es charmans
paysages que l'on a vus le jours precedens dans le basses vallees, on
est tente de croire qu'on a ete subitement transporte dans un autre
monde oublie par la nature, ou sur une comete dans son aphelie. La vue
du Montanvert ne donne de celle-ci qu'une idee tres-imparfaite; la on ne
voit qu'un seul glacier, au lieu que d'ici vous voyez les trois grands
glaciers des Bois, de Lechaud et du Tacul, sans compter un grand nombre
d'autres moins considerables qui, comme celui du Talefre, versent leurs
glaces dans les glaciers principaux.

"Les rochers innombrables que l'on voit au-dessus de ces glaciers sont
tous de granit, car s'il y a, comme j'en suis certain, des rochers
feuilletees, interposees entre ces granits, des _gneufs_, par exemple,
ou des roches de corne; comme elles etoient plus tendres que les
granits, leurs parties faillantes ont ete detruites par les injures de
l'air, et il ne reste plus que leurs bases, caches au fond des gorges
qui separent les hautes pyramides."

This is a fact which, independent of the good authority we have here,
we would have been naturally led, from the theory, to suppose. For, in
wearing out the solid mass, which had been once continuous among those
mountains, something must have determined the situation of those
valleys; but what so likely as some parts more destructible by the
wasting operations of the surface than others, which are therefore less
impaired, and remain more high.

Now, whatever may be our theory with regard to the origin or formation
of these solid masses of the globe, this must be concluded for
certain,--that what we see remaining is but a specimen of what had been
removed,--and that we actually see the operations by which that great
work had been performed: we only need to join in our imagination that
portion of time which, upon the surest principles, we are forced to
acknowledge in this view of present things.

CHAP. IV.

_The same Subject continued, in giving still farther Views of the
Dissolution of the Earth._

To have an idea of this operation of running water changing the surface
of the earth, one should travel in the Alps; it is there that are to
be seen all the steps of this progression of things, and so closely
connected in the scene which lies before one, that there is not required
any chain of argument, or distant reasoning from effect to cause, in
order to understand the natural operations of the globe, in the state
of things which no