Knowing these things, it is needless to say that I found the Petit Plateau keenly interesting.  The menacing seracs leaned from the cliffs, glittering icily, and threw black shadows upon the neve beneath, but suffered us to pass unmolested.

Above the Petit Plateau is a steep ascent called the Grands Montees which taxes the breath.  Having surmounted this, we were on the Grand Plateau, a much wider level than the other, edged with tremendous ice cliffs and crevasses, and situated at an elevation of thirteen thousand feet.  For some time now it had been broad day, but the clouds had thickened rapidly, and the summit was wrapped and completely hidden in them.  Blasts of frigid wind began to whistle about us, driving stinging pellets of ice into our faces.  We quickened our steps, for it would not do to be caught in a storm here.  The Grand Plateau has taken more lives than its ill-starred neighbor below.

A BLINDING STORM OF SNOW AND WIND.

We now bore off to the right, in order to clamber up the side of the great channel, or depression, that we had thus far followed, because at its upper end, where it meets the base of the crowning pyramid of Mont Blanc, it abuts against ice-covered precipices that no mortal will ever scale.  Snow commenced to fall, and the wind rose.  As we neared the crest of the ridge connecting the Dome du Gouter with the Bosses du Dromadaire and the summit, the tempest burst fiercely upon us.  In an instant we were enveloped by a cloud of whirling snow that blotted out sky and mountains alike.  It drove into my eyes, and half blinded me.  It was so thick that objects a few yards away would have been concealed even without a violent wind to confuse the vision.  At times Couttet, close ahead of me, was visible only in a kind of gray outline, like a wraith.  On an open plain such a storm in such a temperature would have had its dangers for a traveller seeking his way.  We were seeking our way, not on an open plain, but two miles and a half above sea level, in a desert of snow and ice, encompassed with precipices, chasms, and pitfalls, treading on we knew not what, assailed by a wild storm, all landmarks obliterated, and our footsteps filling so fast with drifted snow that in two minutes we could not see from what direction we had last come.

In such a situation the imagination becomes dramatic.  The night before I had been reading the account of the loss, in 1870, of Dr. Bean, Mr. Randall, and the Rev. Mr. Corkendale, together with five guides and three porters, eleven persons in all, in just such a storm and within sight of this spot.  And now as we stumbled along I repeated to myself, almost word for word, Dr. Bean’s message to his wife, found when his body was discovered: