time we had been so circumstanced during the whole morning, he
remarked it, and said we ought to have one guide at least between us in
case of accident. This I over-ruled by referring him to the absence of
all appearance of danger at that part of our march; to which he
assented. I did not then attempt to recover my place in front--though
the wish more than once crossed my mind--finding, perhaps, that my
present one was much less laborious. To this apparently trivial
circumstance I was indebted for my life. A few minutes after the above
conversation, my veil being still up, and my eyes turned at intervals
towards the summit of the mountain--which was on the right, as we were
crossing obliquely the long slope above described, which was to conduct
us to Mont Maudit--the snow suddenly gave way beneath our feet,
beginning at the head of the line, and carried us all down the slope on
our left. I was thrown instantly off my feet, but was still on my knees
and endeavouring to regain my footing, when, in a few seconds, the snow
on our right--which, of course, was above us--rushed into the gap thus
suddenly made, and completed the catastrophe by burying us all at once
in its mass, and hurrying us downwards towards two crevasses about a
furlong below us and nearly parallel to the line of our march. The
accumulation of snow instantly threw me backwards, and I was carried
down, in spite of all my struggles. In less than a minute I emerged,
partly from my own exertions and partly because the velocity of the
falling mass had subsided. I was obliged to resign my pole in the
struggle, feeling it forced out of my hand. A short time afterwards I
found it on the very brink of the crevass. This had hitherto escaped our
notice from its being so far below us, and it was not until some time
after the snow had settled that I perceived it. At the moment of my
emerging I was so far from being alive to the danger of our situation,
that, on seeing my two companions at some distance below, up to the arms
in snow and sitting motionless and silent, a jest was rising to my lips,
till a second glance shewed me that, with the exception of Mathieu
Balmat, they were the only remnants of the party visible. Two more,
however, being those in the interval between myself and the rear of the
party, having quickly re-appeared, I was still inclined to treat the
affair as a perplexing though ludicrous delay, in having sent us down so
many hundred feet lower, than in