ndermatt, the St. Gothard, and
the Lake of Lucerne. Hence three great roads now meet at Gletsch.
Before leaving this wondrous spot we inspected some plump marmots, who
were leading a happy life of ease and plenty in a large cage erected
in front of the hotel; then in absolutely perfect weather we mounted
the Grimsel road. We heard the frequent whistling of uncaged marmots
as we ascended, and saw many of the little beasts sitting up on the
rocks and diving into concealing crevices as we approached, just as do
their smaller but closely allied cousins the prairie marmots
(so-called "prairie dogs") of North America. The view, as one ascends
the Grimsel, of the snow-peaks around Gletsch is a fine one in itself,
but is vastly enhanced in beauty by the plunge downwards of the rocky
gorge made by the Rhone as it leaves the flat-bottomed amphitheatre of
its birth. The top of the Grimsel Pass, which is a little over 7,000
feet above sea-level, is the most desolate and bare of all such
mountain passes. The rock is dark grey, almost black, and of unusually
hard character. It is unstratified, and so resistant that it is
everywhere worn into smooth, rounded surfaces, instead of being
splintered and shattered. A small, black-looking lake at the top of
the pass contains to this day the bones of 500 Austrians and French
who fought here in 1799. It is called the Totensee, or Dead Men's
Lake. At this point one stands on a great watershed, dividing the
rivers of the north from the rivers of the south. You may put one foot
in a rivulet which is carrying water down the Aar Valley, and through
the Lakes of Brienz and of Thun to the Rhine and North Sea, whilst you
keep the other in another little stream, whose particles will pass by
the Rhone gorge and valley through the Lake of Geneva to the great
Rhone and the Mediterranean. Three incomparably fine days--September
17th, 18th, and 19th--atoned for three weeks of sunless cloud. One of
them we spent in the high valley of Rosenlaui, where are hairy-lipped
gentians and the blue-iced glacier, but of these I have not space to
tell. Then the clouds and the rain resumed their odious domination,
and we left Lucerne and its lakes invisible, overwhelmed in grey fog,
and made for Paris.

_October, 1910_

CHAPTER IV

THE PROBLEM OF THE GALLOPING HORSE

Until instantaneous photography was introduced, a little more than
twenty-five years ago (by the discovery of the means of increasing the
sen