258 THE LIFE OF JAMES I). FORBES. [CHAP. 



ever crossed before, and how we descended into a valley 

 blocked up by glaciers at its head, which testified its 

 astonishment by the mouth of the Mayor of the village, 

 who asked for our passports, and told us that batons 

 ferres were prohibited in France. The gendarmes were 

 secretly sent for, from the nearest town, in order to 

 inspect the strange strangers. After a day of repose, 

 we jumped out of the valley, as we had jumped into 

 it, across a glacier, which proved more difficult than 

 the last ; and the precipices we had to descend altered, 

 1 confess considerably, the sense which I had always 

 attached to the word inaccessible. The inns are so 

 horrible, that we lodged with the cur$s, and met 

 with an amicable reception and clean beds, an immense 

 luxury. Our time is limited by our rendezvous with 

 Agassiz at the Grimsel on the 8th, otherwise we should 

 have spent more time in these valleys ; but we have seen 

 enough to give us a fair notion of their general as well as 

 of their wildest features. Never in Switzerland elsewhere 

 have I gone through such places. We went to the valley 

 of Arnieux, Felix Neff's parish, and spent an afternoon 

 very pleasantly with the Protestant pastor, a rough zealous 

 man of the Covenanter character, and well fitted, I dare- 

 say, for his arduous and ill-paid situation. . . / 



They reached the hospice of the Grimsel on the even- 

 ing of the 8th, and found that M. Agassiz had arrived a 

 few days before, the avant-courrier of the numerous party 

 whjo were to share his hut on the Unter-Aar Gletscher. 

 Dr. Voght the naturalist was also there, and M. Zippach 

 the keeper of the hospice, while two days after their party 

 was increased by General Pfuyl, with MM. Studer, Escher 

 Von der Linth, and Desor. On the 9th M. Agassiz, 

 with Forbes and Mr. Heath, made trial of the hut as a 

 sleeping-place, only to be driven back next day by heavy 

 snow. But although thus foiled in their first attack, 

 they did not return empty-handed ; for then for the 

 first time what is called the veined or ribbon structure 

 of glacier ice which, although previously remarked, had 



