dripping and constant freezing, the crevasse becomes filled up from beneath, and as the new ice rises, so does it bear on its surface the intruder, until it once more lies upon the top of the glacier.

Arrived at the base of the mountain the guides called for a halt. The most toilsome part of the day's work was now before us, and Fritz declared that hungry or not it was de rigueur to eat and drink something before facing the hill. "This was the established spot for the first meal. No good walker was ever a bad feeder. Eat often and little. Never have either back or stomach too heavily loaded; but an empty stomach is worse than two knapsacks," &c., &c., &c. These and sundry other wise saws and aphorisms decided us to obey, though not particularly hungry; and when Simon discovered after a short search sundry fragments of broken bottles, corks, bleached bones, and even the shankless bowl of a genuine Irish "dhudeen," we were constrained to agree with him that "it was for all the world like Killiney Obelisk, barrin' the lobsther shells and the crathurs coortin'."

Speaking quá pedestrian, I am inclined to think that the many halts for the purpose of eating and drinking, which Swiss guides pretend they make solely for their employers' benefit, are, if not actually injurious, at least unnecessary to anyone accustomed (as the majority of British tourists are) to a long summer's day wander, gun in hand, over stubble and furrow, or tussocked moor. But travellers are too prone to forget that their powers of endurance are not to be alone consulted in the question of a halt. They do not take into consideration that the guide is almost invariably doomed to carry weight to the tune of between twenty and thirty pounds, and that although with these immense odds he will walk down fairly the generality of travellers, it is absurd to expect him to compete with really good pedestrians, burdened at most with a light flannel jacket. Small blame then to Fritz and Ulrich, if they prescribed many an intervening meal between the orthodox ones of breakfast, lunch and dinner. After each such halt we continued the journey somewhat the heavier, and they very much the lighter.

We did, therefore, in all respects as we were commanded-we ate, we drank, we smoked, and finally beguiled the time with shying stones at the empty bottles, until the advance was once more sounded, and the route again resumed. Then came two hours and a half of the hardest work I ever had, consisting in a toilsome trudge up the side of the mountain, over a surface composed of about a foot or two in depth of loose shingle, in which our feet often sank ankle-deep. Before it was half over, we (étrangers) were completely exhausted and blown, though too proud to cry "Hold, enough!" and plodded on with a desperate doggedness which nothing but shame supplied. To add to our distress, the sun, who had evidently been biding his time until he could annoy us with the greatest effect, now rose over the shoulder of the mountain, and beat down savagely upon our heads.

Still the inexorable Michaeioul tramped on with never "a hair turned," totally unconscious of our bursting lungs and blazing countenances; and though now, writing this in a winter month by a warm fire, I wonder at our folly for not regulating our own pace, I feel that few in the same circumstances would have acted otherwise. There was something so humiliating in confessing that we could not walk up to

men laden like pack-horses, that I am sure we would have dropped before one of us would have cried "Stop!"

But our revenge was at hand. At the moment of our direst need, a sharp warning cry was uttered by Michaeioul, which at once directed our attention to a terrible catastrophe which impended. The whole mountain seemed in motion, and with it the guides and Simon-who, with a rattling noise, glided down the hill towards us. The cause was evident: a slip of the shingle had taken place, and that to such an alarming extent as to threaten us with the fate of Sysyphus, if with no worse consequences. The warning cry was just in time; luckily within two or three yards of myself and the Major a knob of rock "cropped out" from the treacherous shingle, and just as we felt the stones beginning to move beneath our feet, we made a dash and gained the harbour of refuge. Just then, with a face of utter hopelessness, Simon rattled past, stabbing convulsively into the moving torrent of the stones with his alpenstock, in the vain hope of anchoring himself until the slip should have subsided. 'Twas useless; the depth of the shingle was too great, and the superincumbent weight of stones bore him along with resistless force, and down he must inevitably have gone, had not the Major, with a promptitude worthy of a medal from the Humane Society, suddenly extended his alpenstock, which coming just within reach, was grasped at by the despairing wretch, and held on to in grim desperation, until at last we drew him triumphantly to terra firma.

Not so the poor guides: for four or five hundred yards at least did they glissade, casting, as they shot past the little Ararat upon which we had taken refuge, most rueful and envious glances. If we had had the rope and sufficient presence of mind, we might have lassoed them; as it was, they were beyond the reach of succour, and could only be left to their fate. At last, the slip subsided with no untoward consequences beyond the additional toil of recovering the lost ground, and, like true heroes as they were, the hardy fellows set themselves to the work almost without a moment's pause to recover breath. ""Tis an ill wind that blows nobody good," and we profited by their misadventure; by the time they had retraced their steps, we had recovered our wind, and resumed the road without detriment to our character as pedestrians.

At last we reached the regions of perpetual snow, and here, for the first time, the rope came into requisition. Our harness consisted in a strap buckled loosely round our waists, through which the rope ran, so that in the event of anyone being obliged to make a sudden jump, his neighbour received little or no jerk. So steep was the pitch of the mountain here, that we were obliged to zig-zag the whole way to the summit; but the steps that had been cut in the snow by the party who had lately crossed from the Grimsel still remaining, we were able to proceed without much delay, though every now and then a sudden chuck at the rope, as some one's foot slipped, testified to the necessity of such a precaution.

But we are now at length at the top of the pass, and congratulate each other that all the rest of the way is down hill. The guides insist upon more eating and drinking, and while they place the comestibles upon the snowy cloth spread for us by Dame Nature, we take

a good look at the wondrous panorama round us. The cloudless sky overhead has lost its turquoise-colour, and the fiery sun blazes from a firmament whose hue approaches black rather than blue, against which the snowy summits around stand out in hard relief. The Shreckhorn, which now seems but a stone's-throw from us on our left, has lost much of its imposing aiguille character, in consequence of the vast height from which we are inspecting it (between 10,000 and 11,000 feet). Still our close vicinity to her rugged precipices render her a grand and striking object; and upon one of her inferior peaks, far removed from the main cone, and a long way from our point of observation, we can see a little red flag shimmering from the top of an alpenstock, planted there a day or two before by an adventurous compatriot who would not be satisfied from hearsay of the inaccessibility of the Shreckhorn.

From our feet the ground is abruptly cut by a precipice of about five hundred feet in depth, whose wall-like face has obtained for it the name of "Die Wand." * From the foot of this, a field of ice falling in a gentle slope occupies the valley which runs between the grandest giants of the Oberland, from the loftiest of which, the monarch of Swiss mountains, the Finster Aarhorn, it receives its name. Over the bosom of this ice-field lay our course, consequently the afore-mentioned "Wand" must be descended-at first sight as impossible a performance as can well be imagined; a more perfectly perpendicular face of cliff to all appearance never was seen; and I feel confident that a stone dropped from the top would fall to the bottom without interruption. Nevertheless, there lay the road, and no sort of option to us except to take it or leave it; accordingly, after fortifying ourselves with meal No. 2, we adopted the former alternative with some misgivings, leaving ourselves entirely to the instinct or intellect of the guides to devise a safe means of descent.

That it was safely accomplished I gratefully record; but looking back upon the feat from a point of view removed to a distance of six months after its performance, I fairly confess my inability to detail the particulars. I know that Michaeioul as usual led the van, and that the guides generally seemed possessed of a faculty of adhesion that was a marvel to us. I know that every trifling inequality in the face of the rock, every inch of projecting shingle, were hailed by us as havens of safety. I know that our garments, which were whole and sound at the top, were rent and frayed in every imaginable direction ere reaching the bottom. Lastly, I know that somebody, one of the last to descend, dislodged about a cart-load of rubbish and small boulders, which hurtled through the midst of us with terrible fracas, missing us almost miraculously; that we said very little, but when we looked at each other, we saw very pale faces. These are my recollections of the Strahleck Wand, the last and most perilous bit in the whole pass.

And now came an exhibition of guide-craft. At the foot of the cliff lay a belt of fresh-looking snow, of about twenty yards in breadth, apparently as firm as the rest of the glacier. Full of relief at having

Die Wand-The Wall.

escaped the dangers of the Wand, we were about to press forward, when Fritz restrained us, informing us that the snow before us was but a thin cake, treacherously concealing a yawning abyss, whose vast dimensions had obtained for it the name of the "Grande Crevasse," and that it must be crossed with the greatest precaution. Accordingly, giving us one end of the rope to hold, he fastened the other round his waist, and with a cat-like, springy step, crossed the dangerous bridge. Once upon solid ice, he desired us to pass the end of the rope as before through our belts, and one by one to cross to him, stepping as lightly as possible, Michaeioul keeping the rope stretched. All went en felicitously until it came to Simon's turn, who, from ignorance of the language, had no idea of the nature of the danger. He had just arrived about half way, when with a strong chuck to the rope, which in spite of us ran through our fingers for some distance, and a short smothered cry of terror, the unhappy Celt disappeared from view.

Not for long, however; the rope was good, and stout hands at either end, and in a few minutes he was again among us. What his subglacial sensations were during the short time of his eclipse may be imagined. I know it made the "goose-flesh" rise upon us when we took a peep down into the blue prison from which we had fished him.

Here we were to part with the aid and society of Michaeioul, who accordingly divided his load (now considerably lightened) between Fritz and Ulrich. We also received his little account, both as hotel-keeper and porter, which was so exceedingly moderate, as compared with his personal services, that we added a small additional bucksheesh which surprised him into a voluble torrent of thanks, in the midst of which he took his leave, and in an incredibly short time his jöddled farewell floated down to us from the summit of the pass, and so we went on our several ways rejoicing.

We were, however, still at a considerable height above the surface of the glacier, for the drift-snow which had descended from the top of the pass had here accumulated, and lay in a steep glacis far away on to the hard ice. The method of our descent was simple and expeditious in the extreme, and consisted in our sitting down and resigning ourselves to the influence of the laws of gravity, merely directing our course with our alpenstocks as with a rudder. The pace was terrific and the sensation delightful, in spite of the chilly nature of the surface traversed, and the ragged state of our habiliments.

And now for blue veils and dark spectacles, for the ice around is beginning to look all sorts of colours, a sure sign that the glare is affecting the eye-sight; and once more we get into harness and resume the road, which hereabouts possesses several dangerous crevasses. Every here and there we meet the strange sight of numbers of dead bees, who have lost their lives in attempting to pass from the Oberland to the Vallais, but otherwise our journey is eventless. We seem also to make no progress. Objects which appeared to us from the Wand to be distant from us but a mile or so, seem no nearer at the end of an hour's rapid walking. On pointing this out to Fritz, he replies sententiously, "Monsieur, on se trompe toujours sur la glace." Hour follows hour, and still the same interminable valley of snow-the same barren, rugged masses of mountains. At last the road takes a turn, and we leave

the Finster Aar Glacier, and crossing the stream of the Lauter-aar, enter that of the Unter-aar, which is here devoid of crevasses, but tussocked like a highland moor.

To one passing the base of the Finster-aar horn, the loftiest of the Swiss Alps, its summit does not seem nearly so inaccessible as that of the Shreckhorr, and there are many who declare it practicable. However, putting aside the question of escalade, a great difficulty lies in the number of nights which it would be necessary to camp out on the ice, from its lying so far back in these dreary solitudes. Ulrich related that there was a story current at the Grimsel, that the feat had actually been accomplished by two Englishmen, who had left on the summit, in token of priority of ascent, two bottles, in which they had corked up a paper containing a circumstantial account of their exploit. He added, however, that this statement was received with suspicion, and that a celebrated German pedestrian, Dr. M―, had determined to attempt it himself, and to bring down the bottles, if any there were. I never heard the sequel.

And now, in the far distance, Fritz points out a rusty-coloured rock, and tells us that there we leave the ice. Large central moraines begin to creep over the ice like black caterpillars, and behind one of them is situated the hut built by Mons. Dollfus, called the Pavillon, near the site of the merely temporary cabins erected by Mons. Hugi, and afterwards by Mons. Agassiz, and in which they resided while making their interesting observations on the glacier phenomena. Shortly after crevasses again appear, and down into one of them Ulrich lets fall his icehatchet. For a moment he looks wistfully down into the chasm, unwilling to relinquish it without a struggle. His indecision is but for an instant. The implement is worth ten francs, and he doesn't put half that value upon his neck. He ties one end of the rope under his arms, and confides the other to Fritz and us to hold, and then borrowing the remaining axe, he commences to chip away a staircase in the face of the crevasse. He is a skilled workman at that business, and soon disappears ; but the rope is nearly run out before he announces with a hurrah that he has regained the lost axe; and blithely does he carol up from the bowels of the glacier as he re-ascends, after which we press on again at best pace.

Now the ice becomes more and more fractured, and strange and lovely forms lie around. Here a huge block of granite sits poised aloft on a thin shaft of ice, as a juggler might balance a weight on the top of a pole. There rises a gigantic model, in ice, of a Druidical cromlech, built without human skill. On every side foaming cataracts, the germs of the mighty Aar, force their way through rugged gorges of ice. Strange sounds, too-sounds heard nowhere else-strike the ear, and proclaim the activity of the glacial action; and pinnacles, and crystal forms of wondrous and bizarre beauty, topple and fall on all sides with reports like cannon, awakening the echoes of the surrounding mountains with long and loud reverberations.

It is a weird and impressive scene, but our course is well nigh run,

*It is scarcely necessary to remind the reader that Mont Blanc is situated in the Sardinian territories.