SPARKS FROM A GEOLOGIST'S HAMMER. 



MONT BLANC AND THE HER DE GLACE. 



r I ^HE Alps, towering a present reality before our eyes 

 -*- the glaciers, opening their dark crevasses at our feet, 

 and lifting their crystal pinnacles above our heads, these 

 are the scenes which the reader is invited to enjoy. I 

 do not propose to treat him to a dry description of a 

 range of mountains four thousand miles away. He will 

 go with me at once to the land bristling with rocky 

 " needles," and proud in its hoary mountain-tops, which 

 glisten with the ancient rime of a thousand years, the 

 land of Mont Blanc and the Jungfrau, of the Wetterhorn 

 and the Matterhorn and the Finsteraarhorn, and many 

 another sonorous mountain " horn." 



We set out in the morning from Brussels another 

 Paris on a smaller scale, and passing within sight of the 

 historic field of Waterloo "the grave of France, the 

 deadly Waterloo" traverse the Grand Duchy of Lux- 

 embourg, wedged in among the greater nationalities like 

 an imperiled skiff in an ice-floe, and then run down 

 through those beautiful provinces of Alsace and Lorraine, 

 which to-day are weeping with heads bowed low, like lov- 

 ing daughters torn from an affectionate mother. At Metz 



13 



