The journey from Chamonix to Montavert, where the best view on the "Sea of Ice" can be had, is very tiresome, and not unattended with danger, but the sight is well worth the time and trouble. Twelve miles of solid ice in the most fantastic shapes, "a sea suddenly frozen," is a sight never to be forgotten. [Illustration: THE MER DE GLACE.] A very little mountain climbing goes a great way. We tried it and know whereof we speak. The courier was to blame for it. [Sidenote: THE GORGE.] Couriers make men do more foolish things than any other agency in the world. We had been out to visit a gorge some six or seven miles from Chamonix, and had been delighted with the ravine, with its foaming stream tearing along way down the valley. We had walked for an hour or more on a rickety old foot-bridge, hundreds of feet above the bottom of the gorge, we had crept along wooden galleries fastened to the sides of the precipices, the tops of which were well-nigh out of [Illustration: A SLIP TOWARDS THE EDGE.] sight, and the bottoms scarcely discernable. Galleries that creaked and shook, and swayed under our weight, secured to the rocks with rusty irons, renewed no one knew when, and suggesting at every step the probability of giving way, and letting you down thousands of feet upon jagged rocks, and bounding from one to another till your corpse finally struck water, a torrent as wild and uncontrollable as Niagara. The gallery did not go down and we had gone to the end and admired the waterfall, and then on our way back to Chamonix that courier insisted upon our going up the Glacier des Bossons. In vain we demurred, and told him we could see the Glacier from the road quite well enough. He insisted. It was an easy path clear up, and the view was something marvelous. Our whole visit to Europe would be a failure if we missed this view. There was no help for it and we went. The ladies were provided with mules, while the gentlemen, under the guidance of the courier, struck out across lots. [Illustration: CREVASSES.] For the first quarter of an hour it was all right. There was a good path, and the hill was not very steep. We crossed a number of little brooks that had their source in the glaciers above, and emptied into the Arve in the valley below. The woods through which we passed were huge pine trees, among which the narrow path wound its tortuous course. Occasionally there would be a little clearing and then we could get a glimpse of the valley and the mountains towering high above us.