Viewed from the valley, they have, in my opinion, a much finer effect than from their summit.
The rays of the sun striking with various force on the different parts, according as they are more or less exposed, occasion an unequal dissolution of the ice; and, with the help of a little imagination, give the appearances of columns, arches, and turrets, which are in some places transparent.
A fabric of ice in this taste, two thousand feet high, and three times as broad, with the sun shining full upon it, you must acknowledge to be a very singular piece of architecture.
Our company ascended only the Glacier of Montanvert, which is not the highest, and were contented with a view of the others from the valley; but more curious travellers will surely think it worth their labour, to examine each of them more particularly.
Some people are so fond of Glaciers, that not satisfied with their present size, they insist positively, that they must necessarily grow larger every year, and they argue the matter thus:
The present existence of the Glaciers is a sufficient proof that there has, at some period or other, been a greater quantity of snow formed during the winter, than the heat of the summer has been able to dissolve. But this disproportion must necessarily increase every year, and, of consequence, the Glaciers must augment: because, any given quantity of snow and ice remaining through the course of one summer, must increase the cold of the atmosphere around it in some degree; which being reinforced by the snows of the succeeding winter, will refill: the dissolving power of the sun more the second summer than the first, and still more the third than the second, and so on.
The conclusion of this reasoning is, that the Glaciers must grow larger by an increasing ratio every year, till the end of time. For this reason, the authors of this theory regret, that they themselves have been sent into the world so soon; because, if their birth had been delayed for nine or ten thousand years, they should have seen the Glaciers in much greater glory, Mont Blanc being but a Lilliputian at present, in comparison of what it will be then.