were surrounded. The sunset had now fairly passed, and the travellers were
at the witching moment that precedes the final disappearance of the day. A
calm so deep rested on the limpid lake, that it was not easy to
distinguish the line which separated the two elements, in those places
where the blue of the land was confounded with the well-known and peculiar
color of the Leman.

The precise position of the Winkelried was near mid-way between the shores
of Vaud and those of Savoy, though nearer to the first than to the last.
Not another sail was visible on the whole of the watery expanse, with the
exception of one that hung lazily from its yard, in a small bark that was
pulling towards St. Gingoulph, bearing Savoyards returning to their homes
from the other side of the lake, and which, in that delusive landscape,
appeared to the eye to be within a stone's throw of the base of the
mountain, though, in truth, still a weary row from the land.

Nature has spread her work on a scale so magnificent in this sublime
region that ocular deceptions of this character abound, and it requires
time and practice to judge of those measurements which have been rendered
familiar in other scenes. In like manner to the bark under the rocks of
Savoy, there lay another, a heavy-moulded boat, nearly in a line with
Villeneuve, which seemed to float in the air instead of its proper
element, and whose oars were seen to rise and fall beneath a high mound,
that was rendered shapeless by refraction. This was a craft, bearing hay
from the meadows at the mouth of the Rhone to their proprietors in the
villages of the Swiss coast. A few light boats were pulling about in
front of the town of Vévey, and a forest of low masts and latine yards,
seen in the hundred picturesque attitudes peculiar to the rig, crowded the
wild anchorage that is termed its port.