I 4 2 
SCENERY OF SWITZERLAND. 
Luc, “there are as many blocks of primitive rock as 
if one was in the high Alps.”* 
One of the most remarkable groups is at Monthey, 
overlooking the valley of the Rhone below St. Mau- 
rice. We have here, says Forbes, “a belt or band 
of blocks — poised, as it were, on a mountain side, it 
may be five hundred feet above the alluvial flat 
through which the Rhone winds below. This belt 
has no great vertical height, but extends for miles — 
yes, for miles — along the mountain side, composed 
of blocks of Granite of thirty, forty, fifty, and sixty 
feet in the side, not a few, but by hundreds, fan- 
tastically balanced on the angles of one another, their 
grey weather-beaten tops standing out in prominent 
relief from the verdant slopes of secondary formation 
on which they rest. For three or four miles there is 
a path, preserving nearly the same level, leading 
amidst the gnarled stems of ancient chestnut trees 
which struggle round and among the pile of blocks, 
which leaves them barely room to grow: so that 
numberless combinations of wood and rock are 
formed where a landscape-painter might spend days 
in study and enjoyment.”** 
As already mentioned, these blocks have come 
* Agassiz, Essai sur les Glaciers. 
** Forbes, Travels through the Alps of Savoy. 
