Bah! it was a dull time. Our mountain, like a beautiful coquette, sometimes unveiled herself for a moment, and looked charming above, although [pg 185]very mysterious below. It was not until eventide she allowed us to approach her; then, as darkness came on, the curtains were withdrawn, the light drapery was lifted, and we stole up on tiptoe through the grand portal formed by Mont Suc. But night advanced rapidly, and we found ourselves left out in the cold, without a hole to creep into or shelter from overhanging rock. We might have fared badly, except for our good plaids. When they were sewn together down their long edges, and one end tossed over our rope (which was passed round some rocks), and the other secured by stones, there was sufficient protection; and we slept on this exposed ridge, 9700 feet above the level of the sea, more soundly, perhaps, than if we had been lying on feather beds.
OUR CAMP ON MONT SUC.[133]
We left our bivouac at 4.45 A.M., and at 9.40 arrived upon the highest of the three summits of the Trélatête, by passing over the [pg 186]lowest one. It was well above everything at this end of the chain, and the view from it was extraordinarily magnificent. The whole of the western face of Mont Blanc was spread out before us; we were the first by whom it had been ever seen. I cede the description of this view to my comrade, to whom it rightfully belongs.
[For four years I had felt great interest in the geography of the chain; the year before I had mapped, more or less successfully, all but this spot, and this spot had always eluded my grasp. The praises, undeserved as they were, which my map had received, were as gall and wormwood to me when I thought of that great slope which I had been obliged to leave a blank, speckled over with unmeaning dots of rock, gathered from previous maps—for I had consulted them all without meeting an intelligible representation of it. From the surface of the Miage glacier I had gained nothing, for I could only see the feet of magnificent ice-streams, and no more; but now, from the top of the dead wall of rock which had so long closed my view, I saw those fine glaciers from top to bottom, pouring down their streams, nearly as large as the Bossons, from Mont Blanc, from the Bosse, and from the Dôme.
The head of Mont Blanc is supported on this side by two buttresses, between which vast glaciers descend. Of these the most southern[134] takes its rise at the foot of the precipices which fall steeply down from the Calotte,[135] and its stream, as it joins that of the Miage, is cut in two by an enormous rognon of rock. Next, to the left, comes the largest of the buttresses of which I have spoken, almost forming an aiguille in itself. The next glacier[136] descends from a large basin which receives the snows of the summit-ridge between the Bosse and the Dome, and it is divided from the third and last glacier[137] by another buttress, which joins the summit-ridge at a point between the Dôme and the Aig. de Bionnassay.]
The great buttresses betwixt these magnificent ice-streams have [pg 187]supplied a large portion of the enormous masses of débris which are disposed in ridges round about, and are strewn over, the termination of the Glacier de Miage in the Val Véni. These moraines[138] used to be classed amongst the wonders of the world. They are very large for a glacier of the size of the Miage.
The dimensions of moraines are not ruled by those of glaciers. Many small glaciers have large moraines,[139] and many large ones have small moraines. The size of the moraines of any glacier depends mainly upon the area of rock surface that is exposed to atmospheric influences within the basin drained by the glacier; upon the nature of such rock,—whether it is friable or resistant; and upon the dip of strata. Moraines most likely will be small if little rock surface is exposed; but when large ones are seen, then, in all probability, large areas of rock, uncovered by snow or ice, will be found in immediate contiguity to the glacier. The Miage glacier has large ones, because it receives detritus from many great cliffs and ridges. But if this glacier, instead of lying, as it does, at the bottom of a trough, were to fill that trough, if it were to completely envelope the Aiguille de Trélatête, and the other mountains which border it, and were to descend from Mont Blanc unbroken by rock or ridge, it would be as destitute of morainic matter as the great Mer de Glace of Greenland. For if a country or district is completely covered up by glacier, the moraines may be of the very smallest dimensions.[140]
The contributions that are supplied to moraines by glaciers themselves, from the abrasion of the rocks over which their ice passes, are minute compared with the accumulations which are [pg 188]furnished from other sources. These great rubbish-heaps are formed, one may say almost entirely, from débris which falls, or is washed down the flanks of mountains, or from cliffs bordering glaciers; and are composed, to a very limited extent only, of matter that is ground, rasped, or filed off by the friction of the ice.