192 Bibliography. 



had not the guide of Prof. F. providentially encountered them while on 

 his search for water. With great strength and courage Balmat suc- 

 ceeded in drawing the man up hy the arm from " a spot where a cha- 

 mois could not have escaped alive." Auguste told Prof. F. that while 

 he bore the entire weight of the man on the slippery ledge of rock to 

 which he himself clung, he felt his foot give way and for a moment 

 thought himself lost. After having refreshed the exhausted traveller 

 with food and wine, he was conducted back to Chamouni, while Prof. 

 Forbes with his guide, went to view the place from which he was res- 

 cued. It was a ledge in most places about a foot wide and several feet 

 long, with grass and juniper growing upon it. It thinned off upon the 

 cliff entirely in one direction, and on the other where widest, terminated 

 abruptly against an overhanging rock ten feet high, which no one un- 

 assisted could have ascended. " The direction of his fall was attested 

 by the shreds of his blouse hanging to the bushes which he had grazed 

 in his descent ; but for which evidence it would have seemed impossible 

 that any falling object could have so attained the shelf on which he was 

 miraculously lodged. Immediately below the spot from which he fell, 

 the shelf thinned off so completely that it was plain he must have fallen 

 obliquely across the precipice so to reach it. " The ledge was twenty 

 feet below the top of the smooth granitic precipice, to which a cat could 

 not have clung, and below, the same polished surface went sheer down 

 without a break for at least two hundred feet where it sinks into the 

 glacier." " A more astonishing escape it is scarce possible to conceive. 

 It is probable that had not the young men crossed the glacier at this 

 fortunate moment, my guide and I would have passed the rock fifty 

 yards above him, (it was in the direction in which we were going,) 

 without either party having the remotest idea of the other's presence." 

 It is painful to conclude this story with the following note of Prof. 

 Forbes, p. 83. " I regretted to learn afterwards, that he had not shown 

 himself generously sensible of the great effort used in his preservation." 



Art. XXIII. — Bibliographical Notices. 



1. Reliquia Baldwiniance : selections from the correspondence of 

 the late Wm. Baldioin, M. D., Surgeon in the U. S. Navy, with occa- 

 sional notes, and a short biographical memoir ; compiled by Wm. Dar- 

 lington, M. D. Philadelphia, 1843. pp. 346, 12mo. — In editing the 

 scientific remains of the amiable Baldwin, Dr. Darlington has fulfilled, 

 and well fulfilled, a duty peculiarly incumbent upon him ; for he is cer- 

 tainly the appropriate literary executor of his lamented friend. Born 

 in the same county, and nearly of the same age, the subject of this 



