ANNUAL MOTION OP THE MER DE GLACE. 
181 
The observation, being repeated the ensuing year, gave a motion of about 486 feet (the 
nature of the observation did not admit of the same accuracy as at station C) from the 
13th of September 1843 to the 9th of August 1844, or 331 days, being at the rate of 
536 feet per annum, 
or 17'62 inches per day. 
In 1844 I made the casual discovery of one of my staves, used to mark the position 
of the station A at the Angle , a little higher up the glacier than the last, a point of 
which the motion had been most carefully observed during the summer of 1842 (see 
Travels, p. 140). This stick still bore legibly written upon it the date when it had 
been fixed in the ice at station A, and as the painted marks on the rock of the Angle 
were still as fresh as when they were made, I had no difficulty in finding the exact 
position on the glacier which this mark had in any part of the summer of 1842, and 
by measuring the distance to the place where it was found (which was on a spot of 
the ice quite unfrequented by guides or any one else), I had good reason for 
believing that this must be the space over which it had travelled in the mean time ; 
although of course I do not ascribe to this observation the weight of a direct measure, 
yet it proves an interesting confirmation. Reckoning from the position it occupied 
on the 1st of September 1842, it had advanced down to the 26th of August 1844, 
or in 720 days 952 feet, 
or, per annum .... 482‘5 feet. 
Mean daily motion . . . 15'87 inches. 
It will be seen that this result is in close agreement with that observed at station 
P above mentioned, which is a little further down the glacier, but about the same 
distance from the side ; for though the motion of P is somewhat greater for 1843-44 
than the mean motion of A for 1842-44, it will be seen by the comparative observa- 
tions at C already referred to, that the glacier moved more rapidly in 1843-44 than in 
1842-43. 
But I am now enabled to present a view of the actual progress of two glaciers 
during every part of the year from direct observation. For these I am indebted to 
the intelligent and persevering zeal of my excellent guide and assistant at Chamouni, 
Auguste Balmat, of whose character I have had the pleasure of forming a more and 
more favourable estimate the longer I have been acquainted with him. To the long 
training of the laborious summer of 1842, when he assisted me, he adds the further 
experience derived from my visits in 1843 and 1844, in the latter of which especially 
he became familiar with the nice precautions requisite in conducting the most accu 
rate measurements, and received instructions from me which rendered him perfectly 
competent to continue by himself the simpler kind of measurements which I have 
alone required of him. The extraordinary exertions which he used to obtain the winter 
motion of the block D 7, under the Montan vert, in 1842-43, have been noticed in my 
former publications. On one or two occasions, as I learned afterwards from himself, 
being unable to ascend the usual path to the Montanvert for fear of spring avalanches, 
