30 SPARKS FR03I A GEOLOGIST'S HAMMER. 



Sulphur springs and a fine cascade (cascade de Crepin) 

 are near. The mountains now crowd down upon the 

 highway. The deep, narrow gorge through which the 

 Arve comes, with shouts and summersaults, down from 

 the valley of Chamonix, serves only for the torrent's ac- 

 commodation ; and the French government has chiseled 

 a giddy roadway along the face of the perpendicular cliff 

 of the Little Tete Noir (5,800 feet), giddy, but secure, 

 and worthy of France. The nose of the mountain, how- 

 ever, is at length pierced by a tunnel, the exit of which 

 happens to be within a few feet of an old Roman tunnel, 

 recently exposed to view. The latter is about eight feet 

 high and as many in width. 



Soon we have reached a miserable village, called Les 

 Ouches (3,143 feet). The village of Chamonix lies before 

 us. At oar right is uplifted the tremendous form of 

 Mont Blanc, dazzling in the afternoon sunlight. It seems 

 incredible that these immaculate and shinim^ solitudes 

 are still so remote. But there hang the clouds, half way 

 down the mountain sides. Now, for the first time, a real 

 glacier greets our eyes. The long coveted gratification 

 is at length granted. This is the glacier of Taconnay, 

 half hid in its deep excavated valle}', but revealing itself 

 as a white snake like form crawling down from the home 

 of perpetual snows. A further advance, however, reveals 

 the existence of an intervening valley, which holds the 

 shrunken form of another ancient accumulation of ice. 

 This is the Glacier de la Gria. A few minutes further 

 and the long, swelling form of the Glacier des Bossons 

 comes into sight. 



Are these, then, the glaciers? We thought them broad 

 fields of almost impassable ice, and here they lie revealed 



