rst sculpture. That long banks and fields of rock should
be raised aslope, and break at their edges into cliffs, however
mysterious the details of the operation may be, is yet conceivable in
the main circumstances without any great effort of imagination. But the
carving of those great obelisks and spires out of an infinitely harder
rock; the sculpture of all the fretted pinnacles on the inaccessible and
calm elevation of that great cathedral,--how and when was this wrought?
It is necessary, before the extent and difficulty of such a question can
be felt, to explain more fully the scale and character of the peaks
under consideration.

[Illustration: FIG. 20.]

[Illustration: FIG. 21.]

Sec. 8. The valley of Chamouni, largely viewed, and irrespectively of minor
ravines and irregularities, is nothing more than a deep trench, dug
between two ranges of nearly continuous mountains,--dug with a
straightness and evenness which render its scenery, in some respects,
more monotonous than that of any other Alpine valley. On each side it is
bordered by banks of turf, darkened with pine forest, rising at an even
slope to a height of about 3000 feet, so that it may best be imagined
as a kind of dry moat, which, if cut across, would be of the form
typically shown in Fig. 20; the sloping bank on each side being about
3000 feet high, or the moat about three fifths of a mile in vertical
depth. Then, on the top of the bank, on each side, and a little way back
from the edge of the moat, rise the ranges of the great mountains, in
the form of shattered crests and pyramids of barren rock sprinkled with
snow. Those on the south side of the valley rise another 3000 feet above
the bank on which they stand, so that each of the masses superadded in
Fig. 21 may best be described as a sort of Egyptian pyramid,[53] of the
height of Snowden or Ben Lomond, hewn out of solid rock, and set on the
shoulder of the great bank which borders the valley. Then the Mont
Blanc, a higher and heavier cluster of such summits, loaded with deep
snow, terminates the range. Glaciers of greater or less extent descend
between the pyramids of rock; and one, supplied from their largest
recesses, even runs down the bank into the valley. Fig. 22[54] rudely
represents the real contours of the mountains, including Mont Blanc
itself, on its south side. The range of peaks, _b_, _p_, m, is that
already spoken of, known as the "Aiguilles of Chamouni." They form but a
very small p