evening and slept at Montanvert, a solitary little
mountain inn on the edge of the Mer de Glace.

We were up betimes in the morning. We
provided ourselves with some eatables, and wine,
and started with our guide, whom we had brought
from Courmayeur. It was a glorious morning,
and promised well for our expedition. Our road,
for about half an hour, was along an uneven
path skirting the glacier, which lay below us on
our left hand, very much crevassed and covered
with debris. The path then came to an end,
and the guide said we must now take to the
glacier. We descended on to it, and threaded
our way among the numerous crevasses.

The excursion to the Mer de Glace not being
looked upon as a regular glacier expedition, is
not made with the attendant precautions of axes
or ropes. We had neither. We were in high
spirits, and went along at a great rate; so
quickly, indeed, that our guide, who had fallen
behind, cautioned us once or twice, and requested
us to allow him to take, and keep, the lead. Just
then, our progress was arrested by a wide
crevasse. Looking to the left, I perceived that it
terminated, some twenty feet from us, in a steep
slope of ice, which I thought I could easily climb.
As the crevasse was about sixty yards long, I
determined to try this slope rather than go round
by the other end.

Using my Alpenstock instead of an axe, therefore,
I began making foot holes in the ice with
it. The guide had now come up with us. He
looked at the ice slope and the wide crevasse,
and said, very seriously, " It is dangerous, let us
go round." By this time I had, with the aid of
my Alpenstock, climbed about half way up the
slope. I had already come to the conclusion that
it was much too steep to scale without an axe, and
had determined to retrace my steps. So, when
the guide had spoken, I carefully stretched back
my right leg, feeling for the last hole I had made
in the ice. My foot went past the place, and I
felt that I was slipping. There was not the
least projection that I could grasp. The slope
became perpendicular, and I fell head foremost
into the yawning crevasse below.

I heard a loud cry of despair from my fellow-
traveller and the guide. My own sensations
cannot be described, or even distinctly separated
from the whirl and shock. I felt that I was
being bumped from side to side between the two
walls of ice; that I was falling a great depth;
that I was being hurled to utter destruction—to
a horrible death. Suddenly I felt that I was
caught by something: that I hung suspended.
I was able to take breath, and to call out for
"A rope! a rope!"

By the most extraordinary chance my fall
had been arrested by a little ledge of ice which
spanned the crevasse like a bridge. On this
frail structure, not more than two inches wide
at the top, and (as well as I could judge) about
two feet deep, I had fallen, so that my head
hung down on one side, my legs on the other.
Instinctively and immediately, by means which
I cannot at all recal, I raised myself from this
dreadful position to a standing one on the
ledge, in which there was a little niche
sufficiently wide to admit one foot. I was now so far
collected that I could hear my fellow-traveller
saying from above, " We never hoped to hear
your voice again. For God's sake, take heart.
The guide is running to Montanvert for men
and ropes, and will soon be back."

"If he is not," I answered, " I shall never
come up alive."

My position was an awful one. The little
ledge was so narrow that I could not get both
my feet upon it. I was, in fact, supporting
myself on one leg, half leaning against one side
of the crevasse and pressing my hand against
the opposite side. It was perfectly smooth,
and there was nothing to grasp. A stream of
water poured over my shoulders, drenching me
to the skin, and freezing me with its icy coldness.
Overhead I could see the long narrow
strip of blue sky, bounded by the mouth of the
crevasse. There was a terribly stolid, unrelenting
look in the intensely blue ice that
surrounded me on all sides. The grim walls of the
crevasse looked as if they would unite to crush
me rather than relinquish their victim.
Numerous rills of water poured into the crevasse,
but in the whole sixty yards of its length I
could see no projection except the little ledge
on which I had so miraculously chanced to fall.

I ventured to look down, only for an instant,
into the fearful chasm in which I was suspended.
At the depth to which I had fallen the crevasse
was barely two feet wide, but downward it
narrowed rapidly, and about two hundred feet below
me the sides appeared to join. I believe that if I
had fallen six inches on either side of the little
ledge I must inevitably have been jammed in
head downward, at a depth where no ropes that
could have been brought there could possibly
have reached me.

I had now been about twenty minutes standing
in this perilous position, straining every
nerve to prevent myself from giving way, looking
up at the blue sky above me and the clear
ice on all sides, but seldom daring to cast
a glance into the abyss below. Blood was
trickling over me from a cut in my cheek, and I
felt that my right leg (fortunately the idle one)
was badly bruised. In the mean while my left
leg was becoming exceedingly painful from the
strain upon it, and I was afraid of losing my
balance if I tried to relieve myself by changing
to the other. I felt that I was growing
benumbed by the intense cold of the ice against
which I was leaning, and of the stream of water
from under which I durst not move.

I called to my fellow-traveller to know if any
one were in sight? There was no answer. I
called again. No human being seemed to be
within hearing. A dizziness came over me, as
the thought struck me, " He has gone to look
if any help is coming, and he cannot find his way
back to the crevasse. There are hundreds of
them. I am lost."

Again I had to strain every nerve to keep
myself from sinking; I almost gave up hope; I
felt inclined to throw myself down and have the