necessary to give life and beauty."[1] Strange
that we should seek shelter here! Surely, if, in those countries where
earth was wont, like a tender mother, to nourish her children, we had found
her a destroyer, we need not seek it here, where stricken by keen penury
she seems to shudder through her stony veins. Nor were we mistaken in our
conjecture. We vainly sought the vast and ever moving glaciers of
Chamounix, rifts of pendant ice, seas of congelated waters, the leafless
groves of tempest-battered pines, dells, mere paths for the loud avalanche,
and hill-tops, the resort of thunder-storms. Pestilence reigned paramount
even here. By the time that day and night, like twin sisters of equal
growth, shared equally their dominion over the hours, one by one, beneath
the ice-caves, beside the waters springing from the thawed snows of a
thousand winters, another and yet another of the remnant of the race of
Man, closed their eyes for ever to the light.

Yet we were not quite wrong in seeking a scene like this, whereon to close
the drama. Nature, true to the last, consoled us in the very heart of
misery. Sublime grandeur of outward objects soothed our hapless hearts, and
were in harmony with our desolation. Many sorrows have befallen man during
his chequered course; and many a woe-stricken mourner has found himself
sole survivor among many. Our misery took its majestic shape and colouring
from the vast ruin, that accompanied and made one with it. Thus on lovely
earth, many a dark ravine contains a brawling stream, shadowed by romantic
rocks, threaded by mossy paths--but all, except this, wanted the mighty
back-ground, the towering Alps, whose snowy capes, or bared ridges, lifted
us from our dull mortal abode, to the palaces of Nature's own.

This solemn harmony of event and situation regulated our feelings, and gave
as it were fitting costume to our last act. Majestic gloom and tragic pomp
attended the decease of wretched humanity. The funeral procession of
monarchs of old, was transcended by our splendid shews. Near the sources of
the Arveiron we performed the rites for, four only excepted, the last of
the species. Adrian and I, leaving Clara and Evelyn wrapt in peaceful
unobserving slumber, carried the body to this desolate spot, and placed it
in those caves of ice beneath the glacier, which rive and split with the
slightest sound, and bring destruction on those within the clefts--no
bird or beast of prey could here profane