170 THE FOREST AND THE FIELD. 



quantity of wood, and prepare a bivouac against 

 our return in the evening. This precautionary 

 measure saved our party a fatiguing tramp of three 

 miles, when we returned almost worn out and 

 exhausted in the evening. 



The surface of the glacier presented a constant 

 succession of wave-like undulations, or rather of 

 narrow ridges, separated one from another by deep 

 hollows, in which we found crevasses, fissures, and 

 sometimes pools or wells of clear, pellucid, blue 

 water that we could not fathom with a line a 

 hundred yards long. Every part was more or less 

 studded with enormous angular boulders of rock, 

 some of which were fifty feet in height, and dif- 

 ferent kinds of debris that had evidently been 

 carried down from the mountain above. They were 

 of all shapes and sizes, and amongst them I noticed 

 gray, red, and black granite, several kinds of mar- 

 ble, a peculiar white, hard, fine-grained micacious 

 stone, schist, serpentine, laminated quartz, and 

 very rich copper and iron ore. Some appeared as 

 if they had been freshly quarried, the edges being 

 sharp, whilst others looked as if they were honey- 



