Another river with the same name as the Rhône, all except one letter, is the Rhine. It, too, starts from underneath a glacier, but flows north between France and Germany, through Holland, and empties into the North Sea.

There are many people in the World who think it great sport to climb mountains—the higher the mountain and the more difficult and the more dangerous it is, the more they like to climb it. Now the highest mountain in the Alps is Mont Blanc, which means White Mountain. Part of it is in Switzerland, but the top is in France. Every summer many people climb Mont Blanc and other mountains in the Alps. These mountain-climbers use long poles with spikes on the ends to catch on the ice, and they wear heavy shoes with hobnails; and they take along guides who know the way to go and the way to climb, and they are tied together so that if one slips over a ledge the others may pull him back. But every summer people lose their lives in such mountain-climbing. They slip and fall and are dashed to their death or they are covered by an avalanche and buried alive under the falling pile of snow.

Probably the hardest of all Swiss mountains to climb is a mountain that looks like a huge horn. It is called the “Matterhorn.” Only the most skilled and the most daring ever attempt to climb it, though the only thing you can do after you have risked your life to reach the top is to admire the view. The reason most people climb it, however, is simply so they can say “I’ve done it.”

So many people go to Switzerland to see the giant snow-covered mountains, even if they do not climb them, that the Swiss people have built hotels wherever there is a fine view of a mountain, or a waterfall, or some other wonderful or beautiful sight. There are thousands of such hotels all through Switzerland, so that the chief business of the Swiss people seems to be hotel-keeping, and they keep them very well indeed. In fact, it is said they are the finest hotel-keepers in the World. They are famous for other things too: Swiss milk chocolate, which you have probably eaten; Swiss cheese with big holes in it, which you may have eaten; Swiss watches; Swiss wood-carving, and cuckoo-clocks and cowbells and music boxes.