ille du Midi, which were drawn clear and sharp against the
brightening sky. Right under this Aiguille were heaps of snow smoothly
rounded and constituting a portion of the sources whence the Glacier du
Geant is fed; these, as the day advanced, bloomed with a rosy light. We
reached the Petit Plateau, which we found covered with the remains of
ice avalanches; above us upon the crest of the mountain rose three
mighty bastions, divided from each other by deep, vertical rents, with
clean smooth walls, across which the lines of annual bedding were drawn
like courses of masonry. From these, which incessantly renew themselves,
and from the loose and broken ice-crags near them, the boulders amid
which we now threaded our way had been discharged. When they fall their
descent must be sublime.

The snow had been gradually getting deeper, and the ascent more
wearisome, but superadded to this at the Petit Plateau was the
uncertainty of the footing between the blocks of ice. In many places
the space was merely covered by a thin crust, which, when trod upon,
instantly yielded and we sank with a shock sometimes to the hips. Our
way next lay up a steep incline to the Grand Plateau, the depth and
tenderness of the snow augmenting as we ascended. We had not yet seen
the sun, but as we attained the brow which forms the entrance to the
Grand Plateau, he hung his disk upon a spike of rock to our left, and,
surrounded by a glory of interference spectra of the most gorgeous
colors, blazed down upon us. On the Grand Plateau we halted and had our
frugal refreshment.

At some distance to our left was the crevasse into which Dr. Hamel's
three guides were precipitated by an avalanche in 1820; they are still
entombed in the ice, and some future explorer may, perhaps, see them
disgorged lower down, fresh and undecayed. They can hardly reach the
surface until they pass the snow-line of the glacier, for above this
line the quantity of snow that annually falls being in excess of the
quantity melted, the tendency would be to make the ice-covering above
them thicker. But it is also possible that the waste of the ice
underneath may have brought the bodies to the bed of the glacier, where
their very bones may have been ground to mud by an agency which the
hardest rocks can not withstand.

As the sun poured his light upon the Plateau the little snow-facets
sparkled brilliantly, sometimes with a pure white light, and at others
with prismatic colors. Contras