THE GROWTH OF CONTINENTS. 
131 
character of its scenery. Perhaps my readers 
will pardon the digression, if I interrupt our geo- 
logical discussion for a moment, to offer them a 
word of advice, though it be uncalled for. I 
have often been asked by friends who were in- 
tending to go to Europe, what is the most favor- 
able time in the day and the best road to enter 
Switzerland in order to have at once the finest 
impression of the mountains. My answer is al- 
ways, Enter it in the afternoon over the Jura. 
If you are fortunate, and have one of the bright, 
sOit afternoons that sometimes show the .Alps in 
their full beauty, as you descend the slope of the 
Jura, from which you command the whole pano- 
rama of the opposite range, you may see, as the 
day dies, the last shadow pass with strange rapid- 
ity from peak to peak of the Alpine summits. 
The passage is so rapid, so sudden, as the shadow 
. vanishes from one height and appears on the 
next, that it seems like the step of some living 
spirit of the mountains. Then, as the sun sinks, 
it sheds a brilliant glow across them, and upon 
that follows, — strangest effect of all, — a sudden 
pallor, an ashy paleness on the mountains, that 
has a ghastly, chilly look. But this is not their 
last aspect: after the sun has vanished out of 
sight, in place of the glory of his departure, and 
of the corpse-like pallor which succeeded it, there 
spreads over the mountains a faint blush that die? 
