, and fading at the other into a
pure, ethereal hue to which it would be difficult to assign a special
name. Higher up the sky was violet, and this changed by insensible
degrees into the darkling blue of the zenith, which had to thank the
light of moon and stars alone for its existence. We wound steadily for a
time through valleys of ice, climbed white and slippery slopes, crossed
a number of crevasses, and after some time found ourselves beside a
chasm of great depth and width, which extended right and left as far
as we could see. We turned to the left, and marched along its edge in
search of a "pont"; but matters became gradually worse; other crevasses
joined on to the first one, and the further we proceeded the more riven
and dislocated the ice became.

At length we reached a place where further advance was impossible.
Simond, in his difficulty complained of the want of light, and wished us
to wait for the advancing day; I, on the contrary, thought that we had
light enough and ought to make use of it. Here the thought occurred to
me that Simond, having been only once before to the top of the mountain,
might not be quite clear about the route; the glacier, however, changes
within certain limits from year to year, so that a general knowledge was
all that could be expected, and we trusted to our own muscles to make
good any mistake in the way of guidance.

We now turned and retraced our steps along the edges of chasms where the
ice was disintegrated and insecure, and succeeded at length in finding a
bridge which bore us across the crevasse. This error caused us the loss
of an hour, and after walking for this time we could cast a stone from
the point we had attained to the place whence we had been compelled to
return.

Our way now lay along the face of a steep incline of snow, which was cut
by the fissure we had just passed, in a direction parallel to our route.
On the heights to our right, loose ice-crags seemed to totter, and we
passed two tracks over which the frozen blocks had rushed some short
time previously. We were glad to get out of the range of these terrible
projectiles, and still more so to escape the vicinity of that ugly
crevasse. To be killed in the open air would be a luxury, compared with
having the life squeezed out of one in the horrible gloom of these
chasms. The blush of the coming day became more and more intense; still
the sun himself did not appear, being hidden from us by the peaks of
the Aigu