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Whilst your mind is properly toned by these influences, you become
conscious of another fact, to which the common variety of tourists is
necessarily insensible. You begin to find out for the first time what
the mountains really are. On one side, you look back upon the huge
reservoirs from which the Oberland glaciers descend. You see the vast
stores from which the great rivers of Europe are replenished, the
monstrous crawling masses that are carving the mountains into shape, and
the gigantic bulwarks that separate two great quarters of the world.
From below these wild regions are half invisible; they are masked by the
outer line of mountains; and it is not till you are able to command them
from some lofty point that you can appreciate the grandeur of the huge
barriers, and the snow that is piled within their folds. There is
another half of the view equally striking. Looking towards the north,
the whole of Switzerland is couched at your feet; the Jura and the Black
Forest lie on the far horizon. And then you know what is the nature of a
really mountainous country.


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