[18] Taking one kind of work with another, a thousand feet of height per hour is about as much as is usually accomplished on great Alpine ascents.
SCALE, THREE MILES TO AN INCH
Our day’s work was as good as over (for we knew from Messrs. Mathews and Bonney that there was no difficulty upon the other side), and we abandoned ourselves to ease and luxury; wondering alternately, as we gazed upon the Rateau and the Écrins, how the one mountain could possibly hold itself together, and whether the other would hold out against us. The former looked so rotten that it seemed as if a puff of wind or a clap of thunder might dash the whole fabric to pieces, while the latter asserted itself the monarch of the group, and towered head and shoulders above all the rest of the peaks which form the great horseshoe of Dauphiné. At length a cruel rush of cold air made us shiver, and shift our quarters to a little grassy plot three thousand feet below—an oasis in a desert—where we lay nearly four hours admiring the splendid wall which protects the summit of the Meije from assault upon this side.[[19]] Then we tramped down the Vallon des Étançons, a howling wilderness, the abomination of desolation; destitute alike of animal or vegetable life; pathless, of course; suggestive of chaos, but of little else; covered almost throughout its entire length with débris, from the size of a walnut up to that of a house: in a word, it looked as if half a dozen moraines of first-rate dimensions had been carted and shot into it. Our tempers were soured by constant pitfalls: it was impossible to take the eyes from the feet, and if an unlucky individual so much as blew his nose without standing still to perform the operation, the result was either an instantaneous tumble or a barked shin or a half-twisted ankle. There was no end to it, and we became more savage at every step, unanimously agreeing that no power on earth would ever induce us to walk up or down this particular valley again. It was not just to the valley, which was enclosed by noble mountains—unknown, it is true, but worthy of a great reputation, and which, if placed in other districts, would be sought after and cited as types of daring form and graceful outline.
[19] This wall may be described as an exaggerated Gemmi, as seen from Leukerbad. From the highest summit of La Meije right down to the Glacier des Etançons (a depth of about 3200 feet), the cliff is all but perpendicular, and appears to be completely unassailable. The dimensions of these pages are insufficient to do justice to this magnificent wall, which is the most imposing of its kind that I have seen; otherwise it would have been engraved.
THE VALLON DES ÉTANÇONS (LOOKING TOWARD LA BÉRARDE)