We got down to Chapiu about seven--itself one of the most desolately-placed villages I ever saw in the Alps.

Scotland is in no place that I have seen, so barren or so lonely.

Ever since I passed Shapfells, when a child, I have had an excessive love for this kind of desolation, and I enjoyed my little square chalet window and my chalet supper exceedingly (mutton with garlic)." He then confesses that he woke in the night with a sore throat, but struggled on next day down the Allee Blanche to Cormayeur.
"I never saw such a mighty heap of stones and dust.

The glacier itself is quite invisible from the road (and I had no mind for extra work or scrambling), except just at the bottom, where the ice appears in one or two places, being exactly of the colour of the heaps of waste coal at the Newcastle pits, and admirably adapted therefore to realize one's brightest anticipations of the character and style of the Allee _Blanche_.
"The heap of its moraine conceals, for the two miles of its extent, the entire range of Mont Blanc from the eye.

At last you weather the mighty promontory, cross the torrent which issues from its base, and find yourself suddenly at the very foot of the vast slope of torn granite, which from a point not 200 feet lower than the summit of Mont Blanc, sweeps down into the valley of Cormayeur.
"I am quite unable to speak with justice--or think with clearness--of this marvellous view.