but I am very certain he could not perform the same feat on Mont Blanc. It is remarkable, that a few seconds rest was sufficient to restore both our strength and breath. One of our guides, a robust man, who had been once on the summit, was so much incommoded, that we were compelled to leave him behind to await our return. I experienced some inconvenience from a slight degree of nausea and head-ache, of which most of those, who have made this journey have complained. When ascending Ætna, two months before, I had been seriously affected both by a difficulty of breathing, and by a violent thumping of the heart and arteries, which was loud enough to be easily heard by my companions, and which the slightest exertion was sufficient to excite. In the present instance I dreaded these effects, and had already begun to feel them in an uncomfortable degree; but was almost entirely relieved by drinking plentifully of vinegar and water, with which our guides, to whom experience had taught its utility, had taken care to be well provided. This drink was extremely agreeable to us; wine on the contrary, disgusted us. All the water we had, we had brought from the rock at which we slept, where we had carefully collected it from the cracks of the ice: for we were now in the region of eternal ice, where rain never falls, and where the utmost power of the midsummer sun can only soften, in a slight degree, the surface of the snow. The acclivity we were now ascending, was steeper than any we had before encountered, so much so that we could only accomplish it by a zigzag path, advancing not more than a few feet every 20 or 30 yards we walked. To have an idea of our situation, you must imagine us marching in single file on the steep mountain side, placing with the greatest care our feet in the steps, which the hardness of the snow rendered it necessary for our leader to cut with an axe, supporting ourselves with our poles against the upper side of the slope, and having on the other side, the same rapid slope terminating below in a precipice several hundred feet in height, over which we saw rapidly hurried all the small pieces of ice, that we loosened with our feet. Our situation was similar to that of a person scaling the steep and iced roof of a lofty house, and constantly liable, by an incautious step, to be suddenly precipitated over the eaves. After we had been proceeding in this manner for some time, I looked down on the Plateau beneath, for the guide we had left, and when at last I discerned him, like a speck on the snow, my head began to grow dizzy at the idea of the distance below me, and I was forced to keep my head averted from this side, to recover from this disagreeable feeling.