98 Narrative of a Journey from Chamouni (Fez. 
has often been announced to the world by a variety of tracts, and 
by many excellent drawings, confirmed the account, and assured 
me that he himself had made the attempt on the next day to that on 
which M. de Saussure descended, but was obliged, as on many 
former occasions, to abandon the enterprise. Having formed my 
resolution, I sent to the different cottagers of the vale of Chamouni, 
from the skirts of which the mountain takes its rise, to inquire if 
any of them were willing to go with me as my assistants and my 
guides, and had soon the satisfaction to find that 10 were ready to 
accept the proposal. J engaged them all. Having announced to 
them my intention of setting out the next morning, I divided 
among them provisions for three days, together with a kettle, a 
chaffing dish, a quantity of charcoal, a pair of bellows, a couple of 
blankets, a long rope, a hatchet, and a ladder, which formed the 
stores that were requisite for the journey. After a night of much 
solicitude, lest the summit of Mount Blanc should be covered 
with clouds, in which case the guides would have refused the un- 
dertaking as impracticable, I rose at five in the morning, and saw, 
with great satisfaction, that the mountain was free from vapour, and 
that the sky was every where serene. My dress was a white flannel 
jacket without any shirt beneath, and white linen trowsers without 
drawers. ‘Fhe dress was white that the sunbeams might be thrown 
off; and it was loose, that the limbs might be unconfined. Besides 
a pole for walking, I carried with me cramp irons for the heels of 
my shoes, by means of which the hold of the frozen snow is firm, 
and in steep ascents the poise of the body is preserved. My guides 
being at length assembled, each with his allotted burthen ; and one 
of them, a fellow of great bodily strength, and great vigour of 
mind, Michael Cachet by name, who had accompanied M. de 
Saussure, having desired to take the lead, we ranged ourselves in a 
line, and at seven o'clock, in the midst of the wives, and children, 
and friends, of my companions, and indeed of the whole village of 
Chamouni, we began our march. The end of the first hour brought 
us to the Glaciere des Boissons, at which place the rapid ascent of 
the mountain first begins, and from which, pursuing our course 
along the edge of the rocks that form the eastern side of this frozen 
lake, we arrived in four hours more at the second glaciere, called 
the Glaciere de la Coté. Here, by the side of astream of water 
which the melting of the snow had formed, we sat down to a short 
repast. ‘To this place the journey is neither remarkably laborious, 
nor exposed to danger, except that name should be given to the 
trifling hazard that arises from the stones and loose pieces of the 
broken rock which the goats, in leaping from one projection to an- 
other, occasionally throw down. Our dinner being finished, we 
fixed our cramp-irons to our shoes, and began to eross the glacieres 
but we had not proceeded far when we discovered that the frozen 
snow which lay in the ridges between the waves of ice, often con- 
cealed, with a covering of uneertain strength, the fathomless 
chasms which traverse this solid sea; yet the danger was soon in a 
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