precipices, with foaming torrents dashing down their sides, and dizzy
heights, which I should be sorry any of my little friends were looking
down. But these are delightfully intermixed with beautiful valleys,
adorned with groves of fir, beech, and chestnut trees; clear lakes,
rapid rivers, cataracts, and bridges of one arch reaching an immense
distance from rock to rock. Portions of the mountains are covered with
villages and scattered cottages; and the inside of the dwellings are
so neat and look so comfortable, that you could almost wish to live in
one of them, if you were not told that there is a perpetual danger of
their being buried under one of the enormous masses of snow that
frequently roll from the tops of the mountains, and destroy everything
in their way. These masses are called Avalanches.

Between the summits of the highest of the mountains are valleys of
ice, frozen into many fantastic shapes, formed by one crust of ice
growing hard over another; but what is more extraordinary, is that the
borders of these glaciers, as they are called, are fertile:
strawberries, wild cherries, nuts, barberries, and mulberries, grow
there; and goats browse on the most inaccessible parts of the rocks,
and bound with the most surprising agility from one cliff to another.

[Illustration]

Several contributions have been sent by the Prussians and Austrians;
woollens, minerals, linens, china, and other things.

The Prussians are a very polite and well-educated people, and nowhere
are there more schools than in their country.

Prussia itself is an extremely pleasant place, and the towns are fine,