ut. In another minute the
great arc lamps of the Gletsch Hotel, close to us, blazed forth, and
we were welcomed into its snug hall and warmed by the great log-fire
burning on its hospitable hearth.

The next day we were early afoot in the most brilliant sunshine, under
a cloudless sky--really perfect Alpine weather. In the shade the
persisting night-frost told of the great height of the marvellous
amphitheatre which lay before us. The valley by which we had mounted
the previous night abruptly abandons its steep gradient and gorge-like
character, and widens into a flat, boulder-strewn plain, a little over
a mile in diameter, surrounded, except for the narrow gap by which we
had entered, by the steep, rocky sides of huge mountains. At the far
end of the plain, a mile off, the great Rhone glacier comes toppling
over the precipice, a snowy white, frozen cascade of a thousand feet
in height. It looks even nearer than it is, and the gigantic teeth of
white ice at the top of the fall seem no bigger than sentry-boxes,
though we know they are more nearly the size of church steeples. The
celebrated Furca road zig-zags up the mountain side for a thousand
feet close to the glacier, and when you drive up it and reach the
height of the Belvedere, you can step on to the ice close to the road.
Then you can mount on to the flat, unbroken surface of the broad
glacier stream above the fall, and trace the glacier to the
snow-covered mountain-tops in which it originates. There is no such
close and intimate view of a glacier to be had elsewhere in Europe by
the traveller in diligence or carriage. We walked by the side of the
infant Rhone, among the pebbles and boulders, to the overhanging snout
of the great glacier from beneath which the river emerges. A very
beautiful wine-red species of dwarf willow-herb (_Epilobium
Fleischeri_) was growing abundantly in tufts among the pebbles, and
many other Alpine plants greeted our eyes. The heat of the sun was
that of midsummer, whilst a delicate air of icy freshness diffused
itself from the great frozen mass in front of us.

Some large blocks of the glacier ice had fallen from above, and lay
conveniently for examination. Whilst the walls of the ice-caves which
have been cut into this and other glaciers present a perfectly smooth,
continuous surface of clear ice, these fragments which had fallen from
the surface exposed to the heat of the sun, were, as seen in the mass,
white and opaque. When a stic