162 PRÆTERITA-I

forming the Park and Boulevard of the wistful little village, down to the single arched bridge that leaps the Ain, which pauses underneath in magnificent pools of clear pale green: the green of spring leaves; then clashes into foam, half weir, half natural cascade, and into a confused race of currents beneath hollow overhanging of crag festooned with leafage.

188. The only marvel is, to any one knowing Jura structure, that rivers should be visible anywhere at all, and that the rocks should be consistent enough to carry them in open air through the great valleys, without perpetual “pertes” like that of the Rhone. Below the Lac de Joux the Orbe thus loses itself indeed, reappearing seven hundred feet* beneath in a scene of which I permit myself to quote my Papa Saussure’s description:-

“A semicircular rock at least two hundred feet high, composed of great horizontal rocks hewn vertical, and divided † by ranks of pine which grow on their projecting ledges, closes to the west the valley of Valorbe. Mountains yet more elevated and covered with forests, form a circuit round this rock, which opens only to give passage to the Orbe, whose source is at its foot. Its waters, of a perfect limpidity, flow at first with a majestic tranquillity upon a bed tapestried with beautiful green moss, Fontinalis antipyretica; but soon, drawn into a steep slope, the thread of the current breaks itself in foam against the rocks which occupy the middle of its bed, while the borders, less agitated, flowing always on their green ground, set off the whiteness of the midst of the river; and thus it withdraws itself from sight, in following the course of a deep valley covered with pines, whose blackness is rendered more striking by the vivid green of the beeches which are scattered among them....

“Ah, if Petrarch had seen this spring and had found there his Laura, how much would not he have preferred it to that of Vaucluse, more abundant, perhaps, and more rapid, but of which the sterile rocks have neither the greatness of ours, nor the rich parure, which embellishes them.”

I have never seen the source of the Orbe, but would commend to the reader’s notice the frequent beauty of

* Six hundred and eighty French feet. Saussure, § 385.¹

† “Taillées à pic, et entrecoupées.”

¹ [Voyages dans les Alpes, Neuchatel, 1779, vol. i. pp. 311-312.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]