em, if, in the absolute impossibility of reaching their
summit, you must be content to remain at a lesser height?

Others, such as Mont Cervin, are more difficult of access; but we
perceived the summit of Mont Cervin twelve hundred feet below us!

And then, what a view to reward us for our troubles and dangers!

The sky, still pure, had assumed a deep-blue tint. The sun,
despoiled of a part of his rays, had lost his brilliancy, as if
in a partial eclipse. This effect, due to the rarefaction of the
air, was all the more apparent as the surrounding eminences and
plains were inundated with light. No detail of the scene,
therefore, escaped our notice.

In the south-east, the mountains of Piedmont, and farther off the
plains of Lombardy, shut in our horizon. Towards the west, the
mountains of Savoy and Dauphine; beyond, the valley of the Rhone.
In the north-west, the Lake of Geneva and the Jura; then,
descending towards the south, a chaos of mountains and glaciers,
beyond description, overlooked by the masses of Monte Rosa, the
Mischabelhoerner, the Cervin, the Weishorn--the most beautiful of
crests, as Tyndall calls it--and farther off by the Jungfrau, the
Monck, the Eiger, and the Finsteraarhorn.

The extent of our range of vision was not less than sixty
leagues. We therefore saw at least one hundred and twenty leagues
of country.

A special circumstance happened to enhance the beauty of the
scene. Clouds formed on the Italian side and invaded the valleys
of the Pennine Alps without veiling their summits. We soon had
under our eyes a second sky, a lower sky, a sea of clouds, whence
emerged a perfect archipelago of peaks and snow-wrapped
mountains. There was something magical in it, which the greatest
poets could scarcely describe.

The summit of Mont Blanc forms a ridge from southwest to north-east,
two hundred paces long and a yard wide at the culminating
point. It seemed like a ship's hull overturned, the keel in the
air.

Strangely enough, the temperature was very high--ten degrees above
zero. The air was almost still. Sometimes we felt a light breeze.

The first care of our guides was to place us all in a line on the
crest opposite Chamonix, that we might be easily counted from
below, and thus make it known that no one of us had been lost.
Many of the tourists had ascended the Brevent and the Jardin to
watch our ascent. They might now be assured of its success.

But to ascend was not all; we must think al