ater sufferings to make acquaintance with such a scene as now
met my astonished gaze.

Eager to achieve the crowning feat of my undertaking, I hastened
onwards; and with beating heart I soon stood within the jaws of the
mighty portal, through which swept the howling wind. A step more, and
I was in Spain. Glaciers slope away on each side of the wall; but all
along the front of the Breche, on the French side, the glacier is
scooped out into a deep fosse or cavity, by the action of the sun's
rays pouring from the south through the opening. A wild world of
mountains appeared to the south, those in the foreground covered with
snow, and the more distant looming hazily over the plains of
Saragossa. And this was Spain!--wondrous land, defying description,
and in memory resembling, not realities, but fragments of tremendous
dreams. Towards France, the scene is softer. Mountains there are,
sky-piled, but there are forests too, the home of wolves

Cruel as death, and hungry as the grave!
Burning for blood; bony, and gaunt, and grim;

and vales of emerald, and silver streams, and gleaming lakes. But how
hope to convey anything like a faithful impression of the panorama
seen from the Breche-de-Roland! I will not attempt it, preferring
rather to advise the reader, should he not be stricken in years, to
see it himself.

My guide produced the contents of his wallet, which, thanks to Madame
Cazean's provident forethought, were good and abundant; and having
placed the wine-flasks in the ice--there was enough at hand to ice the
great Heidelberg tun--I sat down on the ridge of the Breche, one leg
in Spain, the other in France, and my body in amiable neutrality. Oh,
the delight of that repast! there never was so tender a fowl, never
wine so good. While thus engaged in refreshing exhausted nature, I
even forgot that the terrible glacier had to be recrossed, and the
steep snow-slopes to be descended.

The day continued faithful to its early morning promise. A bright
sun--unfelt, however, at this great elevation--poured down a flood of
light on the far-stretching glaciers and snow-fields, on which we
discerned izzards, which seemed, when in motion, like points moving in
space. These, and a few eagles, were the only living things that met
our eye. Fain would I have spent hours here, but my guide was very
properly obdurate; and having done great justice to our meal, we
prepared to descend. Before leaving the Breche, where we remain