Two roads, one from the village and one from the baths, and numerous paths, direct and digressive, lead from St. Moritz to Camfer, standing on the uppermost of the three rocky steps that divide the Upper Engadine into as many lake-basins. The upper lake has been divided into three by detritus brought down from the Val Fex at Sils and from the Julier {18} and Surlej at Silvaplana, the mid-lake at St Moritz has shrunk to a remnant of its former self, while the lower lake has entirely disappeared, tapped by the gorge that the Inn has cut from the Upper to the Lower Engadine. The origin of such lakes has long been a problem. The most authoritative conclusion seems to be that in the slow tectonic wrinkling of the earth's crust bars have been raised across the course of a river, which has thus been dammed up into a lake and drowned its former bed. Of course, a crustal subsidence might have had the same effect, or the two movements may have been combined. A mile and a half beyond Camfer is Silvaplana, seated on the green promontory by which the silt of the Ova del Vallun descending from the Julier Pass, seconded on the opposite side by streams from the Surlej, has cut the original lake in two. A picturesque wooden bridge spans the channel still left to the Inn between the deltas of its furious tributaries; in the background rises Piz Margna, a glacier filling the cleft in its broad head. The sylvan shades commemorated in the name of Silvaplana have long given place to flowery meadows, which now cover the broad holm that the Ova del Vallun has thrust into the lake. High above the village the vehement stream is commandeered for the electrical supply of the valley. By the side of the {19} works is a water-wheel, the earliest and the latest harnessing of water-power, a striking illustration of the return of industry to its oldest helpmate. It will be a curious instance of history repeating itself if manufactures again plant themselves by streams as in the days before water-wheels were superseded by steam. Population may one day be as congested in the beautiful highlands that are now the playground of the nations as in the great coal-basins. Happily the 'white coal,' as the Swiss call their water-power, deals more sympathetically with nature than the black. What a contrast to our factories and gasworks is this trim little building at Silvaplana, with its aqueduct of ruddy larch, and the fine cascade from the overflow of its reservoir. It is as though the grimy palm of Vulcan were replaced by the light finger of Apollo.