VIA-MAIA, a remarkable defile in the canton of Grisons, Switzerland, is a portion of the Hinterrheiuthal (see BRINE) which lies between Thesis and Zillis. The sides a the cleft, which is about 2 m. in length, are immense walls of rock, almost parallel, to each other, and so hard that the disintegrating influence of the elements appears not to have produced the slightest effect on them, each projection on one side corresponding to an indentation on the other, almost as perfectly as at the time they were separated. The walls have a maximum height of about 1600 ft., and at various parts of the defile are not more than ten yards apart at the top. Far beneath, tlic Hither Rhine, compressed till it. appears to one above like a mere thread, rushes like an arrow through the gorge. The first part of this defile was long deemed quite inaccessible, and had received the name of the Lost Gulf (Fr. Trou perdu; Ger. Verloreaes Loch). but in the early part of
this century, a magnificent road was constructed along the whole length of the defile, from 400 to 600 ft. above the river, by blasting and cutting a " notch " in the side of the rock. The road is necessarily steep and narrow, crosses from side to side of the defile by three bridges, and is protected now by a canopy of rock overhead, and again by a Wooden roofing, from falling, stones and trees. So narrow is the crevasse in some places, that fallen trunks and stones are often wedged in between its sides at a considerable dis tance above the ordinary water level; and on the occasion of the great flood of 1834, the river, which is generally 400 ft. below the second bridge, rose to within a few feet of it. and at the same time carried off the upper bridge.