The summit of the mountain is an elongated ridge, which has been compared to the back of an ass.  It was perfectly manifest that we were dominant over all other mountains; as far as the eye could range Mont Blanc had no competitor.  The summits which had looked down upon us in the morning were now far beneath us.  The Dome du Goute, which had held its threatening “seracs” above us so long, was now at our feet.  The Aiguille du Midi, Mont Blanc du Tacul, and the Monts Maudits, the Talefre, with its surrounding peaks, the Grand Jorasse, Mont Mallet, and the Aiguille du Geant, with our own familiar glaciers, were all below us.  And as our eye ranged over the broad shoulders of the mountain, over ice hills and valleys, plateaux and far-stretching slopes of snow, the conception of its magnitude grew upon us, and imprest us more and more.

The clouds were very grand—­grander, indeed, than anything I had ever before seen.  Some of them seemed to hold thunder in their breasts, they were so dense and dark; others, with their faces turned sunward, shone with the dazzling whiteness of the mountain snow; while others again built themselves into forms resembling gigantic elm trees, loaded with foliage.  Toward the horizon the luxury of color added itself to the magnificent alternation of light and shade.  Clear spaces of amber and ethereal green embraced the red and purple cumuli, and seemed to form the cradle in which they swung.  Closer at hand squally mists, suddenly engendered, were driven hither and thither by local winds; while the clouds at a distance lay “like angels sleeping on the wing,” with scarcely visibly motion.  Mingling with the clouds, and sometimes rising above them, were the highest mountain heads, and as our eyes wandered from peak to peak, onward to the remote horizon, space itself seemed more vast from the manner in which the objects which it held were distributed....

The day was waning, and, urged by the warnings of our ever-prudent guide, we at length began the descent.  Gravity was in our favor, but gravity could not entirely spare our wearied limbs, and where we sank in the snow we found our downward progress very trying.  I suffered from thirst, but after we had divided the liquefied snow at the Petits Mulets among us we had nothing to drink.  I crammed the clean snow into my mouth, but the process of melting was slow and tantalizing to a parched throat, while the chill was painful to the teeth.

THE JUNGFRAU-JOCH[58]

BY SIR LESLIE STEPHEN

I was once more standing upon the Wengern Alp, and gazing longingly at the Jungfrau-Joch.  Surely the Wengern Alp must be precisely the loveliest place in this world.  To hurry past it, and listen to the roar of the avalanches, is a very unsatisfactory mode of enjoyment; it reminds one too much of letting off crackers in a cathedral.  The mountains seem to be accomplices of the people who charge fifty centimes for an echo.  But it does one’s moral nature good to linger there at sunset or in the early morning, when tourists have ceased from traveling; and the jaded cockney may enjoy a kind of spiritual bath in the soothing calmness of scenery....