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Updated: May 26, 2025
It is a fair sight to look down from the tree-clad hills upon the ancient burgh, with the river half circling it, and gardens, orchards, woods, in the beauty of summer blossoming, or the magnificence of their autumnal hues, encompassing it, while the venerable Abbey riseth stately in the midst of all, as a temple in paradise.
There is a quiet beauty in the broad sweep of the valley, a stately majesty in the towering mountains, a restful grandeur in the rounded domes of the tree-clad hills, and an element of strength in the broad sweep of the ocean. One never tires of watching the constant change of light and shade, for they never appear twice alike.
On the side of the precipice next to the great fall of the main river stands a piece of tree-clad rocky ground, apparently about 50 feet higher than the precipice, and this is flanked by a rapid at the top, passing into a cascade lower down, which then held but little water, but which in floods must add much to the beauty of the scene.
It was enticing enough, with its broad, cool, tiled flooring and its vine-hung arches and its vistas of the tree-clad hills across the ravine; but it was empty. "I think I'll return when the rest of them are together.", And Reggie, stumbling against the door-jamb on his way out, wandered away, choosing the right-hand passage because his body had happened to lurch in that direction.
From roughest rock-strewn mountain side and tree-clad slope, from boulder-piled watercourse and tangled brush, they must drive in the scattered cattle. At reckless speed, as their quarry ran and turned and dodged, they must hesitate at nothing.
"waters rippling, flowing, Flashing along the valley to the sea;" a mountain tarn representing the mighty stream. Beyond it, the tree-clad heights, rolling away into the distance, faded from blue-brown to the faintest azure, hardly to be distinguished from the empyrean above.
Here was a valley stretching four miles east and west, and about eight miles north and south, left with the richest soil to its own wild growth of grass which in civilization would have been a most valuable meadow for the rearing of cattle invested as it was by dense forests, darkening the horizon at all points of the compass, and folded in by tree-clad ridges.
It was a dull gray landscape, and as I gradually deciphered the details of it I realized that it represented a long and enormously high line of cliffs exactly like an immense cataract seen in the distance, with a sloping, tree-clad plain in the foreground. "I believe it is the same place as the painted picture," said I. "It is the same place," the Professor answered.
But after the moon rose the constellations paled; and clear in her light the tree-clad banks stood on either hand as we steamed steadily against the swirling current of the great river. At noon on the twelfth we were at the Brazilian boundary. On this day we here and there came on low, conical hills close to the river.
Surely, nothing could exceed the loveliness as we wound down the hillside, through the vineyards, to Lausanne, and farther on, near the foot of the lake, to Montreux, backed by precipitous but tree-clad hills, fronted by the lovely water, and the great mountains which run away south into Savoy, where Velan lifts up its snows.
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