For Instance, This Mer De Glace Is Traversed Every Where By
_Crevasses_ In The Ice, Which Go To - Nobody Knows
Where, down
into the under world - great, gaping, blue-green mouths of Hades; and
C. must needs jump across them,
And climb down into them, to the
mingled delight and apprehension of the guide, who, after
conscientiously shouting out a reproof, would say to me, in a lower
tone, "Ah, he's the man to climb Mont Blanc; he would do well for
that!"
The fact is, nothing would suit our guides better, this clear, bright
weather, than to make up a party for the top of Mont Blanc. They look
longingly and lovingly up to its clear, white fields; they show us the
stages and resting-places, and seem really to think that it is a waste
of this beautiful weather not to be putting it to that most sublime
purpose.
Why, then, do not we go up? you say. As to us ladies, it is a thing
that has been done by only two women since the world stood, and those
very different in their _physique_ from any we are likely to
raise in America, unless we mend our manners very much. These two were
a peasant woman of Chamouni, called Marie de Mont Blanc, and
Mademoiselle Henriette d'Angeville, a lady whose acquaintance I made
in Geneva. Then, as to the gentlemen, it is a serious consideration,
in the first place, that the affair costs about one hundred and fifty
dollars apiece, takes two days of time, uses up a week's strength, all
to get an experience of some very disagreeable sensations, which could
not afflict a man in any other case.
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