ASCENT OF MONT BLANC. 17 



which forms in its ensemble the boundary of a glacier. 

 The view is superb, but you dare not look at it. It 

 is only when the loose ground crumbles away beneath 

 your right foot, and you nearly slide away over the 

 precipice you would do so if the guide did not 

 seize you by the arm with the sudden grip of a vice 

 that you give up staring about you, and do nothing 

 but carefully watch the footsteps of the man who is 

 going on before. The path goes up and down its 

 gradual tendency, however, is to descend; and in 

 about twenty minutes we had arrived at the bottom 

 of the ravine. Here we had another half -hour's 

 troublesome scramble over loose boulders, which 

 threw and twisted our ankles about in every 

 direction, until at last we gained the second station, 

 if it may so be called, of our journey another huge 

 rock called the Pierre a 1'Echelle, under shelter of 

 which a ladder is left from one year to the other, 

 and is carried on by the guides, to assist them in 

 passing the crevices on the glacier. The remains of 

 an old one were likewise lying here, and the rungs of 

 it were immediately seized for firewood. 



"We were now four thousand feet above Chamouni, 

 and the wonders of the glacier world were breaking 

 upon us. The edge of the ice was still half-an-hour's 

 walk beyond this rock, but it appeared close at hand 

 literally within a stoneVthrow. So vast is every- 

 thing that surrounds the traveller there is such an 

 utter absence of any comprehensible standard of com- 



VOL. IV. B 



