MONT BLANC AND THE MER DE GLACE. 57 



Pierre Pointue, 6,722 feet above the sea. Here is a com- 

 fortable little inn, whose keeper, Sylvain Couttet, has be- 

 come well known to ascensionists. 



After rest and refreshment, we press on toward the 

 border of the upper Glacier des Bossons. Overcoming 

 the difficulties which everywhere beset the entrance upon 

 a glacier, we traverse the plateau of the glacier, and pro- 

 ceed as far as its junction with Glacier de Taconnay- The 

 expanse of ice and snow is wild and chaotic beyond de- 

 scription. Enormous crevasses, precipices to be scaled by 

 means of ladders, towering pyramids, beetling seracs and 

 bristling needles of ice, succeeding each other mile after 

 mile, these must be seen to be appreciated or under- 

 stood. 



But here, for the present, we check our roaming, and 

 take leave of the majestic forms and sublime silences of 

 these awful Alps. There is much more here than the 

 material lineaments which address themselves to the lit- 

 eral eye. To him who has cherished and cultured the 

 divine gift of penetrating beyond the visible forms of 

 Nature, there is a realm of meaning revealed by these 

 stupendous features wliich, to grosser eyes, they completely 

 obscure. It was in this vale of Chamonix that Coleridcre 

 penned his " Hymn before Sunrise," so full of the spirit 

 which transfuses Nature. To the poet, realities unseen 

 and truths unutterable are proclaimed by "those five wild 

 torrents fiercely glad," called forth from the " icy caverns 

 of night and utter death"; by their "unceasing thunder 

 and eternal foam"; by the "living flowers that skirt the 

 eternal frost"; the "wild goats sporting round the eagle's 

 nest"; the "lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds," 

 and first and chief, the snow-clad " sovran of the vale," 



