So I walked away, and shortly afterwards, as it was getting dark, encamped in a lovely hole—a cavity or kind of basin in the earth, with a stream on one side, a rock to windward, and some broken fir branches close at hand. Nothing could be more perfect: rock, hole, wood, and water. After making a roaring fire, I nestled in my blanket bag (an ordinary blanket sewn up double round the legs, with a piece of elastic riband round the open end), and slept, but not for long. I was troubled with dreams of the Inquisition; the tortures were being applied—priests were forcing fleas down my nostrils and into my eyes—and with red-hot pincers were taking out bits of flesh, and then cutting off my ears and tickling the soles of my feet. This was too much; I yelled a great yell and awoke, to find myself covered with innumerable crawling bodies. They were ants; I had camped by an ant-hill, and, after making its inhabitants mad with the fire, had coolly lain down in their midst. [Illustration: THE BLANKET BAG.] The night was fine, and as I settled down in more comfortable quarters, a brilliant meteor sailed across full 60° of the cloudless sky, leaving a trail of light behind which lasted for several seconds. It was the herald of a splendid spectacle. Stars fell by hundreds; and not dimmed by intervening vapours, they sparkled with greater brightness than Sirius in our damp climate. The next morning, after walking up the valley to examine the Viso, I returned to Abries, and engaged a man from a neighbouring hamlet, an inveterate smoker, and thirsty in proportion, whose pipe never left his mouth except to allow him to drink. We returned up the valley together, and slept in a hut of a shepherd, whose yearly wage was almost as small as that of the herdsman spoken of in Hyperion by Longfellow; and the next morning, in his company, proceeded to the summit of the pass which I had crossed in 1860. We were baffled in our attempt to get closer to the mountain. A deep notch(29) with precipitous cliffs cut us off from it. The snow-slope, too, which existed in the preceding year on the Piedmontese side of the pass, was now wanting, and we were unable to descend the rocks which lay beneath. A fortnight afterwards the mountain was ascended for the first time by Messrs. Mathews and Jacomb, with the two Croz’s of Chamounix. Their attempt was made from the _southern_ side, and the ascent, which was formerly considered a thing totally impossible, has become one of the most common and favourite excursions of the district.