30 TRAVEL, ADVENTURE, AND SPORT. 



two glaciers of Bossons and Tacconay. They are 

 chosen for a halting-place, not less from their con- 

 venient station on the route than from their situation 

 out of the way of the avalanches. From the western 

 face of the peak on which we were situated we could 

 not see Chamouni, except by climbing up to the top 

 of the rock rather a hazardous thing to do and 

 peeping over it, when the whole extent of the valley 

 could be very well made out; the villages looking 

 like atoms of white grit upon the checkered ground. 

 Below us, and rising against our position, was the 

 mighty field of the glacier a huge prairie, if I may 

 term it so, of snow and ice, with vast irregular undu- 

 lations, which gradually merged into an apparently 

 smooth unbroken tract, as their distance increased. 

 Towering in front of us, several thousand feet higher, 

 and two or three miles away, yet still having the 

 strange appearance of proximity that I have before 

 alluded to, was the huge Dome du Goute the 

 mighty cupola usually mistaken by the valley travel- 

 lers for the summit of Mont Blanc. Up the glacier, 

 on my left, was an enormous and ascending valley of 

 ice, which might have been a couple of miles across ; 

 and in its course were two or three steep banks of 

 snow, hundreds of feet in height, giant steps by 

 which the level landing-place of the Grand Plateau 

 was to be reached. On the first and lowest of these 

 we could make out two dots slowly toiling up the 

 slope. They were the pioneers we had started from 



