"No, not often; nothing but snow."
"There!" says my guide, pointing to an object about as big as a good-sized fly, on the side of a distant mountain, "there's the auberge, on La Flégère, where we are going."
"Up there?" say I, looking up apprehensively, and querying in my mind how my estimable friend the mule is ever to get up there with me on his back.
"O yes," says my guide, cheerily, "and the road is up through that ravine."
The ravine is a charming specimen of a road to be sure, but no matter—on we go.
"There," says a guide, "those black rocks in the middle of that glacier on Mont Blanc are the Grands Mulets, where travellers sleep going up Mont Blanc."
We wind now among the pine tree still we come almost under the Mer de Glâce. A most fairy-like cascade falls down from under its pillars of ice over the dark rocks,—a cloud of feathery foam,—and then streams into the valley below.
"Voilà, L'Arveiron!" says the guide.
"O, is that the Arveiron?" say I; "happy to make the acquaintance."
But now we cross the Arve into a grove of pines, and direct our way to the ascent. We begin to thread a zigzag path on the sides of the mountain.