Down it by a
kind of gully that led through to a place where the limestone cliffs
were broken, and (so my map told me) to the town of Soleure, which
stands at the edge of the plain upon the river Aar.
I was an hour or more going down the enormous face of the Jura, which
is here an escarpment, a cliff of great height, and contains but few
such breaks by which men can pick their way. It was when I was about
half-way down the mountain side that its vastness most impressed me.
And yet it had been but a platform as it were, from which to view the
Alps and their much greater sublimity.
This vastness, even of these limestone mountains, took me especially
at a place where the path bordered a steep, or rather precipitous,
lift of white rock to which only here and there a tree could cling.
I was still very high up, but looking somewhat more eastward than
before, and the plain went on inimitably towards some low vague hills;
nor in that direction could any snow be seen in the sky. Then at last
I came to the slopes which make a little bank under the mountains, and
there, finding a highroad, and oppressed somewhat suddenly by the
afternoon heat of those low places, I went on more slowly towards
Soleure.
