utiful blue color. This blue color is so remarkable that
it attracts the attention of every one who looks down into it from a
bridge or from a boat, and there have been a great many suppositions and
speculations made in respect to the cause of it; but I believe that,
after all, nobody has yet been able to find out what the cause is.

The city of Geneva is situated exactly at the lower end of the lake,
that is, at the western end; and the River Rhone, in coming out of the
lake, flows directly through the town.

The lake is about fifty miles long, and the eastern end of it runs far
in among the mountains. These mountains are very dark and sombre, and
their sides rise so precipitously from the margin of the water that in
many places there is scarcely room for a road along the shore. Indeed,
you go generally to that end of the lake in a steamer; and as you
advance, the mountains seem to shut you in completely at the end of the
lake. But when you get near to the end, you see a narrow valley opening
before you, with high mountains on either hand, and the River Rhone
flowing very swiftly between green and beautiful banks in the middle of
it. Besides the river, there is a magnificent road to be seen running
along this valley. This is the great high road leading from France into
Italy; and it has been known and travelled as such ever since the days
of the old Romans.

The River Rhone, where it flows into the lake at the eastern end of it,
is very thick and turbid, being formed from torrents coming down the
mountain sides, or from muddy streams derived from the melting of the
glaciers. At the western end, on the other hand, where it issues from
the lake, the water is beautifully pellucid and clear. The reason of
this is, that during its slow passage through the lake it has had time
to settle. The impurities which the torrents bring down into it from the
mountains all subside to the bottom of the lake, and are left there, and
thus the water comes out at the lower end quite clear. The lake itself,
however, is of course gradually filling up by means of this process.

There are several large and handsome houses on the northern shore of
the lake; but Geneva, at the western end of it, entirely surpasses them
all.

Geneva is, however, after all, a comparatively small town. It contains
only thirty or forty thousand inhabitants. It would take ten Genevas to
make a New York, and nearly a hundred to make a Paris or London.

Why, then,