[FULL-SIZE] -- [Medium-Size]
These glaciers are very ugly, very dirty, very uneven, very slippery; at every step you run the risk of falling, and if you fall it is on sharp stones or into deep holes. They look like heaps of old plaster-work, and those who have admired them have a stock of admiration for sale.
The water has pierced them so that you walk upon bridges of snow. These bridges have the appearance of kitchen air-holes; the water is swallowed up in a very low archway, and, when you look closely, you get a distinct sight of a black hole. An Englishman who wished to enjoy the view, allowed himself to fall, and came out half dead, “with the rapidity of a trout.” We left such experiments to the trout and the English.
VI.
[FULL-SIZE] -- [Medium-Size]
After the glaciers we find a sloping esplanade; we climb for ten minutes bruising our feet upon fragments of sharp rock. Since leaving the hut we have not lifted our eyes, in order to reserve for ourselves an unbroken sensation. Here at last we look. A wall of granite crowned with snow hollows itself before us in a gigantic amphitheatre. This amphitheatre is twelve hundred feet high, nearly three miles in circumference, three tiers of perpendicular walls, and in each tier thousands of steps.