"This lake resembles a sea in the color of its waters, the storms that are raised on it and the ravages it makes on its banks. It receives too a different name from the coast it washes and in summer has something like an ebb and flow which arises from the melting of the snows that fall into it more copiously at noon than at other times of the day. It has four different states bordering on it: the Kingdom of France, the Duchy of Savoy, the Canton of Bern and the Republic of Geneva."
Addison spent a day at Lausanne, which he calls the greatest town on the lake after Geneva, and he saw "the wall of the cathedral church that was opened by an earthquake and shut again some years after by a second." But Addison adds:--"The crack can but be just discerned at present though there are several in the town still living who have formerly passed through it."
Addison's compliment to the Almighty in letting the Rhône run as it does is quite amusing. He says: "As I have seen the great part of the course of this river I cannot but think it has been guided by the particular hand of Providence.... Had such a river as this been left to itself to have found its way out from among the Alps, whatever windings it had made it must have formed several little seas and have laid many countries under water before it had come to the end of its course."
Addison went to Nyon, where he says he observed in the walls of several houses the fragments of the vast Corinthian pillars with several other pieces of architecture which must have formerly belonged to some very noble pile of building.
Will and I went to Nyon a few days after our return from Geneva and we went into the château, where there is now an interesting museum of antiquities. The walls of the building are at least three meters in thickness.
From Nyon we drove in the car through Trélex, Saint-Cergue, as far as the Château de Vuarnen; from there we walked to the summit of La Dôle. We chose our day and our time and had as perfect a view as one could desire. It stands about twelve hundred and forty meters above the sea but it might be rather lonely for a continued residence; for that I should perhaps choose the Château de Monnetier, within jumping distance of Geneva.