’Here, where the majestic Mount Gothard elevates its summit above the clouds, and where the earth itself seems to approach the sun, Nature has assembled in one spot all the choicest treasure of the globe.  The deserts of Libya, indeed, afford us greater novelties, and its sandy plains are more fertile in monsters:  but thou, favoured region, art adorned with useful productions only, productions which can satisfy all the wants of man.  Even those heaps of ice, those frowning rocks in appearance so sterile, contribute largely to the general good, for they supply inexhaustible fountains to fertilize the land.  What a magnificent picture does Nature spread before the eye, when the sun, gilding the top of the Alps, scatters the sea of vapours which undulates below!  Through the receding vale the theatre of a whole world rises to the view!  Rocks, valleys, lakes, mountains, and forests fill the immeasurable space, and are lost in the wide horizon.  We take in at a single glance the confines of divers states, nations of various characters, languages, and manners, till the eyes, overcome by such extent of vision, drop their weary lids, and we ask of the enchanted fancy a continuance of the scene.

’When the first emotion of astonishment has subsided, how delightful is it to observe each several part which makes up this sublime whole!  That mass of hills, which presents its graceful declivity covered with flocks of sheep whose bleatings resound through the meadows; that large clear lake, which reflects from its level surface sunbeams gently curved; those valleys, rich in verdure, which compose by their various outlines points of perspective which contract in the distance of the landscape!  Here rises a bare steep mountain laden with the accumulated snow of ages; its icy head rests among the clouds, repelling the genial rays of the moon and the fervid heat of the dog-star:  there a chain of cultivated hills spreads before the delighted eye; their green pastures are enlivened by flocks, and their golden corn waves in the wind:  yet climates so different as those are only separated by a cool, narrow valley.  Behold that foaming torrent rushing from a perpendicular height!  Its rapid waves dash among the rocks, and shoot even beyond their limits.  Divided by the rapidity of its course and the depth of the abyss where it falls, it changes into a grey moving veil; and, at length scattered into humid atoms, it shines with the tints of the rainbow, and, suspended over the valley, refreshes it with plenteous dew.  The traveller beholds with astonishment rivers flowing towards the sky, and issuing from one cloud, hide themselves in the grey veil of another.

’Those desert places uncheered by the rays of the sun, those frozen abysses deprived of all verdure, hide beneath their sterile sands invaluable treasures, which defy the rigour of the seasons and all the injuries of time!  ’Tis in dark and marshy recesses, upon the damp grottos, that crystal rocks are formed.  Thus splendour is diffused through their melancholy vaults, and their shadowy depths gutter with the colours of the rainbow.  O Nature, how various are thy operations, how infinite thy fertility!’