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guide. He had been waiting at the new hotelerected by M. Seiler at the foot of the Mayenwand,expecting our arrival; and finally, despairing of this,he had resolved to abandon the mountains, and wasnow bound for Brientz. In fact, the lakes of Swit zerland , and the ancient men who once bivouackedalong their borders, were to him the principalobjects of interest; and we caught him in the actof declaring a preference for the lowlands which we*could not by any means share.
We reversed his course, carried him with us downthe mountain, and soon made ourselves at home inM. Seiler’s hotel. Here we had three days’ trainingon the glacier and the adjacent heights, and on oneof the days Lubbock and myself made an attemptupon the Galenstock. By the flank of the mountain,with the Rhone glacier on our right, we reached theheights over the ice cascade and crossed the glacierabove the fall. The sky was clear and the airpleasant as we ascended; but in the earth’s atmo-sphere the sun works his swiftest necromancy, thelightness of air rendering it in a peculiar degreecapable of change. Clouds suddenly generated camedrifting up the valley of the Rhone , covering theglacier and swathing the mountain-tops, but leav-ing clear for a time the upper neve of the Rhone .Grandeur is conceded while beauty is sometimesdenied to the Alps. But the higher snow-fields of