My guide, whose heart was evidently more in the hunting than in his present business, became half wild with excitement at the sight of these izzards. It was the largest herd he had seen that year, and, with many a sacré, he bemoaned his fate that he should be without his rifle; though I endeavoured to convince him that there was nothing to regret, as he could not at the same time hunt izzards and conduct me to the Brêche.
We now fairly lost sight of the Cirque, and were in the midst of snow and glaciers which covered a steep, inclined about forty-five degrees. The surmounting of this slope was a most fatiguing affair for me, as the snow was very slippery, and it happened that I retrograded nearly as often as I advanced. This part of the ascent occupied about an hour. My guide now turned to the left, for the purpose of crossing a glacier, the inclination of which is so great that it is the next thing to impossible to ascend it. The passage over this glacier, beyond which lies the Brêche, is by far the most dangerous part of the undertaking. At the place where we encountered it, its breadth may be about four hundred yards; but throughout, its inclination is such that the slightest false step would prove fatal, for beneath are precipices of fearful depth. Here crampons are used. I was fairly exhausted when I came to the edge of this glacier, and despite the protestations of my guide, who declared that there was no time to lose, I threw myself on the snow, and would, had I been left alone, have been asleep in a few moments.
It is customary for the few tourists who visit the Brêche to take two guides, for the purpose of crossing this glacier in safety; and I had cause to regret my ignorance of the practice, for although I trod most cautiously in the notches cut by my guide, yet my limbs were so weak, that when about half-way across, I stumbled, and for a moment gave myself up for lost. Happily, my guide was sufficiently near to grasp my extended arms, and shouting: 'Prenez garde! prenez garde! Courage! courage!' he sustained me until I recovered my balance. Then it was that I became fully aware of the mistake I had committed in making this excursion without previous training; and I admonished Jaques in future, to give those who desired to scale the Brêche fair warning of the dangers and difficulties attendant upon the undertaking.
My escape was not rendered the less interesting by a story which my guide related to me of an unfortunate traveller, who when his crampon, by some accident, caught his trousers, lost his balance, and there being no friendly hand to arrest him, in an instant sped down the sloping ice with the speed of an avalanche, and was almost instantaneously lost for ever.
It was here that Mr Paris, who was rash enough to attempt ascending to the Brêche without a guide, was obliged to give up the task. 'The sight of this glacier,' he observes, 'was too appalling. I could not summon sufficient resolution to attempt the passage, which was in distance about a quarter of a mile, and wisely, I think, abandoned it. To understand all its terrors, the place must be seen. Once slip, and you are gone for ever, past all human aid: the death is too frightful for contemplation.'
Bracing my shattered nerves for the occasion, I resumed my labour, taking care, however, to hold my guide's hand; and thus moving slowly and cautiously, I had at length the inexpressible satisfaction of achieving the formidable passage of this terrible glacier. The rest of the journey was comparatively easy, though the elevation—above 9000 feet—and the steepness were trying enough. But all sense of fatigue forsook me when the huge portal—the tiny notch as seen from Gèdres—yawned in all its stern magnificence before me. It was a fit reward for all my toil, and I felt that I would have willingly endured even greater sufferings to make acquaintance with such a scene as now met my astonished gaze.
Eager to achieve the crowning feat of my undertaking, I hastened onwards; and with beating heart I soon stood within the jaws of the mighty portal, through which swept the howling wind. A step more, and I was in Spain. Glaciers slope away on each side of the wall; but all along the front of the Brêche, on the French side, the glacier is scooped out into a deep fosse or cavity, by the action of the sun's rays pouring from the south through the opening. A wild world of mountains appeared to the south, those in the foreground covered with snow, and the more distant looming hazily over the plains of Saragossa. And this was Spain!—wondrous land, defying description, and in memory resembling, not realities, but fragments of tremendous dreams. Towards France, the scene is softer. Mountains there are, sky-piled, but there are forests too, the home of wolves
Cruel as death, and hungry as the grave!
Burning for blood; bony, and gaunt, and grim;
and vales of emerald, and silver streams, and gleaming lakes. But how hope to convey anything like a faithful impression of the panorama seen from the Brêche-de-Roland! I will not attempt it, preferring rather to advise the reader, should he not be stricken in years, to see it himself.
My guide produced the contents of his wallet, which, thanks to Madame Cazean's provident forethought, were good and abundant; and having placed the wine-flasks in the ice—there was enough at hand to ice the great Heidelberg tun—I sat down on the ridge of the Brêche, one leg in Spain, the other in France, and my body in amiable neutrality. Oh, the delight of that repast! there never was so tender a fowl, never wine so good. While thus engaged in refreshing exhausted nature, I even forgot that the terrible glacier had to be recrossed, and the steep snow-slopes to be descended.