There is a manufactory of electric clocks, also of recent date. All day
long, therefore, the solemn silence of these mountains is broken by the
noise of mill-wheels and rushing waters, and if it is the manufactories
that feed the people, it is the rivers that feed the manufactories. The
Jura, indeed, may be said to depend on its running streams and rivers
for its wealth, each and all a Pactolus in its way, flowing over sands
of gold. Nowhere has water power been turned to better account than at
Morez, where a very Ariel, it is forced by that all-omnipotent Prospero
man, the machine-maker, to do his behests, here turning a wheel, there
flowing into the channels prepared for it, and on every side dispensing
riches and civilization.
Delightful and refreshing it is to get beyond reach of these
never-resting mill-wheels, and follow the mountain-torrent and the
rushing streams to their home, where they are at liberty and untamed.
Innumerable delicious haunts are to be found in the neighbourhood of
Morez, also exhilarating panoramas of the Jura and Switzerland from the
mountain-tops. There is nothing to be called agriculture, for in our
gradual ascent we have alternately left behind us the vine, corn, maize,
walnuts and other fruit trees, reaching the zone of the gentian, the
box-tree, the larch, and the pine.
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