Nowhere else, in one quarter of the globe, has nature laid her hand on the face of the earth with the same majesty; no other division of it presents the same contrasts in a panorama so astonishing; no other exhibits so surprising a diversity of landscapes, caverns and waterfalls, fields of ice and cascades, green and broad mountain-sides, pastoral abodes and smiling vales, winding and rocky paths, aerial bridges and infernal glens, eternal snows and luxuriant pastures, forests of dark larches and congress of hoary mountains, austere loveliness and lofty nobleness:
“Ever charming, ever new,
When will the landscape tire the view?
The mountain’s fall, the river’s flow,
The wooded valleys, warm and low;
The windy summits wild and high,
Roughly rushing on the sky;
Town and village, tower and farm,
Each give to each a double charm.”
If the Neapolitan be moved to call the environments of his capital “un pezzo del cielo caduto in terra” (“a bit of heaven fallen upon the earth”), the Swiss may more modestly claim that they have that piece of the Garden of Eden only which the angels of the legend lost on their way. It is impossible to convey a vivid, and at the same time an accurate, impression of grand scenery by the use of words. Written accounts, when they come near their climax, fall as much below the intention as words are less substantial than things.