1858 WITH TYNDALL AMONG THE SWISS GLACIERS 255 



and he makes no allowance for my having reached the 

 top of the curve, and begun to descend on the other 

 side. 



The summit of the peak consists of piled blocks 

 of gneissic rocks, rent by frost and weather, and heaped 

 on each other in wild confusion, like the summits of 

 the Glyders, or Y Try fan, above the passes of Nant 

 Francon and Llanberis. The view from the summit 

 was, indeed, grand. Below on the north and west 

 lay the Great Aletsch glacier, seemingly as much 

 larger than all the other glaciers I have yet seen, as 

 the St. Lawrence is larger than the Severn, Thames, 

 or Seine. There it lay below us, broad, smooth, and 

 sweeping, although crevassed and somewhat crumpled. 

 The moraines looked small upon it. On the left it 

 descended into the valley, and on the north it was lost 

 in the far recesses of those Alpine giants, the Jungfrau, 

 Monch, and Finsteraarhorn. On the north-west the 

 glacier is joined by two great tributaries, one the Ober 

 Aletsch glacier, the other the Middle Aletsch glacier, 

 stretching up among the snows and awful cliffs of the 

 Aletschhorn, the peak of which rises more than 13,000 

 feet above the sea. This summit is higher than the 

 Jungfrau. White sunny mists were seething round it, 

 half veiling and adding to its majesty. 



Seemingly close below lay the Marjelen See, with 

 the glacier branching into it, and breaking off in large 

 masses, which floated away eastward as tabular bergs 

 before the wind, and grounded on the desolate shores. 

 Clearly the glacier once sent off a branch down this 

 valley, for besides that it partially does so still, the 

 rocks on the hills by the lake are moutonntes high up 

 on either side. The glacier must then have sent off a 

 branch that united with the Viescher glacier, and at a 



