BOOK Y 



GLACIEES AND ETEENAL SNOWS. 



The glaciers which extend their motionless waves over 

 the summits of the globe, and the gleaming splendour of 

 the snowy winding-sheet which envelops them, strike the 

 traveller still more than the aspect of the sea and the 

 desert. 



All is frightful amid the frozen solitudes of the moun- 

 tains, and a horrible death seems at each step to threaten 

 the rash mortal who enters them. On one side the aval- 

 anche threatens to bury him; beneath his feet open fright- 

 ful precipices in which he would be shattered, while cold 

 and hunger may destroy him. Every day the names of 

 new victims are inscribed in the records of deaths, and yet 

 each day some intrepid traveller tries a new enterprise. 



A chamois-hunter said to Do Saussure that his grand- 

 father and father had both been buried in the glaciers 

 whilst pursuing game, and he added, with a feeling of 

 sadness, that he was certain he should experience the 

 same fate as they had done, and that his knapsack would 

 be his shroud! Yet in spite of this he would never 

 renounce his fatal passion. Some years after this conver- 



