Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 3).djvu/505

 ing energy impressed upon their exterior. You must remember, too, all this is upon a scale of such prodigious magnitude, that when we succeeded subsequently in approaching the spot—where, with a leap like that of Niagara, one of these glaciers plunges down into the sea—the eye, no longer able to take in its fluvial character, was content to rest in simple astonishment at what then appeared a lucent precipice of grey-green ice, rising to the height of several hundred feet above the masts of the vessel."

The most magnificent glacier tracks in the Alps are, in Ruskin's opinion, those on the rocks of the great angle opposite Martigny; the most interesting are those above the channel of the Trient between Valorsine and the valley of the Rhone. In Great Britain, I know no better illustration of ice action than is to be seen on the road leading down from Glen Quoich to Loch Hourn, one of the most striking examples of desolate and savage scenery in Scotland, so that its name in Celtic is said to mean the Lake of Hell. All along the roadside are smoothed and polished hummocks of rock, most of them deeply furrowed with approximately parallel striæ, presenting a gentle slope on the upper end, and a steep side below, clearly showing the direction of the great ice flow.

Many of the upper Swiss valleys contain lakes, as, for instance, that of the Upper Rhone the Lake of Geneva, of the Reuss the Lake of Lucerne, of the Rhine that of Constance. These lakes are generally very deep.

Among the Swiss mountains themselves, each has its special character. Tyndall thus describes a view in the Alps, certainly one of the most beautiful—that, namely from the summit of the Ægischhorn:—

"Skies and summits are to-day without a cloud, and no mist or turbidity interferes with the sharpness of the outlines. Jungfrau, Monk, Eiger, Truberg, cliffy Strahlgrat, stately lady-like Aletschhorn, all grandly pierce the empyrean. Like a Saul of mountains, the Finisteraarhorn overtops all his neighbours; then we have the Oberaarhorn, with the river glacier of Viesch rolling from his shoulders. Below is the Marjelin See, with its crystal precipices and its floating icebergs, snowy white, on a blue-green sea. Beyond, is the range which divides the Valais from Italy. Sweeping round, the vision meets an aggregate of peaks which look, as fledglings to their mother, towards the mighty Dom. Then come the repellent crags of Mont Cervin; the ideal of moral savagery, of