[Footnote: Weissenstein is a high
point in the Jura, above Soleure.] (_Ten o'clock in the morning_).--A
marvelous view of blinding and bewildering beauty. Above a milky sea of
cloud, flooded with morning light, the rolling waves of which are
beating up against the base of the wooded steeps of the Weissenstein,
the vast circle of the Alps soars to a sublime height. The eastern side
of the horizon is drowned in the splendors of the rising mists; but from
the Toedi westward, the whole chain floats pure and clear between the
milky plain and the pale blue sky. The giant assembly is sitting in
council above the valleys and the lakes still submerged in vapor. The
Clariden, the Spannoerter, the Titlis, then the Bernese _colossi_ from
the Wetterhorn to the Diablerets, then the peaks of Vaud, Valais, and
Fribourg, and beyond these high chains the two kings of the Alps, Mont
Blanc, of a pale pink, and the bluish point of Monte Rosa, peering out
through a cleft in the Doldenhorn--such is the composition of the great
snowy amphitheatre. The outline of the horizon takes all possible forms:
needles, ridges, battlements, pyramids, obelisks, teeth, fangs, pincers,
horns, cupolas; the mountain profile sinks, rises again, twists and
sharpens itself in a thousand ways, but always so as to maintain an
angular and serrated line.
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