72 



Louis Agassiz. 



My life/' he wrote at another time, is now a 

 vortex, in which the best part of my nature is hardly 

 conscious of its existence, so numerous and pressing 

 are the exterior exigencies from which I suffer.'* 



The season in this ice-land of romance passed only 

 too quickly and the summer of 1840 was looked 

 forward to by the enthusiasts with unbounded pleas- 

 ure. As soon as the season permitted, Agassiz and 

 his party were again established on the glacier of 

 the Aar. They were provided with two excellent 

 guides, and on the moraine they formed a shelter 

 partly under a huge bowlder, which with blankets 

 and poles they transformed into a rude house, which 

 was facetiously called the Hotel des Neuchatelois. 

 Agassiz was the landlord, or proprietor of this 

 glacial hotel, and the register might have shown the 

 names of Edouard Desor, Charles Vogt, Count 

 Pourtales, afterward so well known in America, 

 Henri Coulon, Celestin Nicolet, Jacob Leuthold, and 

 Johann Wahren, the two latter having been guides 

 to Hugi, the builder of the cabin on the glacier 

 in 1828. 



The following extract from a letter of M. Desor, 

 dated on the Aar, will convey an impression of 

 life on a glacier, showing that it required no little 

 scientific ardour to continue it : 



You are much mistaken if you suppose that all is 

 pleasure, satisfaction, and intellectual enjoyment at 

 the Hotel Neuchatelois. We have been shut up three 

 days in our tent, unable to venture out, the £-ux^ 



* A whirlwind of snow, called so in the Oberland. 



