The source of the Rhone is fitting for such a mighty waterway. It begins life as a torrent that pours from the foot of the great Rhone Glacier, 5909 feet above sea-level. It is now ascertained that it is the glacier itself from under which it emerges which gives birth to the river, and not the warm springs which issue from the ground at the point formerly reached by the glacier. Very early on its course another glacier-fed torrent adds its waters to the Rhone, which foams and rages through a gorge of typical Alpine grandeur. The exuberance of its youth is maintained by the torrents that feed its adolescent stages. It falls more than 3600 feet in less than thirty miles from its source, joined at frequent intervals by companions born of ice and snow, such as the Eginen, the Binna, and the Massa, a child of the Aletsch Glaciers. Below Brieg comes the Saltine, and then follows a quiet stretch, when the growing river passes through a stretch of alluvium--a dull period, a first governess, as it were, to a high-spirited youth--where floods are frequent. Below the old town of St. Maurice the river is confined within the narrow gorge that forms the western entrance of the Vallais, and it emerges from this gateway to Switzerland to flow across the marshy plain that was formerly the south-eastern end of the Lake of Geneva. Year by year the debris of the Bernese and the Pennine Alps is washed down by the tireless waters, and the date is approximately ascertainable when the lake will have ceased to exist. That will be a sad day for the Rhone, for it is through the filter-like action of the lake that the river flows forth freed from its burden of detritus, and Byron's "blue rushing of the arrowy Rhone" will describe a river whose character has changed for ever, unless the hand of man erects barriers in its course, and so introduces periods of artificial repose. But France to-day does not receive from Switzerland the gift of a river in its unsullied youth, for not long after it has passed from the lake it is contaminated by an untutored glacier-bred youth fresh from the Mont Blanc range, whence it has carried down much solid matter. For a certain distance the two rivers do not recognise one another, the waters refusing to mix, but propinquity brings its familiar result and justifies the copy-book maxim concerning evil companionship. [Illustration: EVIAN LES BAINS. ON LAKE GENEVA.]