journey, going and coming, is about three
miles and a half, three of which are on level ground. We made it in
less than a day, but I would counsel the unpracticed--if not pressed
for time--to allow themselves two. Nothing is gained in the Alps by
over-exertion; nothing is gained by crowding two days' work into one for
the poor sake of being able to boast of the exploit afterward. It will
be found much better, in the long run, to do the thing in two days, and
then subtract one of them from the narrative. This saves fatigue, and
does not injure the narrative. All the more thoughtful among the Alpine
tourists do this.

We now called upon the Guide-in-Chief, and asked for a squadron of
guides and porters for the ascent of the Montanvert. This idiot glared
at us, and said:

"You don't need guides and porters to go to the Montanvert."

"What do we need, then?"

"Such as YOU?--an ambulance!"

I was so stung by this brutal remark that I took my custom elsewhere.

Betimes, next morning, we had reached an altitude of five thousand feet
above the level of the sea. Here we camped and breakfasted. There was
a cabin there--the spot is called the Caillet--and a spring of ice-cold
water. On the door of the cabin was a sign, in French, to the effect
that "One may here see a living chamois for fifty centimes." We did not
invest; what we wanted was to see a dead one.

A little after noon we ended the ascent and arrived at the new hotel on
the Montanvert, and had a view of six miles, right up the great glacier,
the famous Mer de Glace. At this point it is like a sea whose deep
swales and long, rolling swells have been caught in mid-movement and
frozen solid; but further up it is broken up into wildly tossing billows
of ice.

We descended a ticklish path in the steep side of the moraine, and
invaded the glacier. There were tourists of both sexes scattered far and
wide over it, everywhere, and it had the festive look of a skating-rink.

The Empress Josephine came this far, once. She ascended the Montanvert
in 1810--but not alone; a small army of men preceded her to clear the
path--and carpet it, perhaps--and she followed, under the protection of
SIXTY-EIGHT guides.

Her successor visited Chamonix later, but in far different style.

It was seven weeks after the first fall of the Empire, and poor Marie
Louise, ex-Empress was a fugitive. She came at night, and in a storm,
with only two attendants, and stood before a peasant's h