Claude, and the amazing variety
of the surrounding scenery. Every turn we take of the upward curling
road gives us a new and more beautiful picture. The valley grows deeper
and deeper, the mountains on either side higher and higher, little
chalets peeping amid the grey and the green, here perched on an
apparently unapproachable mountain-top, there in the inmost recess of
some rocky dell. As we get near the falls, we are reaching one of the
most romantic points of view in all the Jura, and one of the most
striking I have ever seen, so imposingly do the mountains close around
us as we enter the gorge, so lovely the scene shut in by the
impenetrable natural wall; for within the framework of rock, peak, and
precipice are little farms, gardens, and orchards--gems of dazzling
green bathed in ripest sunshine, pine-forests frowning close above these
islets of luxuriance and cultivation, dells, glades, and open, lawny
spaces between the ramparts of fantastically formed crags and solitary
peaks, a scene recalling Kabylia, in the Atlas mountains, but unlike
anything except itself. All was still, except for the roar of the tiny
river and the occasional sound of timber sliding from some mountain
slope into the valley below.
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