by the crests of the oblique beds of slaty
crystallines. Every traveller must remember the steep and smooth beds of
rock like sloping walls, down which, and over the ledges of which, the
path descends from the cabin to the edge of the glacier. These sloping
walls are formed by the inner sides of the crystalline beds,[60] as
exposed in the notch behind the letter M.

Sec. 8. To these beds we shall return presently, our object just now being
to examine the aiguille, which, on the Montanvert, forms the most
conspicuous mass of mountain on the right of the spectator. It is known
in Chamouni as the Aiguille des Charmoz, and is distinguished by a very
sharp horn or projection on its side, which usually attracts the
traveller's attention as one of the most singular minor features in the
view from the Montanvert. The larger masses of the whole aiguille, and
true contour of this horn, are carefully given in plate +30+, Fig. 2, as
they are seen in morning sunshine. The _impression_ which travellers
usually carry away with them is, I presume, to be gathered from Fig. 1,
a fac simile of one of the lithographs purchased with avidity by English
travellers, in the shops of Chamouni and Geneva, as giving a faithful
representation of this aiguille seen from the Montanvert. It is worth
while to perpetuate this example of the ideal landscape of the
nineteenth century, popular at the time when the works of Turner were
declared by the public to be extravagant and unnatural.

Sec. 9. This example of the common ideal of aiguilles is, however, useful
in another respect. It shows the strong impression which these Chamouni
mountains leave, of their being above all others sharp-peaked and
splintery, dividing more or less into arrowy spires; and it marks the
sense of another and very curious character in them, that these spires
are apt to be somewhat bent or curved.

Both these impressions are partially true, and need to be insisted upon,
and cleared of their indistinctness, or exaggeration.

First, then, this strong impression of their peakedness and spiry
separateness is always produced with the least possible _danger_ to the
travelling and admiring public; for if in reality these granite
mountains were ever separated into true spires or points, in the least
resembling this popular ideal in Plate +30+, the Montanvert and Mer de
Glace would be as inaccessible, except at the risk of life, as the
trenches of a besieged city; and the continual fa