MONT BLANC 227 



Nearly three hours were spent in this formidable icefall. 

 Then steeper but less treacherous slopes of snow led up to the foot 

 of the lowest of the crags since known as the Grands Mulets. After 

 a short rest on the rocks the party, profiting by a snow-bridge 

 which was likely to fall later in the season, swerved to the right 

 and then back again to the higher block of the chain of rocks, 

 that on which a second cabin had been built. 



De Saussure's guides now compelled him to a long halt. They 

 were very averse to sleeping on the snow, and their object was to 

 delay him so that they might not get before nightfall into a region 

 where there were no rocks. However, it was only eleven when 

 they started again. De Saussure had spent the time in examining 

 the nature of the rocks and admiring the broken masses of the ice 

 that tumbles from the recess under the Aiguille du Midi. As the 

 climbers advanced, portions of the Lake of Geneva, with the town 

 of Nyon, came into view, and the ranges of Faucigny gradually 

 sank below the horizon, the Aiguille Percee du Reposoir being 

 the last to dip beneath the blue line of the distant Jura. * Each 

 victory of this sort was a matter of rejoicing to all the caravan, 

 for nothing is so cheering and encouraging as a clear proof of 

 progress.' 



De Saussure proceeds in his diary : 



' One rests from time to time on one's pole, but a few minutes 

 are enough ; the caravan marches slowly because it does not wish to 

 go faster ; they rarely make more than thirty steps without halting 

 to take breath ; still they only sit down every half-hour.' 



They now came to the edge of a vast crevasse. 



' Although it was more than a hundred feet in breadth one could 

 nowhere see the bottom. At the moment when we were all collected 

 on its brink admiring its depth and observing the courses of its snowy 

 walls, my servant, from I know not what distraction, let slip the pedestal 

 of my barometer which he had in his hand. It slid with the swiftness 

 of an arrow down the sloping wall of the crevasse and planted itself 

 at a great depth in the opposite side, where it remained fixed and 

 quivering like the lance of Achilles on the bank of the Scamander. I 

 was extremely vexed, for this pedestal served not'only for the barometer, 

 but for a compass, a telescope, and several other instruments. But 

 without hesitation several of the guides, seeing my vexation, offered 

 to recover it, and when the fear of imperilling them made me hesitate, 



