Turning away from this melancholy spectacle, I looked about me with renewed interest.  The sun had set, and evening was casting its shadows over the valley below, which might still be seen through the gorges of our path.  The air above, and the brown peaks that rose around us like gloomy giants, were still visible in a mellow saddened light, and I thought I had never witnessed a more poetical, or a more vivid picture of the approach of night.  Following the direction of the upward path, a track that was visible only by the broken fragments of rock, and which now ascended suddenly, an opening was seen between two dark granite piles, through which the sky beyond still shone, lustrous and pearly.  This opening appeared to be but a span.  It was the col, or the summit of the path, and gazing at it, in that pure atmosphere, I supposed it might be half a mile beyond and above us.  The guide shook his head at this conjecture, and told me it was still a weary league!

At this intelligence we hurried to bestride our mules, which by this time were fagged, and as melancholy as the mountains.  When we left the refuge there were no traces of the sun on any of the peaks or glaciers.  A more sombre ascent cannot be imagined.  Vegetation had absolutely disappeared, and in its place lay scattered the fragments of the ferruginous looking rocks.  The hue of every object was gloomy as desolation could make it, and the increasing obscurity served to deepen the intense interest we felt.  Although constantly and industriously ascending towards the light, it receded faster than we could climb.  After half an hour of toil, it finally deserted us to the night.  At this moment the guide pointed to a mass that I had thought a fragment of the living rock, and said it was the roof a building.  It still appeared so near, that I fancied we had arrived; but minute after minute went by, and this too was gradually swallowed up in the gloom.  At the end of another quarter of an hour, we came to a place where the path, always steep since quitting the refuge, actually began to ascend by a flight of broad steps formed in the living rock, like that already mentioned on the Righi, though less precipitous.  My weary mule seemed at times, to be tottering beneath my weight, or hanging in suspense, undecided, whether or not to yield to the downward pressure.  It was quite dark, and I thought it best to trust to his instinct and his recollections.  This unpleasant struggle between animal force and the attraction of gravitation, in which the part I played was merely to contribute to the latter, lasted nearly a quarter of an hour longer, when the mules appeared to be suddenly relieved.  They moved more briskly for a minute, and then stopped before a pile of rock, that a second look in the dark enabled us to see was made of stone, thrown into the form of a large rude edifice.  This was the celebrated convent of the Great St. Bernard!