The verdant meadows of Noville, Aigle and Bex. spread for
leagues between these snow-capped barriers, so dwindled to the eye,
however, that the spectator believed that to be a mere bottom, which was,
in truth, a broad and fertile plain. Beyond these again, came the
celebrated pass of St. Maurice, where the foaming Rhone dashed between two
abutments of rock, as if anxious to effect its exit before the
superincumbent mountains could come together, and shut it out for ever
from the inviting basin to which it was hurrying with a never-ceasing din.
Behind this gorge, so celebrated as the key of the Valais, and even of the
Alps in the time of the conquerors of the world, the back-ground took a
character of holy mystery. The shades of evening lay thick in that
enormous glen, which was sufficiently large to contain a sovereign state,
and the dark piles of mountains beyond were seen in a hazy, confused
array. The setting was a grey boundary of rocks, on which fleecy clouds
rested, as if tired with their long and high flight, and on which the
parting day still lingered soft and lucid.
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