Susan Coolidge

A Round Dozen Susan Coolidge

I suppose that most boys and girls who go to school and study geography know, by sight at least, the little patch of pale pink which is marked on the map as "Switzerland." I suppose, too, that if I asked, "What can you tell me about Switzerland?" a great many of them would cry out, "It is a mountainous country, the Alps are there, Mont Blanc is there, the highest land in Europe." All this is true; but I wonder if all of those who know even so much have any idea what a beautiful country Switzerland is? Not only are the mountains very high and very grand, but the valleys which lie between are as green as emerald, and full of all sorts of wild flowers; there are lakes of the loveliest blue, rivers which foam and dash as merrily as rivers do in America, and the prettiest farmhouses in the world, -_châlets_ the Swiss call them, -with steep roofs and hanging balconies, and mottoes and quaint ornaments carved all over their fronts. And the most peculiar and marvellous thing of all is the strange nearness of the grass and herbage to the snows. High, high up in the foldings of the great mountains on whose tops winter sits all the year long, are lovely little valleys hidden away, where goats and sheep feed by the side of glacier-fed streams; and the air is full of the tinkle of their bells, and of the sweet smells of the mountain flowers. The water of these streams has an odd color which no other waters have, -a sort of milky blue-green, like an opal. Even on the hottest days a chilly air plays over their surface, the breath, as it were, of the great ice-fields above, from whose melting snows the streams are fed. And the higher you climb, still greener grow the pastures and thicker the blossoms, while the milk in the châlet pans seems half cream, it is so rich. Delicious milk it is, ice cold, and fragrant as if the animals which produce it had fed on flowers. Oh, Switzerland is a wonderful land indeed!