By examining the neighbourhood of the larger of these rocks, we found a burrow, down which one of the men and I made our way, and thus, after some windings in the interior, reached a point from which we could descend to the ice.

The impression conveyed to my mind by the whole appearance of the rock and ice was not unlike that of the domes in the Glaciere of Monthezy; only that now the lower part of the dome was filled with ice, and we stood in the upper part.

There were two or three of these domes, communicating one with another, and in all I found abundant signs of the prismatic structure, though no columns or wall-decoration remained.

My sisters were accomplished in the art of burrowing, but they did not care to come down, and we soon rejoined them, spending a little time in letting down lighted _bougies_ into the various domes and fissures, in order to study the movements of the air, but our experiments did not lead to much.
The landlord had evidently not believed in the existence of ice in summer, and his first thought was to take some home to his wife, to prove that we had reached the glaciere and had found ice: such at least were the reasons he gave, but evidently his soul was imbued with a deep obedience to that better half, and the offering of a block of ice was suggested by a complication of feelings.

When we reached the _auberge_ again, we found the rejected guide still there, and more unstable than before.