At the "half-way house," as it is called, the view is beautiful; three or four waterfalls tumbling down the mountain sides, and falling into the mad stream that goes careering wildly over the rocks and bowlders. Then another long ride through a rough and barren country, indicating the approach to the glacier region, and then at a sudden turn in the road, Mont Blanc looms up high above the great peaks by which it is surrounded. We speed rapidly over the floor-like road, and at six o'clock in the evening, after having been on the road since seven in the morning, we are in Chamonix, the little village at the foot of Mt. Blanc, that lives entirely on tourists. Of course the great point of interest is Mt. Blanc, the highest point of the central chain of the Swiss and Italian High Alps. There it is--fifteen thousand seven hundred and thirty-one feet high, covered with a great mass of ice and snow that has been accumulating for ages. There stands the patriarch of the Alps, crowned with the centuries, and still smiling grimly at Time. It stands alone in its fearful beauty. Of all the European mountains, it impresses the mind with the power of the forces, the source of which are hidden to man, and which it is not given to man to comprehend. One feels his own insignificance as he gazes on this wonderful peak, and, no matter what his creed, feels a profound reverence for whatever power he believes created it. [Sidenote: THE DANGERS OF ASCENDING MONT BLANC.] Around it are other peaks that elsewhere would be considered very high, but compared with this giant they are pigmies. Mt. Blanc is not to be described. Descriptions and pictures can convey no idea of it. One must stand under the shadow of that eternal snow, must feel the presence of the grand old mountain, to fully appreciate it.