deliver up its dead at the foot of the mountain thirty-five years from
the time of the accident, or possibly forty.

A dull, slow journey--a movement imperceptible to any eye--but it was
proceeding, nevertheless, and without cessation. It was a journey
which a rolling stone would make in a few seconds--the lofty point of
departure was visible from the village below in the valley.

The prediction cut curiously close to the truth; forty-one years after
the catastrophe, the remains were cast forth at the foot of the glacier.

I find an interesting account of the matter in the HISTOIRE DU MONT
BLANC, by Stephen d'Arve. I will condense this account, as follows:

On the 12th of August, 1861, at the hour of the close of mass, a guide
arrived out of breath at the mairie of Chamonix, and bearing on his
shoulders a very lugubrious burden. It was a sack filled with human
remains which he had gathered from the orifice of a crevice in the
Glacier des Bossons. He conjectured that these were remains of the
victims of the catastrophe of 1820, and a minute inquest, immediately
instituted by the local authorities, soon demonstrated the correctness
of his supposition. The contents of the sack were spread upon a long
table, and officially inventoried, as follows:

Portions of three human skulls. Several tufts of black and blonde hair.
A human jaw, furnished with fine white teeth. A forearm and hand, all
the fingers of the latter intact. The flesh was white and fresh,
and both the arm and hand preserved a degree of flexibility in the
articulations.

The ring-finger had suffered a slight abrasion, and the stain of the
blood was still visible and unchanged after forty-one years. A left
foot, the flesh white and fresh.

Along with these fragments were portions of waistcoats, hats, hobnailed
shoes, and other clothing; a wing of a pigeon, with black feathers; a
fragment of an alpenstock; a tin lantern; and lastly, a boiled leg of
mutton, the only flesh among all the remains that exhaled an unpleasant
odor. The guide said that the mutton had no odor when he took it from
the glacier; an hour's exposure to the sun had already begun the work of
decomposition upon it.

Persons were called for, to identify these poor pathetic relics, and a
touching scene ensued. Two men were still living who had witnessed the
grim catastrophe of nearly half a century before--Marie Couttet (saved
by his baton) and Julien Davouassoux (saved by the barometer). T