Wonderful
to relate, in the very same hour, almost the same minute, the principal
tower of Nideck fell, and was washed away by the waterfall below.
"Such is the end of the most ancient monument known of Merovingian
architecture, of which Schlosser, the historian, says," etc., etc.
THE QUEEN OF THE BEES.
"As you go from Motiers-Navers to Boudry, on your way to Neufchatel," said
the young professor of botany, "you follow a road between two walls of
rocks of immense height; they reach a perpendicular elevation of five or
six hundred feet, and are hung with wild plants, the mountain basil
(thymus alpinus), ferus (polypodium), the whortleberry (vitis idoea),
ground ivy, and other climbing plants producing a wonderful effect.
"The road winds along this defile; it rises, falls, turns, sometimes
tolerably level, sometimes broken and abrupt, according to the thousand
irregularities of the ground. Grey rocks almost meet in an arch overhead,
others stand wide apart, leaving the distant blue visible, and
discovering sombre and melancholy-looking depths, and rows of firs
as far as the eye could reach.
"The Reuss flows along the bottom, sometimes leaping along in waterfalls,
then creeping through thickets, or steaming, foaming, and thundering over
precipices, while the echoes prolong the tumult and roar of its torrents
in one immense endless hum.
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