or mass of elevated land, upon which nearly all the
highest peaks stood like children set upon a table, removed, in most
cases, far back from the edge of the plateau, as if for fear of their
falling. And the most majestic scenes in the Alps are produced, not so
much by any violation of this law, as by one of the great peaks having
apparently walked to the edge of the table to look over, and thus
showing itself suddenly above the valley in its full height. This is the
case with the Wetterhorn and Eiger at Grindelwald, and with the Grande
Jorasse, above the Col de Ferret. But the raised bank or table is always
intelligibly in existence, even in these apparently exceptional cases;
and, for the most part, the great peaks are not allowed to come to the
edge of it, but remain like the keeps of castles far withdrawn,
surrounded, league beyond league, by comparatively level fields of
mountain, over which the lapping sheets of glacier writhe and flow,
foaming about the feet of the dark central crests like the surf of an
enormous sea-breaker hurled over a rounded rock, and islanding some
fragment of it in the midst. And the result of this arrangement is a
kind of division of the whole of Switzerland into an upper and lower
mountain-world; the lower world consisting of rich valleys bordered by
steep, but easily accessible, wooded banks of mountain, more or less
divided by ravines, through which glimpses are caught of the higher
Alps; the upper world, reached after the first steep banks, of 3000 or
4000 feet in height, have been surmounted, consisting of comparatively
level but most desolate tracts of moor and rock, half covered by
glacier, and stretching to the feet of the true pinnacles of the chain.

Sec. 12. It can hardly be necessary to point out the perfect wisdom and
kindness of this arrangement, as a provision for the safety of the
inhabitants of the high mountain regions. If the great peaks rose at
once from the deepest valleys, every stone which was struck from their
pinnacles, and every snow-wreath which slipped from their ledges, would
descend at once upon the inhabitable ground, over which no year could
pass without recording some calamity of earth-slip or avalanche; while,
in the course of their fall, both the stones and the snow would strip
the woods from the hill sides, leaving only naked channels of
destruction where there are now the sloping meadow and the chestnut
glade. Besides this, the masses of snow, cast dow