After a brief rest at the summit, the brakes are put on, one of the three horses is taken from the front, and down we go on the other side of the mountain it took us all day to ascend.
If the journey so far was attended with any danger, fancied or real, the fact was driven out of our minds by the nature of the road we were descending. It was frightful. From the carriage we could look down into a valley miles and miles away, and the road was so narrow that the slightest slip would have sent us into that valley in short order. The view was grand but the ride was fearful. We were all charmed when we reached the valley and were enabled to look up at the dizzy heights that had given us such a scare.
From this on to the hotel at Tête Noir, there was a constant succession of tunnels, high bridges over deep crevasses, and sharp curves around jutting crags that almost blocked the road.
At the “half-way house,” as it is called, the view is beautiful; three or four waterfalls tumbling down the mountain sides, and falling into the mad stream that goes careering wildly over the rocks and bowlders.
Then another long ride through a rough and barren country, indicating the approach to the glacier region, and then at a sudden turn in the road, Mont Blanc looms up high above the great peaks by which it is surrounded. We speed rapidly over the floor-like road, and at six o’clock in the evening, after having been on the road since seven in the morning, we are in Chamonix, the little village at the foot of Mt. Blanc, that lives entirely on tourists.
Of course the great point of interest is Mt. Blanc, the highest point of the central chain of the Swiss and Italian High Alps.
There it is—fifteen thousand seven hundred and thirty-one feet high, covered with a great mass of ice and snow that has been accumulating for ages.
There stands the patriarch of the Alps, crowned with the centuries, and still smiling grimly at Time.
It stands alone in its fearful beauty. Of all the European mountains, it impresses the mind with the power of the forces, the source of which are hidden to man, and which it is not given to man to comprehend. One feels his own insignificance as he gazes on this wonderful peak, and, no matter what his creed, feels a profound reverence for whatever power he believes created it.
THE DANGERS OF ASCENDING MONT BLANC.