90 THE FOKMS OF WATER IN 



jammed between its boundaries, the upper portions still 

 moved downwards and thickened the ice. The peak of 

 the Aiguille du Dru shook out a cloud-banner, the ori- 

 gin and nature of which have been already explained (84). 

 (See Frontispiece.) 



228. On the morning of the 28th this banner was 

 strikingly large and grand, and reddened by the light 

 of the rising sun, it glowed like a flame. Roses of 

 cloud also clustered round the crests of the Grande 

 Jorasse and hung upon the pinnacles of Charmoz. 

 Four men, well roped together, descended to the glacier. 

 I had trained one of them in 1857, and he was now to 

 fix the stakes. The storm had so distributed the snow 

 as to leave alternate lengths of the glacier bare and 

 thickly covered. Where much snow lay great caution 

 was required, for hidden crevasses were underneath. 

 The men sounded with their staffs at every step. Once 

 while looking at the party through my telescope the 

 leader suddenly disappeared ; the roof of a crevasse had 

 given way beneath him ; but the other three men 

 promptly gathered round and lifted him out of the 

 fissure. The true line was soon picked up bv the theo- 

 dolite ; one by one the stakes were fixed until a series 

 of eleven of them stood across the glacier. 



229. To get higher up the valley was impracticable ; 

 the snow was too deep, and the aspect of the weather 

 too threatening ; so the theodolite was planted amid the 

 pines a little way below the Montanvert, whence through 



