“(Page 40.) On trouve aux environs du couvent quelques schistes argilleux ou ardoises grises feuilletees detruites a moitie.  On ne voir nulle part de ces ardoises sur pied ou formant des masses attachees au sol; il faut que les couches ou les lits de ces ardoises, qui avoient ete formes et places sur ces hauts, ayent ete detruits et renverses par le temps.

“Enfin toute cette montagne, une des plus hautes des Alpes Poenines, qui conserve des neiges et de glaces permanentes, est composee en general de pierres et de roches schisteuses, dont les couches et les lits sont plus on moins sensibles et inclines, et d’une grande durete.  Leurs parties constituantes sont un mica argilleux dont les lames ou les parties sont plus ou moins grandes et brillantes et diversement colorees:  elles sont traversees de filons et de veines meles de rognons et de globule de quartz ordinairement blanc, quelquefois vitreux, transparent, opaque ou grenu:  nous n’y avons vu des granits que sur le penchant de la montagne; ils y etoient isoles et roules.  Quelqu’un qui aura plus de temps, plus de loisir, decouvrira peut-etre d’ou ces masses proviennent[21].”

[Footnote 21:  M. de Saussure, in his 2d volume of Voyages dans les Alpes, has shown the origin of these travelled granites, and traced the way by which they have come.]

We have here a picture of one of those valleys which branch from, or join the main valley of the Rhone.  In this subordinate valley, there is the most evident marks of the operations of water hollowing out its way, in flowing from the summits of the mountains, and carrying the fragments of rocks and stones along the shelving surface of the earth; thus wearing down that surface, and excavating the solid rock.  On the summit of the mountain, again, there is an equal proof of the operation of water and the influences of the atmosphere continued during a long succession of ages.  It is impossible perhaps to conjecture as to the quantity of rock which has been wasted and carried away by water from this alpine region; the summits testify that a great deal had been above them, as that which remains has every mark of being the relicts of what had been removed, and moved only by those operations which here are natural to the surface of the earth.  Let us now abstract any consideration of that quantity above the summits of those mountains, as a quantity which cannot be estimated; and let us only consider all the cavity below the summits of those ridges of mountains to have been hollowed out by those operations of running water which we now have in view.