Except for the tiny state of Monaco, on the Riviera (Sec. 548), no other country in the world gets so much of its living from the traveler who goes seeking pleasure and vacation.
500. The Austrian Alps.—German-speak ing Austria owns as much of the Alps as does Switzerland. This section is not so high as the Swiss Alps. It does not have so many snowfields, or so many through routes to Italy, and it has not succeeded in getting much tourist business. The people here make their living, as do some of the Swiss, by a little mining, farming, and timber cutting.
501. The western Alps, which belong to France and Italy, are much like the Austrian Alps in appearance, uses, and the life of the people. The only important difference is that more manufactur ing is done in the French Alps than in the Austrian Alps.
Belts or zones of climate on moun tains. — In ascending the Alps and many other high mountains, a climber crosses several belts or zones of cli mate. (Fig.1.) The first Alpine zone would be the warm valleys at the foot, where there are farms and orchards, with groves of chestnut and walnut trees.
Next comes the zone where beech and maple trees grow, and fields of rye and potatoes. Then comes the zone of the pine and the fir, with dwarf pine, shrubs, and berry bushes at its upper edge. Next, on the slope where it is too cold for trees or bushes, he finds a belt of grass and flowers much like those of the Arctic tundra. This belt extends to the last mountain zone—the zone of snow and ice, which covers the tops of all very high mountains.
Thus the high mountain shows us in a few miles all the climate belts and plant belts that we would find in a journey from the Erie Canal Belt to the Greenland Ice Cap, or from the foot of the Alps to northern Spitzbergen.
503. The Alps as a type.—We have spent much more time studying the Alps than we can spend on the other high mountains.
But in studying the Alps we have learned about the kinds of life on the high mountains, so that we do not need to have it so fully ex plained again.