At five on a lovely morning I shouldered my knapsack and started for Briançon. Gauzy mists clung to the mountains, but melted away when touched by the sun, and disappeared by jerks (in the manner of views when focused in a magic lantern), revealing the wonderfully bent and folded strata in the limestone cliffs behind the town. Then I entered the Combe de Malval, and heard the Romanche eating its way through that wonderful gorge, and passed on to Le Dauphin, where the first glacier came into view, tailing over the mountain-side on the right. From this place until the summit of the Col de Lautaret was passed, every gap in the mountains showed a glittering glacier or a soaring peak: the finest view was at La Grave, where the Meije rises by a series of tremendous precipices eight thousand feet above the road. The finest distant view of the pass is seen after crossing the col, near Monetier. A mountain, commonly supposed to be Monte Viso, appears at the end of the vista, shooting into the sky: in the middle distance, but still ten miles off, is Briançon with its interminable forts, and in the foreground, leading down to the Guisane and rising high up the neighboring slopes, are fertile fields, studded with villages and church-spires. The next day I walked over from Briançon to La Bessée, to my worthy friend Jean Reynaud, the surveyor of roads of his district. [Illustration: MONT PELVOUX FROM ABOVE BESSÉE] All the peaks of Mont Pelvoux are well seen from La Bessée—the highest point as well as that upon which the French engineers erected their cairn in 1828. Neither Reynaud nor any one else knew this. The natives knew only that the engineers had ascended one peak, and had seen from that a still higher point, which they called the Pointe des Arcines or des Écrins. They could not say whether this latter could be seen from La Bessée, nor could they tell the peak upon which the cairn had been erected. We were under the impression that the highest point was concealed by the peaks we saw, and would be gained by passing over them. They knew nothing of the ascent of Monsieur Puiseux, and they confidently asserted that the highest point of Mont Pelvoux had not been attained by any one: it was this point we wished to reach.