responds
exactly." So she repeated the following lines from Byron's poem, which
describes the island in the language of one of the prisoners, who saw it
from his dungeon window,

"And then there was a little isle,
Which in my very face did smile--
The only one in view;
A small green isle, it seemed no more,
Scarce broader than my dungeon floor;
But in it there were three tall trees,
And o'er it blew the mountain breeze,
And by it there were waters flowing,
And on it there were young flowers growing,
Of gentle breath and hue."

"That's pretty poetry," said Rollo.

"Very pretty indeed," said his father.

The horse now began to trot along the road. The little island continued
in view for a while, and then disappeared, and afterwards came into view
again, as the road went turning and winding around, following the
indentations of the shore.

At length, after a short but very pleasant ride, the party arrived
safely at the inn again at Villeneuve.

CHAPTER XIII.

PLAN FORMED.

The reason why the Lake of Geneva is of a crescent form is, that that is
the shape of the space in the bottom of the valley which it fills. There
are two ranges of mountains running in a curved direction almost
parallel to each other, and the space between them, for a certain
distance, is filled with water, owing to the spreading out of the waters
of the Rhone in flowing through. Thus the lake is produced by the
valley, and takes its form from it.

The valley does not come to an end when you reach the head of the lake,
but continues for more than a hundred miles beyond, the two mountain
ranges continuing to border it all that distance, and the River Rhone to
flow through the centre of it. Thus at Villeneuve you look in one
direction, and you have a winding valley filled with water, extending
for fifty miles, to Geneva; while in the other direction, the same
valley--though now the floor of it is a green and fertile
plain--continues, with the same stupendous walls of mountain bordering
the sides of it, for a hundred miles or more, to the sources of the
Rhone.

There is another thing that is very curious in respect to this valley,
and that is, that the floor of it is as flat, and smooth, and level,
almost, where it is formed of land, as where it is formed of water.

Geologists suppose that the reason why the bottom of the valley, when it
consists of land, is so perfectly level,