284 THE LIFE OF JAMES D. FORBES. [CHAP. 



sional companionships, which, without incommoding me, 

 have completely removed the feeliug of solitude which 

 for a continuance of three months might have - been 

 oppressive : and even when weather-bound at the Mont- 

 anvert, I see, as you may well believe, plenty of 

 " monde " of one kind or another, and scarcely a day 

 passes there, without my meeting some one who knows 

 about me or I about them. If the weather permits, I 

 am out from morning till night, and see no one but a 

 stray traveller from the Jardin, whom I meet like a 

 chance chamois on the glacier : by the way I had two 

 within shot chamois, not travellers the day before 

 yesterday. . . / 



Notwithstanding the inflammation of his eyes pro- 

 duced by the snow plains of the Col du Geant, Forbes 

 at once resumed his observations on the Mer de Glace. 

 ' On the evening of the 24th of July/ he writes, 

 ' the day following my descent from the Col du Geant, 

 I walked up the hill of Channoz to a height of 600 

 or 700 feet above the Montanvert, or about l,ooo 

 feet above the glacier. The tints of sunset were c.ist 

 in a glorious manner over the distant mountains, while 

 the glacier was thrown into comparative shadow, a 

 condition of half illumination which is far more 

 proper for distinguishing feeble shades of colour on a 

 white surface like that of a glacier, than the broad day. 

 Accordingly, whilst revolving in my mind during this 

 evening's stroll the singular problems of the ice-world, 

 my eye was caught by a veiy peculiar appearance of the 

 surface of the ice, which 1 was certain that I then saw 

 for the first time. It consisted of a series of nearly 

 hyperbolic brownish bands on the glacier, the curves 

 pointing downwards, and the two branches mingling 

 indiscriminately with the moraines/ * They were marked 

 by merely a faint change in the colour of the ice, 

 and were almost imperceptible when examined closely 

 . . . but I clearly saw that they were not properly 

 diversions of the true moraines, as I at first suppo- 



