24 SPARKS FEOM A GEOLOGIST'S HAMMER. 



of mountains capped with eternal snows. It would be 

 a calamity not to gain this first view from the city of 

 Geneva. We may have been in the place three days, or 

 a week; but though we know the Mont Blanc range 

 should be visible, the jealous clouds have interposed an 

 impenetrable veil. To-day, however, a purifying influ- 

 ence has gone through the air, and the vapors have 

 seemed to dissolve before it. The sun has now just dis- 

 appeared behind the Jura range. We saunter from the 

 dinner-table down to the Quai, which faces eastward 

 toward Mont Blanc. There the long-sought vision of 

 glory is revealed.* This is indeed the first view of moun- 

 tains mantled in perpetual snow. Nothing like it have 

 we ever seen. There is no other terrestrial glory with 

 which to compare it. Exclamations there are none. The 

 instincts of the mind and soul consign all adjectives to 

 contempt. We can only gaze, and wonder, and enjoy. 

 We are transfixed. Our most expressive language is 

 silent admiration. 



Must we mock this transcendent scene with a descrip- 

 tion? Yonder in the distant horizon stretches the ser- 

 rated crest of the Mont Blanc range. It is all luminous 

 with the light of the setting sun. Its brilliancy is more 

 dazzling than crystal. It looms up behind the darkened 

 intervening hills like the very parapet of heaven above 

 the earthly horizon. It is so unlike everything else seen 

 upon the earth that it seems to be not of the earth a 

 very vision of supernal glory. 



Among these Alpine summits it is not possible to 

 mistake the sovereign mountain. At the right, Mont Blanc 

 lifts his regal front highest, and stands at the head of 

 * See Frontispiece. 



