48 TRAVEL, ADVENTURE, AND SPORT. 



lying down, and others standing in little parties. I 

 was on the top of Mont Blanc ! 



The ardent wish of years was gratified ; but I was 

 so completely exhausted that, without looking round 

 me, I fell down upon the snow, and was asleep in an 

 instant. I never knew the charm before of that 

 mysterious and brief repose which ancient people 

 term "forty winks." Six or seven minutes of dead 

 slumber was enough to restore the balance of my 

 ideas ; and when Tairraz awoke me, I was once more 

 perfectly myself. And now I entered into the full 

 delight that the consciousness of our success brougnt 

 with it. It was a little time before I could look at 

 anything steadily. I wanted the whole panorama 

 condensed into one point ; for gazing at Geneva and 

 the Jura, I thought of the plains of Lombardy behind 

 me ; and turning round towards them, my eye im- 

 mediately wandered away to the Oberland, with its 

 hundred peaks glittering in the bright morning sun. 

 There was too much to see, and yet not enough : I 

 mean, the view was so vast that, whilst every point and 

 valley was a matter of interest, and eagerly scanned, 

 yet the elevation was so great that all detail was 

 lost. What I did observe I will endeavour to r.ender 

 account of not as a tourist might do who, planting 

 himself in imagination on the Mont Blanc of Keller's 

 map or Auldjo's plan, puts down all the points that 

 he considers might be visible, but just as they struck 

 me with an average traveller's notion of Switzerland. 



