I CAN see the importance of a knowledge of geology as a basis for the study of history. How do valleys run—north and south or east and west? This inclination conditions sunlight. Where the rocks are hard and impervious there are many small streams; but in a fissured district of chalky rock as in the Jura there are few torrents. There is almost no water in the regions of the upper Jurassic rocks and no temptations for settlers. But the lower and middle Jura, rich in marl, offers excellent pasturage. The grass grows sparse but sweet where the cretaceous rocks have crumbled. Where the sun shines bright and warm and there is shelter from cold winds the vine is cultivated.
Poor ignorant man, wandering up into valleys where the limestone of the hard water will give all his descendants the goître, or building his habitation under a precipice where the whole side of the mountain will slide down on him and overwhelm him, as happened at Val Bregaglia in 1618 when Monte Conto wiped out most of the 2,000 inhabitants of Piuro! How can a country like Switzerland, made up of so many scores of valleys each different in characteristic and each conditioning the inhabitants,—here making them taciturn, there gay and thoughtless, here again honest and religious, there sly and untrustworthy,—how can it have any real political unity?
The next morning, after breakfast, I went into the library and picked up a copy of Addison’s “Travels through Switzerland.” One sentence begins:—“I made a little voyage round the lake and touched on the several towns that lie on its coasts, which took up near five days, though the wind was pretty fair for us all the while.” He was referring to the Lake of Geneva. As usual with me, I copied a few paragraphs into my diary. I like to do that with letters or books. Often one can find just the description one wants and save making an original one. I was amused at one thing in Addison. He introduces classical poems whenever he can with his own translations and sometimes he forgets to put them à propos, so he adds them at the end of his chapter.
“Near St. Julian in Savoy the Alps begin to enlarge themselves on all sides and open into a vast circuit of ground, which, in respect of the other parts of the Alps, may pass for a plain champagne country. This extent of lands, with the Leman Lake, would make one of the prettiest and most defensible dominions in Europe, was it all thrown into a single state and had Geneva for its metropolis. But there are three powerful neighbors who divide among them the greatest part of this fruitful country. The Duke of Savoy has the Chablais and all the fields that lie beyond the Arve as far as to the Ecluse. The King of France is master of the whole country of Gex; and the Canton of Bern comes in for that of Vaud.
“Geneva and its little territories lie in the heart of these three states. The greatest part of the town stands upon a hill and has its view bounded on all sides by several ranges of mountains, which are, however, at so great a distance that they leave open a wonderful variety of beautiful prospects. The situation of these mountains has some particular effects on the country which they inclose. At first they cover it from all winds except the south and north. It is to the last of these winds that the inhabitants of Geneva ascribe the healthfulness of their air; for as the Alps surround them on all sides they form a vast kind of bason, where there would be a constant stagnation of vapors, the country being so well watered, did not the north wind put them in motion and scatter them from time to time.
“Another effect the Alps have on Geneva is that the sun here rises later and sets sooner than it does to other places of the same latitude. I have often observed that the tops of the neighboring mountains have been covered with light above half an hour after the sun is down in respect of those who live at Geneva.
“These mountains likewise very much increase their summer heats and make up an horizon that has something in it very singular and agreeable. On one side you have the long tract of hills that goes under the name of Mount Jura, covered with vineyards and pasturage, and on the other huge precipices of naked rocks rising up in a thousand odd figures and cleft in some places so as to discover high mountains of snow that lie several leagues behind them. Toward the south the hills rise more insensibly and leave the eye a vast uninterrupted prospect of many miles. But the most beautiful view of all is the lake and the borders of it that lie north of the town.
“This lake resembles a sea in the color of its waters, the storms that are raised on it and the ravages it makes on its banks. It receives too a different name from the coast it washes and in summer has something like an ebb and flow which arises from the melting of the snows that fall into it more copiously at noon than at other times of the day. It has four different states bordering on it: the Kingdom of France, the Duchy of Savoy, the Canton of Bern and the Republic of Geneva.”