100 Narrative of a Journey from Chamouni [Fes. 
as fixed points. How improved in those altitudes would be the 
aids which the telescope gives to vision; indeed, the clearness of 
the air was such as led me to think that Jupiter’s satellites might be 
distinguished by the naked eye; and had he not been in the neigh- 
bourhood of the moon, I might possibly have succeeded. He con- 
tinued distinctly visible for several hours after the sun was risen, and 
did not wholly disappear till almost eight. At the time I rose, my 
thermometer, which was on Fahrenheit’s scale, and which I had 
hung on the side of the rock without the hut, was 8° below the 
freezing point. Impatient to proceed, and having ordered a large 
quantity of snow to be melted, I filled a small cask with water for 
my own use, and at three o'clock we left the hut. Our route was 
across the snow; but the chasms which the ice beneath had formed, 
though less numerous than those that we had passed on the pre- 
ceding day, embarrassed our ascent. One in particular had opened 
so much in the few days that intervened between M. de Saussure’s 
expedition and our own, as for the time to bar the hope of any fur- 
ther progress; but at length, after having wandered with much 
anxiety along its bank, I found a place which I hoped the ladder 
was sufficiently long to cross. The ladder was accordingly laid 
down, and was seen to rest upon the opposite edge, but its bearing 
did not exceed an inch on either side. We now considered that, 
should we pass the chasm, and should its opening, which had en- 
larged so much in the course of a few preceding days, increase in 
the least degree before the time of our descent, no chance of return 
remained. We also considered that, if the clouds which so often 
envelope the hill should rise, the hope of finding, amidst the thick 
fog, our way back to this only place in which the gulf, even in its 
present state, was passable, was little less than desperate. Yet, 
after a moment’s pause, the guides consented to go with me, and 
we crossed the chasm. We had not proceeded far when the thirst, 
which, since our arrival in the upper regions of the air, had been 
always troublesome, became almost intolerable. No sooner had I 
drank than the thirst returned, and in a few minutes my throat be- 
came perfectly dry. Again I had recourse to the water, and again 
my throat was parched. The air itself was thirsty; its extreme of 
dryness had robbed my body of its moisture. Though centinually 
drinking, the quantity of my urine was almost nothing ; and of the 
little there was, the colour was extremely deep. The guides were 
equally affected. Wine they would not taste; but the moment my 
back was turned, their mouths were eagerly applied to my cask of 
water. Yet we continued to proceed till seven o’clock; when, 
having passed the place where M. de Saussure, who was provided 
with a tent, had slept the second night, we sat down to breakfast. 
All this time the thermometer was 4° below the freezing point. 
We were now at the foot of Mount Blanc itself; for, though it is 
usual to apply that term to the whole assemblage of several succes- 
sive mountains, yet the name properly belongs only to a small 
mountain of pyramidal form that rises from.a narrow plain which 
