t be superadded.

MONT BLANC ASCENDED, HUXLEY GOING PART WAY[54]

BY JOHN TYNDALL

The way for a time was excessively rough,[55] our route being overspread
with the fragments of peaks which had once reared themselves to our
left, but which frost and lightning had shaken to pieces, and poured
in granite avalanches down the mountain. We were sometimes among huge,
angular boulders, and sometimes amid lighter shingle, which gave way at
every step, thus forcing us to shift our footing incessantly. Escaping
from these we crossed the succession of secondary glaciers which lie
at the feet of the Aiguilles, and, having secured firewood, found
ourselves, after some hours of hard work, at the Pierre l'Echelle. Here
we were furnished with leggings of coarse woolen cloth to keep out the
snow; they were tied under the knees and quite tightly again over the
insteps, so that the legs were effectually protected. We had some
refreshment, possest ourselves of the ladder, and entered upon the
glacier.

The ice was excessively fissured; we crossed crevasses and crept
round slippery ridges, cutting steps in the ice wherever climbing
was necessary. This rendered our progress very slow. Once, with the
intention of lending a helping hand, I stept forward upon a block of
granite which happened to be poised like a rocking stone upon the ice,
tho' I did not know it; it treacherously turned under me; I fell, but my
hands were in instant requisition, and I escaped with a bruise, from
which, however, the blood oozed angrily. We found the ladder necessary
in crossing some of the chasms, the iron spikes at its end being firmly
driven into the ice at one side, while the other end rested on the
opposite side of the fissure. The middle portion of the glacier was
not difficult. Mounds of ice rose beside us right and left, which were
sometimes split into high towers and gaunt-looking pyramids, while the
space between was unbroken.

Twenty minutes' walking brought us again to a fissured portion of the
glacier, and here our porter left the ladder on the ice behind him. For
some time I was not aware of this, but we were soon fronted by a chasm
to pass which we were in consequence compelled to make a long and
dangerous circuit amid crests of crumbling ice. This accomplished, we
hoped that no repetition of the process would occur, but we speedily
came to a second fissure, where it was necessary to step from a
projecting end of ice to a mass of soft snow