onsisting
in each case of a ridge starting steeply from this elevated plateau, as
if by a new impulse of angry or ambitious mountain temper, can only be
seen by ascending a considerable height upon the flank of the opposite
mass of the Faulhorn.

Sec. 10. And this is, if possible, still more notably and provokingly the
case with the great peaks of the chain of Alps between Monte Rosa and
Mont Blanc. It will be seen, by a glance at any map of Switzerland, that
the district which forms the canton Valais is, in reality, nothing but a
ravine sixty miles long, between that central chain and the Alps of the
cantons Fribourg and Berne. This ravine is also, in its general
structure, merely a deeper and wider _moat_ than that already described
as forming the valley of Chamouni. It lies, in the same manner, between
two _banks_ of mountain; and the principal peaks are precisely in the
same manner set back upon the tops of these banks; and so provokingly
far back, that throughout the whole length of the valley not one of the
summits of the chief chain can be seen from it. That usually pointed out
to travellers as Monte Rosa is a subordinate, though still very colossal
mass, called the Montagne de Saas; and this is the only peak of great
size discoverable from the valley throughout its extent; one or two
glimpses of the snows, not at any eminent point, being caught through
the entrances of the lateral valleys of Evolena, &c.

[Illustration: FIG. 23.]

Sec. 11. Nor is this merely the consequence of the great _distance_ of the
central ridge. It would be intelligible enough that the mountains should
rise gradually higher and higher towards the middle of the chain, so
that the summit at _a_ in the upper diagram of Fig. 23 should be
concealed by the intermediate eminences _b_, _c_, from the valley at
_d_. But this is not, by any means, the manner in which the concealment
is effected. The great peaks stand, as at _a_ in the lower diagram,
jagged, sharp, and suddenly starting out of a comparatively tame mass
of elevated land, through which the trench of the valley of the Rhone is
cut, as at _c_. The subdivision of the bank at _b_ by thousands of
ravines, and its rise, here and there, into more or less notable
summits, conceal the real fact of the structure from a casual observer.
But the longer I stayed among the Alps, and the more closely I examined
them, the more I was struck by the one broad fact of their being a vast
Alpine plateau,