Nathan Dole - The Spell of Switzerland

Deep as it seems – for a thousand feet of perpendicular water is in itself a somewhat awesome thought – still, in proportion to its surface-extent, the lake is shallow. Pour out a tumbler of water on a wooden chair and the comparative depth is greater.

Pure as it seems to be – and the beauty of its colour is a proof of it – the Rhône carries down from it to the sea a vast amount of organic matter and, as it drains a basin of eight thousand square kilometers, it is not strange that Geneva, which has used the lake-water for drinking purposes since 1715, has occasionally suffered from typhoid fever. In 1884 there were sixteen hundred and twenty-five cases; but, since the intake-pipes have been carried farther into deep water, the danger seems to have passed. Ancient writers supposed that the Rhône ran through Lake Leman without mixing its waters; they did not know that the lake is the Rhône.

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