Page:Whymper - Scrambles amongst the Alps.djvu/289

Rh highest of the three summits of the Trélatête, by passing over the lowest one. It was well above everything at this end of the chain, and the view from it was extraordinarily magnificent. The whole of the western face of Mont Blanc was spread out before us; we were the first by whom it had been ever seen. I cede the description of this view to my comrade, to whom it rightfully belongs.

[ For four years I had felt great interest in the geography of the chain; the year before I had mapped, more or less successfully, all but this spot, and this spot had always eluded my grasp. The praises, undeserved as they were, which my map had received, were as gall and wormwood to me when I thought of that great slope which I had been obliged to leave a blank, speckled over with unmeaning dots of rock, gathered from previous maps—for I had consulted them all without meeting an intelligible representation of it. From the surface of the Miage glacier I had gained nothing, for I could only see the feet of magnificent ice-streams, but no more; but now, from the top of the dead wall of rock which had so long closed my view, I saw those fine glaciers from top to bottom, pouring down their streams, nearly as large as the Bossons, from Mont Blanc, from the Bosse, and from the Dôme.

The head of Mont Blanc is supported on this side by two buttresses, between which vast glaciers descend. Of these the most southern takes its rise at the foot of the precipices which fall steeply down from the Calotte,"! and its stream, as it joins that of the Miage, is cut in two by an enormous rognon of rock. Next, to the left, comes the largest of the buttresses of which I have spoken, almost forming an aiguille in itself. The next glacier descends from a large basin which receives the snows of the summit-ridge between the Bosse and the Dôme, and it is divided from the third and last glacier by another buttress, which joins the summit-ridge at a point between the Dôme and the Aig. de Bionnassay. ]