A FATIGUING EXCURSION. I'l i 



completed her dreadful operations. Accordingly, 

 having ascertained that, although the regular 

 roads, bridgeways, and pathways were carried 

 away, a circuitous course over the mountains was 

 practicable to the very foot of the glaciers of Mont 

 Pleureur, which impended over the mouth of the 

 Lac de Getroz, he determined to make the attempt. 

 During the first day's journey nothing of particular 

 importance occurred. The early dawn of the 

 second morning found our traveller, accompanied 

 by two guides mounted on horseback, and prepared 

 for an excursion, which, under the most favourable 

 circumstances, must be long and fatiguing. For 

 the first three or four hours the road lay sometimes 

 along plains, sometimes along heights, presenting a 

 succession of striking objects among the wildest im- 

 aginable exhibitions of mountain scenery. At length 

 the party descended into a valley of considerable 

 extent, affording a flat platform of what fiad once 

 been meadow land, but was then a wide plain, 

 on whose surface, in every direction, were scattered 

 in wild confusion, rocks and stones, and uprooted 

 trees of all dimensions, deposited by the torrent, 

 which had returned to its original channel, through 

 which it was roaring over a bed of broken granite, 

 forming a sort of loose and coarse shingle. This 

 valley, though unconfined towards the west, was 

 apparently closed in towards the east, immediately 

 ] 15 



