ni arbustes, ni verdure.  Et quand on se rappelle la belle vegetation, et les charmans paysages que l’on a vus le jours precedens dans le basses vallees, on est tente de croire qu’on a ete subitement transporte dans un autre monde oublie par la nature, ou sur une comete dans son aphelie.  La vue du Montanvert ne donne de celle-ci qu’une idee tres-imparfaite; la on ne voit qu’un seul glacier, au lieu que d’ici vous voyez les trois grands glaciers des Bois, de Lechaud et du Tacul, sans compter un grand nombre d’autres moins considerables qui, comme celui du Talefre, versent leurs glaces dans les glaciers principaux.

“Les rochers innombrables que l’on voit au-dessus de ces glaciers sont tous de granit, car s’il y a, comme j’en suis certain, des rochers feuilletees, interposees entre ces granits, des gneufs, par exemple, ou des roches de corne; comme elles etoient plus tendres que les granits, leurs parties faillantes ont ete detruites par les injures de l’air, et il ne reste plus que leurs bases, caches au fond des gorges qui separent les hautes pyramides.”

This is a fact which, independent of the good authority we have here, we would have been naturally led, from the theory, to suppose.  For, in wearing out the solid mass, which had been once continuous among those mountains, something must have determined the situation of those valleys; but what so likely as some parts more destructible by the wasting operations of the surface than others, which are therefore less impaired, and remain more high.

Now, whatever may be our theory with regard to the origin or formation of these solid masses of the globe, this must be concluded for certain,—­that what we see remaining is but a specimen of what had been removed,—­and that we actually see the operations by which that great work had been performed:  we only need to join in our imagination that portion of time which, upon the surest principles, we are forced to acknowledge in this view of present things.

CHAP.  IV.

The same Subject continued, in giving still farther Views of the Dissolution of the Earth.

To have an idea of this operation of running water changing the surface of the earth, one should travel in the Alps; it is there that are to be seen all the steps of this progression of things, and so closely connected in the scene which lies before one, that there is not required any chain of argument, or distant reasoning from effect to cause, in order to understand the natural operations of the globe, in the state of things which now appears.  So strongly are the operations of nature marked in those scenes, that even a description is sufficient to give a lively idea of the process which had been transacted.  With this view, I shall here transcribe, from the Tableau de la Suisse, a description of that remarkable passage by the mountain of St. Gothard, from Switzerland to Italy, hoping, that, even independent of the illustration hereby given to the theory, the reader will be pleased to see such a picture of that country as will either excite new ideas in a person who has not seen such scenes, or call up those which it is proper for a naturalist to have[4].