panied by Michael Savoye, guide, and Laurent
Brou, porter, ascended Mont Blanc from the Italian side on August 17th,
and passed the night in the hut on the Bosses du Dromadaire where, six
days before, I had had a stormy experience. But now the weather was
superb, and when, on the morning of the 18th, they started to descend to
Chamonix, no thought of impending evil could have oppressed their minds.

They passed the Grand Plateau and the Petit Plateau in safety, and
reached the labyrinth of crevasses between the cliffs of the Dome du
Gouter and the Grands Mulets. Just what happened then no one will ever
know, but there they disappeared from the world of the living.

[Illustration: VIEW FROM THE SUMMIT OF MONT BLANC, SHOWING THE
MATTERHORN IN THE DISTANCE.]

Eight days went by, and then a telegram was received at Chamonix from
the family of the guide Savoye, in Courmayer, Italy, inquiring if he and
his party had been seen. All Chamonix comprehended in an instant the
significance of that telegram, and thirty guides started post haste for
the mountains.

The fact was now recalled that several days before some of Monsieur
Janssen's porters had noticed an ice axe lying on the snow a little
aside from the ordinary route. They thought nothing of it at the time,
supposing that the implement had either been thrown away, or left behind
by some one who would return to get it. This abandoned axe now became
the first object of the search. Having discovered it, the guides knew
well where to look for its owner. The axe lay on a slope of snow almost
as hard as ice, and at the foot of the slope was the inevitable
crevasse; not one of the largest, being only fifteen feet wide by two
hundred long, and one hundred deep, but all too sufficient. They crept
to the edge, and peered into the gloomy depths. There lay the missing
men, still tied together. Schnurdreher and Savoye had apparently been
killed at once; but there was heart-rending evidence that Brou had
survived the fall, and made a pitiful effort to scale the perpendicular
walls of the ice chasm. Enclosed in bags of rough sacking, the bodies
were dragged with ropes down to the Pierre Pointue, and thence carried
to Chamonix. This is a time-honored procedure in such cases. Every boy
in Chamonix understands how a body should be brought down from Mont
Blanc.

On the night of my arrival Savoye and Brou had just been buried at
Chamonix, and money was being raised for the relief of their