--even when doing his worst in the way of making
rough places plain, and robbing nature of some of her romance--could not
do much to damage the grandeur of that impressive spot. His axe only
chipped a little of the surface and made the footing secure. It could
not mar the beauty of the picturesque surroundings, or dim the sun's
glitter on the ice-pinnacles, or taint the purity of these delicate blue
depths into which Emma and Nita gazed for the first time with admiration
and surprise while they listened to the mysterious murmurings of
sub-glacial waters with mingled feelings of curiosity and awe.

Full of interest they traversed the grand unfathomable river of ice,--
the product of the compressed snows of innumerable winters,--and,
reaching the other side in less than an hour, descended the Chapeau
through the terminal moraine.

Those who have not seen it can form but a faint conception of the
stupendous mass of _debris_ which is cut, torn, wrenched, carried,
swept, hurled, rolled, crushed, and ground down by a glacier from the
mountain-heights into the plain below. The terminal moraine of the Mer
de Glace is a whole valley whose floor and sides are not only quite, but
deeply, covered with rocks of every shape and size, from a pebble the
size of a pea, to a boulder as large as a cottage, all strewn, piled,
and heaped together in a wild confusion that is eminently suggestive of
the mighty force which cast them there.

"To me there do seem something dreadful as well as grand in it," said
Nita, as she sat down on a boulder beside Emma, near the lower end of
the chaotic valley.

"It is, indeed, terrible," answered Emma, "and fills me with wonder when
I think that frozen water possesses power so stupendous."

"And yet the same element," said the Professor, "which, when frozen,
thus rends the mountains with force irresistible, when melted flows
through the land in gentle fertilising streams. In both forms its power
is most wonderful."

"Like that of Him who created it," said Emma, in a low tone.

The party stood on the margin of a little pond or lakelet that had
collected in the midst of the _debris_, and which, by reflecting the
clear sky and their figures, with several large boulders on its margin,
gave point and a measure of softness to the otherwise confused and
rugged scene. While they stood and sat rapt in silent contemplation of
the tongue of the Mer de Glace, at whose tip was the blue ice-cave
whence issu