura, 4,600 feet above the sea level. 

 From this circumstance the original thickness of the ice could be 

 ascertained. Some of these blocks carried down by the ice 

 measure half a million of cubic feet. The Rhone receives in its 

 course 260 muddy streams from glaciers. This mud, deposited in 



