Rhone

ron, a river of central Europe. It rises in the famous Rhone glacier in the Swiss canton of Valais. Its general direction is westward into France, where it takes a turn to the southward and falls into the Gulf of Lyons. Where its cold waters issue from the enormous mass of the glacier, it may be crossed easily by stepping stones. The waters of the upper river are roily, but before leaving Switzerland it passes through Lake Geneva. Its silt is deposited in the upper end of that lake, and its blue waters leave the lake at its western extremity with the swiftness of an arrow. A mile or two to the westward of the Geneva, the Rhone receives the Arve, swollen by the waters of the valley of Chamonix and the glaciers of Mt. Blanc. At one place above its junction with the Saone, its principal tributary, the Rhone passes through a chasm so narrow that the overhanging rocks almost touch each other. It is said that at one point one may stand with a foot on either bank "and see between the beautiful river trembling as it were with rage, and hastening to escape from the defile through which it is doomed to pass." The waters have, of course, cut a wide passage underneath.

Lyons, the center of the French silk industry, is the largest city on its banks. The lower or navigable portion of the river is connected with the Rhine and the Loire and Paris by a remarkable system of canals. The Rhone and the Rhine were for ages the great highway between southern and northern Europe. Speaking in his lines To the Rhone of its issuance from the glacier and its lordly course through France, Longfellow says: