1846.] CHANGES IN GLACIER OF LA BRENVA. 177 



south side of Mont Blanc. Having undertaken the journey 

 from Chamouni to Courmayeur and back, for the sole purpose 

 of examining anew this glacier and that of Miage (of which I 

 have already given a full account in the tenth chapter of my 

 Travels in the Alps of Savoy, etc.), I thought myself fortunate 

 in obtaining some important and unexpected observations, as 

 well as in again meeting M. Carrel, canon of Aoste, who, in 

 company with M. L'Eglise, canon of the Great St. Bernard, 

 very kindly made a visit to Courmayeur, on purpose to join me, 

 and afterwards accompanied me upon the glaciers. 



Upon arriving opposite to the glacier of La Brenva, on the 

 6th August last, in descending from the Col de la Seigne, I 

 was first struck by the surprising extension of volume which 

 it had undergone since my last visit in 1842. This will be 

 understood by a comparison of the limit of the glacier in 1842, 

 as sketched in the plan No. II., opposite to page 193 of the first 

 edition of my Travels, and reproduced in Plate VIII., fig. 1, 

 accompanying this paper, and the line of its extension in 1846, 

 marked by a dotted line in the same figure. I wish it to be 

 understood that the sketches in question, being only taken by 

 the eye, have no pretension to exact accuracy, but fortunately 

 the land-marks are sufficiently distinct to prevent the least 

 dubiety. Thus, for example, the bay or hollow opposite to 

 C in the sketch, and which was drawn, in 1842, as filled with 

 the old moraine of 1818, was filled up with ice very nearly, if 

 not quite, to the level of that moraine, so as to follow the natural 

 curve of the soil, which it everywhere touched, presenting a 

 steep wall of nearly unbroken ice, 70 feet in height, facing the 

 bank. Again, opposite to the remarkable chapel of Notre 

 Dame de la Guerison, of which I have given an account in my 

 Travels, with the history of its invasion and ruin by the pro- 

 gress of the ice in 1818, the ice has risen against the projecting 

 rock, beneath the old larch tree (seen in Plate IV. of my Tra- 

 vels, and in Plate VII., fig. 1, accompanying this paper), and 

 seems to threaten the security of the path, in the same manner 

 as it did at that time. " The height of this rock " I stated in 



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