FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   >>  
g in the broad glow of the street-lamp. He never got that post-office. To go back to Lucerne and its fishers, I concluded, after about nine hours' waiting, that the man who proposes to tarry till he sees something hook one of those well-fed and experienced fishes will find it wisdom to "put up at Gadsby's" and take it easy. It is likely that a fish has not been caught on that lake pier for forty years; but no matter, the patient fisher watches his cork there all the day long, just the same, and seems to enjoy it. One may see the fisher-loafers just as thick and contented and happy and patient all along the Seine at Paris, but tradition says that the only thing ever caught there in modern times is a thing they don't fish for at all--the recent dog and the translated cat. CHAPTER XXVII [I Spare an Awful Bore] Close by the Lion of Lucerne is what they call the "Glacier Garden"--and it is the only one in the world. It is on high ground. Four or five years ago, some workmen who were digging foundations for a house came upon this interesting relic of a long-departed age. Scientific men perceived in it a confirmation of their theories concerning the glacial period; so through their persuasions the little tract of ground was bought and permanently protected against being built upon. The soil was removed, and there lay the rasped and guttered track which the ancient glacier had made as it moved along upon its slow and tedious journey. This track was perforated by huge pot-shaped holes in the bed-rock, formed by the furious washing-around in them of boulders by the turbulent torrent which flows beneath all glaciers. These huge round boulders still remain in the holes; they and the walls of the holes are worn smooth by the long-continued chafing which they gave each other in those old days. It took a mighty force to churn these big lumps of stone around in that vigorous way. The neighboring country had a very different shape, at that time--the valleys have risen up and become hills, since, and the hills have become valleys. The boulders discovered in the pots had traveled a great distance, for there is no rock like them nearer than the distant Rhone Glacier. For some days we were content to enjoy looking at the blue lake Lucerne and at the piled-up masses of snow-mountains that border it all around--an enticing spectacle, this last, for there is a strange and fascinating beauty and charm about a majestic
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   >>  



Top keywords:

boulders

 

Lucerne

 

fisher

 

caught

 

patient

 

valleys

 

ground

 
Glacier
 

torrent

 

beneath


glaciers
 

turbulent

 

washing

 
chafing
 

continued

 

smooth

 

furious

 
remain
 

ancient

 

glacier


guttered

 

rasped

 

fishers

 

removed

 
shaped
 
office
 

tedious

 

journey

 

perforated

 

formed


content

 
distant
 
distance
 

nearer

 

masses

 
fascinating
 

strange

 

beauty

 

majestic

 

spectacle


mountains

 

border

 
enticing
 

traveled

 

vigorous

 

neighboring

 
mighty
 
country
 
discovered
 
street