sight, and the bottoms scarcely discernable. Galleries that creaked and shook, and swayed under our weight, secured to the rocks with rusty irons, renewed no one knew when, and suggesting at every step the probability of giving way, and letting you down thousands of feet upon jagged rocks, and bounding from one to another till your corpse finally struck water, a torrent as wild and uncontrollable as Niagara. The gallery did not go down and we had gone to the end and admired the waterfall, and then on our way back to Chamonix that courier insisted upon our going up the Glacier des Bossons.
In vain we demurred, and told him we could see the Glacier from the road quite well enough. He insisted. It was an easy path clear up, and the view was something marvelous. Our whole visit to Europe would be a failure if we missed this view.
There was no help for it and we went. The ladies were provided with mules, while the gentlemen, under the guidance of the courier, struck out across lots.
CREVASSES.
For the first quarter of an hour it was all right. There was a good path, and the hill was not very steep. We crossed a number of little brooks that had their source in the glaciers above, and emptied into the Arve in the valley below. The woods through which we passed were huge pine trees, among which the narrow path wound its tortuous course. Occasionally there would be a little clearing and then we could get a glimpse of the valley and the mountains towering high above us.