438 GRANDEUR OF THE GLACIERS. 



thing so fully exhibiting the principles of glacier 

 movement or so forcibly illustrating the river-like char- 

 acter of the crystal stream. To scale the glacier fur- 

 ther was not in my power ; but the eye climbed up, 

 step by step, through the mountain-pass to the giddy 

 summit, and as the imagination wandered from this 

 icy pinnacle over sea and mountain, it seemed to me 

 that the world did not hold any more impressive evi- 

 dence of the greatness and the power of the Almighty 

 hand ; and I thought how feeble were all the efforts 

 of man in comparison. As I turned away and com- 

 menced my descent, I found myself repeating these 

 lines of Byron, penned as his poet-fancy wandered 

 up the ice-girdled steeps and over the ice-crowned 

 summits of the Alps : — 



" these are 



The palaces of Nature, whose vast walls 

 Have pinnacled in clouds their snowy scalps, 

 And throned Eternity in icy halls 

 Of cold sublimity." 



