St. Johnsbury Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1867-1919, 1879-10-17
Letters from Europe.

CHAMoUNY, Savoy, Sept. 13, 1879.
My Dear Sir During our three days
stay in Geneva we saw most of the
things that attract strangers, the city
itself, the 'arrowy, rushing Rhone,"-
as Byron terms it-which divides it in
to two parts, the confluence of the gray
Arve and blue Rhone and the flow of
their waters for long distance side by
side without apparent mingling, the
old house of John Calvin and the home
of Rosseau, and the parks, shops, and
public buildings which are more or less
alike in every city, but we were spec
tally interested in the markets. Here
berries, raspberries, blackberries, cher
ries, plums, pears, apples, peaches,
grapes, and every species of vegetables,
from radishes and green peas, to tur
nips, that Vermont garden produces.
Think of all that at once, and of the
difficulty of selection from such vari-
ETY.. We saw no blueberries in the
market, but they might have been
there, for we picked them to-day on
the Tete Noire pass. The rain which
we had here on Tuesday was snow
among the high alps, and nothing could
seem a purer white than Mont Blanc
from Geneva on Tuesday evening.
Yesterday we skirted the whole north
shore of Lake Geneva by boat. Pass
ing or calling at Fernex where lived
for many years VOltaire, and where he
erected church with the inscription
''Deo erexit Voltaire"-in which Latin
sentence, as in everything he wrote or
did, his name has the emphatic, chief
place and so herein lies its blasphemy,
I-COppet, the residence of Neckar
(after he left the cabinet of Louis xvi)
and his daughter, the brilliant Madame
De Stael, ,-Nyon, where Joseph Bona
parte had a chateau and near which
Prince jerome BOnaparte, almost the
only surviving member of that family
now has his home,-Rolle, the birth
place and resting place of the well
known Russian general, La Harpe,-
Lausanne, a beautiful city, where Cal
vim held disputations and Gibbon wrote
the last of his great Roman history
rendered famous,-Montreux, in the
midst of vineyards, figs and pomegran-
ates, and, having all the way had the
finest views of the shores and the Sa.
vOyard Alps, at last came to the cele
brated Castle of Chillon, immortalizet
! by Lord Byron, and the prison of NOR,
than one lover of liberty in the storm,
, days of the fifteenth and sixteenth cen
turles. Here we are shown the hall O
. Justice, the tOrture-rOOm with the pull
leys by which victims were drawn VI
J, by their thumbs, still remaining, an,
s the dungeons where prisoners wer
: chained to huge stone pillars, an,
s where Bonivard walked forth and bacl
! for six years till the solid stone Dor
5 his deep footprints. Escape hence wa
: hopeless, since the walls were man
feet in thickness and the waters of tn
i lake below were scores of fathoms deer
4 There is a wonderful fascination abou
; all this region. For the last three cen
a turies Geneva and these shores hav
: been the refuge of exiles, political an
!, . religious, from every other nation O
Europe here have been educated tn
young of every civilized race, and her
many an invalid has had his feeble
sluggish pulses quickened to new life.
An hour by rail up the valley of tn
Rhone brings us to Martigny for th
night. This morning we started earl
: for Chamouny. The way is an old br
die path improved and widened enoug
for narrow carriages built expressly fo
n this route. While not as high as sey
II eral besides, this Tete NOire pass
sleeper and rougher than any other W