1857 .]

SUNRISE AT CHAMOUNI.

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poem entitled ‘Sunrise in tlie Valley of Chamouni,’ andto witness in all perfection the scene described by the poet,I waited at Chamouni a day longer than was otherwisenecessary. On the morning of Wednesday, the 15th of July,I rose before the sun; Mont Blanc and his wondrous staff ofAiguilles were without a cloud; eastward the sky was of apale orange which gradually shaded off to a kind of rosyviolet, and this again blended by imperceptible degreeswith the deep zenithal blue. The morning star was stillshining to the right, and the moon also turned a pale facetowards the rising day. The valley was full of music;from the adjacent woods issued a gush of song, while thesound of the Arve formed a suitable bass to the slmller me-lody of the birds. The mountain rose for a time cold andgrand, with no apparent stain upon his snows. Suddenly thesunbeams struck his crown and converted it into a boss ofgold. For some time it remained the only gilded summitm view, holding communion with the dawn while all theothers waited in silence. These, in the order of theirheights, came afterwards, relaxing, as the sunbeams struckeach in succession, into a blush and smile.

On the same day we had our luggage transported to theMontanvert, while we clambered along the lateral moraine°f the glacier to the Chapeau. The rocks alongside theglacier were beautifully scratched and polished, and I paidParticular attention to them, for the purpose of furnishingmyself with a key to ancient glacier action. The sceneto my right was one of the most wonderful I had ever wit-nessed. Along the entire slope of the Glacier de Bois, thelce was cleft and riven into the most striking and fantasticlorms. It had not yet suffered much from the wasting in-fluence of the summer weather, but its towers and minaretssprang from the general mass with clean chiselled outlines.Some stood erect, others leaned, while the white debris,strewn here and there over the glacier, showed where the