On the same day we had our luggage transported to the Montanvert, while we clambered along the lateral moraine of the glacier to the Chapeau. The rocks alongside the glacier were beautifully scratched and polished, and I paid particular attention to them, for the purpose of furnishing myself with a key to ancient glacier action. The scene to my right was one of the most wonderful I had ever witnessed. Along the entire slope of the Glacier des Bois, the ice was cleft and riven into the most striking and fantastic forms. It had not yet suffered much from the wasting influence of the summer weather, but its towers and minarets sprang from the general mass with clean chiselled outlines. Some stood erect, others leaned, while the white debris, strewn here and there over the glacier, showed where the wintry edifices had fallen, breaking themselves to pieces, and grinding the masses on which they fell to powder. Some of them gave way during our inspection of the place, and shook the valley with the reverberated noise of their fall. I endeavoured to get near them, but failed; the chasms at the margin of the glacier were too dangerous, and the stones resting upon the heights too loosely poised to render persistence in the attempt excusable. We subsequently crossed the glacier to the Montanvert, and I formally took up my position there. The rooms of the hotel were separated from each other by wooden partitions merely, and thus the noise of early risers in one room was plainly heard in the next. For the sake of quiet, therefore, I had my bed placed in the _chateau_ next door,--a little octagonal building erected by some kind and sentimental Frenchman, and dedicated "_a la Nature_." My host at first demurred, thinking the place not "_propre_," but I insisted, and he acquiesced. True the stone floor was dark with moisture, and on the walls a glistening was here and there observable, which suggested rheumatism, and other penalties, but I had had no experience of rheumatism, and trusted to the strength which mountain air and exercise were sure to give me, for power to resist its attacks. Moreover, to dispel some of the humidity, it was agreed that a large pine fire should be made there on necessary occasions. [Sidenote: QUARTERS AT THE MONTANVERT. 1857.]