A few miles up the valley, Erwald called our attention to the entrance
of the cavern of Balme. It is a natural gallery in the rock and well
worth a visit. The valley now becomes more spacious; while its
boundaries increase in grandeur. The meadows, adorned with groves of
beech-trees, rise in gentle swells from the verge of the Arve, and
spread their green carpet, dotted with cottages and watered by
innumerable streams, to the base of the neighboring heights. At one of
these cottages we rested for the night. I never dreamed of a fairer
scene; it was too beautiful for sleep; the murmurings of the Arve were
the only sounds that broke upon the ear, while all around tremendous
precipices rose to heaven, shutting out from us the cares and tumults
of the busy world. To pay for my enthusiasm I arose with a headache
and a feeling of weariness that sensibly diminished the enjoyment of
the morning.

Leaving this enchanted spot, we passed the waterfall D'Orli, and a
few miles beyond we paused to admire the cataract of Arpenas. Its
height is estimated at eight hundred feet. The water rushes with
considerable volume over a tremendous precipice of dark and fantastic
rocks. At first it divides into separate streams that in their fall
resemble descending rockets, till at length, caught by the rocks
beneath, they meet and mingle in one mass of foam.

At the cataract we had an instance of that deception which is produced
to the eye by the magnitude of the objects which compose the scenery
of these Alpine regions. Viewed from the road the fall did not appear
by any means so considerable as it measurement determines; while at
its foot there was a little green hillock to the summit of which it
seemed a few steps would reach. To this hillock we determined to