An omnibus bears you from Ouchy, which is simply the port of Lausanne, back into the city, past pretty country residences, walled in, over the gates of which the owners have placed suggestive names: "My Rest;" "Heart's Desire;" "Good Luck;" "Beautiful Situation;" anything which fancy or individual taste may dictate. Of Lausanne I recall little but an endless mounting and descending of stairs. The city is built upon a hill, intersected by ravines, which accounts for this peculiar method of gaining many streets from others above and below. We made but a hurried visit. It was market day, and ugly women, old and young, were sitting upon the sidewalks in the narrow streets, knitting, with the yarn held over the fore-finger of the left hand, and selling fruits and vegetables between times. In the honey market the air fairly buzzed and swarmed; yet still these women knit, and gossiped, and bargained complacently, unmindful of the bees in their bonnets. From Ouchy we made an excursion to the head of the lake. It is a short voyage of two hours to Villeneuve, the last town. Clouds hid the distant mountains; but those lesser and nearer, upon our right, as we went on, were bare, and broken, and rocky, contrasting strangely with the gently swelling slopes upon the other side, covered with vineyards, and with quiet little villages at their feet. Each of these villages has its romantic association; or, failing in that, a grand hotel to attract summer visitors. Vevay boasts the largest hotel, but nothing more. Just beyond Vevay is "Clarens, sweet Clarens," the willows of which dip into the lake. Here, if Rousseau and Byron are to be believed, Love was born; possibly in some one of the mean little houses which border the narrow streets.
Soon after leaving Clarens, the gray, stained tower of Chillon rises from the water, near enough to the shore to be reached by a bridge. With the "little isle" and its three tall trees marked by the prisoner as he paced his lonely cell, ends the romance of the lake. Poets have sung its beauties, but Lucerne had stolen away our hearts, and we gazed upon the rocks, and vineyards, and villages, with cold, critical eyes. It was only later, when the summer twilight fell as we lingered upon the balcony before our windows at Ouchy that we acknowledged its charm. The witching sound of music came up from the garden below. Upon the silver lake before us, the lateen sails, like the white wings of great sea-birds, gleamed out from the darkness; the tiny wavelets rippled and plashed softly against the breakwater; and where the clouds had parted overhead, a horned moon hung low in the sky, while the mountains resolved themselves into shadows or other waiting clouds.