the village rose the black mountains, white at the top with their snows.

[Illustration: _The Wine-press_]

In the cafés and other public places there were placards advertising
American wine-presses, but I saw none of them in use. At a farm-house
near us we looked on at the use of one of the old-fashioned Swiss
presses. Under it lay a mighty cake of grapes, stems, and skins, crushed
into a common mass, and bulging farther beyond the press with each turn
of the screw, while the juice ran in a little rivulet into a tub below.
When the press was lifted, the grapes were seen only half crushed. Two
peasants then mounted the cake, and trimmed it into shape with
long-handled spades, piling the trimmings on top, and then bringing the
press down again. They invited us with charming politeness to taste the
juice, but their heavy boots bore evidence of too recent a visit to the
cherished manure heap, and we thanked them with equal courtesy.

This grape cake, when it had yielded up its last drop, would be broken
to pieces and scattered over the fields as a fertilizer. The juice would
meanwhile have been placed to ferment in the tuns, twelve and thirteen
feet deep, which lay in the adjoining cellar.

For weeks after the vintage people were drinking the new wine, which
looked thick and whitish in the glasses, at all the cafés. It seemed to
be thought a dainty beverage, but our scruples against it remained, and
I cannot say what its effect upon the drinkers might be. Perhaps it had
properties as a "sweet, oblivious antidote" which rendered necessary the
placard we saw in the café of the little Hôtel Chillon:

"Die Rose blüht,