228. On the morning of the 28th this banner was strikingly large and grand, and reddened by the light of the rising sun, it glowed like a flame. Roses of cloud also clustered round the crests of the Grande Jorasse and hung upon the pinnacles of Charmoz. Four men, well roped together, descended to the glacier. I had trained one of them in 1857, and he was now to fix the stakes. The storm had so distributed the snow as to leave alternate lengths of the glacier bare and thickly covered. Where much snow lay great caution was required, for hidden crevasses were underneath. The men sounded with their staffs at every step. Once while looking at the party through my telescope the leader suddenly disappeared; the roof of a crevasse had given way beneath him; but the other three men promptly gathered round and lifted him out of the fissure. The true line was soon picked up by the theodolite; one by one the stakes were fixed until a series of eleven of them stood across the glacier. 229. To get higher up the valley was impracticable; the snow was too deep, and the aspect of the weather too threatening; so the theodolite was planted amid the pines a Little way below the Montanvert, whence through a vista I could see across the glacier. The men were wrapped at intervals by whirling snow-wreaths which quite hid them, and we had to take advantage of the lulls in the wind. Fitfully it came up the valley, darkening the air, catching the snow upon the glacier, and tossing it throughout its entire length into high and violently agitated clouds, separated from each other by cloudless spaces corresponding to the naked portions of the ice. In the midst of this turmoil the men continued to work. Bravely and steadfastly stake after stake was set, until at length a series of ten of them was fixed across the glacier. 230. Many of the stakes were fixed in the snow. They were four feet in length, and were driven in to a depth of about three feet. But that night, while listening to the wild onset of the storm, I thought it possible that the stakes and the snow which held them might be carried bodily away before the morning. The wind, however, lulled. We rose with the dawn, but the air was thick with descending snow. It was all composed of those exquisite six-petaled flowers, or six-rayed stars, which have been already figured and described (§ 9). The weather brightening, the theodolite was planted at the end of the first line. The men descended, and, trained by their previous experience, rapidly executed the measurements. The first line was completed before 11 A. M. Again the snow began to fall, filling all the air. Spangles innumerable were showered upon the heights. Contrary to expectation, the men could be seen and directed through the shower.