GLIMPSES OF WESTERN EUROPE. 
121 
ance upon town and castle prison, sheening the lake with silver and crown¬ 
ing the tops of the mountains with a pure and holy light. All nature was 
hushed and still, save the rippling of water on the pepply shore and the mu¬ 
sic of muffled oars lazily plied by lovers on the lake. * * * It is now 
half past seven in the morning, and after a visit to the castle and a row 
around it on the lake, I am waiting for the train to Lausanne. It comes. 
VILLENEUVE TO BASLE, VIA LAUSANNE. 
I waive an adieu to VilleneiA^e, dash past the chateau of Chillon, 
and am winding my swift way around the shore of the lake. On my 
right is the continuous slope of the mountains, clothed almost to the summit 
with terraced vineyards, beautifully green, and still fresh with the dew of the 
morning. On my left, between railway and lake, a succession of charming 
little cottages, trellised with vines, and each entered through an arched 
gateway covered with roses. Nothing could be more refreshing and beau¬ 
tiful. Montreux, Clarens and Vevay are passed, and I am so soon in view of 
Ouchy and Lausanne, lake port and capital of the Canton of Vaud. Here I 
shall spend a few hours and then turn my face northward for Basle, where I 
am to have my first view of the Rhine. 
An interesting old town, this Lausanne. Very old. The great cathe¬ 
dral was consecrated by Pope Gregory Al. D. 1000, and how much further 
back the city should date its origin no one knows. Located on three com¬ 
manding hills, from which the view of the surrounding mountains, their 
slopes covered with vineyards, of the rich valleys that lie between, and of 
Lake Leman, is extremely fine. * * * 
In more recent history, Lausanne is noted for having been the residence of 
Gibbon, while he wrote his famous history of the decline of the RomanE m- 
pire. * * * 
The railroad leads me through the beautiful plain which spreads out be¬ 
tween Basle and Lausanne, and affords once more a glimpse of broad fields, 
bearing rich crops of grain, of grass and roots. On my left are the grand 
old Jura Mountains, shutting out from my view the fields of sunny France. 
Every few moments the whistle calls us to a halt at some station, old or new— 
for be it known villages are some times born of railroads in the old world as 
well as in the new, but the most of them present nothing worthy of note. 
Another scream of the locomotive, and tho station guards shout in at the 
windows, Neuchatel! Neuchatel ! ” But what of it? Nothing, only that 
this is the place famous in all the Avoiid for the manufacture of clocks and 
watches. It is a dingy looking old Swiss town, lying rather low, and pre¬ 
senting no particular attraction to the eye of the stranger. The Swiss 
have not learned to apply machinery to the manufacture of watches, and 
have no need, therefore, for large establishments. On the contrary, of the 
thousands of Neuchatelers who devote their lives to this business, each one 
giving himself exclusively to a certain branch of the manufacture takes the 
material to his own home and there does the work assigned him. When a 
quantity of that particular article is completed, he takes them to the work¬ 
man who next has need of them; he to another, and so on, until, at last, the 
several parts have found their way into the hands of the man or men whose busi¬ 
ness it is to put them together ; when the clocks or watches thus finished are 
turned over to the capitalist who furnished the material and by whose 
order the work was executed by all. 
Off again. Goodbye, 0 ye watchmakers! * * * * * 
Basle is in view. Hardly in view either, for it is night, and but little is 
visible save the thousands of lights which, glaring and glimmering high and 
low, prove to my curious eyes that this city, also, is built on hilly ground. 
I have risen with the morning light, and am standing on the banks of the 
glorious old Rhine 1 The sun pours a flood of golden light across the flowing 
stream and gilds the old city into a richness not its own. But my thoughts 
dwcjl most on the river. Who can think of it without the association of 
strange scenes in the far feudal past—of poetic legends and more recent yet 
\ 
