"SamuelButler-CambridgePieces" - читать интересную книгу автора (Butler Samuel)

a long tunnel, very long--I fancy there must be high hills above it;
for I remember that some few years ago when I was travelling up from
Marseilles to Paris in midwinter, all the way from Avignon (between
which place and Chalon the railway was not completed), there had
been a dense frozen fog; on neither hand could anything beyond the
road be descried, while every bush and tree was coated with a thick
and steadily increasing fringe of silver hoar-frost, for the night
and day, and half-day that it took us to reach this tunnel, all was
the same--bitter cold dense fog and ever silently increasing hoar-
frost: but on emerging from it, the whole scene was completely
changed; the air was clear, the sun shining brightly, no hoar-frost
and only a few patches of fast melting snow, everything in fact
betokening a thaw of some days' duration. Another thing I know
about this tunnel which makes me regard it with veneration as a
boundary line in countries, namely, that on every high ground after
this tunnel on clear days Mont Blanc may be seen. True, it is only
very rarely seen, but I have known those who have seen it; and
accordingly touch my companion on the side, and say, "We are within
sight of the Alps"; a few miles farther on and we are at Dijon. It
is still very early morning, I think about three o'clock, but we
feel as if we were already at the Alps, and keep looking anxiously
out for them, though we well know that it is a moral impossibility
that we should see them for some hours at the least. Indian corn
comes in after Dijon; the oleanders begin to come out of their tubs;
the peach trees, apricots, and nectarines unnail themselves from the
walls, and stand alone in the open fields. The vineyards are still
scrubby, but the practised eye readily detects with each hour some
slight token that we are nearer the sun than we were, or, at any
rate, farther from the North Pole. We don't stay long at Dijon nor
at Chalon, at Lyons we have an hour to wait; breakfast off a basin
of cafe au lait and a huge hunch of bread, get a miserable wash,
compared with which the spittoons of the Diners de Paris were
luxurious, and return in time to proceed to St. Rambert, whence the
railroad branches off to Grenoble. It is very beautiful between
Lyons and St. Rambert. The mulberry trees show the silkworm to be a
denizen of the country, while the fields are dazzlingly brilliant
with poppies and salvias; on the other side of the Rhone rise high
cloud-capped hills, but towards the Alps we strain our eyes in vain.

At St. Rambert the railroad to Grenoble branches off at right angles
to the main line, it was then only complete as far as Rives, now it
is continued the whole way to Grenoble; by which the reader will
save some two or three hours, but miss a beautiful ride from Rives
to Grenoble by the road. The valley bears the name of Gresivaudan.
It is very rich and luxuriant, the vineyards are more Italian, the
fig trees larger than we have yet seen them, patches of snow whiten
the higher hills, and we feel that we are at last indeed among the
outskirts of the Alps themselves. I am told that we should have
stayed at Voreppe, seen the Grande Chartreuse (for which see
Murray), and then gone on to Grenoble, but we were pressed for time