248 LIFE OF HORACE BENEDICT DE SAUSSURE 



so over-arched that they did not know how to get out of them. They 

 had to climb ridges hollow underneath and encompassed by enormous 

 precipices. The ledges on which they risked themselves were often 

 only three inches wide. The axe for cutting staircases was as useful 

 as the ladder and the rope, to which they had all tied themselves. 

 Between ten and one o'clock the ladder was used thirty-eight times. 



* They next reached steep plateaux (sic) cut by bottomless crevasses 

 extending the whole breadth of the glacier, which might be a league, 

 and so wide that the ladder scarcely stretched across them. About 

 one clouds began to cover the summits, wind beat on them from every 

 direction, and the cold increased. At two no clear sky was visible, 

 the sea of ice they were traversing seemed boundless, they were like 

 polar travellers, and the mists completed the parallel. The effect 

 was as sublime as it was alarming. Their anxiety was further in- 

 creased by the vast crevasses concealed under extremely thin snow- 

 arches. They must have perished but for the rope by which they 

 were attached. The guide Charlet broke through one of these fragile 

 bridges, and had he not been carrying the ladder, he would never 

 have been able to emerge from the abyss at his feet. His head, caught 

 between the rungs, gave him the look of a man taken in a snare or a 

 trap. At three their distress grew still greater because they found 

 they had gone past the strait which they ought to take in order to 

 get to Courmayeur, and they thought of returning in their footsteps, 

 already hah* effaced by the wind and the falling snow. The cold 

 began, too, to be insupportable, and the thermometer was at 6 below 

 zero (Reaumur). Their hair, as well as their veils, were fringed with 

 icicles. Young Bourrit had some half an inch in length. This youth, 

 who had lost sensation in his feet and fingers, bore his sufferings with a 

 courage which drew the admiration of the guides. The cold increased 

 still more. At three their clothes froze, as well as the laces of their 

 boots. The guides, firmly convinced that they had passed the point 

 they had to make for, ran backwards and forwards like men who, after 

 a shipwreck, avoid the waves by scrambling from rock to rock. They 

 sought for some crag or passage by which they might escape from 

 their perilous situation. M. Bourrit and his son, who kept close to 

 him, were already planning to pass the night where they were rather 

 than wander further. They proposed to break up the ladder to 

 provide fuel, put their legs in their sacks, and huddle together. But 

 the guides, who did not believe it possible to resist the cold of the 

 night and the bad weather, were resolved to rescue them at all costs 

 from this dreadful desert. The thermometer marked 7 below 

 zero. At this moment a gust of wind drove off the mist and 



