We stole a few moments for an inspection of the Church of Arc, and found, to our surprise, some very pleasing paintings in good repair, and open sittings which looked unusually clean and neat.  Then we crossed the plain towards the north, and proceeded to grapple with a stiff path through the woods which climb the first hills.  It turned out that there was no one available for our purpose in the chalet to which the landlord led us; but a small child was despatched in search of the master or the domestic, and returned before long with the latter individual, who received the mistress’s instruction respecting the route, and received also an axe which I had begged in case of need.  The accounts we had heard of the glaciere or glacieres—­every one declined to call them caves—­were so various, and the total denials of their existence so many, that we quietly made up our minds to disappointment, and agreed that what we had seen at the source of the Loue was quite sufficient to repay us for the trouble we had taken; while the idea of a rapid raid into France had something attractive in it, which more than counterbalanced the old charms of Soleure.  Besides, we found that we were now in a good district for flowers, and the abundant Gnaphalium sylvaticum brought back to our minds many a delightful scramble in glacier regions, where its lovely velvet kinsman the pied-de-lion grows.  On the broad top of the range of hills, covered with rich grass, we came upon large patches of a plant, with scented leaves and pungent seeds, which we had not known before, Meum athamanticum, and, to please our guide, we went through the form of pretending that we rather liked its taste.  My sisters were in ecstasies of triumph over a wild everlasting-pea, which grew here to a considerable height—­Lathyrus sylvestris, they said, Fr. Gesse sauvage, distinct from G. heteropyhlle, which is still larger, and is almost confined to a favourite place of sojourn with us, the little Swiss valley of Les Plans.  It is said that on the top of these hills springs of water rise to the surface, though there is no higher ground in the neighbourhood; a phenomenon which has been accounted for by the supposition of a difference of specific gravity between these springs and the waters which drive them up.

The character of the ground on the plateau changed suddenly, and we passed at one step, apparently, from a meadow of flowers to a wilderness of fissured rock, lying white and skeleton-like in the afternoon sun.  We only skirted this rock in the first instance, and made for a clump of trees some little way off, in which we found a deep pit, with a path of sufficient steepness leading to the bottom.  Here we came to a collection of snow, much sheltered by overhanging rocks and trees; and this, our guide told us, was the neigiere, a word evidently formed on the same principle as glaciere.  The snow was half-covered with leaves, and was unpleasantly wet