This night we fixed our camp high above the tree-line, and indulged ourselves in the healthy employment of carrying our fuel up to it. The present rock was not so comfortable as the first, and before we could settle down we were obliged to turn out a large mass which was in the way. It was very obstinate, but moved at length—slowly and gently at first, then faster and faster, at last taking great jumps in the air, striking a stream of fire at every touch, which shone out brightly as it entered the gloomy valley below; and long after it was out of sight we heard it bounding downward, and then settle with a subdued crash on the glacier beneath. As we turned back from this curious sight, Reynaud asked if we had ever seen a torrent on fire, and told us that in the spring the Durance, swollen by the melting of the snow, sometimes brings down so many rocks that where it passes through a narrow gorge at La Bessée no water whatever is seen, but only boulders rolling over and over, grinding each other into powder, and striking so many sparks that the stream looks as if it were on fire. We had another merry evening, with nothing to mar it: the weather was perfect, and we lay backward in luxurious repose, looking at the sky spangled with its ten thousand brilliant lights. The ranges stood Transfigured in the silver flood. Their snows were flashing cold and keen, Dead white, save where some sharp ravine Took shadow, or the sombre green Of hemlocks turned to pitchy black, Against the whiteness at their back.[1] [1] J.G. Whittier, “Snow-Bound.” [Illustration: R. J. S. MACDONALD] Macdonald related his experiences over the café noir. He had traveled day and night for several days in order to join us, but had failed to find our first bivouac, and had encamped a few hundred yards from us under another rock, higher up the mountain. The next morning he discerned us going along a ridge at a great height above him, and as it was useless to endeavor to overtake us, he lay down and watched with a heavy heart until we had turned the corner of a buttress and vanished out of sight. Nothing but the heavy breathing of our already sound—asleep comrades broke the solemn stillness of the night. It was a silence to be felt. Nothing! Hark! what is that dull booming sound above us? Is that nothing? There it is again, plainer: on it comes, nearer, clearer: ’tis a crag escaped from the heights above. What a fearful crash! We jump to our feet. Down it comes with awful fury: what power can withstand its violence? Dancing leaping, flying, dashing against others, roaring as it descends. Ah, it has passed! No: there it is again, and we hold our breath as, with resistless force and explosions like artillery, it darts past, with an avalanche of shattered fragments trailing in its rear. ’Tis gone, and we breathe more freely as we hear the finale on the glacier below.