A COLLECTING DAY ABOVE AROLLA 73 
Pyramides d’Euseignes. Water, it seems, has in the 
interminable course of years eroded all this valley. But 
certain huge stone blocks have sheltered the light friable 
tufa on which they rested; with the result that each 
block stands up, like a gigantic toadstool, on a tapering 
twenty-foot spire. And here these fantastic mushrooms 
rise aloft securely on their stems, and bid fair to outlast 
the valley, and grow taller as its soil is washed away. 
Only man has ever been successful as their enemy. Some 
perverted mind once conceived the idea of using the 
pyramids for targets in gun-practice. Popular indignation, 
however, stopped the irreverence before much damage 
had been done. 
After Euseignes the road crosses to the other side of 
the valley, and mounts and mounts. At a dizzy depth 
below, by the foot of the precipice, the river brawls 
downwards over its rocky bed. ‘The roadway is a mere 
wrinkle on the face of the cliff. Overhead, as the air 
clears, hardens, deepens to the cold calm of sunset, the 
high snows begin to appear, chill and sombre above the 
last pines. But neither precipice, nor pyramids, nor 
yellow Ononis can hold one’s attention for long against 
the dominant presence of the Val d’Hermance. For one 
has not been bowling for long through the upper valley 
before one comes into sight of its reigning deity. Snow 
here, snow there, high overhead, is our right; we expect 
it. But snow is one thing, ordinary white teeth of 
mountain are one thing; the Dent Blanche is quite 
another. Away, away at the uttermost extremity of the 
valley the mountain-spire leaps into sight, and the un- 
relenting majesty of it is like the blast of trumpets. As 
I have already said, all these secondary streams flow from 
some big mother-peak, and these mountain glens end _ 
always in a pre-eminent height of snow. The Val d’Her- 
mance is formed like a Y, and while the right-hand 
