144 Professor Forbes' s Thirteenth Letter on Glaciers, 



under him, and had very often carried on his back this very 

 knapsack. The figured stripe of green and purple on the 

 shoulder straps was very marked, and could not easily be 

 mistaken. The testimony of these two men was therefore 

 perfectly authentic, but I verified it by questioning the very 

 Jullien Michel Devouassou himself, who is still a guide at 

 Chamouni, and who, on seeing the fragments, offered to verify 

 them upon oath. The accident occurred thus : — On the 29th 

 July 1830 (or ten years all but five days from my recovering 

 the fragments), Devouassou accompanied a stranger to the 

 Jardin, taking, as usual, the knapsack from the Montanvert, 

 with a supply of bread, cheese, and wine. They arrived 

 without accident at the top of the Couvercle, between the 

 Aiguille du Moine and the Glacier du Talefre ; and when at 

 the point marked in the accompanying sketcli with the words 

 *' Knapsack lost," the guide, to shorten the way, attempted 

 to take an oblique course to the Jardin, instead of following 

 the usual track on firm ground round the foot of the Aiguille 

 du Moine, and then turning sharply to the right, so as to 

 make the passage of the glacier as short as possible. The 

 ice on which he ventured was partly covered with snow, as 

 is almost always the case there in July, and near the edge it 

 was also full of concealed fissures. Into one of these the 

 guide suddenly dropped, leaving the astonished traveller 

 alone in this wilderness of rocks and ice. After vainly call- 

 ing to his guide and obtaining no answer, he left the place in 

 despair, and returned to the Montanvert by the way he had 

 come. Devouassou, however, having reached the bottom of 

 the crevasse but little hurt, managed, by the aid of his 

 pocket-knife, to cut steps in the walls of ice, and, finally, 

 with great exertion and suiFering, to raise himself to the sur- 

 face, and make his escape, leaving behind him his knapsack, 

 of which, of course, he had first disembarrassed himself. 

 Astonishing fact ! that the yet undecayed vestiges, together 

 with a part of even the very bottle which formed his burden, 

 should be brought to light on the surface of the ice after ten 

 years friction and onward movement ! I took pains to mea- 

 sure angles with my theodolite at each point, which enabled 

 me to project them with tolerable accuracy on the map, as 



