; and we hoped, by a long detour round the base, to
make an easy climb up this gentler surface. So we toiled on for an hour
over the rocks, reaching at last the bottom of the north slope. Here our
work began in good earnest. The blocks were of enormous size, and in
every stage of unstable equilibrium, frequently rolling over as we
jumped upon them, making it necessary for us to take a second leap and
land where we best could. To our relief we soon surmounted the largest
blocks, reaching a smaller size, which served us as a sort of stairway.

The advancing daylight revealed to us a very long, comparatively even
snow-slope, whose surface was pierced by many knobs and granite heads,
giving it the aspect of a nice-roofing fastened on with bolts of stone.
It stretched in far perspective to the summit, where already the rose of
sunrise reflected gloriously, kindling a fresh enthusiasm within us.

Immense boulders were partly imbedded in the ice just above us, whose
constant melting left them trembling on the edge of a fall. It
communicated no very pleasant sensation to see above you these immense
missiles hanging by a mere band, and knowing that, as soon as the sun
rose, you would be exposed to a constant cannonade.

The east side of the peak, which we could now partially see, was too
precipitous to think of climbing. The slope toward our camp was too much
broken into pinnacles and crags to offer us any hope, or to divert us
from the single way, dead ahead, up slopes of ice and among fragments of
granite. The sun rose upon us while we were climbing the lower part of
this snow, and in less than half an hour, melting began to liberate huge
blocks, which thundered down past us, gathering and growing into small
avalanches below.

We did not dare climb one above another, according to our ordinary mode,
but kept about an equal level, a hundred feet apart, lest, dislodging
the blocks, one should hurl them down upon the other.

We climbed alternately up smooth faces of granite, clinging simply by
the cracks and protruding crystals of feldspar, and then hewed steps up
fearfully steep slopes of ice, zigzagging to the right and left to avoid
the flying boulders. When midway up this slope we reached a place where
the granite rose in perfectly smooth bluffs on either side of a
gorge,--a narrow cut, or walled way, leading up to the flat summit of
the cliff. This we scaled by cutting ice steps, only to find ourselves
fronted again by a