Warm rays on cottage roofs are here,
And laugh of girls and hum of bees,—
Here linger till thy waves are clear.
Thou heedest not, thou hastest on;
From steep to steep thy torrent falls,
Till, mingling with the mighty Rhone,
It rests beneath Geneva’s walls.”
“That expression, ‘rests beneath Geneva’s walls,’ seems to me singularly inappropriate,” said I. “I did not know it rested anywhere.”
“By the way,” said Will, “it is a curious thing: almost all visitors to the Rhône valley remember the river as a greyish muddy-looking stream; yet it is true, for seven months of the year it runs with a clear current, of a greenish colour very much like Niagara’s. I suppose it does its work of disintegration mainly in the summer, when it has the help of the sun.”
Chamonix, which so short a time ago was almost a lost valley, is now the very centre of the mercenary traffic in Nature’s most marvellous mysteries. One may reach dizzy heights now by the railway, and there are restaurants a mile above the sea.