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At no great distance from the small village of Chillón stands the château, an ancient
and respectable building, situated on a rock in the lake, constructed in 1238 by Amadeus
IV. count of Savoy. This castle, for a length of time, served as a place of
strength, or fortress, to the descendents of that illustrious house ; but, since the reduction
of the Pays-de-Vaud, it became the residence of the bailiff of Vevay, until the
removal of the bailiwic to the to\vn itself, when it was used as a magazine for the
republic, and latterly as a state-prison. Such have been the various changes of a fabric,
the ancient and majestic appearance of which so exactly corresponds with the wild
romantic beauties of the surrounding country, as to have been chosen by Rousseau for
the fatal catastrophe of the heroine of his novel, it being when on a visit at this castle
that she fell into the lake, to rescue her son from the watery grave 5 which accident was
soon after the cause of her death,—so that it is impossible to view this spot without
recollecting every circumstance of that pathetic tale.
Having left Chilion, I proceeded to Villeneuve, situate at the extremity of the lake,
about a mile and a half from the château.
O B S E R V A T I O N S
FORMATION OF MOUNTAINS IN GENERAL ;
THOSE WHICH SCREEN THE LAKE OF GENEVA ;
WITH THEIR CONSEQUENCES,
IMPRESSED with a conviction of the extreme difficulty whi ch must attend the deduction
of any thing in the form of a system, from inspecting or examining those effects or
consequences which now present themselves to our view in the great and stupendous
features of Nature, and of ascertaining the various revolutions which the earth has
undergone, from its first great shock, or convulsion, through sundry subsequent periods
to the present, I venture, with extreme diffidence, to hazard my sentiments or conjectures
on the causes which appear to me most likely to have operated in producing, in
most of the mountains and hills which constitute the Alps (though more particularly
those which environ the Lake of Geneva), that difference in their direction and structure,
as well as abruptness in their strata, which is at present so conspicuous. It
is with no less diffidence that I shall annex some notice relative to the formation of the
beds of sand-stone, in many places intermixed with others of pebbles, sand, and sometimes
wi th a species of calcareous pudding-stone, gypsum, lithanthrax, or fossil-coal, 8:c.
and, in fine, my ideas on the origin of the lake, the valleys which terminate contiguous
to it, and the great revolutions doubtless experienced in that part of the Alps prior to
the formation of this extensive and noble basin. Yet before I dare propose my conjectures
on such difficult and important subjects to geology, it may be necessary to
observe, that the present work, as well as jny former publications, being simple narratives,
or local descriptions, to which I have subjoined reflexions or observations spontaneously
occasioned by the curious state of the places which I visited, I have avoided,
as much as possible, long and tedious details on geology and lithology, reserving to
;
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