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Show HUB OF PEACE International conferences never ruffle dignity of Switzerland's famous Lake Geneva, one of the world's most beautiful beauti-ful inland vacation spots. It - -W- - I : 'Y,4 f x X, I Most waterfront towns on Switzerland's Switzer-land's Lake Geneva look the same from the shore. Here is a side-wheeled side-wheeled pleasure boat beading out over the deep blue waters. at all thread between them up the hill. But as you explore them the medieval peace is shattered by the blast of an auto horn, and you Jump aside just in time as a modern sedan rushes down over the cobbles. Pottery, Politics Broueht Fame Prepared by National Geographic Society, Washington. D. C WNU Service. THE Lake Geneva country, coun-try, self-styled "peace I hub of the world," has learned to take international crises in its stride. Here, for 2,000 years, Caesars, Napoleons, Napole-ons, bishops and barons have fought and ruled, come and gone, but Lake Geneva stays, and the ancient River Rhone "keeps right on rollin' " into one end of the lake and out the other. Lake Geneva lies in a sort of peninsula that juts out from Switzerland's southwest corner into France. In fact, most of its southern shore is French territory, and two-fifths of the lake itself belongs to France. Geneva people, if they want to go for a Sunday automobile ride, have but one main road on which they can drive more than a few miles without having to cross the French frontier. Most motorists like to drive in Switzerland, so the single highway high-way along the lake's north shore is often jammed with traffic on pleasant pleas-ant Sunday afternoons. Far up in the Alps, 6,000 feet above the sea and 75 miles from the actual lake basin, you see where Lake Geneva is born. The massive Rhone glacier, glistening greenish white in the sun, lies on a mountainside moun-tainside surrounded by towering precipices and snow-clad peaks. Lake Geneva fills a deep mountain moun-tain abyss in which the Eiffel tower (984 feet high) would sink out of sight. The lake's surface is 1,230 feet above the sea, but the deepest deep-est hole in its bottom goes down 1,015 feet, almost sea level. Mountains Moun-tains 6,000 feet high tower close around its eastern end, but gradually gradual-ly give way to rolling green hills. Pottery, long before politics, brought fame to Nyon. You may visit the old pottery factory, its ancient an-cient wooden stairs worn hollow, its walls and floor gray with the accumulated accu-mulated clay of 150 yars. In this same building pottery has been manufactured continuously since the days of the American Revolution. Revolu-tion. Once it produced the finest ware, all hand-made, decorated with great artistry. Those pieces now are rare, much sought after by collectors who pay high prices, for they are produced no more. Along the lake's north shore, eastward east-ward from Nyon, vineyards crowd every inch of space on the hillsides that rise steeper and steeper from the water's edge. They are planted so close to the edge of the road that in some places you can reach out from your car seats to pick fat bunches of grapes right off the vines. AS THE hillsides grow steeper, innumerable terraces rise in steps from the water's edge. Each terrace, held in place by its stone retaining wall, supports a few square yards of soil that in some places slopes at almost a 45-degree angle. The soil washes down when it rains on such steep slopes, even with the stone walls to hold it back. But every winter the farmers dig up Lake Fronts Like Follies Chorus The lake fronts of all the towns around Lake Geneva are as uniformly uni-formly lovely as the girls in a follies fol-lies chorus and as much alike as their costumes. Always there is a I sturdy sea wall, against which waves dash high when storm winds blow; a neat stone balustrade; formal for-mal rows of green plane trees, their tops pruned to equal height and flat umbrella shape as carefully as any hedge; flower beds; grass plots; park benches; gravel walks paralleling paral-leling the shore; and a neat' wharf. Nyon's lake front is like them all, and, like most Lake Geneva towns, too, it has its castle, high on the hilL the roofs of its five towers as sharp as pencil points. But this castle seems to smile instead of frown, perhaps because there are flower boxes in its windows, a little park with more bright flowers around it, and homely terraced vegetable veg-etable gardens sloping up to its very the soil that has washed to the bottom bot-tom of the terraces, carry it back up in baskets on their backs, and spread it again evenly over the slopes. Up and down the hillsides you notice innumerable tiny flashes of light twinkling against the background back-ground of green leaves. They are scarecrows. They are bits of polished metal, hung among the vines to be swung by the wind, reflect the sunlight, and scare the birds. Bustling center of this rich farming farm-ing region of the lake's north shore is Lausanne, sprawled over three high hills above its lake port, Ouchy, which, incidentally, claims the only natural bathing beach in Switzerland. Switzer-land. Lausanne is another of the "conference "con-ference cities." In 1912 a treaty signed here ended the war between Turkey and Italy, and a conference in 1922-23 resulted in the signing of 17 different treaties and agreements. When Lausanne Moved to the Hills foot. Entering the ghost-gray walls through a gate dated 1572, you find on the first floor a musty museum that preserves a few bits of Nyon's past: Roman tiles and carvings; ancient cannon; wax figures in the bright costumes of other days. A spiral stair in one of the round corner cor-ner towers leads to neat courtrooms court-rooms and offices for the judges. THE prisoners, on the top floor, if they have any eye for beauty, must spend much time gazing out Looking down your neighbor's chimney is no novelty here. Leaning Lean-ing over the balustrade on one high bridge, you can see straight down into the chimney pots of houses in the ravine below, while their smoke drifts up into your nostrils. Many a narrow street winds upward steep as a mountain path, and in some places long flights of steps take you from one level to another. History says the Lausannians took to the hills after a disastrous defeat in the Fourth century, and there they stayed. On a cliff on the Cite, chief of the three hills, Lausanne's cathedral towers dominate the skyline. Its beautiful rose window was in place more than 200 years before Columbus Colum-bus came to America. The cathedral cathe-dral has been Protestant for 400 years, since the day of the "Great Disputation," in 1536, when John Calvin and other leaders of the Reformation wrested control from the Catholic clergy. the windows. Across the lake, beyond be-yond the green hills of the' French shore to the south, Mont Blanc, highest of Europe's peaks, looms like a white cloud on clear days. Back of the town rise the peaks of the Jura range along the Swiss-French Swiss-French border on the north. To the east Grand Lac broadens to a width of more than eight miles and looks like the sea. The weatherworn houses of Nyon's 5,000 citizens cluster their white and gray walls and red-brown roofs closely around and beneath the castle. cas-tle. Narrow cobbled streets with sidewalks "one man wide" or none |