420 THE HUNTING GROUNDS 



as it appeared to be the highest point, and surveyed 

 at leisure the wonderful scene before me. The higher 

 summit still towered like a mass of sparkling ala- 

 baster, some three thousand feet above the crest 

 upon which I was standing, but even had the day 

 not been So far advanced I could not have made any 

 attempt to reach it, as a scarped precipice over six 

 hundred feet in depth, an inaccessible glacier, and a 

 ridge of bluff peaks divided us, although it looked 

 almost within the range of my rifle. Could I even 

 have descended and made a circuit of the lower sum- 

 mit, the glacier was an obstacle that would have been 

 insurmountable, as in it were stupendous icebergs 

 and wave upon wave of precipitous ridges with steep 

 scarped sides, apparently inaccessible to the foot of 

 man, which gave me the idea of numberless rocky 

 islands in a tempestuous ocean suddenly frozen. In 

 the valleys and undulations between were innumer- 

 able blue and violet streaks, which, with the aid of 

 my glass, I made out to be deep fissures and yawning 

 chasms so wide as to appear perfectly impassable, 

 although some seemed arched over with natural 

 bridges of ice. Here and there, scattered over the 

 surface, dark masses of rock and fantastically-grouped 

 aiguilles and pinnacles appeared like the domes, 

 spires, and minarets of far-distant Eastern cities, 

 whilst the massive ridges of ice forcibly reminded 

 me of lines of defence and fortifications on the largest 

 scale, the efi'ect of which was somewhat heightened 

 by the continual cracking and breaking of the ice. 



