MONT BLANC AND THE MER DE GLACE. 61 



takes its rise from the glacier, we are ushered into an 

 amphitheater, the vastness of whose proportions and the 

 utter chaos of whose aspect create a feeling of oppression 

 in the mind. The moraine is at least eighty feet high, 

 and sweeps around in front of us to join the. lateral mo- 

 raine. It is a desolate pile of clay and sand and rounded 

 boulders. Its inner slope is interrupted by another mo- 

 raine thirty feet high, which, like a bench, extends from 

 end to end of the circuit. This immense terraced wall 

 incloses an area nearly half a mile in each diameter, and 

 strewed with a wilderness of granitic blocks, among which 

 we pick our way. The white water of the rushing stream, 

 which deafens us with its din, pours out from beneath a 

 dark majestic vault of ice in the lofty terminal wall of 

 the glacier. This is the source of the Arveiron, an in- 

 significant though noisy river, blending, in the course of 

 a mile, with the equally turbulent Arve. But how mag- 

 nificent is its cradle! With difficulty, and not without 

 danger, we climb over the debris to the very foot of the 

 glacier and lay our hand upon the cold ice. Beyond and 

 above us stretches the icy river, with its bristling pyra- 

 mids and needles projected against the sky. A chilling 

 current of air from the surface of the glacier settles 

 down upon us. Rocks of granite and rocks of ice are 

 mingled in indiff"erent confusion beneath our feet, upon 

 our right and upon our left, while, from moment to 

 moment, the blocks which have completed their long jour- 

 ney upon the back of the glacier, dismount with a plunge 

 which startles the visitor and prompts him to reflect 

 upon his danger. A few years ago one of these missiles 

 crushed the cranium of a young English lady and threw 

 her into the torrent. Two other fatal accidents of this 



