flowers, and between the wings of the angels. They will fly a little way up with you in the gold sunshine. But very soon you leave them below you. Then the spires are below, and even the blue sea drops away out of sight.
Do you know how high you are? Nearly three miles. The air is very thin and pure and clear. Away off to the north you can see piled up clouds, all pink and pearl and violet and gold—and diamonds! See how they flash all the colors of the rainbow in the sun! Why, it's ice and snow—mountains of them away up in the sky! The mountains are called the Alps. And you are above them, looking down. What do you see?
Jagged peaks of rocks and ice are crowded and tumbled together; steep slopes and broad fields of snow lie below them. High between the slopes are hundreds of streams and cascades of glittering ice. Those are the frozen rivers called glaciers. Below them, growing on snowy slopes, are forests of dark pine trees. Farther down are green valleys where cattle feed, and in the deepest pockets of the mountains are blue lakes like mirrors. Surely no one can live in a country that stands on end like the Alps! Oh, yes they can. This mountain country is Switzerland. It is only two hundred miles long and one hundred fifty wide. Two thirds of it is mountains. Some of the peaks are nearly three miles high. But more than three million of the busiest people in the world live in Switzerland. A third of them are farmers, too.
Now you know they must use every scrap of good earth that is as big as a table cloth. On every shelf of rock a stout little house, of stone and pine timbers, nestles. On every wide shelf there is a whole village, with a school house and a church. In the valleys are big cities. On every lake shore are hotels for travellers who come from all over the world just to look at this beautiful land. Nearly every one of these travellers ask their Swiss guides how all those towns and farm-houses came to be scattered over the mountains. And they ask why the Swiss people have no language of their own but speak German, French or Italian, and sometimes all three, as well as English. This is the story the guides tell.
"Once there was a very lazy goblin. He came from the Rhine River, in Germany. He wanted a city, but was too lazy to build one. So he picked up a lot of houses and put them in a bag. Then he went across the river into France and stole some more houses. In Italy he stole palaces and churches. He put all these in his bag
