A large manufactory of electrotype plate, modelled on those of England, notably the Elkington ware, has been founded here within recent years, and is very flourishing, exporting on a vast scale to remote countries. There is a manufactory of electric clocks, also of recent date. All day long, therefore, the solemn silence of these mountains is broken by the noise of mill-wheels and rushing waters, and if it is the manufactories that feed the people, it is the rivers that feed the manufactories. The Jura, indeed, may be said to depend on its running streams and rivers for its wealth, each and all a Pactolus in its way, flowing over sands of gold. Nowhere has water power been turned to better account than at Morez, where a very Ariel, it is forced by that all-omnipotent Prospero man, the machine-maker, to do his behests, here turning a wheel, there flowing into the channels prepared for it, and on every side dispensing riches and civilization.
Delightful and refreshing it is to get beyond reach of these never-resting mill-wheels, and follow the mountain-torrent and the rushing streams to their home, where they are at liberty and untamed. Innumerable delicious haunts are to be found in the neighbourhood of Morez, also exhilarating panoramas of the Jura and Switzerland from the mountain-tops. There is nothing to be called agriculture, for in our gradual ascent we have alternately left behind us the vine, corn, maize, walnuts and other fruit trees, reaching the zone of the gentian, the box-tree, the larch, and the pine. These apparently arid limestone slopes and summits, however, have velvety patches here and there, and such scattered pastures are a source of almost incredible wealth. The famous Jura cheese, Gruyère so called, is made in the isolated chalets perched on the crest of a ravine, and nestled in the heart of a valley, which for the seven winter months are abandoned, and throughout the other five swarm like bee-hives with industrious workers. As soon as the snow melts, the peasants return to the mountains, but in winter all is silent, solitary, and enveloped in an impenetrable veil of snow. The very high-roads are imperceptible then, and the village sacristan rings the church bells in order to guide the belated traveller to his home.