a sort of high platform that you see the mountains so. With all other
hills that I remember it is best to have them burst suddenly upon you
from the top of some pass lifted high above the level and coming, let us
say, to a height half their own. Certainly the Bernese Oberland is more
wonderful caught in one moment from the Jura than introduced in any
other way, and the snows on Atlas over the desert seem like part of the
sky when they come upon one after climbing the red rocks of the high
plateaux and you see them shining over the salt marshes. The Vosges you
cannot thus see from a half-height; there is no platform, and that is
perhaps why the Vosges have not impressed travellers as they should. But
you can so watch the grand chain of old volcanoes which are the rampart
of Auvergne. You can stand upon the high wooden ridge of Foreze and see
them take the morning across the mists and the flat of the Limagne,
where the Gauls fought Caesar. Further south from the high table of the
Velay you can see the steep backward escarpment of the Cevennes, inky
blue, desperately blue, blue like nothing else on earth except the
mountains in those painters of North Italy, of the parts north and east
of Venice, the name of whose school escapes me--or, rather, I never knew
it.

Now, as for towns that live in a hollow, it is great fun to come upon
them from above. They are not used to being thus taken at a disadvantage
and they are both surprised and surprising. There are many towns in
holes and trenches of Europe which you can thus play "peep-bo" with if
you will come at them walking. By train they will mean nothing to you.
You will probably come upon them out of a long, shrieking tunnel, and by
the high road they mean little more, for the high road will follow the
vale. But if you come upon them from over their guardian cliffs and
scars you catch them unawares, and this is a good way of approaching
them, for you master them, as it were, and spy them out before you enter