For my part, I could not think highly of any
body who could be brought long into connection with another human
being and feel no interest to inquire into his history and
surroundings.
As we stopped, going down the descent, to rest the mules, I looked up
above my head into the crags, and saw a flock of goats browsing. One
goat, in particular, I remember, had gained the top of a kind of table
rock, which stood apart from the rest, and which was carpeted with
lichens and green moss. There he stood, looking as unconscious and
contemplative as possible, the wicked fellow, with his long beard! He
knew he looked picturesque, and that is what he stood there for. But,
as they say in New England, he did it "_as nat'ral as a pictur!_"
By the by, the girls with strawberries, milk, and knitting work were
on hand on the way down, and met us just where a cool spring gushed
out at the roots of a pine tree; and of course I bought some more milk
and strawberries.
How dreadfully hot it was when we got down to the bottom! for there we
had the long, shadeless ride home, with the burning lenses of the
glaciers concentrated upon our defenceless heads. I was past admiring
any thing, and glad enough for the shelter of a roof, and a place to
lie down.
After dinner, although the Glacier de Boisson had been spoken of as
the appointed work for the afternoon, yet we discovered, as the psalm
book says, that
"The force of nature could no farther go"
[Illustration: _of an ice climbing party scaling a large serac._]
What is Glacier de Boisson, or glacier any thing else, to a person
used up entirely, with no sense or capability left for any thing but a
general aching? No; the Glacier de Boisson was given up, and I am
sorry for it now, because it is the commencement of the road up Mont
Blanc; and, though I could not go to the top thereof, I should like to
have gone as far as I could. In fact, I should have been glad to sleep
one night at the Grands Mulets: however, that was impossible.
To look at the apparently smooth surface of the mountain side, one
would never think that the ascent could be a work of such difficulty
and danger. Yet, look at the picture of crossing a _crevasse_,
and compare the size of the figures with the dimensions of the blocks
of ice. Madame d'Angeville told me that she was drawn across a
_crevasse_ like this, by ropes tied under her arms, by the
guides. The depth of some of the _crevasses_ may be conjectured
from the fact stated by Agassiz, that the thickest parts of the
glaciers are over one thousand feet in depth.
