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the Lake of Geneva to Cluse. La Roche
was formerly fortified, but was surprised
and taken by the Genevese in 1590, and a
great slaughter of the inhabitants followed.
The Genevese defaced the emblems of the
Catholic faith in the churclies, and returned
laden with pillage, to offer thanks for the
pious work they had been enabled to perform.
The appearance of Bonneville is
imposing on approaching it from La Boche;
it seems a city of considerable consequence,
in the midst of a wide cultivated plain,
bounded by lofty mountains. Bonneville
contains about 1000 inhabitants. It is
much better built than most of the towns
of Savoy ; the market-place and main street
are very broad, and the houses in the environs
are surrounded by gardens and plantations
of poplars, and other trees.
I visited the quarries of micaceous sandstone,
near Bonneville, in which are sometimes
found vegetable impressions, more or
less carbonized. These strata, though they
have been considered as parasitical, are
evidently subordinate to the great calcareous
formations in this part of Savoy. The
mountains in the whole of this valley, as
far as St. Martin, are calcareous, with subordinate
beds of sandstone and soft schist.
They every where present indications of a
stratification, which has undergone extraordinary
disturbances, here vertical, there
curved, or dipping to opposite sides of the
compass, in the same mountain. In another
part, the strata are nearly horizontal,
or dip very gently. The range or direction
of the strata is also variable. There is
another circumstance which has been but
little attended to, that greatly increases the
apparent irregularity of the strata, and by
an optical illusion presents them sometimes
as in a state of extraordinary confusion ;
for according as the escarpements and ravines
in these mountains, cut the curved
stratification irregularly in different directions,
either approaching the line of dip,
or the line of bearing, the strata appear
twisted in almost every direction, when in
reality they are segments of one curve.
Added to the above, the cleavages on a
large scale are often as regular as the strata
themselves, and can scarcely be distinguished
from them ; and as these cleavages
intersect the strata nearly at right angles,
this has also led to many erroneous conclusions,
respecting the stratification o fth e
V O L . I .
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