Algernon Blackwood

“ The life of this lake, I always think, increases as it leaves Geneva and sweeps round towards the mountains and the entrance to the Rhone Valiey. The town itself, scorched in summer, and desolated in winter by the icy bise noire that sucks down through the trough of the long curve from Lausanne, cutting like broken glass, presents itself to my imagination as the point where the Rhone escapes only too gladly. Even the seabirds prefer the Chillon end. The trees themselves grow more vital and independent towards the eastern tip ”

“ For the Valais Alps that tower beyond the southern shores, facing the strip from Lausanne to Villeneuve, drop into the lake dark images of themselves that stretch halfway across and readily conjure to an imaginative mind the picture of death waiting inevitably in the depths of all things. ”

“ The suggestiveness of sudden contrast must always be a quickener to the inner life⁠—that sharp little spur forward it gives to the imagination⁠—and to descend from a sojourn of months among the frozen immobilities of the high Alps, and catch a great bit of the world’s surface in dancing motion, gave me a sensation the other day that was keen enough to be properly described as a “shock.” ”