name for these notch-like passes in the loftier mountain ridges), leading over from the St. Bernard, at a height of some 9200 feet, into the Val Ferret, which lies under the base of the left or eastern flank of the Mont Blanc chain. By this route we should have the opportunity of examining some features of geological interest, and also avoid the beaten track of the St. Bernard.

cases.

Studer and Escher's geological chart led to some conversation on the formation of the neighbouring mountain-ranges, and we adjourned to the library, where, beside the well-filled bookshelves, a good electrical machine, and other apparatus, was a small collection chiefly illustrating the mineralogy and geology of the district. During the commotions of 1848 and 1849 we had seen it all in disorder, huddled away in an upper room; now, however, it was neatly arranged in glass Among the specimens I found a portion of the "rocher poli," described by De Saussure, and which I hoped to see on our way over the Col next day. This fragment consisted of a very hard compact quartz, of a dark bluish black, and varied with lighter veins. The exposed surface is glossy and bright as polished marble, and very finely striated with close hair-like parallel scratches, which at first sight suggest glacier action, but its situation at the summit of the Col precludes the possibility. De Saussure describes it as forming the very crest of the chain, descending to the E. at an angle of 45°, its surface in places quite flat, so that slabs of 8 or 10 feet long, and proportionately wide, might be cut out; in other parts slightly wavy, but everywhere equally polished, with a lustre more like agate or jasper than marble. The cause of this singular phenomenon he attributes to the friction of fine grit or earth in which the rock is partly buried. My hopes of examining it in situ were destined to be disappointed, but a portion of the block in the museum was kindly presented to me.

* Voyages dans les Alpes, § 996.

Before it became dusk we sallied out and faced the Spitzbergen-like weather, for a scramble among the rocks, and to the site of the ancient temple of Jupiter, which was buried in snow on our previous visit. For some little distance from the Convent a sheltered terrace, scarped on the face of the rock, or piled on stones, and catching what sun there is when it shines, forms the only level bit of promenade the monks have outside their own walls. The further part of this, however, was now buried under a steeply-sloping bed of deep snow, left from last winter, and almost touching the "Convent garden;" two little terraced patches within low walls, four or five yards square, in which grew a few tiny lettuces almost microscopic, and two or three equally diminutive representatives of the cabbage tribe, name unknown. De Saussure's description in 1778,-"Ils ont peine à produire à la fin d'Août quelques laitues et quelques choux de la plus petite espèce, pour le plaisir de voir croître quelque chose,”—might have been written that week. Perhaps this forlorn attempt at a garden, with the thought that it was the height of their few weeks of summer, dark clouds of sleet sweeping over us and whitening the little lettuces, while we had left all bright and glowing in the valley below, gave us a more forcible impression than anything else, of the dreary life of selfsacrifice to which these worthy men devote the best years of their existence.

Crossing the steep bed of snow with a sensation of delight, as we crunched its crisp surface, at feeling ourselves once more within the regions of snow and glacier, we climbed the rocks to a high point, below which, on the edge of a bluff rock, stands a large stone cross, simple and massive, mounted on a plain square base. It is inscribed "Deo Optimo Maximo," and is visible in clear weather far down the southern descent of the pass, the appropriate emblem of that true charity, of the very essence of Christianity, which is here so nobly exemplified.

To the southward bleak and jagged pyramids stretched across the horizon in successive ridges, the deepening gloom increasing their savage wildness. Conspicuous among those in the foreground was the singular insulated mass quaintly called the Tour des Fous, a fantastic pile of upreared tables of quartz, of which these ranges in great part consist. They all run in a direction from N.E. to S.W., parallel to and inclined against the great primitive chain; and through the long trough-like gorge thus formed, the cutting "bise" pours with relentless keenness intensified by the snows and glaciers over which it sweeps. Rifts in the whirling cloud-masses between us and these distant peaks revealed occasional glimpses into a profound treeless valley, far below our feet, where we could distinguish the Convent herds grazing. In the narrow rock-bound gorge in which we seemed hemmed in by the lofty snow dome of Mont Velan, the Pic de Dronaz, Mont Mort, and Mont Chenellette, stood the Convent itself, grey and sad-looking as the waters of the gloomy little lake on which it abuts. This lake, which is amongst the highest in the Alps, and has frequently never thawed during the summer, appeared, as we looked down on its ruffled surface, of the inkiest black hue, the more intense from the contrast with the snow-patches which fringed its desolate basin. The Stygian waters fed by the melting snow are tenantless (as no fish can live in them, though the experiment has been tried more than once), unless the ghostly white trout appears here as at the old Abbey of St. Maurice in the Valais, where, as the legend tells, it is always seen in the convent ponds on the death of each monk. Amidst all this desolation and savage gloom brilliant little patches of the exquisite blue gentian, the white ranunculus glacialis and dryas octopetala, bright forget-me-nots, the crimson stars of the saxifraga oppositifolia, and other Alpine plants, flourished with a cheery brightness which gave a life even to the sombre mosses and grey lichen-covered rocks.