Plumes, pinceaux, couleurs en tous entroits
J’ai fait passer par villes et châteaux,
Villages, bourgs, par montagnes et bois,
Par champs et près et vignobles si beaux
Rochers, forêts, rivières et ruisseaux.”
But the morning was passing, and we had to tear ourselves away. We had not intended to go into any of the public buildings of Geneva, tempting as they might be, but to walk across the Treille, along the Promenade des Bastions and then take a tram for the Salève, from which, on such a clear day, the view would have been superb. But it was too late; we had to hurry back to the hotel for an early lunch and then continue our journey around the lake.
As we went back I registered a vow to spend at least a fortnight in Geneva, and I am happy to say it was not a vow in vain. I came to know and love the fine old town with its splendid educational advantages, its museums and libraries, its fascinating parks and its wealth of glorious walks. More than once as we went down toward the lake I turned around to look at the bold escarpments of the limestone cliff against which the twin towers and the tall spire of the Cathedral stood out so proudly.
I went one day to the Voirons and had perhaps the same view as James Fenimore Cooper enjoyed so much, when on his journey southward he suddenly emerged on their heights and got his first glimpse of Geneva and the lake and all those parts of Vaud that lie between Geneva and the Dôle. Of course, Geneva nearly eighty years ago was much smaller than it is now. He describes it with enthusiasm, and his picture still glows with colour:—
“A more ravishing view than that we now beheld can scarcely be imagined. Nearly the whole of the lake was visible. The north shore was studded with towns, towers, castles and villages for the distance of thirty miles; the rampart—resembling rocks of Savoy—rose for three or four thousand feet, like walls above the water, and solitary villages were built against their bases in spots where there scarcely appeared room to place a human foot. The solemn magnificent gorge rather than valley of the Rhône and the river, glittering like silver among its meadows, were in the distant front, while the immediate foreground was composed of a shore which also had its wall of rocks, its towns laved by the water, its castles, its hamlets half concealed in fruit-trees, and its broad mountain bosom thrown carelessly into terraces, to the elevation of two thousand feet on which reposed nearly every object of rural art that can adorn a picture....