morning-dawn. Like a cloud, like one of many that were spread in

impenetrable woof over the sky, which, when the shepherd north has driven

its companions "to drink Antipodean noon," fades and dissolves in the clear

ether--Such were we!

We left the fair margin of the beauteous lake of Geneva, and entered the

Alpine ravines; tracing to its source the brawling Arve, through the

rock-bound valley of Servox, beside the mighty waterfalls, and under the

shadow of the inaccessible mountains, we travelled on; while the luxuriant

walnut-tree gave place to the dark pine, whose musical branches swung in

the wind, and whose upright forms had braved a thousand storms--till the

verdant sod, the flowery dell, and shrubbery hill were exchanged for the

sky-piercing, untrodden, seedless rock, "the bones of the world, waiting to

be clothed with every thing necessary to give life and beauty."[1] Strange

that we should seek shelter here! Surely, if, in those countries where

earth was wont, like a tender mother, to nourish her children, we had found

her a destroyer, we need not seek it here, where stricken by keen penury

she seems to shudder through her stony veins. Nor were we mistaken in our

conjecture. We vainly sought the vast and ever moving glaciers of

Chamounix, rifts of pendant ice, seas of congelated waters, the leafless

groves of tempest-battered pines, dells, mere paths for the loud avalanche,

and hill-tops, the resort of thunder-storms. Pestilence reigned paramount

even here. By the time that day and night, like twin sisters of equal

growth, shared equally their dominion over the hours, one by one, beneath

the ice-caves, beside the waters springing from the thawed snows of a

thousand winters, another and yet another of the remnant of the race of

555

The Last Man