40 SPARKS FKOM A GEOLOGIST'S HAMMER. 



approachable altitude? Ah, the answer to our question is 

 recorded on your grey, pilastered sides. If we can- 

 not place foot upon your head, we are near enough 

 to read your record. We can see your vertical sheets of 

 rock, with their projecting angles running up the giddy 

 spire like the lines of masonry on the high-towered cathe- 

 dral at Strasbourg. Old Charmoz, after all, is not erect, 

 but prostrate on his side. Weathered and battered and 

 wasted by the wear of centuries, these salient pinnacles 

 are but the protruding ribs of a mountain skeleton. 



We have discovered the way to Charmoz, but, like 

 Jacques Balmat, on the discovery of the path to Mont 

 Blanc, we shall not travel over it the first day. Our 

 mountain crest which leads to Charmoz has thinned to a 

 knife-edge. On each side we look down, almost vertically, 

 about two thousand feet, upon some rocks which would 

 have a tendency to abate too suddenly our agreeable ex- 

 citement. We know that we could scale the pinnacle of 

 Charmoz, but we ought to go back and inform the ladies 

 where we might be found in case of any inadvertence. 



But we shall not travel the same road twice. We de- 

 scend a declivity as steep as possible, directly to the Mer 

 de Glace. Getting in the track of an old avalanche, we 

 go plunging, sliding, jumping, rolling, and so, literally, 

 " we go rolling home." Beaching the glacier, we mount 

 its tremendous lateral moraine rising one hundred feet 

 above the swelling ice-sea ; and over boulders, and along the 

 shining faces of cliffs scoured by the moving ice, we pick 

 our way down to the spot where we left the ladies pressing 

 flowers. 



We now feel competent to cross the Mer de Glace with- 

 out the intervention of a guide. Declining many proffers 



