“Le faite de la montagne, battu de tous cotes par les vents, et par les pluies, a souffert des alterations les plus grandes:  ici les couches du cote du lac ont ete detruites, et laissent voir les sommites des couches opposees, dont les escarpemens paroissent tourner contre ce meme lac; la, ce font les couches du cote de la vallee de Mijoux, qui out ete emportees, et la montagne en pente uniforme de notre cote, est escarpee du cote de celle vallee; plus loin, le faite entier a ete enleve, et la on voit des abaissemens ou des gorges comme aux Faucilles, a St. Serge, etc.

“Les flancs et la base de La montagne ont aussi ete degrades par les torrens que produisent la pluie et les neiges fondues, qui ont forme de larges et profondes excavations.”

These ravages of time, or rather of the wasting operations of the surface of the earth, however great, compared with the little changes that we find in our experience, or in the most ancient record of our histories, are little things, considering the softness and solubility of the materials, and compared with the wasting of the Alps, which we find in tracing up those same rivers to their sources in the icy valleys.  Let us go up the Arve to the valley of Chamouni.  From this fertile valley, M. de Saussure heads us up the Montanvert, 428 fathoms above the level of the valley, and consequently 954 above that of the sea.

From this mountain we descend again into the high frozen valley which runs between the granite mountains, and pours its ice into the valley of Chamouni.

In this high valley, which communicates with an immensity of the like kind, we find ourselves among the most hard and durable materials.  Here we must perceive, that most enormous masses of those solid materials had, in the course of time, been wasted by the flow effects of air and water, of the sun and frost, in order to hollow out those barren valleys of immense extent, which have, during an amazing tract of time, contributed from their solid rocks to the formation of travelled soils below, but which materials have long ago been travelling in the sea.  The sides of those valleys are solid rock here exposed naked to our view.  It is to such a place as this that we should go to see the operations of the surface wasting the solid body of the globe, and to read the unmeasurable course of time that must have flowed during those amazing operations which the vulgar do not see, and which the learned seem to see without wonder!

M. de Saussure, in his second volume of Voyages dans les Alps, has given us a most interesting view of this scene, p. 6.

“En montant au Montanvert, on a toujours sous ses pieds la vue de la vallee de Chamouni, de l’Arve qui l’arrose dans toute la longueur, d’une soule de villages et de hameaux entoures d’arbres et de champs bien cultives.  Au moment ou l’on arrive au Montanvert, la scene change; et au lieu de cette riante et fertile vallee, on se trouve presqu’au bord d’un precipice, dont le fond est une vallee beaucoup plus large et plus etendue, remplie de neige et de glace, et bordee de montagnes colossales, qui etonnent par leur hauteur et par leurs formes, et qui effraient par leur sterilite et leurs escarpements.”