When at last we had surmounted all the difficulties which beset us, and stood on the highest point which had so far been in sight, we found ourselves on the edge of a vast plain of parched grass, with nothing to guide us in one direction rather than another.

There was no human being in sight, no sign of water, nor any particle of shade; nothing but grass, brown and monotonous, with white cliffs miles away at the extremity of the plain.

This was evidently the _Foire de Fondeurle_, and in it somewhere lay the glaciere, if only we could make out in which direction to begin to traverse the plain.

In the earlier part of this century, a very famous fair was held on this wild and out-of-the-way table-land, to which many thousands of horses and mules and cattle of various kinds were brought from all quarters; but the fair has fallen off so much, that the man who had turned us up the last hill said there were only fourteen head of cattle in 1863, and very few of those were sold.

M.Hericart de Thury describes this plain as lying in the calcareous sub-Alpine range of the south-east of France.
The woods here terminate at a height of 5,147 feet above the sea, and the _Foire de Fondeurle_ lies immediately above this point.
At last we made a bold dash across the plain, and after a time came upon some sheep, standing in a thick row, with their heads thrust under a low bank which afforded a little shade; and at no great distance from them sat the shepherd.