Note 39 — (First Pilgrimage.) (continued 4)

It is surprising that the author of the “Voyage Pittoresque en Suisse,” and even Dr. Ebell, should have been led into the monstrous error of imagining that the torrent of the Tamina had, in the course of ages, hollowed out of the marble rock this profound bed for itself. We might just as well suppose, that the bed of the Mediterranean had been scooped out by the waters of the Hellespont, in their way from the Black Sea to the Atlantic. The mountain was rent by some convulsion of Nature, and apparently from below upwards, as the breadth, at the bed of the Tamina, is far broader than the external crevice above.