III.
In America, I suppose, if you stand in the centre of the Michigan shore of Lake Superior, you can no more make out Canada across the water than a man can make out Normandy though he strain his eyes for ever from Selsey or Beachy Head. A lake, in fact, may be so big that it ceases, for all landscape effect, to be a lake at all, and becomes merely an inland sea. Perhaps the most beautiful lakes of all are those of such modest dimension—yet more than mere ponds or tarns—that you can comprehend their total shore-line from some eminence on their bank, as Buttermere, for example, is comprehended from the slopes of Red Pike, or Loch Lomond, very nearly, from the summit of Ben Voirlich. The Lake of Geneva, from this point of view, is much nearer Buttermere than Lake Superior; but still, in a sense, not whimsical, but real, must be reckoned as much too big. And not only this, but its basin also is a hotch-pot of different kinds of scenery, and of different ranges of hills. It is encradled, as a whole, neither in Alp nor Jura, but lies rather in a plain between the two. It's head, indeed, penetrates superficially into the lower Alps of Vaud; whilst the greater Alps of the Valais, and in particular the noble Dent-de-Morcles, and the yet nobler Dent-du-Midi, guard its upper waters at such a distance that, though really far removed, they appear as we approach to rise almost from its margin, and form an immediate and splendid setting for its reaches above Evian and Vevey. Its southern shore, again, is bordered fairly closely, for almost its whole length, by rugged Alps of Savoy that open behind Thonon to admit glimpses even of the far-away snows of Mont Blanc himself, revealed in crowning majesty beyond the valley of the Dranse. So far, indeed, Lac Leman may be fairly claimed for Alpine; but turn to the opposite shore, and we must tell another tale. From Geneva towards Lausanne the background is formed, though at considerable distance, by the south-east escarpment of the Jura, whose long, level-crested wall of limestone rock—exactly like the long limestone wall of the Pennine hills above the Vale of Eden, or of Mendip above the marshes of mid-Somerset—affords the strongest contrast in the world to the abruptly pointed, opposite, Savoyard summits of the Dent d'Oche or Pointe de Grange, though not without analogy, near the city of Geneva, in the hog-backed ridge of the Grand Salève, which might almost belong to Jura itself. Moreover, this ridge of Jura, which at Geneva itself is not more than some ten miles or so away from the lake, gradually, after Rolle, or Aubonne, in its straight course towards the north-east, trends farther and farther from the lake, which here begins to curve towards the south, so that part of the north shore of the lake, between Rolle and Lausanne, actually abuts on neither Alp nor Jura, but terminates, rather tamely, on the great central plain of Switzerland. Geneva, however, though thus diverse in setting and scenery—for the hill forms of the Alps, to go back again for a moment to our familiar home comparison, are as widely different from the hill forms of the Jura as are those of English Lakeland from those of the opposite Pennine chain—is superbly simple in shape. It is, in fact, an almost perfect crescent, or half moon (save that the south-east horn at Chillon is unduly blunted and truncated), the convexity of which is turned towards the north, whilst its concave face embraces the hills of Chablais, or Savoy. It follows that, in order to appreciate Geneva as a whole, so far as this can ever be achieved in the case of so big a sheet of water, it is necessary to view it from the high ground, and from the vineyards, above Aubonne or Lausanne, which command, more or less imperfectly, both curves of the bending lake. It follows again that Geneva, with this form of extreme simplicity, exhibits none of the mystery and surprises of such highly complex lakes as Lugano or Lucerne: everything here is exceedingly straightforward, and depends for its effect, not on continually new grouping of interlocking ranges of hill, but on the gradual majestic unfolding of a short series of dignified scenes.
THE SAVOY ALPS IN WINTER, FROM THE ROAD TO CAUX.
It will be gathered from what has already been said that, for the greater part of its length, the finest shore views of Geneva are commanded from its north, or convex, margin, looking south across splendidly broad stretches of water—opposite Thonon, where it is nearly at its broadest, almost exactly eight miles—to the grandly marshalled Alps of Chablais that tower above the opposite shore. To look northward from this opposite shore, across the water to the Jura and Central Plain, is to contemplate quite a different lake, and one of less superlative degree. It so happens, again, that the north shore is the more interesting of the two, by reason of the succession of ancient and picturesque towns, such as Nyon, Rolle, Morges, and Aubonne—to say nothing of partially modernized Vevey, and of almost wholly modernized Lausanne (which has yet in its Cathedral a jewel of priceless worth), or of castles like Vufflens and Chillon—that stud its immediate shore, or lie barely a trifle inland. The best way, no doubt, to appreciate Geneva is to sail again and again up its gracious sheet of blue; yet no one who has leisure will repent a quiet pilgrimage, best made I think on bicycle, to the villages and towns along its north bank.
This pilgrimage we hope to make presently; but for the moment it will be as well to turn our attention to the two gay watering-places of Evian and Thonon (promoted of recent years to be Evian- and Thonon-les-Bains, though an old Murray in my possession, published in 1872, knows them as Evian and Thonon only), and to penetrate a little deeper up the valley of the Dranse to the roots of the rocky mountains that form so grand a background to the lake as viewed from the castle terrace at Nyon, or from the cathedral porch at Lausanne. Neither Thonon nor Evian need detain us long; for, though each has a nucleus of ancient town, each is now rather overwhelmed by its vast and fashionable modern hotels. Respectively they lie to the west and east of the Dranse, which, descending in three separate streams from the highlands of Savoy—the Dranse proper, the Dranse d'Abondance, and the Dranse de Morzine—here pushes out in united delta into the lake. Thonon is the capital of the old Savoyard province of Chablais, and has actually, in excuse of its modern pretensions, a set of chalybeate springs. Evian, however, with water containing bicarbonate of soda, is much the quainter and pleasanter, in its ancient parts, of the two; has also the great advantage, in comparison with Thonon, of being situated farther to the east, and thus commanding nobler views of the mountains above Vevey, and towards the head of the lake; and lastly is distinguished for its pleasant, tree-shadowed promenades by the actual water-side (whereas Thonon is on the cliff above the lake), whence you see across the blue expanse the white houses of Lausanne, clustered in profusion on the sunny slopes of the opposite shore, or twinkling in the twilight with a million electric lamps. No one should quit either Evian or Thonon without making first an "inland voyage" up the valley of the Dranse to visit the quaint little mountain villages of Abondance and St. Jean d'Aulph (de Alpibus). At Abondance is a small monastic church, with a picturesque cloister, that dates in its inception from as early as the sixth century; whilst at St. Jean (on the whole less charming) are the very pretty ruins of a little Cistercian abbey that is remarkable in more than one direction—its possession of a triforium and some foliated capitals—for its unusually early departure from the usual architectural severity of the early Cistercian rule. The valley of the Dranse d'Abondance is refreshingly green and pastoral, and is bounded in places by magnificently rocky hills; but it is only towards its head, beyond the Chapel of Abondance, and before reaching the low pass that leads to Morgins in Switzerland, that the sudden apparition of the splendid Dent-du-Midi—pre-eminently entitled, notwithstanding its comparatively low height (only 10,695 feet), to rank in point of form and truly Alpine aspect amidst the giants of the Alps—lifts the whole landscape in a moment to the level of Alpine sublimity. Abondance, though much frequented by French families in summer, has absolutely nothing of the modern fashionable spirit that is rather too apparent at Thonon or Evian-les-Bains. Its inns, though comfortable enough for those who are not unduly fastidious, are still genuine mountain hostelries; and the type of French family life, though possibly wholly bourgeois, that may be studied here in August is amusing and piquant indeed, in contrast with the rather dull banalities of much more fashionable watering-places, such as Vichy or Aix-les-Bains.