motion,
tremendous in its action, awful in its sterility, and, altogether, one
of the most impressive and sublime works of God.

This gigantic glacier, or stream of ice, springing, as it does, from the
giant-mountain of Europe, is appropriately hemmed in, and its mighty
force restrained, by a group of Titans, whose sharp aiguilles, or
needle-like peaks, shoot upward to a height little short of their
rounded and white-headed superior, and from whose wild gorges and riven
sides tributary ice-rivers flow, and avalanches thunder incessantly.
Leaving its cradle on the top of Mont Blanc, the great river sweeps
round the Aiguille du Geant; and, after receiving its first name of
Glacier du Geant from that mighty obelisk of rock, which rises 13,156
feet above the sea, it passes onward to welcome two grand tributaries,
the Glacier de Lechaud, from the rugged heights of the Grandes Jorasses,
and the Glacier du Talefre from the breast of the Aiguille du Talefre
and the surrounding heights. Thus augmented, the river is named the Mer
de Glace, or sea of ice, and continues its downward course; but here it
encounters what may be styled "the narrows," between the crags at the
base of the Aiguille Charmoz and Aiguille du Moine, through which it
steadily forces its way, though compressed to much less than half its
width by the process. In one place the Glacier du Geant is above eleven
hundred yards wide; that of the Lechaud is above eight hundred; that of
Talefre above six hundred--the total, when joined, two thousand five
hundred yards; and this enormous mass of solid ice is forced through a
narrow neck of the valley, which is, in round numbers, only _nine
hundred_ yards wide! Of course the ice-river must gain in depth what it
loses in breadth in this gorge, through which it travels at the rate of
twenty inches a day. Thereafter, it tumbles ruggedly to its termination
in the vale of Chamouni, under the name of the Glacier des Bois.

The explanation of the causes of the rise and flow of this ice-river we
will leave to the genial and enthusiastic Professor, who glories in
dilating on such matters to Captain Wopper, who never tires of the
dilations.

Huge, however, though this glacier of the Mer de Glace be, it is only
one of a series of similar glaciers which constitute the outlets to that
vast reservoir of ice formed by the wide range of Mont Blanc, where the
snows of successive winters are stored, packed, solidified, and
rendered