This came nearest to that dream. I had no sense of fear at all. Looking down, I could say with Tennyson’s eagle, “The wrinkled sea beneath me crawls.” The whole lake lay, as it were, in the palm of my hand. It was an indescribable panorama, flattened except where very high hills arose, and in the distance an infinitude of blended details. It was vastly more exciting than being on a mountain-top. The wind whistled through the wires and almost took away my breath. Thanks to having twice circled the lake—once by motor-boat and once in the automobile—I knew pretty well what the towns were over which we sailed. We made a wide circuit over Geneva and, mounting still higher, cleared the crest of the Salève and then returned like an arrow to Vernex. I now knew how an eagle feels when in splendid spirals it soars up toward the sun until it is lost to human sight, and then, with absolute command of its motions, descends to its eyrie on the top of a primeval pine planted on the mountain’s dizzy side. I now knew how Icarus dared fit those wax-panoplied wings to his strong arms and with mighty strokes ply the upper skies, looking down on the sea which it was worth dying for to name through all the ages.
Over this very lake once floated the balloon sent up by Madame de Charrière de Bavois, kindled to enthusiasm by the invention of the celebrated Montgolfier brothers. It was nearly two meters high and two or three times that in circumference and was made of paper and a network of wires. But it caught fire, and fell like a meteor, and Lausanne forbade any more experiments of the sort without permission; there was too great risk of setting the woods on fire. What would Rousseau and Voltaire have said to see men flying a thousand feet above their heads? But what at first seems like a miracle soon becomes a commonplace and, now that I have been up in a “plane,” ordinary locomotion will seem rather tame.
But, to return to our trip around the lake. The buzzing hydro-aeroplane sped over our heads, going at a tremendous clip and of course filling us with wonder and admiration. While those above us were free from every obstacle, except the air itself, which Kant, in one of his poetic passages in the “Critique,” shows is the very support of the bird’s flight, we were making good progress in the “Hirondelle,” running not far from the shore, but of course avoiding the shelving edge of the beine—to use the local term.
We were near enough to admire the beautiful villas which occupied commanding and lovely sites at frequent intervals between Lutry and Cully. When Emile pointed out Villette I wondered if Charlotte Brontë got the name of her autobiographical romance from it. Pretty soon we glided slowly by Vevey, where we could see the crowds of people on the Place du Marché, and the green fields with scattered houses, and enjoyed the tall trees and the fine old château de l’Aile and, farther back, the noble tower of Saint Martin.
Vevey has been rather unfortunate in its piers. In 1872 the municipality began to build a solid and handsome structure along La Place de l’Ancien Port. Several years were spent on it and it had been completed about eighteen months when one hundred and nine meters—all of the western part—suddenly, and without any warning, sank into the lake. The physical explanation of the catastrophe was very simple. Almost a hundred years earlier—in June and again in November, 1785—some of the houses on what was then La Rue du Sauveur, now La Rue du Lac, being founded on the same unstable basis, gave way. It happened again in 1809. The weight of the superimposed structure caused the mud and gravel deposits to slide down into deeper water. Even now one almost expects to see the white, gravelly beach, just beyond, sink into the depths, with all the chattering washer-women who use the lake as a bath-tub. Similar catastrophes have happened on several other Swiss lakes.
It was like a moving-picture to see the succession of interesting places. Beyond Vévey-la-Tour were the clustered villas of La Tour-de-Peilz, where Count Peter of Savoy once enjoyed the beauties of the lake; then Clarens, suggesting memories of Rousseau and Byron. Far up on the height we could see the Château des Crêtes. We made beautiful scallops in around by Vernex, and doubled the picturesque point on which Montreux roosts, and looked up to the far-away Dent de Jaman; we skirted Territe and then came close under the frowning, historic walls of Chillon.
LAKE LEMAN AT VEVEY.