have, during an amazing tract of time,
contributed from their solid rocks to the formation of travelled soils
below, but which materials have long ago been travelling in the sea. The
sides of those valleys are solid rock here exposed naked to our view. It
is to such a place as this that we should go to see the operations
of the surface wasting the solid body of the globe, and to read the
unmeasurable course of time that must have flowed during those amazing
operations which the vulgar do not see, and which the learned seem to
see without wonder!

M. de Saussure, in his second volume of _Voyages dans les Alps_, has
given us a most interesting view of this scene, p. 6.

"En montant au Montanvert, on a toujours sous ses pieds la vue de la
vallee de Chamouni, de l'Arve qui l'arrose dans toute la longueur, d'une
soule de villages et de hameaux entoures d'arbres et de champs bien
cultives. Au moment ou l'on arrive au Montanvert, la scene change; et au
lieu de cette riante et fertile vallee, on se trouve presqu'au bord
d'un precipice, dont le fond est une vallee beaucoup plus large et
plus etendue, remplie de neige et de glace, et bordee de montagnes
colossales, qui etonnent par leur hauteur et par leurs formes, et qui
effraient par leur sterilite et leurs escarpements."

It is the cause of this appearance, of deep valleys and colossal
mountains, that I would now wish my readers to perceive. This is a
thought which seldom strikes the mind of wondering spectators, viewing
those lofty objects; they are occupied with what they see, and do not
think how little what they see may have been, compared with what had
been removed in the gradual operations of the globe. We have but to
suppose this scene hewn out of the solid mass of country raised above
the level of the valley; and, that this had been the case, must appear
from the examination of all around.

Let us follow our author up those valleys between the solid granite
mountains, valleys which properly are great rivers of ice moving,
grandly but slowly, the ruins of those mountains upon which they were
gathered. It is the Glacier de Bois upon which he is set out, (p. 26.)

"Apres une bonne demi-heure de marche sur le glacier, nous traversons
une arrete de glace chargee de terre, de sable et de debris de rocher.
J'ai parle dans le 1er. vol. de ces arretes paralleles a la longueur de
glaciers, que l'on voit souvent dans le milieu de leur largeur, ou a des
distances plus ou moi