ch grass,
we came upon large patches of a plant, with scented leaves and pungent
seeds, which we had not known before, _Meum athamanticum_, and, to
please our guide, we went through the form of pretending that we rather
liked its taste. My sisters were in ecstasies of triumph over a wild
everlasting-pea, which grew here to a considerable height--_Lathyrus
sylvestris_, they said, Fr. _Gesse sauvage_, distinct from _G.
heteropyhlle,_ which is still larger, and is almost confined to a
favourite place of sojourn with us, the little Swiss valley of Les
Plans. It is said that on the top of these hills springs of water rise
to the surface, though there is no higher ground in the neighbourhood; a
phenomenon which has been accounted for by the supposition of a
difference of specific gravity between these springs and the waters
which drive them up.

The character of the ground on the plateau changed suddenly, and we
passed at one step, apparently, from a meadow of flowers to a wilderness
of fissured rock, lying white and skeleton-like in the afternoon sun. We
only skirted this rock in the first instance, and made for a clump of
trees some little way off, in which we found a deep pit, with a path of
sufficient steepness leading to the bottom. Here we came to a collection
of snow, much sheltered by overhanging rocks and trees; and this, our
guide told us, was the _neigiere_, a word evidently formed on the same
principle as _glaciere_. The snow was half-covered with leaves, and was
unpleasantly wet to our feet, so that we did not spend much time on it,
or rather in it. A huge fragment of rock had at some time or other
fallen from overhead, and now occupied a large part of the sloping
bottom of the pit: by squeezing myself through a narrow crevice between
this and the live rock, which looked as if it ought to lead to
something, I found a veritable ice-cave, unhappily free from ornament,
and of very small size, like a round soldier's tent in shape, with walls
of rock and floor of ice. We afterwards found an easier entrance to the
cave; but the floor was so wet, and the constant drops of water from the
roof so little agreeable, that we got out again as soon as possible,
especially as this was not the glaciere we had come to see.

When we reached the surface once more, the landlord and the domestic
both assured us that the _neigiere_ was the great sight, the glaciere
being nothing at all, but, such as it was, they would lead us to it.