St. Moritz is the center of the valley of the Upper Engadine, which
extends to the length of eighteen or nineteen leagues, and which
scarcely possesses a thousand inhabitants. Almost all the men emigrate
to work for strangers, like their brothers, the mountaineers of Savoy
and Auvergne, and do not return till they have amassed a sufficient
fortune to allow them to build a little white house, with gilded
window frames, and to die quietly in the spot where they were born....
Historians tell us that the first inhabitants of the Upper Engadine were
Etruscans and Latins chased from Italy by the Gauls and Carthaginians,
and taking refuge in these hidden altitudes. After the fall of the
Empire, the inhabitants of the Engadine fell under the dominion of the
Franks and Lombards, then the Dukes of Swabia; but the blood never
mingled--the type remained Italian; black hair, the quick eye, the
mobile countenance, the expressive features, and the supple figure.


GENEVA[41]

BY FRANCIS H. GRIBBLE

Straddling the Rhone, where it issues from the bluest lake in the world,
looking out upon green meadows and wooded hills, backed by the dark
ridge of the Salève, with the "great white mountain" visible in the
distance, Geneva has the advantage of an incomparable site; and it
is, from a town surveyor's point of view, well built. It has wide
thoroughfares, quays, and bridges; gorgeous public monuments and
well-kept public gardens; handsome theaters and museums; long rows
of palatial hotels; flourishing suburbs; two railway-stations, and a
casino. But all this is merely the façade--all of it quite modern;