These prodigious blocks of granite, thirty or forty feet long and twenty feet thick, which float on this grim sea of ice, do float, and are drifting, drifting down to the valley below, where, in a few days, they must arrive.
We walked these valleys, ascended these hills, leaped across chasms, threw stones down the crevasses, plunged our alpenstocks into the deep baths of green water, and philosophized and poetized till we were tired. Then we returned to the auberge, and rode down the zigzag to our hotel.
LETTER XXXIV.
MY DEAR:—
The Mer de Glâce is exactly opposite to La Flégère, where we were yesterday, and is reached by the ascent of what is called Montanvert, or Green Mountain. The path is much worse than the other, and in some places makes one's nerves twinge, especially that from which C. projected his avalanche. Just think of his wanting to stop me on the edge of a little shelf over that frightful chasm, and take away the guide from the head of my mule to help him get up avalanches!
I warn you, if ever you visit the Alps, that a travelling companion who has not the slightest idea what fear is will give you many a commotion. For instance, this Mer de Glâce is traversed every where by crevasses in the ice, which go to—nobody knows where, down into the under world—great, gaping, blue-green mouths of Hades; and C. must needs jump across them, and climb down into them, to the mingled delight and apprehension of the guide, who, after conscientiously shouting out a reproof, would say to me, in a lower tone, "Ah, he's the man to climb Mont Blanc; he would do well for that!"
The fact is, nothing would suit our guides better, this clear, bright weather, than to make up a party for the top of Mont Blanc. They look longingly and lovingly up to its clear, white fields; they show us the stages and resting-places, and seem really to think that it is a waste of this beautiful weather not to be putting it to that most sublime purpose.
Why, then, do not we go up? you say. As to us ladies, it is a thing that has been done by only two women since the world stood, and those very different in their physique from any we are likely to raise in America, unless we mend our manners very much. These two were a peasant woman of Chamouni, called Marie de Mont Blanc, and Mademoiselle Henriette d'Angeville, a lady whose acquaintance I made in Geneva. Then, as to the gentlemen, it is a serious consideration, in the first place, that the affair costs about one hundred and fifty dollars apiece, takes two days of time, uses up a week's strength, all to get an experience of some very disagreeable sensations, which could not afflict a man in any other case. It is no wonder, then, that gentlemen look up to the mountain, lay their hands on their pockets, and say, No.
Our guide, by the way, is the son, or grandson, of the very first man that ascended Mont Blanc, and of course feels a sort of hereditary property and pride in it.
C. spoke about throwing our poles down the pools of water in the ice.