- Got up this morning with a peculiarly cold feel, and
started with a fine piercing breeze in our teeth, blowing directly
off the snows.
Our force was augmented to-day by three goats, as portable dairy, and a
party of natives, with three days' supplies, also a guide, for our path
lay over ground neither much frequented nor well known. To-day's has
been the grandest scene of the panorama yet unfolded to us. From the
last halt, no inconsiderable height in itself, we mounted continually
towards the huge white masses of snow, which so lately towered above
us in the distance. Passing the remains of mighty avalanches firmly
fixed across the foaming torrent, we ascended the snow valley by the
side of a perfect mountain of ice and snow, the accumulations of,
possibly, as many years as the world has existed, which had formed
itself immoveably between the mighty mountain's sides. The terrific
force, with which the masses of snow had come down each season, to
repair the ravages in the frozen monster's constitution caused by the
melting away of his lower extremities, could be seen by the enormous
blocks of stone which rested on its surface in all directions. In
some places fantastic arches of snow were thus formed, with blocks of
rock resting on their summits, and such a distance were these central
accumulations of rocks, and snow, and ice, from the cradles in which
they were reared, that it was impossible to conceive, without the
occurrence of an earthquake, how they could ever have reached their
present positions.
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