In some places I found the crevasses difficult, the ice being split in a very singular manner. Vast plates of it not more than a foot in thickness were sometimes detached from the sides of the crevasses, and stood alone. I was now approaching the base of the _seracs_, and the glacier around me still retained a portion of the turbulence of the cascade. I halted at times amid the ruin and confusion, and examined with my glass the cascade itself. It was a wild and wonderful scene, suggesting throes of spasmodic energy, though, in reality, all its dislocation had been _slowly_ and _gradually_ produced. True, the stratified blocks which here and there cumbered the terraces suggested _debacles_, but these were local and partial, and did not affect the general question. There is scarcely a case of geological disturbance which could not be matched with its analogue upon the glaciers,--contortions, faults, fissures, joints, and dislocations,--but in the case of the ice we can prove the effects to be due to slowly-acting causes; how reasonable is it then to ascribe to the operation of similar causes, which have had an incomparably longer time to work, many geological effects which at first sight might suggest sudden convulsion! Wandering slowly upwards, successive points of attraction drawing me almost unconsciously on, I found myself as the day was declining deep in the entanglements of the ice. A shower commenced, and a splendid rainbow threw an oblique arch across the glacier. I was quite alone; the scene was exceedingly impressive, and the possibility of difficulties on which I had not calculated intervening between me and the lower glacier, gave a tinge of anxiety to my position. I turned towards home; crossed some bosses of ice and rounded others; I followed the tracks of streams which were very irregular on this portion of the glacier, bending hither and thither, rushing through deep-cut channels, falling in cascades and expanding here and there to deep green lakes; they often plunged into the depths of the ice, flowed under it with hollow gurgle, and reappeared at some distant point. I threaded my way cautiously amid systems of crevasses, scattering with my axe, to secure a footing, the rotten ice of the sharper crests, which fell with a ringing sound into the chasms at either side. Strange subglacial noises were sometimes heard, as if caverns existed underneath, into which blocks of ice fell at intervals, transmitting the shock of their fall with a dull boom to the surface of the glacier. By the steady surmounting of difficulties one after another, I at length placed them all behind me, and afterwards hastened swiftly along the glacier to my mountain home. [Sidenote: CHAMOUNI RULES. 1857.]