This accident occurred in 1866, a year and a month after the disaster on the Matterhorn.  Three adventurous English gentlemen, [1] of great experience in mountain-climbing, made up their minds to ascend Mont Blanc without guides or porters.  All endeavors to dissuade them from their project failed.  Powerful telescopes are numerous in Chamonix.  These huge brass tubes, mounted on their scaffoldings and pointed skyward from every choice vantage-ground, have the formidable look of artillery, and give the town the general aspect of getting ready to repel a charge of angels.  The reader may easily believe that the telescopes had plenty of custom on that August morning in 1866, for everybody knew of the dangerous undertaking which was on foot, and all had fears that misfortune would result.  All the morning the tubes remained directed toward the mountain heights, each with its anxious group around it; but the white deserts were vacant.

1.  Sir George Young and his brothers James and Albert.

At last, toward eleven o’clock, the people who were looking through the telescopes cried out “There they are!”—­and sure enough, far up, on the loftiest terraces of the Grand Plateau, the three pygmies appeared, climbing with remarkable vigor and spirit.  They disappeared in the “Corridor,” and were lost to sight during an hour.  Then they reappeared, and were presently seen standing together upon the extreme summit of Mont Blanc.  So, all was well.  They remained a few minutes on that highest point of land in Europe, a target for all the telescopes, and were then seen to begin descent.  Suddenly all three vanished.  An instant after, they appeared again, two thousand feet below!

Evidently, they had tripped and been shot down an almost perpendicular slope of ice to a point where it joined the border of the upper glacier.  Naturally, the distant witness supposed they were now looking upon three corpses; so they could hardly believe their eyes when they presently saw two of the men rise to their feet and bend over the third.  During two hours and a half they watched the two busying themselves over the extended form of their brother, who seemed entirely inert.  Chamonix’s affairs stood still; everybody was in the street, all interest was centered upon what was going on upon that lofty and isolated stage five miles away.  Finally the two—­one of them walking with great difficulty—­were seen to begin descent, abandoning the third, who was no doubt lifeless.  Their movements were followed, step by step, until they reached the “Corridor” and disappeared behind its ridge.  Before they had had time to traverse the “Corridor” and reappear, twilight was come, and the power of the telescope was at an end.

The survivors had a most perilous journey before them in the gathering darkness, for they must get down to the Grands Mulets before they would find a safe stopping-place—­a long and tedious descent, and perilous enough even in good daylight.  The oldest guides expressed the opinion that they could not succeed; that all the chances were that they would lose their lives.