The path up to the great glacier above us was wild and barren, it
lay over a little plain watered by branching streams, and covered
over with ice and newly fallen snow. Crossing one of these streams,
I flushed a solitary woodcock, the only inhabitant of the wild,
and shortly afterwards, our guide, an uncouth bundle of sheep-skins,
slipped over a frozen stone, and came down in the freezing water with
a splash, which, at that hour of the morning, made one shudder all
over involuntarily. The snow-shoes which F. and myself had donned,
alone saved us several times from a similar, uncomfortable fate. Our
path, properly speaking, should have led over the very centre of the
glacier; but, in consequence of the numerous crevasses and the early
appearance of the new snow, our guide steadily refused to take us
over the pass by that route. To have taken it without a guide would
have been simply impossible; so we diverged to one side, and, after a
sharp ascent of two hours over the snow, reached a sort of upper basin
among the very mountain-tops.
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