I made a little voyage round the lake, and touched on the several towns that lie on its coasts; which took up near five days, though the wind was pretty fair for us all the while.

The right side of the lake from Geneva belongs to the duke of Savoy, and is extremely well cultivated. The greatest entertainment we found in coasting it were the several prospects of woods, vineyards, meadows, and corn fields, which lie on the borders of it, and run up all the sides of the Alps, where the barrenness of the rocks or the steepness of the ascent will suffer them. The wine, however, on this side of the lake is by no means so good as that on the other, as it has not so open a soil, and is less exposed to the sun. We here passed by Yvoire, where the duke keeps his galleys, and lodged at Tonon, which is the greatest town on the lake belonging to the Savoyard. It has four convents, and, they say, about six or seven thousand inhabitants. The lake is here about twelve miles in breadth. At a little distance from Tonon stands Ripaille, where is a convent of Carthusians. They have a large forest cut out into walks, that are extremely thick and gloomy, and very suitable to the genius of the inhabitants. There are vistas in it of a great length, that terminate upon the lake. At one side of the walks you have a near prospect of the Alps, which are broken into so many steps and precipices, that they fill the mind with an agreeable kind of horror, and form one of the most irregular misshapen scenes in the world. The house that is now in the hands of the Carthusians belonged formerly to the hermits of St. Maurice, and is famous in history for the retreat of an antipope, who called himself Felix the fifth. He had been duke of

Savoy, and, after a very glorious reign, took on him the habit of a hermit, and retired into this solitary spot of his dominions. His enemies will have it that he lived here in great ease and luxury, from whence the Italians to this day make use of the proverb, Andare a Ripaglia, and the French, Faire Ripaille, to express a delightful kind of life. They say, too, that he had great managements with several ecclesiastics before he turned hermit, and that he did it in the view of being advanced to the pontificate. However it was, he had not been here half a year before he was chosen pope by the council of Basil, who took upon them to depose Eugenio the fourth. This promised fair at first: but by the death of the emperor, who favoured Amadeo, and the resolution of Eugenio, the greatest part of the church threw itself under the government of their deposed head. Our antipope, however, was still supported by the council of Basil, and owned by Savoy, Switzerland, and a few other little states. This schism lasted in the church nine years, after which Felix voluntarily resigned his title into the hands of pope Nicholas the fifth, but on the following conditions: that Amadeo should be the first cardinal in the conclave; that the pope should always receive him standing, and offer him his mouth to kiss; that he should be perpetual cardinal-legate in the states of Savoy and Switzerland, and in the archbishoprics of Geneva, Sion, Bresse, etc. And lastly, that all the cardinals of his creation should be recognised by the pope. After he had made a peace so acceptable to the church, and so honourable to himself, he spent the remainder of his life with great devotion at Ripaille, and died with an extraordinary reputation of sanctity.

At Tonon they showed us a fountain of water that is in great esteem for its wholesomeness. They say it weighs two ounces in a pound less than the same measure of the lake water, notwithstanding this last is very good to drink, and as clear as can be imagined. A little above Tonon is a castle and small garrison. The next day we saw other small towns on the coast of Savoy, where there is nothing but misery and poverty. The nearer you come to the end of the lake, the mountains on each side grow thicker and higher, till at last they almost meet. One often sees on the tops of the mountains several sharp rocks that stand above the rest; for as these mountains have been doubtless much higher than they are at present, the rains have washed away abundance of the soil, that has left the veins of stone shooting out of them; as in a decayed body the flesh is still shrinking from the bones. The natural histories of Switzerland talk very much of the fall of these rocks, and the great damage they have sometimes done, when their foundations have been mouldered with age, or rent by an earthquake. We saw in several parts of the Alps that bordered upon us, vast pits of snow, as several mountains that lie at a greater distance are wholly covered with it. I fancied the confusion of mountains and hollows, I here observed, furnished me with a more probable reason than any I have met with for those periodical fountains in Switzerland, which flow only at such particular hours of the day. For as the tops of these mountains cast their shadows upon one another, they hinder the sun's shining on several parts at such certain times, so that there are several heaps of snow which have the sun lying upon them two or three hours together, and are in the shade all the

One

day afterwards. If, therefore, it happens that any particular fountain takes its rise from any of these reservoirs of snow, it will naturally begin to flow on such hours of the day as the snow begins to melt: but as soon as the sun leaves it again to freeze and harden, the fountain dries up, and receives no more supplies till about the same time the next day, when the heat of the sun again sets the snows a running that fall into the same little conduits, traces, and canals, and by consequence break out and discover themselves always in the same place. At the very extremity of the lake the Rhone enters, and, when I saw it, brought along with it a prodigious quantity of water; the rivers and lakes of this country being much higher in summer than in winter, by reason of the melting of the snows. would wonder how so many learned men could fall into so great an absurdity, as to believe this river could preserve itself unmixed with the lake till its going out again at Geneva, which is a course of many miles. It was extremely muddy at its entrance when I saw it, though as clear as rock water at its going out. Besides that, it brought in much more water than it carried off. The river, indeed, preserves itself for about a quarter of a mile in the lake, but is afterwards so wholly mixed, and lost with the waters of the lake, that one discovers nothing like a stream till within about a quarter of a mile of Geneva. From the end of the lake to the source of the Rhone is a valley of about four days' journey in length, which gives the name of Vallesins to its inhabitants, and is the dominion of the bishop of Sion. We lodged the second night at Ville Neuve, a little town in the canton of Berne, where we found good accommodations, and a much greater

appearance of plenty than on the other side of the lake. The next day, having passed by the castle of Chillon, we came to Versoy, another town in the canton of Berne, where Ludlow retired after having left Geneva and Lausanne. The magistrates of the town warned him out of the first by the solicitation of the duchess of Orleans, as the death of his friend Lisle made him quit the other. He probably chose this retreat as a place of the greatest safety, it being an easy matter to know what strangers are in the town, by reason of its situation. The house he lived in has this inscription over the door:

Omne solum forti patria
quia patris.

The first part is a piece of a verse in Ovid, as the last is a cant of his own. He is buried in the best of the churches, with the following epitaph:

SISTE GRADUM ET RESPICE

Hic jacet Edmond Ludlow Anglus Natione, Provincia Wiltoniensis, filius Henrici Equestris Ordinis, Senatorisque Parliamenti, cujus quoque fuit ipse membrum, Patrum stemmate clarus et nobilis, virtute propriâ nobilior, religione protestans et insigni pietate coruscus, ætatis Anno 23. Tribunus Militum, paulo post exercitus prætor primarius. Tunc Hibernorum domitor, in pugnâ intrepidus et vitæ prodigus, in victoriâ clemens et mansuetus, patriæ libertatis defensor, et potestatis arbitrariæ propugnator acerrimus; cujus causâ ab eâdem patriâ 32 annis extorris, meliorique fortuna dignus apud Helvetios se recepit ibique ætatis Anno 73. Moriens sui desiderium relinquens sedes æternas lætus advolavit.

Hocce Monumentum, in perpetuam veræ et sinceræ pietatis erga Maritum defunctum memoriam, dicat et vovet Domina Elizabeth de Thomas, ejus strenua et mæstissima, tam in infortuniis quam in matrimonio consors dilectissima, quæ animi magnitudine et vi amoris conjugalis mota eum in exilium ad obitum usque constanter secuta est Anno Dom. 1693.