THE LAKE OF GENEVA. 
93 
level had been lower, the remains would have been 
destroyed, and on the other hand the piles could 
not have been fixed in deeper water. 
At present the lake is maintained at a nearly 
constant level by dams and sluices at Geneva. 
The condition and configuration of the Lake of 
Geneva offer many difficult problems, as to which 
there is still much difference of opinion. 
The course of the Rhone below the Lake of 
Geneva is extremely curious and interesting. It 
presents many indications of comparatively recent 
origin, or at anyrate of recent changes.* At the 
Fort de I’Ecluse it passes througli a narrow canon or 
gorge, several hundred feet in depth, between the 
Credo (Cret d’Eau) and the Vuache Mountain 
(Fig. 77, p. 2i). The latter is one half of an anticlinal, 
split longitudinally and with the Western half sunk. 
The gorge coincides with a change in the direction 
of the mountain chain which has, according to 
Bourdon,** given rise to a fault, the difference of 
level between the Credo and the Vuache amounting 
to looo metres. It then enters a plain, and at 
Bellegarde joins the Valserine, which though the 
* “Le Canon du Rhone,” Bull. Soc. GeoL, France 1894; 
Schardt, “Chaine de Reculet Vuache,” 1891. 
** Bull. Soc. GeoL, Laris. 1895. 
