As we crossed the plain, there was still the same total absence of water, and we reached the bottom of the hill in a state of mind and body which rebelled against the exertion of struggling with the sand and shingle and brushwood.  Liotir thought it was useless to attempt it with no hope of water, and I held much the same view, only it was impossible really to think of giving it up.  When at last we had surmounted all the difficulties which beset us, and stood on the highest point which had so far been in sight, we found ourselves on the edge of a vast plain of parched grass, with nothing to guide us in one direction rather than another.  There was no human being in sight, no sign of water, nor any particle of shade; nothing but grass, brown and monotonous, with white cliffs miles away at the extremity of the plain.  This was evidently the Foire de Fondeurle, and in it somewhere lay the glaciere, if only we could make out in which direction to begin to traverse the plain.  In the earlier part of this century, a very famous fair was held on this wild and out-of-the-way table-land, to which many thousands of horses and mules and cattle of various kinds were brought from all quarters; but the fair has fallen off so much, that the man who had turned us up the last hill said there were only fourteen head of cattle in 1863, and very few of those were sold.  M. Hericart de Thury describes this plain as lying in the calcareous sub-Alpine range of the south-east of France.  The woods here terminate at a height of 5,147 feet above the sea, and the Foire de Fondeurle lies immediately above this point.

At last we made a bold dash across the plain, and after a time came upon some sheep, standing in a thick row, with their heads thrust under a low bank which afforded a little shade; and at no great distance from them sat the shepherd.  He was a cripple, and his clothes were something worse than rags.  He offered us a portion of the water he had in a detestable-looking skin; but he assured us it was quite warm, and had not been good to begin with, so we did not try it, though we were thirsty enough to have hailed a muddy pool with delight.  Our new acquaintance knew nothing of the glaciere, but he belonged himself to the Chalet of Fondeurle, and as that was the only house on the whole plain, he told us to make for it.  The surface of the plain seemed to have fallen through in many places, forming larger and smaller pits with steep sides of limestone.  These were often of the size of a large field, and, as the deeper of them required circumvention, the shepherd told us that we must follow the line of little cairns which we should find here and there on our way, the only guide across the plain.  He could not be sure himself in what direction the chalet lay; but if we kept to a certain tortuous line, we should come to it in time.