70 SPARKS FROM A GEOLOGIST'S HAMMER. 



And stopped at once, amid their maddest plunge! 

 Motionless torrents! silent cataracts! 

 Who made you glorious as the gates of heaven 

 Beneath the keen full moon? Who bade the sun 

 Clothe you with rainbow? Who, with living flowers 

 Of loveliest blue, spread garlands at your feet? 

 God! Let the torrents like a shout of nations 

 Answer, and let the ice-plains echo, God!" 



Starting from Chamonix, our path leads for half a mile 

 through a grove of firs, without much change of level; 

 then ascending in the usual zigzag fashion, we soon reach 

 the beautiful little Cascade du Dard, which we contem- 

 plate from a pavilion or chalet which offers us refresh- 

 ments and photographs of the scenes around us. A lit- 

 tle distance beyond, we reach the torrent des Pelerins, 

 which issues from a glacier of the same name, and has 

 the interesting peculiarity of increasing and diminishing 

 without regard to the weather, sometimes descending 

 with a devastating flood in the dryest periods. Here 

 until 1853 existed a first-class cascade, when, in a time 

 of flood, the blows of the descending blocks were so power- 

 ful as to batter down a cliff 200 feet high; and thus this 

 natural curiosity, yielding the keeper of the rude inn a 

 valuable revenue annually, was reduced to a fifth-rate 

 affair. The chalet still stands, however, and the oppor- 

 tunity^ is still open to spend a few francs for refreshments. 



The ascent next brings us to the brow of a ridge over- 

 looking a ravine strewed with shingle, and noisy with the 

 headlong rush of the Torrent des Praz, which gushes from 

 the upper portion of the Glacier des Bossons. The voy- 

 ager here looks down at least 500 feet into a gorge which, 

 in times not geologically remote, must have been filled 



