the country. They
scarcely looked into _my_ trunk at all."

While Mr. George and Rollo had been holding this conversation they had
returned to their places in the car, and very soon the train was in
motion to take them into the town.

Thus our travellers passed the Swiss frontier. In half an hour
afterwards they were comfortably established at a large and splendid
hotel called the Three Kings. The hotel has this name in three
languages, English, French, and German, as people speaking those several
languages come, in almost equal numbers, to Switzerland. Thus when you
leave the station you may, in your directions to the coachman, say you
wish to go to the Three Kings, or to the Trois Rois, or to the Drei
Koenige, whichever you please. They all mean the same hotel--the best
hotel in Basle.

CHAPTER III.

BASLE.

The city of Basle stands upon the banks of the Rhine, on the northern
frontier of Switzerland. The waters of the Rhine are gathered from
hundreds of roaring and turbid torrents which come out, some from vast
icy caverns in the glaciers, some from the melting debris of fallen
avalanches, some from gushing fountains which break out suddenly through
crevices in the rocks or yawning chasms, and some from dark and
frightful ravines on the mountain sides, down which they foam and tumble
perpetually, fed by vast fields of melting snow above. The waters of all
these torrents, being gathered at last into one broad, and deep, and
rapid stream, flow to a vast reservoir called the Lake of Constance,
where they repose for a time, or, rather, move slowly and insensibly
forward, enjoying a comparative quiescence which has all the
characteristics and effects of repose. The waters enter this reservoir
wild and turbid. They leave it calm and clear; and then, flowing
rapidly for one hundred miles along the northern frontier of
Switzerland, and receiving successively the waters of many other streams
that have come from hundreds of other torrents and have been purified in
the repose of other lakes extending over the whole northern slope of
Switzerland, they form a broad and rapid river, which flows swiftly
through Basle, and then, turning suddenly to the northward, bids Basle
and Switzerland farewell together.

"And then where does it go?" said Rollo to Mr. George when his uncle had
explained this thus far to him.

"Straight across the continent to the North Sea," said Mr. George.

Thus the whole northern slope of S