CLOUDS AND RIVERS, ICE AND GLACIERS. 91 



a vista I could see across the glacier. The men were 

 wrapped at intervals by whirling snow-wreaths which 

 quite hid them, and we had to take advantage of the 

 lulls in the wind. Fitfully it came up the valley, dark- 

 ening the air, catching the snow upon the glacier, and 

 tossing it throughout its entire length into high and 

 violently agitated clouds, separated from each other by 

 cloudless spaces corresponding to the naked portions of 

 the ice. In the midst of this turmoil the men con- 

 tinued to work. Bravely and steadfastly stake after 

 stake was set, until at length a series of ten of them 

 was fixed across the glacier. 



230. Many of the stakes were fixed in the snow. 

 They were four feet in length, and were driven in to a 

 depth of about three feet. But that night, while list- 

 en in g to the wild onset of the storm, I thought it pos- 

 sible that the stakes and the snow which held them 

 might be carried bodily away before the morning. 

 The wind, however, lulled. We rose with the dawn, but 

 the air was thick with descending snow. It was all 

 composed of those exquisite six-petaled flowers, or six- 

 rayed stars, which have been already figured and de- 

 scribed (§ 9). The weather brightening, the theodo- 

 lite was planted at the end of the first line. The men 

 descended, and, trained by their previous experience, 

 rapidly executed the measurements. The first line was 

 completed before 11 a.m. Again the snow began to fall, 

 filling all the air. Spangles innumerable were showered 

 8 



