ICE AND GLACIERS. 119 



nothing that we are acquainted with on the plains can be 

 compared. From its purity it shows a splendid blue, 

 like that of the sky, only with a greenish hue. Crevasses in 

 which pure ice is visible in the interior occur of all sizes ; 

 in the beginning they form slight cracks in which a knife 

 can scarcely be inserted ; becoming gradually enlarged to 

 chasms, hundreds, or even thousands, of feet in length, 

 and twenty, fifty, and as much as a hundred feet in 

 breadth, while some of them are immeasurably deep. 

 Their vertical dark blue walls of crystal ice, glistening 

 with moisture from the trickling water, form one of the 

 most splendid spectacles which nature can present to us ; 

 but, at the same time, a spectacle strongly impregnated 

 with the excitement of danger, and only enjoyable by the 

 traveller who feels perfectly free from the slightest ten- 

 dency to giddiness. The tourist must know how, with 

 the aid of well-nailed shoes and a pointed Alpenstock, to 

 stand even on slippery ice, and at the edge of a vertical 

 precipice the foot of which is lost in the darkness of 

 night, and at an unknown depth. Such crevasses cannot 

 always be evaded in crossing the glacier; at the lower 

 part of the Mer de Glace, for instance, where it is usually 

 crossed by travellers, we are compelled to travel along 

 some extent of precipitous banks of ice, which are oc- 

 casionally only four to six feet in breadth, and on 

 each side of which is such a blue abyss. Many a 

 traveller, who has crept along the steep rocky slopes 

 without fear, there feels his heart sink, and cannot turn 

 his eyes from the yawning chasm, for he must first care- 

 fully select every step for his feet. And yet these blue 

 chasms, which lie open and exposed in the daylight, are 

 by no means the worst dangers of the glacier ; though 

 indeed we are so organised that a danger which we per- 

 ceive, and which therefore we can safely avoid, frightens us 

 far more than one which we know to exist, but which 



