The news and herald. (Winnsboro, S.C.) 1877-1900, 1895-05-28
A MISS As GOOD AS A MILE.

ii This is place to make one feei small,
Il and no m,staker' said one of my COM
rades, emphatica!ly. "We look no
bigger, the whole eleven of US, than
sies upon the side of house!'
And well might he say so. We were
4 making the ascent of Mount Blanc,
and, although we had been tramplng
ever since sunrise, we were no higher
q than the skirts of the great mountain
Il even now.
II For hours we had been toiling over
the seemingly endless expanse of the
4 mighty Glacier des Bossons-- strug-
Cling through knee-Geep masses CT SOFT
snow, leaping recklessly across yawning
clefts, scrarnbling up razor-edsed nd
ges, that cracked and splinted beneath
our hasty steps, or scaling sheer walls
of ice, in which flight of steps grew
no beneath the blows of our guides
:ce-axe.
Ever and anon one of our party
would disappear from sight, having
plunged into snow-drift or slipped
bodily down soft crevasse. But as we
were all roped together and marched 10
single fiie it did not take long to bring
the missing man to the surface again.
Onward, ever onward, past pliared
arcades of silver, and dim depths or
clouded steel, and dark blue pools OF
water sleeping i'll floating shadow, and
bewildetins mszes of bright points,
rising lance beyond lance.
At length, just as the sun was begin
ming to sink, the vast black pyramid OF
the Grands Mulets rock was seen loom
ing dark against the snowy whiteness
of the higher slopes, with its tlrs
plank hut perched in a hollow at the
top of it, like taper stuck in candle
stick
This is our camping place for the
night before undertaking the most diff
tcult part of the ascent, and the weak
er members of our party brighten up at
the sight of it. But they are not to
get there so easily, The storm clouds
that have been rolling up ar und US
for the last hour suddenly burst IN
perfect torrent of rain, and now the
strait. of the work makes itself felt in
earnest. We have indeed a rough
A lime ere we reach the sheltering hut.
a Bit, once there, all is soon put to
Il rights. A CHEEKY fire is lighted, our
y wet clothes are hung up to dry, and a
full measure of hot coffee-made In a
charcoal bucket with three shovelfuls
of snow, and stirred up with a pickaSe
sets all in a glow again.
The accommodation is certainly OF
the simplest for the entire furniture
q consists of table, q bench, stove and
a the charcoal bucket above mentioned,
3 while the crazy plauking of the walls
lets in the keen, frosty air through
q countless chinks. But one cannot be
verv PARTICULAR at ten thousand feet
above the sea level, and, in any case,
we have only a few hours to spend IN
this hermitage, the final start being
Usually made little after midnight.
To sleep, however, was no easy mat
ter, even after such tramp; for all
the planks Of the floor were loose, and
whenever any ore stepped upon them
they went up and down like the keys
of a piano, making us feel as if IN a
state of chronic earthquake.
Getting tired of this. J. went outside
and lay down behind sock, wrapped
in my plaid, to look down al thunder
storm that was raging three thousand
feet below me-the lightning zigzagg-
ing among the hills and the rain sweep
ing like a torrent along the valley,
while all around me was perfect still
ness and cloudless moonlight.
was doing off to sleep when / saw
the head guide, old Gaspard Simond,
standing beside me with a very serious
look on his weather-beaten face.
Monsieur" he said gravely, ri
fear that English student will get us
into trouble if we don't mind. He's
not strong enough for work like this,
and if he delays us IN the upper ridges,
where there's always risk of an avail
anche, why, them
A significant sweep of his hand COM
pleted the sentence.
ssDo avalaucheS fall so late in the
season as this, then? l thought they
mostly came in the spring or early
summer" I exclaimed somewhat
startled.
$50 they do, but when there's so
much snow as there is here, one can
never be safe; they often come when
you least expect them. Now, if we
should have to run for our lives, it
would not do to have helpless man
among us. So think We had better
leave the student here, and pick him
up on our way back
quite agreed with him, but the stu
dent pleaded so hard to be allowed to
60 with US to the summit that S,mond
yielded against his better judgment.
Half an hour after midnight, amid a
silence in which even the whispered
words of command sound unnaturaily
loud, we start once more up slope after
siope of smooth untrodden snow,
bathed in the full splenGor of the moon
light.
All around is dazzling white. all
above is deep, rich blue. and round and