d at great depths.

While sailing along the Lake of Geneva one day, I could as little see
substance in the water below me, when I looked upon it at a certain
distance from the steamer, as in the clear sky; both seemed alike blue and
boundless!

The weather and the temperature changes very suddenly among the high Alps.
The climate in the valleys of Switzerland is as warm as ours, in summer,
while some thousand feet higher lie the everlasting glaciers. From these,
avalanches of cold air precipitate into the valleys, so that the mercury
often falls from 20 to 30 degrees in ten minutes! One is in danger of
taking "a cold" every day in Switzerland.

Besides "The Alps" and the _lovely lakes_ among them, the tourist may also
see castles, museums, art galleries, pleasure gardens, &c., in
Switzerland, but I will only enumerate a few of the most striking objects
that I met and saw in this curious country, and then pass on to Italy.

One of the bridges of Lucerne is adorned with very curious paintings
representing the "Dance of Death." Scores of skeletons, some blowing the
bugle or playing with the triangles, others equipped with hoes and spades,
are jubilant over their work!

One of the finest organs in Europe is the far-famed one at Freiburg,
having 67 stops and 7,800 pipes, some of them 33 feet long. This
instrument has such a range of volume that it can simulate the roaring
thunder as well as the faintest echo. The portal of the same cathedral
which contains the famous organ is also adorned (?) with a curious
representation of the last judgment. St. Peter leads the blessed to the
door of Heaven, but half a dozen evil ones busy themselves in disposing of
the wicked. One of them that has a head like a hog, carries them from the
scales into a large caldron where they are boiled. Others with forks in
their hands pitch them into the mouth of the large dragon-devil who is
represented as glutting them, and whose capacious mouth admits of several
of them at a time! The time has almost arrived when one may no longer
describe what he sees in the churches of Europe! This reminds me of a
monster that stands upon a fountain in Bern, called the Kindlifresser,
(the Ogre), who is in the act of eating a child, while others doomed to
the same fate protrude from his girdle and pockets!

Berne is a great place for bears. Besides those connected with the curious
machinery of the clock on one of its clock-towers, among the dead bears,
they al