You can trace the lines of
these cattle paths, running like threads all along the sides of the
mountains. We went in the same road that we had gone in the morning.
How different it seemed, in the soberness of this afternoon light,
from its aspect under the clear, crisp, sharp light of morning!
We pass again through the pine woods in the valley, and cross the
Arve; then up the mountain side to where a tiny cascade throws up its
feathery spray in a brilliant _jet d'eau_. Every body knows, even
in our sober New England, that mountain brooks are a frisky,
indiscreet set, rattling, chattering, and capering in defiance of all
law and order, tumbling over precipices, and picking themselves up at
the bottom, no whit wiser or more disposed to be tranquil than they
were at the top; in fact, seeming to grow more mad and frolicsome with
every leap. Well, that is just the way brooks do here in the Alps, and
the people, taking advantage of it, have built a little shanty, where
they show up the capers of this child of the mountain, as if he
tumbled for their special profit. Here, of course, in the shanty are
the agates, and the carved work, and so forth, and so on, and you must
buy something for a souvenir.
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