" [2] I do
not, however, borrow from him or from any one else any description of
glaciers, for they are so unlike anything else, that no one who has not
seen, can possibly visualize them.
The history of European rivers yet remains to be written, and is most
interesting. They did not always run in their present courses. The Rhone,
for instance, appears to have been itself a great traveler. At least there
seems reasons to believe that the upper waters of the Valais fell at first
into the Danube, and so into the Black Sea; subsequently joined the Rhine
and the Thames, and so ran far north over the plains which once connected
the mountains of Scotland and of Norway--to the Arctic Ocean; and to have
only comparatively of late years adopted their present course into the
Mediterranean.
But, however this may be, the Rhine of Germany and the Rhine of
Switzerland are very unlike. The catastrophe of Schaffhausen seems to
alter the whole character of the river, and no wonder. "Stand for half an
hour," says Ruskin, "beside the Fall of Schaffhausen, on the north side
where the rapids are long, and watch how the vault of water first bends,
unbroken, in pure polished velocity, over the arching rocks at the brow of
the cataract, covering them with a dome of crystal twenty feet thick, so
swift that its motion is unseen except when a foam globe from above darts
over it like a falling star;.
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