it was awful, where the Aiguilles rocks shoot up some thirteen thousand fect, and the deep valley between gives one an idea of the infinite. What a chaos of rock-peaks and snow-domes! what a white waste of desolation! One feels more humility than pride, up there away from his kind, and if not face to face with the infinite, at least with that which partially reveals it.

How petty and far-away the mountains round Chamouni looked, which are formidable enough to climb. Indeed, every thing about us seemed so strangely far down: even the Aiguilles and snow-domes, which from below had appeared of almost equal height with Mont Blanc itself, now seemed little more than half as high. The white clouds, too, scattered about in small masses, were more curious still: while from the valley they seemed to be high up in the heavens, from the summit they appear to be a still greater distance below one; they were motionless, for there was no wind, and the sun shining upon them gave them the appearance of dense, heavy masses of snow. seemed strange that they hung there, and did not fall into the valley.

It

France, Italy, Savoy, Switzerland, from Milan to Lyons, from Berne and further north to the mountains behind Genoa, all was visible-Genoa and its lake, the Gemmi, the Oberland Alps with their grand captain the Jungfrau, St. Gothard, the Matterhorn, and Mont Rosa, besides the summits and glaciers more immediately about us.

The different ascents and precipices of our route diminished to littleness as we looked down, down so far away to see them. There were the snow mountains, which separate the great glaciers; over them is the old route to the summit, and there an avalanche swept the three guides of Dr. Hamel, the Russian, in 1820, to their ice-chasm grave, the winds for mourners, and the snow mountain for a monument.

There is the Grand Plateau, where a porter in 1855 went on ahead of his party, in haste to reach his home. Alas! he fell into a chasm so deep, that

his body could not be seen. His fellows brought up ropes the next day from the valley, and stood at the edge looking hopelessly down. No attempt was made, however, to descend; they did not care to face the impossible, and his body was left there to be embalmed by the ice, for longer ages than the Orientals in their pyramids. Again, on the Grand Plateau in 1866, an English captain and his four guides were ascending energetically, hopefully, when they looked up and saw the beginning of an avalanche. What a moment! They were all tied together. They snatched at their knives, and cut the rope, two running in one direction, three in another. The three, including the captain, were overwhelmed, lost; the two escaped, and men's memories engraved more names on the snow-monuments of that huge graveyard.

Again, in 1866, three brothers attempted the ascent without guides. They had succeeded in reaching the Mur de la Côte-were ascending it; a few inches of light fresh snow lay on the surface of the frozen mountain; an incautious step on this unfrozen snow—a slip-and down they were all hurled, with almost the speed of a lightningflash, over each other headlong to the snow at the foot of the ascent; two of them stunned, and for a time insensible, one gone to the judgment-seat. Jean Carriez, my guide, was partly up the mountain, watching their movements through a telescope, and saw the accident. Hastening up to the rescue, of course long hours in doing so, he met the two brothers trying to find their way down.

To all his offers of service they only answered no! no! seemingly still stunned, morally if not physically. They were cared for at the hut-in the morning had recovered their moral balance, and, with the guide, returned to the fatal spot, where they found the body of the dead one. How to take it down! Ah, it was a difficult question. Still, three were about as good for that as thirty, it could not be carried. Carefully fastening it up in a wrapper,

they tied a rope, and drew it along the snow where that was possible, to the verge of those fearfully steep mountains, then placing it on the edge, let it slide, or rather flash down to the snow-valley, while they turned their backs so as not to see its descent; and so he was borne on towards his grave. The eternal silences were eloquent about them, and their hearts made the silent response. What a service! What a funeral! My guide told me it was the most sickening thing he ever did, or saw.

And there, far away in another direction, is the pointed peak of the Matterhorn. Four out of a party of six were destroyed in a similar manner there. The published accounts say the "rope broke," and two were saved. I had always doubted that, still more so when I saw the size of the ropes they use on the mountains, and inquired of the guides. They told me it did not break, it was cut. One lost his foothold, and slipped-a sudden struggle and jerk on the rope, the next lost his footing the weight of two, and the third lost his hold-the struggle of three, and the fourth went all perhaps the work of three or four seconds, but it had given time to the fifth to draw his knife. As the jerk came and he was losing his footing, he cut the rope; and away they flashed down some four thousand feet, to a grave, where the attempt even could not be made to recover their mortal remains. And so the catalogue of horrors goes on-we will end it here.

I have said that the moment I reached the summit my fatigue vanished. It was so all the way up the mountains; the moment I stopped, or threw myself down in the snow, there was no feeling of pain, nor sickness, nor bleeding at the nose, which most people are troubled with who attempt these heights; only a feeling of intense, lazy lassitude, a desire to be still; and at the time of the severest efforts, the most intense fatigue, there was no pain nor oppression of the lungs, only breathing rapidly with the mouth wide open, to inhale more of the rarified air than could be taken in through the nostrils. As I

attribute this wholly to my habits and training, it may be interesting to some tourists to mention, that, eating but moderately of animal food, I take no coffee, tea, nor spirits, and during my training on the Swiss mountains, on rising I ate ripe fruit exclusively, then climbed the mountain selected for the day's amusement, taking a hearty midday meal, or déjeuner à la fourchette, at the châlet, or little hotel at the top, and then, elastic and unfatigued, as the sun was sinking to his rest, went down to a hearty meal at the table d'hôte of the hotel.

Well! I went down from my eyry and joined the guides, who were clustered a little lower on the sunny side of the dome, where it was warm and the air perfectly calm, although in ascending it had blown fiercely, and with a keen, cutting frostiness that would have done honor to January itself. We pulled our chickens to pieces,-knives were too heavy a luxury to carry up there,— and eat and drank heartily, and with a good relish. Of course, the guides were pleased we had succeeded, and their premium was sure, to say nothing of the enthusiasm which they always seem to feel in the success of those committed to their charge, and our meal was finished with toasts and congratulations. I then drew aside, and, seated on the snow, tore leaves from my notebook, and wrote little pencil-notes to the President of the Travellers' Club, and other friends in the lower world. I doubt if ever that was done before, or if they will ever receive another missive from that post-office-an office whose postmaster is Almighty, and the avalanches and hurricanes are the carriers.

The guides called, it was time to return: I wrote on unheeding. They called again; but it was the third time, and more earnestly, with the assurance that it would be death to be caught on the mountain all night, before I could tear myself from my occupation, and then the sublime, wild, magic scene, had to be looked at again, and again, before I could leave it. But it was after three o'clock; we had been over an hour on

the summit, and it was absolutely necessary to look one's longing, lingering, last farewell. We were soon tied together again, and, leaving our little monument of bottles and bones, more lightly loaded, and more light of heart, started for the descent.

The descent! I had hardly realized that that was more serious, more dangerous than coming up, but so it is. I looked down the steep, icy declivity into the far-away valley with a certain moral depression, and a longing to be at the end of it all. In fact, the thing had been done; the natural desire in all men to conquer difficulties had in this case, at least, been appeased; the ambition was satisfied, and I wanted to be away from it all, and safely in the lower world again. But the work was before us, and must be done; so down we went, tramp, tramp, tramp, in the old footholds which we had cut in ascending, the alpenstocks braced tightly in the frozen snow, and so reached the foot of the dome safely, then briskly on over, or rather through, the snow to the Mur de la Côte. To ascend this steep was dangerous work enough, but one looked at his footsteps and up only; in descending, one could not help looking down and seeing at a glance the whole of that wall-side, as it is not inaptly termed. To stand on Trinity Church spire and hold by the cross would be babyplay beside it, for then you would have something to hold by, but here nothing; while the little places we had cut in the ice as footholds, at a little distance down seemed hardly large enough for the footing of a kitten, and a little further were invisible, while the abyss yawned hundreds of feet below. I felt nervous as I stood for a moment at the edge and looked down. However, cautiously, quickly, step after step, we put our feet into the little holes we had made in the morning, the only words uttered being "arrétez! un moment!" as I turned a sharp angle and changed my alpenstock to the right or left, or got the rope entangled between my legs; and so we reached the bottom, and on to the Corridor. In descending I was

second, Carriez leading, and the three other guides behind, to hold in case I slipped, or fell.

The sun had been warm during the day, the snow had become softened, and many of the snow-bridges had fallen in, so that there seemed to be double the number of chasms to cross, many of them, too, which we had crossed unconscious of their existence. As we went down the lower part of the Corridor, we seemed to be playing the part of bacchanals; one foot would break through the crust of frozen snow, and down went the limb its entire length, throwing one on his side; the crust at the next step would perhaps be firm, and you drew the other foot out to go down again at another step; and so we labored on, thrown from side to side like drunken men. Here also our only accident occurred, the entire trip otherwise having been made without a slip or a false step. As we were descending the Corridor gayly and rapidly, we came to a crevasse covered with snow and entirely hidden. The first guide passed over, I followed, the next crossed safely; three were thus on the lower or descending side from the crevasse, with the rope stretched out between them, when the two last guides, gay and laughing, came together on the snow over the chasm and broke through. A sudden wild struggle, a death-grapple at the snow-bank, a jerk on the rope, and they were out, and laughing at the mishap. They did not laugh much over it, however: had it been the two first who had broken through while coming down the steep mountain, we should all have been drawn in together, and to inevitable death. Again we' went on with our uneven, ungainly movements in the half-frozen snow, and now rose on our right the monstrous overhanging ice-cliffs, while from the mountains on our left a huge avalanche had fallen while we were on the summit, and the débris had rolled down the mountain-side, and spread along the plain to within a few feet of our path

way.

Of course, the incessant labor of our

descent at last became intensely wearying, and I called on the guides to stop and rest; but they were evidently a little excited by the situation, the thaw, and the state of things generally, and their pas ici! pas ici! monsieur! were emphasized by their hurrying steps and furtive looks at the overhanging icecliffs. "Where can we halt?" I asked, and a shadow on the snow, fully a mile away, was pointed out as the nearest safe halting-place: indeed, we soon began running instead of resting. Arrived at the shadow, we sat down in the snow for a few minutes, and went on again.

Twilight was deepening rapidly into night as we reached the little hut of the Grand Mulets, and that day's work was ended. I felt fatigued, of course, but no pain then, nor afterwards; in fact, I hardly ever remember to have felt as well as I did that evening. Having been troubled, more or less, for ten years, with what the physicians call nervous indigestion, I felt persuaded that it had gone forever, and the months which have passed since, only prove the correctness of the impression. The ascent, the previous training, the diet, the enormous physical effort, had evidently brought life and activity to some dormant vitality, and I was well. Still, it is not a medicine that I would advise people generally to take.

Late in the night there was a sharp frost, and when in the morning we breakfasted, and again put on our costumes of the snow-regions, and stepped out, I could hardly, even with my spiked boots, stand on the steep, slippery ice-declivity.

On descending-still, of course, tied together with our strong hempen ropethe wild ice-chaos of three days before had become more wild, more strangely weird, and more dangerous, from the effects of the sunshine of three hot days. It may seem strange to speak so often of hot and cold in the same paragraph, but it is literally so on these wild heights, and at some places, as we were in the sunshine, or the shade, we had January 2nd July within the half hour.

Many snow-bridges had also fallen in, to make fathomless abysses visible, over which we before had walked. Of course, it was more trying and dangerous.

At the hut we were joined by the porter, who brought up the provisions; and as he was most experienced on this part of the route, he took the lead.

As we went on and looked down at our route, the rugged split-up ice masses seemed to end in a hopeless precipice; and as we approached the edge and looked over again, it seemed just possible, and hardly possible, to descend; then another precipice seemed to be before us, and so on for miles. Turning to the right and to the left to find a pathway, sometimes brought to a dead halt in front of a tremendous gulf, and skirting it to find a crossing, we hurried on; for with the heat, the way was becoming more dangerous every half hour. Of course, our route was all new, the old footprints and steps we had cut in the ice having all melted away. At one place, the only feasible crossing of a chasm was a wall of ice about a yard thick, standing erect between two unmeasured crevasses. This crossing required a steady head, as the wall-top was rounding, and each one, as he leaped over, had to land with a firm footing, and no step forward or backward, or he would have been thrown down the chasm; then turning to the right, he had to go a few steps forward on the rounding ice-wall, until the next sprang over. At last we were all on this frail-looking edge of ice. It did look at that moment a little insane, that human beings should so peril their lives. On this wall we had to advance some distance to a snow-bridge, and so proceed. In many places the snowbridges had become so soft, that we ran our alpenstocks through them with ease; and in such cases each one as he crossed, or crept over, spread out his arms and legs, so as to press on as much surface as possible, for if he stood upright he would sink through.

Unceasing and unresting, we went on and down to where the perpendicular rock-mountain skirted our way, but no

boulder was thrown down at us as we hurried on. Finally we reached the first little opening, where the snow and the earth were fighting for mastery, and there were a few miniature spears of grass, a minute forget-me-not, and a field-daisy, perfect in form, but so small as to measure hardly more than a quarter of an inch in diameter. How they looked up their laughing welcome! At that moment, and fresh as we were from all we had gone through, they seemed almost human. I shall certainly remember their smiles, after I forget many human ones. But on, on, and at last we arrive at the châlet of La Pierre Pointue, for a long pause, an admiring outlook over the beautiful scene, and a midday breakfast. About three o'clock we started again, and after three hours' trudging down the mountain-side, we reached the hotel, after being two nights and part of three days above the snow-line, and received the congratulations of the gentlemen who had been watching us through their telescopes, to say nothing of the smiles of approval from fair ones who put the

lilies to the blush, as the lilies once did the glory of Solomon.

My face was a picture to behold. Two white spots where the spectacles had rested, a white place on my forehead that the hat had covered, and all the rest of the face a deep purple red. The skin soon began to crack, and peeled off in flakes, the chin became covered with fever-blisters, and for a week or ten days I was unpresentable.

Would I advise any one else to go? No, by no means. More than that, I would not permit any one over whom I had any control to do so, indeed, would not repeat it myself for a fortune. And yet-and yet, Paris with its courtballs, Moscow and St. Petersburg with their great bell, gold dome, and daylight all night, Athens with its antiquities which laugh at the passing centuries, Constantinople with its Bosphorus and mosques, its dervishes, and half-concealed beauties in their thin yasmachs,-I would part with most of them, and their memories, readily, willingly, sooner than not have succeeded in reaching the summit of Mont Blanc.