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Gratified with exploring this extraordinary place, I by no means regretted the time
and trouble I had now bestowed on it, since the day yet sufficed to reach Geneva. I
therefore made the best of my way to Vanchi.
As soon as I had left this village, which is about eight miles from the fort of Cluse,
1 began, imperceptibly, to turn the head of the Jura, leaving the mountains of Credo
behind. But here the valley contracts so considerably, that in several places there is
scarcely room for the course of the Rhône j and the road, which is better than could be
expected, is oftentimes cut in the main rock.
I then proceeded through the romantic little villages of Grezin, Lia, and Lougaretta,
rendered particularly picturesque by their situation, being seated at the very
foot of the Jura, and on the banks of the Rhône, where its impetuous waters fall, with
tremendous noise, into "a frightful abyss which they have formed contiguous to those
villages.
At Lougaretta I first began to discover clearly the abrupt spiry head of the Jura, and
the direction of its strata, which are there nearly perpendicular to the horizon. This singularity
is observable in this long range of mountains, as far as to the neighbourhood
of Co longe, a village three miles beyond Ecluse ; and they likewise stretch to those of
the head of the Vouaches, another chain of mountains which skirt the left banks of the
Rhône, and which have a similar direction in their strata, also the same thickness, and
fossils like those contained in the Jura. AVhat adds very greatly to the above singularity
is, that these may be considered as almost the only places in this vast range where
the strata exhibit that abruptness and direction, being every-where else nearly parallel
to the horizon : besides, several of the mountains belonging to these chains have in
many parts an extreme acclivity, which extends almost to their summit.
This analogy and similarity of direction, still more conspicuous in those which screen
the defile of Cluse, have at all times excited my curiosity, and led me to believe that they
originally formed one and the same chain, it having invariably appeared to me that it
really was so. I also conceive that the effect of separation has been produced by some
sudden convulsion of the earth in that part of the secondary chain of the Alps (most
probably at a time less distant than appears at first), of which the violence and extent
was such as to entirely sever those mountains from top to bottom which now border
the defile, and, if so, naturally caused the cavities and irregularities at present exhi
bited in their strata. Tliese cavities have doubtless been since increased by the current