350 LOUIS AGASSIZ. 



comfort of the new abode consoled them. It 

 had several divisions. A sleeping - place for 

 the guides and workmen was partitioned off 

 from a middle room occupied by Agassiz and 

 his friends, while the front space served as 

 dining-room, sitting-room, and laboratory. 

 This outer apartment boasted a table and one 

 or two benches ; even a couple of chairs were 

 kept as seats of honor for occasional guests. 

 A shelf against the wall and a few pegs ac- 

 commodated books, instruments, coats, etc., 

 and a plank floor, on which to spread their 

 blankets at night, was a good exchange for 

 the frozen surface of the glacier. 1 



1 In bidding farewell to the boulder which had been the 

 first " Hotel des Neuchatelois " we may add a word of its 

 farther fortunes. It had begun to split in 1841, and was 

 completely rent asunder in 1844, after which frost and rain 

 completed its dismemberment. Strange to say, during the 

 last summer (1884) certain fragments of the mass have been 

 found, inscribed with the names of some of the party ; one of 

 the blocks bearing beside names, the mark No. 2. The ac- 

 count says : " The middle stone, the one numbered 2, was at 

 the intersecting point of two lines drawn from the Pavilion 

 Dollfuss to the Scheuchzerhorn on the one part, and from 

 the Rothhorn to the Thierberg on the other." According to 

 the measurements taken by Agassiz, the Hotel des Neuchate- 

 lois in 1840 stood at 797 metres from the promontory of 

 Abschwung. We are thus enabled, by referring to the large 

 glacier map of Wild and Stengel, to compare the present 

 with the then position of the stone, and thereby ascertain the 

 progress of the glacier since the time in question. Thus the 



