«Le faite de la montagne, battu de tous cotés par les vents, et par les pluies, a souffert des altérations les plus grandes: ici les couches du coté du lac ont été detruites, et laissent voir les sommités des couches opposées, dont les escarpemens paroissent tourner contre ce même lac; là, ce font les couches du coté de la vallée de Mijoux, qui out été emportées, et la montagne en pente uniforme de notre coté, est escarpée du coté de celle vallée; plus loin, le faite entier a été enlevé, et là on voit des abaissemens ou des gorges comme aux Faucilles, à St. Serge, etc. «Les flancs et la base de La montagne ont aussi été dégradés par les torrens que produisent la pluie et les neiges fondues, qui ont formé de larges et profondes excavations.» These ravages of time, or rather of the wasting operations of the surface of the earth, however great, compared with the little changes that we find in our experience, or in the most ancient record of our histories, are little things, considering the softness and solubility of the materials, and compared with the wasting of the Alps, which we find in tracing up those same rivers to their sources in the icy valleys. Let us go up the Arve to the valley of Chamouni. From this fertile valley, M. de Saussure heads us up the Montanvert, 428 fathoms above the level of the valley, and consequently 954 above that of the sea. From this mountain we descend again into the high frozen valley which runs between the granite mountains, and pours its ice into the valley of Chamouni. In this high valley, which communicates with an immensity of the like kind, we find ourselves among the most hard and durable materials. Here we must perceive, that most enormous masses of those solid materials had, in the course of time, been wasted by the flow effects of air and water, of the sun and frost, in order to hollow out those barren valleys of immense extent, which have, during an amazing tract of time, contributed from their solid rocks to the formation of travelled soils below, but which materials have long ago been travelling in the sea. The sides of those valleys are solid rock here exposed naked to our view. It is to such a place as this that we should go to see the operations of the surface wasting the solid body of the globe, and to read the unmeasurable course of time that must have flowed during those amazing operations which the vulgar do not see, and which the learned seem to see without wonder! M. de Saussure, in his second volume of _Voyages dans les Alps_, has given us a most interesting view of this scene, p. 6.