This pilgrimage we hope to make presently; but for the moment it will be as well to turn our attention to the two gay watering-places of Evian and Thonon (promoted of recent years to be Evian- and Thonon-les-Bains, though an old Murray in my possession, published in 1872, knows them as Evian and Thonon only), and to penetrate a little deeper up the valley of the Dranse to the roots of the rocky mountains that form so grand a background to the lake as viewed from the castle terrace at Nyon, or from the cathedral porch at Lausanne. Neither Thonon nor Evian need detain us long; for, though each has a nucleus of ancient town, each is now rather overwhelmed by its vast and fashionable modern hotels. Respectively they lie to the west and east of the Dranse, which, descending in three separate streams from the highlands of Savoy--the Dranse proper, the Dranse d'Abondance, and the Dranse de Morzine--here pushes out in united delta into the lake. Thonon is the capital of the old Savoyard province of Chablais, and has actually, in excuse of its modern pretensions, a set of chalybeate springs. Evian, however, with water containing bicarbonate of soda, is much the quainter and pleasanter, in its ancient parts, of the two; has also the great advantage, in comparison with Thonon, of being situated farther to the east, and thus commanding nobler views of the mountains above Vevey, and towards the head of the lake; and lastly is distinguished for its pleasant, tree-shadowed promenades by the actual water-side (whereas Thonon is on the cliff above the lake), whence you see across the blue expanse the white houses of Lausanne, clustered in profusion on the sunny slopes of the opposite shore, or twinkling in the twilight with a million electric lamps. No one should quit either Evian or Thonon without making first an "inland voyage" up the valley of the Dranse to visit the quaint little mountain villages of Abondance and St. Jean d'Aulph (_de Alpibus_). At Abondance is a small monastic church, with a picturesque cloister, that dates in its inception from as early as the sixth century; whilst at St. Jean (on the whole less charming) are the very pretty ruins of a little Cistercian abbey that is remarkable in more than one direction--its possession of a triforium and some foliated capitals--for its unusually early departure from the usual architectural severity of the early Cistercian rule. The valley of the Dranse d'Abondance is refreshingly green and pastoral, and is bounded in places by magnificently rocky hills; but it is only towards its head, beyond the Chapel of Abondance, and before reaching the low pass that leads to Morgins in Switzerland, that the sudden apparition of the splendid Dent-du-Midi--pre-eminently entitled, notwithstanding its comparatively low height (only 10,695 feet), to rank in point of form and truly Alpine aspect amidst the giants of the Alps--lifts the whole landscape in a moment to the level of Alpine sublimity.