ering a
promise of favorable weather after several days of mist and rain.
Monsieur Janssen, the French astronomer, who was waiting at Chamonix for
his porters to complete their long and wearisome labor of transporting
piecemeal his telescope and other instruments of observation to the
summit, before making the ascent himself, said, grasping my arm at
parting:

"I wish you good luck; good weather you are sure of."

[Illustration: COL DE BLANC, MONT BLANC.

From a photograph loaned by Mr. Frank Hegger, New York.]

It was high authority, for Monsieur Janssen has studied the weather all
his life, and knows the atmosphere of mountain peaks and of the airy
levels where balloons float; yet if he could have foreseen what was to
occur on Mont Blanc within twenty hours, he would have wished me the
good fortune of being somewhere else.

It was past the middle of the forenoon of the 10th of August when, with
Couttet and the porter, I left Chamonix. Dismissing my tired mule at the
Pierre Pointue, which hangs with its flag nearly seven thousand feet
above sea level, and high over the seracs of the Glacier des Bossons, we
began the ascent by way of the Pierre a l'Echelle and over the
missile-scarred foot of the Aiguille du Midi. The upper part of this
mountain as seen from Chamonix looks quite sharp-pointed enough to
deserve its name of the "Needle of the South." The side toward the
Glacier des Bossons is exceedingly steep, and when the snows are melting
the peak becomes a perfect catapult, volleys of ice and stones being
discharged from its lofty precipices. The falling rocks, dropping, as
some of them do, from ledge to ledge half a mile, acquire the velocity
of cannon shots. Nobody ever lingers on this part of the route, and we
had no desire to pause, although the Aiguille sends comparatively few
stones down so late in the summer.

The sun beat furiously while we were scrambling on the rocks, and the
latter were warm to the touch, although, thousands of feet below, the
immense cleft in the mountain side was choked with masses of
never-melted ice.

"Never mind," said Couttet, as I stopped to wipe the perspiration from
my face, "it will be cool enough when we get onto the glacier."

And it was--so cool in fact that I hastily pulled on my coat. Having
passed out of range of the Aiguille du Midi, we found comfortable going
on the ice.

[Illustration: THE MAUVAIS PAS, MONT BLANC.]

DIFFICULTIES AND DANGERS OF THE ROUTE.