After an hour’s rest it is, “Up! time presses; we must go on!” The guide and luggage were to go westward, along the wood, where there is a mule path. He will wait for us at Jas or Bâtiment, at the upper limit of the beeches, some 1550 metres above the sea. The Jas is a large stone, but capable of sheltering man and beast at night. We were to go upward to the crest which we should follow so as to reach the highest part more easily. After sunset we would go down to the Jas, where the guide would have long arrived; such was the plan proposed and adopted. We have reached the crest. Southward extend, as far as eye can see, the comparatively easy slopes by which we ascended on the north. The scene is savagely grand, the mountain sometimes perpendicular, sometimes falling in frightfully steep terraces, little less than a precipice of 1500 metres. Throw a stone, and it never stops till, bound after bound, it reaches the valley where one can see the bed of the Toulourenc wind like a ribbon. While my companions moved masses of rock and sent them rolling into the gulf that they might watch the terrible descent, I discovered under a big stone an old acquaintance in the entomological world—Ammophila hirsuta, which I had always found isolated on banks along roads in the plain, while here, on the top of Mont Ventoux, were several hundreds heaped under the same shelter. I was trying to find the cause of this agglomeration, when the southern breeze, which had already made us anxious in the course of the morning, suddenly brought up a bevy of clouds melting into rain. Before we had noticed them a thick rain-fog wrapped us round, and we could not see a couple of paces before us. Most unluckily one of us, my excellent friend, Th. Delacour, had wandered away looking for Euphorbia saxatilis, one of the botanical curiosities of these heights. Making a speaking trumpet of our hands we all shouted together. No one replied. Our voices were lost in the dense fog and dull sound of the wind in the whirling mass of cloud. Well, since the wanderer cannot hear us we must seek him. In the darkness of the mist it was impossible to see one another two or three paces off, and I alone of the seven knew the locality. In order to leave no one behind, we took each other’s hands, I placing myself at the head of the line. For some minutes we played a game of blindman’s buff, which led to nothing. Doubtless, on seeing the clouds coming up, Delacour, well used to Ventoux, had taken advantage of the last gleams of light to hurry to the shelter of Jas. We also must hurry there, for already the rain was running down inside our clothes as well as outside, and our thin white trousers clung like a second skin. A grave difficulty met us: our turnings and goings and comings while we searched had reduced me to the condition of one whose eyes have been bandaged, and has then been made to pirouette on his heels. I had lost the points of the