he mountain, with an immense abyss yawning
below. There was one such place where it would have been impossible for
any one not accustomed to mountain climbing to have got along without
the assistance of guides. When they reached this place, one guide went
over first, and then reached out his hand to assist Rollo. The other
scrambled down upon the rocks below, and planted his pike staff in a
crevice of the rock in order to make a support for a foot. By this
means, first Mr. George, and then Rollo, succeeded in getting safely
over.

Both the travellers felt greatly relieved when they found themselves on
the other side of this dangerous pass.

In coming back, however, Rollo had the misfortune to lose his pike staff
here. The staff slipped out of his hand as he was clinging to the
rocks; and, after sliding down five or six hundred feet to the brink of
the precipice, it shot over and fell a thousand feet to the glacier
below, where it entered some awful chasm, or abyss, and disappeared
forever.

Mr. George and Rollo had a pretty hard time in scrambling over the
moraine when they came to the place where they were to get upon the
glacier. When they were fairly upon the glacier, however, they could
walk along without any difficulty. It was like walking on wet snow in a
warm day in spring. Little brooks were running in every direction, the
bright waters sparkling in the sun. The crevasses attracted the
attention of the travellers very strongly. They were immense fissures
four or five feet wide, and extending downward perpendicularly to an
unfathomable depth. Rollo and Mr. George amused themselves with throwing
stones down. There were plenty of stones to be found on the glacier. In
fact, rocks and stones of all sizes were scattered about very profusely,
so much so as quite to excite Mr. George's astonishment.

"I supposed," said he, "that the top of the glacier would be smooth and
beautiful ice."

"I did not think any thing about it," said Rollo.

"I imagined it to be smooth, and glassy, and pure," said Mr. George;
"and, instead of that, it looks like a field of old snow covered with
scattered rocks and stones."

Some of the rocks which lay upon the glacier were very large, several of
them being as big as houses. It was remarkable, too, that the largest of
them, instead of having settled down in some degree into the ice and
snow, as it might have been expected from their great weight they would
have done, were raised som