A FATIGUING EXCURSION. 227

completed her dreadful operations. Accordingly,
having ascertained that, although the regular
roads, bridgeways, and pathways were carried
away, a circuitous course over the mountains was
practicable to the very foot of the glaciers of Mont
Pleureur, which impended over the mouth of the
Lac de Getroz, he determined to make the attempt.
During the first day’s journey nothing of particular
importance occurred. The early dawn of the
second morning found our traveller, accompanied
by two guides mounted on horseback, and prepared
for an excursion, which, under the most favourable
circumstances, must be long and fatiguing. For
the first three or four hours the road lay sometimes
along plains, sometimes along heights, presenting a
succession of striking objects among the wildest im-
aginable exhibitions of mountain scenery. At length
the party descended into a valley of considerable
extent, affording a flat platform of what had once
been meadow land, but was then a wide plain,
on whose surface, in every direction, were scattered
in wild confusion, rocks and stones, and uprooted
trees of all dimensions, deposited by the torrent,
which had returned to its original channel, through
which it was roaring over a bed of broken granite,
forming a sort of loose and coarse shingle. This
valley, though unconfined towards the west, was

apparently closed in towards the east, immediately
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