Much
the effect that heat lightning does in the summer sky - it seemed to
flash over his face and be gone in a wink; at first this looked to me
very odd, but so much do our ideas depend on association, that after I
had known him for some time, I really thought that I liked him better
with, than I should without it. It seemed to give originality to the
expression of his face; he was such a good, fatherly man, and took
such excellent care of me and the mule, and showed so much
intelligence and dignity in his conversation, that I could do no less
than like him, heat lightning and all.
This valley of Chamouni, through which we are winding now, is every
where as flat as a parlor floor. These valleys in the Alps seem to
have this peculiarity - they are not hollows, bending downward in the
middle, and imperceptibly sloping upward into the mountains, but they
lie perfectly flat. The mountains rise up around them like walls
almost perpendicularly.
"_Voila!_" says my guide, pointing to the left, to a great, bare
ravine, "down there came an avalanche, and knocked down those houses
and killed several people."
"Ah!" said I; "but don't avalanches generally come in the same places
every year?"
"Generally, they do."
"Why do people build houses in the way of them?" said I.
"Ah! this was an unusual avalanche, this one here."
"Do the avalanches ever bring rocks with them?"
"No, not often; nothing but snow."
"There!" says my guide, pointing to an object about as big as a
good-sized fly, on the side of a distant mountain, "there's the
_auberge_, on La Flegere, where we are going."
"Up there?" say I, looking up apprehensively, and querying in my mind
how my estimable friend the mule is ever to get up there with me on
his back.
"O yes," says my guide, cheerily, "and the road is up through that
ravine."
The ravine is a charming specimen of a road to be sure, but no
matter - on we go.
"There," says a guide, "those black rocks in the middle of that
glacier on Mont Blanc are the Grands Mulets, where travellers sleep
going up Mont Blanc."
We wind now among the pine tree still we come almost under the Mer de
Glace. A most fairy-like cascade falls down from under its pillars of
ice over the dark rocks, - a cloud of feathery foam, - and then streams
into the valley below.
"_Voila, L'Arveiron!_" says the guide.
"O, is that the Arveiron?" say I; "happy to make the acquaintance."
But now we cross the Arve into a grove of pines, and direct our way to
the ascent. We begin to thread a zigzag path on the sides of the
mountain.
