5-4

77/A’ ALPINE REGIONS.

of ‘sights.’ At a few indeed of the larger Alpine waterfalls,some favourite ‘look-out’ is within a gate to which a silverkey must be applied ; but usually there are hundreds of otherpoints of view, at which after you have sacrificed to the Penatesof the place, and been taken the orthodox round, you may liedown and gaze undisturbed. As the number is so great, and awaterfall even harder to depict with the pen than with thepencil, I shall only name a few of the finest, and leave thereader to find the others for himself in each Alpine valleythat he may visit. There is the Rhine fall near Sohaffhausen,where a whole river tumbles over a ledge of limestone rock, aAvail of ‘shattered chrysophrase,’ with a roar that shakes theneighbouring crags; the Staubbach , one column of pendulousspray against three hundred yards ot precipice; the Giessbach,leaping through the pine-woods from cliff to cliff to the Lake of Brienz ; the Aar fall and Arlenbach, plunging Avith unitedAvaters into a misty abyss in the rifted gneiss-rock; and theTosa sliding OA'er granite domes in bell-like sheets of liquidglass. Scarce inferior to these is the triple fall of the Reichen-bach, and the Sallenche 1 weaving an endless veil of foamythreads; with many another, named and unnamed, in the valleysnear Lenk and Sixt, Kandersteg and Lauterbrunneu. Theyare also very abundant and beautiful in Dauphine : the finestperhaps being the Torrent du Liable near St Christophe, andthe Saute de la Pucelle near La Grave ; and are by no meansAvanting in the Graian and Savoy Alps. In the German Alps are the magnificent cascades of the Kriml, but on the Avhole theyare less frequent in the Tyrol (especially the Italian district)and in the Cottian Alps , oAving no doubt to the comparativesmallness of the snowfields ; but even here a few very beautifulinstances may be found, at all events in the spring, before theinteuse heat of summer has dried up the streams.

1 Near Yemayaz on the left hank of the Rhone Valley , bearing looally a farless euphonious name.