mere howls, and
the maire lapsed into oaths heavy enough to break in the ice. It is
always sufficiently disagreeable to hear men swear; but in situations
which have anything impressive, either of danger or of grandeur, it
becomes more than ever unbearable. I remember on one occasion
over-taking a large party in the descent from the Plateau to the
Grands Mulets, in a place where the snow was extremely soft, and any
moment might land one of us in a crevasse; and I shall never forget
the oaths which caught my ear, from a floundering fellow-countryman
enveloped from the waist downwards.

When 60 feet had run out, the candle stopped, and on stretching over I
saw that it had reached a slope of ice which inclined very steeply
northwards, and passed away under the rock, apparently into a fresh
cavern. By raising the candle slightly and then letting it drop, we made
it glide down this slope for 8 feet; and then it finally rested on a
shelf of ice, showing us the shadowy beginnings of what should be a most
glorious ice-cave. The little light which the candle gave was made the
most of by the reflecting material which surrounded it; and we were able
to see that the archway in the rock was rounded off with grey ice, and
rested, as it were, on icy pillars. As far as we could judge, there
would have been abundant room to pass down the slope under the archway,
if only the preliminary 60 feet could by any means have been
accomplished; and I shall dream for long of what there must be down
there.

As I was anxious to know whether the side of the pit was vertical ice
under our feet, I contrived to get about a third of the way round the
edge, so as almost to reach the fluting in the rock which formed the
farther side of the pit, and then desired the schoolmaster to raise the
candle slowly from the ledge on which it still rested. As he pulled it
gradually up, I was startled to find that the ice fell away sharply
immediately below the spot where we had been collected, and then formed
a solid wall; so that we had been standing on the mere edge of a shelf,
with nothing but black emptiness below. How far the solid wall receded
at the bottom I was unable to determine, for the light of one candle was
of very little use at so great a distance, and in darkness so profound.
I persuaded the maire to make an effort to reach a point from which he
could see the insecurity of the ice which had seemed to form so solid a
floor; and he was so much impresse