A COLLECTING DAY ABOVE AROLLA 73 



Pyramides d'Euseignes. Water, it seems, has in the 

 interminable course of years eroded all this valley. But 

 certain huge stone blocks have sheltered the light friable 

 tufa on which they rested ; with the result that each 

 block stands up, like a gigantic toadstool, on a tapering 

 twenty-foot spire. And here these fantastic mushrooms 

 rise aloft securely on their stems, and bid fair to outlast 

 the valley, and grow taller as its soil is washed away. 

 Only man has ever been successful as their enemy. Some 

 perverted mind once conceived the idea of using the 

 pyramids for targets in gun-practice. Popular indignation, 

 however, stopped the irreverence before much damage 

 had been done. 



After Euseignes the road crosses to the other side of 

 the valley, and mounts and mounts. At a dizzy depth 

 below, by the foot of the precipice, the river brawls 

 downwards over its rocky bed. The roadway is a mere 

 wrinkle on the face of the cliff. Overhead, as the air 

 clears, hardens, deepens to the cold calm of sunset, the 

 high snows begin to appear, chill and sombre above the 

 last pines. But neither precipice, nor pyramids, nor 

 yellow Ononis can hold one's attention for long against 

 the dominant presence of the Val d'Hermance. For one 

 has not been bowling for long through the upper valley 

 before one comes into sight of its reigning deity. Snow 

 here, snow there, high overhead, is our right ; we expect 

 it. But snow is one thing, ordinary white teeth of 

 mountain are one thing; the Dent Blanche is quite 

 another. Away, away at the uttermost extremity of the 

 valley the mountain-spire leaps into sight, and the un- 

 relenting majesty of it is like the blast of trumpets. As 

 I have already said, all these secondary streams flow from 

 some big mother-peak, and these mountain glens end 

 always in a pre-eminent height of snow. The Val d'Her- 

 mance is formed like a Y, and while the right-hand 



