ortion of a great crowd of similar, and, for the most part,
larger peaks which constitute the chain of Mont Blanc, and which receive
from the Savoyards the name of Aiguilles, or needles, in consequence of
their peculiarly sharp summits. The forms of these Aiguilles, wonderful
enough in themselves, are, nevertheless, perpetually exaggerated both by
the imagination of the traveller, and by the artists whose delineations
of them find most frank acceptance. Fig. 1 in Plate 30 is faithfully
copied from the representation given of one of these mountains in a
plate lately published at Geneva. Fig. 2 in the same plate is a true
outline of the mountain itself. Of the exaggerations in the other I
shall have more to say presently; meantime, I refer to it merely as a
proof that I am not myself exaggerating, in giving Fig. 22 as showing
the general characters of these peaks.

[Illustration: FIG. 22.]

Sec. 9. This, then, is the problem to be considered,--How mountains of such
rugged and precipitous outline, and at the least 3000 feet in height,
were originally carved out of the hardest rocks, and set in their
present position on the top of the green and sloping bank which sustains
them.

"By mere accident," the reader replies. "The uniform bank might as
easily have been the highest, and the broken granite peaks have risen
from its sides, or at the bottom of it. It is merely the chance
formation of the valley of Chamouni."

Nay; not so. Although, as if to bring the problem more clearly before
the thoughts of men, by marking the structure most where the scenery is
most attractive, the formation is more distinct at Chamouni than
anywhere else in the Alpine chain; yet the general condition of a
rounded bank sustaining jagged or pyramidal peaks is more or less
traceable throughout the whole district of the great mountains. The most
celebrated spot, next to the valley of Chamouni, is the centre of the
Bernese Oberland; and it will be remembered by all travellers that in
its principal valley, that of Grindelwald, not only does the summit of
the Wetterhorn consist of a sharp pyramid raised on the advanced
shoulder of a great promontory, but the two most notable summits of the
Bernese Alps, the Schreckhorn and Finsteraarhorn, cannot be seen from
the valley at all, being thrown far back upon an elevated plateau, of
which only the advanced head or shoulder, under the name of the
Mettenberg, can be seen from the village. The real summits, c