e with the sweep
of the rocks beneath, rising and breaking like a wave at the feet of the
remarkable horn or spur which supports it on the right. The base of the
aiguille itself is, as it were, washed by this glacier, or by the snow
which covers it, till late in the season, as a cliff is by the sea;
except that a narrow chasm, of some twenty or thirty feet in depth and
two or three feet wide, usually separates the rock from the ice, which
is melted away by the heat reflected from the southern face of the
aiguille. The rock all along this base line is of the most magnificent
compactness and hardness, and rings under the hammer like a bell; yet,
when regarded from a little distance, it is seen to be distinctly
inclined to separate into grand curved flakes or sheets, of which the
dark edges are well marked in the plate. The pyramidal form of the
aiguille, as seen from this point, is, however, entirely deceptive; the
square rock which forms its apparent summit is not the real top, but
much in advance of it, and the slope on the right against the sky is a
perspective line; while, on the other hand, the precipice in light,
above the three small horns at the narrowest part of the glacier, is
considerably steeper than it appears to be, the cleavage of the flakes
crossing it somewhat obliquely. But I show the aiguille from this spot
that the reader may more distinctly note the fellowship between its
curved precipice and the little dark horn or spur which bounds the
glacier; a spur the more remarkable because there is just such another,
jutting in like manner from the corresponding angle of the next aiguille
(Charmoz), both of them looking like remnants or foundations of the
vaster ancient pyramids, of which the greater part has been by ages
carried away.

[Illustration: FIG. 37.]

Sec. 17. The more I examined the range of the aiguilles the more I was
struck by this curved cleavage as their principal character. It is quite
true that they have other straighter cleavages (noticed in the Appendix,
as the investigation of them would be tiresome to the general reader);
but it is this to which they owe the whole picturesqueness of their
contours; curved as it is, not simply, but often into the most strange
shell-like undulations, as will be understood by a glance at Fig. 37,
which shows the mere _governing_ lines at the base of this Aiguille
Blaitiere, seen, with its spur, from a station some quarter of a mile
nearer it, and more to