Our route for the glaciere followed the high road which leads by the Asile de Marchairuz to La Vallee, as far as the well-known Chalet de la S. Georges; and then the character of the way changed rapidly for the worse, and we took to the wet woods.  After a time, the wood ceased for a while, and a large expanse of smooth rock showed itself, rising slightly from the horizontal, and so slippery in its present wet condition that we could not pass up it.  Then woods again, and then the montagnes of Sous la Roche, and La Foireuse, till at last, in two hours, the Pre de S. Livres was achieved.  The fog was so dense that nothing could be seen of the general lie of the country; but the thalweg was a sufficient guide, and after due perseverance we came upon the glaciere, not many yards from that line, on the north slope of the open valley, about 4,500 feet above the sea.

To prevent cattle from falling into the pit, a wall has been built round the trees in which it lies.  The circumference of this wall is 435 feet, but there are so many trees at the upper end of the enclosure that this gives an exaggerated idea of the size of the pit.  The men fed while the preliminary measurements were being made; and when this was accomplished, they pressed their bottle of wine upon me so hospitably that I was obliged to antedate the result which its appearance promised, and plead mal d’estomac.  Of all things, it is most unwise to give a reason for a negative, and so it proved in this instance; for they promptly felicitated themselves and me on the good luck by which it happened that they had brought a wine famous on all the cote as a remedy for that somewhat vague complaint—­a homoeopathic remedy in allopathic doses.

The glaciere is entered by a natural pit in the gentle slope of grass, not much unlike the pit of La Genolliere, but wider, and covered at the bottom with snow.[19] The first ladder leads down to a ledge of rock on which bushes and trees grow, and this ledge it is possible to reach without a ladder; the next ladder leads on to the deep snow, and descent by any ordinary manner of climbing is in this case quite impossible.[20] The snow slopes down towards a lofty arch in the rock which forms the north-west side of the pit, and this arch is the entrance to the glaciere; it is 28-3/4 feet wide, and as soon as we passed under it we found that the snow became ice, and it was necessary to cut steps; for the surface of underground ice is so slippery, unlike the surface of ordinary glaciers, that the slightest defect from the horizontal makes the use of the axe advisable.  The stream of ice falls gradually, spreading out laterally like a fan, so as to accommodate itself to the shape of the cave, which it fills up to the side walls; it increases in breadth from 28-3/4 feet at the top to 72 feet at the bottom of the slope, and the distance from the top of the first ladder to this point is 177 feet.  Here we were arrested by a strange wall of ice 22