278 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



June 



tel, over which the American and English flags 

 •were waving to attract just such patriots as our- 

 selves, we walked up to the small church and in- 

 to the fields, and sat down upon the grass, and 

 watched the sunlight on the mountain peaks, 

 glistening like silver with rainbow hues, as the 

 shadows from the valleys crept softly up the hill- 

 sides. There was no cloud or mist around the 

 lofty peaks, and one by one the twilight cast her 

 mantle over them, till the brightness of all was 

 dimmed, except one distant lofty summit which 

 before had seemed no higher than the rest, but 

 now we saw, as the sunlight still glanced from 

 this, when all the rest of the world had sunk into 

 shade, that Mont Blanc, with his glorious fore- 

 head bathed in light, looked down on all around 

 him. Next day was clear and bright, and, as I 

 watched the sunrise on the mountains which rise 

 almost like a wall on the east of the valley of 

 Chamouni, every wave of the ocean of snow 

 which covers them was plainly visible. "We took 

 an early start on foot up Mt. Anvert, by a steep 

 and crooked path, and there at about three thou- 

 sand feet elevation above the valley, and eight 

 thousand above the ocean level, we looked down 

 upon the famous Mer de Glace. This is one of 

 the glaciers, and here about three miles above the 

 lower end of it we crossed to the other side upon 

 the ice. The passage did not seem to me either 

 difficult or dangerous, though some of our party 

 availed themselves constantly of the helping 

 hand of the guides to steady their steps. 



It is a rough river of ice of about half a mile 

 in width, not smooth, like ice formed where it 

 lies, but rough and broken, as if a sea of ice of 

 many feet in thickness had been broken up by a 

 torrent and swept down from above, till it was 

 jammed into the mountain pa?s in a perfect chaos 

 of confusion. The guides have small flags post- 

 ed up at intervals to indicate a safe pathway, 

 and they carry hatchets with which they cut 

 notches in the large masses of ice over which we 

 climbed. 



We passed close by large fissures where the 

 masses of ice were separated, which appeared to 

 be fifty feet in depth, and across narrow passes 

 as if on huge cakes of ice set on edge. Stones 

 and earth are in places mingled with the ice, and 

 all this seems to substantiate the theory that 

 these glaciers are formed by avalanches of snow 

 and ice which slide from the higher peaks of the 

 mountains. 



Slowly, but surely, the whole mass slides down 

 into the valley, where, at the end of the glacier, 

 which juts out like a tongue between the green 

 fields and pastures which almost touch its sides, 

 a river of roaring, foaming water constantly 

 rushes from beneath it. It is, as I have said, 

 about three miles from where we crossed to the 



lower end of the glacier. Occasionally a guide 

 or traveller falls into the deep fissures in the ice 

 in crossing, and they say that it takes about for- 

 ty years for those unfortunate individuals to 

 make the passage out at the lower end, showing 

 that the glacier moves at about the speed of three 

 miles in that period of time. We were solemnly 

 assured that there are three guides now on the 

 passage, and that one of them is anxiously 

 looked for every year by his posterity, and ex- 

 pected to come out in as good a state of preser- 

 vation as the elephant that was found in Siberia, 

 frozen up probably before the time of Noah. 



After crossing the ice, we walked down on the 

 other side, climbing along by the side of a per- 

 pendicular precipice, holding by a rope fastened 

 with staples to the rock, for many rods, looking 

 down all the way upon the glacier at our feet. 

 The day was hot, and large masses of ice were 

 constantly falling as the water beneath loosened 

 the foundation, and occasionally a crash like the 

 report of a field-piece, told that a great mass of 

 ice had fallen oft' from the end of the glacier, 

 which seems to stand some fifty feet high, and to 

 preserve, by some means, a square wall at its ter- 

 mination. All through the day we had fine views 

 of the mountains, and at night arrived at our ho- 

 tel, after a rough walk of twenty miles, with less 

 feeling of fatigue than a quarter of that distance 

 gave us in our early attempts at pedestrianism. 



The agriculture of this valley is not extensive. 

 Crops of wheat and oats were growing in the nar- 

 row plains in the valleys. Flocks of she-goats, 

 each with a bell on her neck, were driven at 

 night home to the village to be milked. High 

 up on the mountains we could see little villages 

 of small cottages, where a few cows and goats 

 are kept. Even in the midst of the mountain 

 passes, where nothing but a mule can travel, 

 there were away up above our path, houses and 

 attempts at fields of grain. The hunters shoot 

 chamois and some other kinds of mountain goats 

 or deer. Where there are wider valleys, grapes 

 are grown on the sunny slopes, but on the whole, 

 the region about Chamouni is barren and deso- 

 late, and the inhabitants subsist mainly by the 

 expenditures of travellers who are attracted 

 thither by the wild beauty of the scenery. From 

 Chamouni we took post-horses to Geneva, a long 

 but pleasant day's ride of nearly fifty miles. 



The scenery is picturesque and grand through 

 most of the route, with fine views backward of 

 Mont Blanc. We dined at Bonneville, and then 

 journeyed on through a pleasant Rhine-like vine 

 land down the river Arve till we reached the ele- 

 gant aristocratic city of Geneva. Here again we 

 seemed to have found one of those cities peculiar 

 to continental Europe, devoted, like Brussels and 

 Paris, to luxury and elegant amusement. Beauti- 



