XI. L’HOTEL DU MONT BLANC 443

plain, a mass of rocky mountains, presenting for the most part their cliffs to the approaching traveller, and tossing their crests back in careless pride, above the district of well inhabited, but seldom traversed, ravines which wind between the lake of Annecy and vale of Sallenches.

Of these the nearest-yet about twelve miles distant-is the before-named Brezon, a majestic, but unterrific, fortalice of cliff, forest, and meadow, with unseen nests of village, and unexpected balm and honey of garden and orchard nursed in its recesses. The horses have to rest at Bonneville before we reach the foot of it; and the line, of its foundation first, and then of the loftier Mont Vergy, must be followed for seven or eight miles, without hope apparently of gaining access to the inner mountain world, except by footpath.

214. A way is opened at last by the Arve, which, rushing furiously through a cleft affording room only for road and river, grants entrance, when the strait is passed, to a valley without the like of it among the Alps. In all other avenues of approach to their central crests the torrents fall steeply, and in places appear to be still cutting their channels deeper, while their lateral cliffs have evidently been in earlier time, at intervals, connected, and rent or worn asunder by traceable violence or decay. But the valley of Cluse is in reality a narrow plain between two chains of mountains which have never been united, but each independently* raised, shattered, and softened into their present forms; while the river, instead of deepening the ravine it descends, has filled it to an unknown depth with beds of glacial sand, increased annually, though insensibly, by its wandering floods; but now practically level, and for the most part tenable, with a little logwork to fence off the stream at its angles, in large spaces of cultivable land.

* In the same epoch of time, however. See Mr. Collingwood’s Limestone Alps of Savoy.¹

¹ [See, especially, pp. 142, 143 of that book.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]