An Ascent of Mont Ventoux 205 



guide will have arrived long before us. This is 

 the plan proposed and adopted. 



We reach the crested ridge. On the south, 

 the comparatively easy slopes which we have 

 just climbed stretch as far as the eye can see ; 

 on the north, the scene is full of wild grandeur : 

 the mountain, sometimes hewn perpendicularly, 

 sometimes carved into rough steps, alarmingly 

 steep, is little else than a sheer precipice a mile 

 high. If you throw a stone, it never stops, but 

 falls from rock to rock until it reaches the bottom 

 of the valley, where you can distinguish the bed 

 of the Toulourenc looking like a ribbon. While 

 my companions loosen masses of rock and send 

 them rolling into the abyss so that they may 

 watch the frightful fall, I discover under a 

 broad flat stone one of my old insect acquaint- 

 ances, the Hairy Ammophila, whom I had always 

 met by herself on the roadside banks in the 

 plain, whereas here, almost at the top of the 

 Ventoux, I find her to the number of several 

 hundreds heaped up under one and the same 

 shelter. 



I was beginning to investigate the reasons for 

 this agglomeration, when the southerly breeze, 

 which already during the morning had inspired 

 us with a few vague fears, suddenly brought up 

 a cohort of clouds which melted into rain. 

 Before we knew it, we were shrouded in a thick, 



