It is not improbable that some of those who read this book, may feel a wish to know in what manner I became possessed of the manuscript.

Such a desire is too just and natural to be thwarted, and the tale shall be told as briefly as possible.
During the summer of 1828, while travelling among those valleys of Switzerland which lie between the two great ranges of the Alps, and in which both the Rhone and the Rhine take their rise, I had passed from the sources of the latter to those of the former river, and had reached that basin in the mountains that is so celebrated for containing the glacier of the Rhone, when chance gave me one of those rare moments of sublimity and solitude, which are the more precious in the other hemisphere from their infrequency.

On every side the view was bounded by high and ragged mountains, their peaks glittering near the sun, while directly before me, and on a level with the eye, lay that miraculous frozen sea, out of whose drippings the Rhone starts a foaming river, to glance away to the distant Mediterranean.

For the first time, during a pilgrimage of years, I felt alone with nature in Europe.

Alas! the enjoyment, as all such enjoyments necessarily are amid the throngs of the old world, was short and treacherous.