Bérarde itself is a miserable village, without interest, without commerce, and almost without population. Why then did we wish to cross it? Because we were bound to the Pointe des Ecrins, to which La Bérarde was the nearest inhabited place.
When we sat upon the Aiguille de la Sausse, we were rather despondent about our prospects of crossing the Brèche, which seemed to present a combination of all that was formidable. There was, evidently, but one way by which it could be approached. We saw that at the top of the pass there was a steep wall of snow or ice (so steep that it was most likely ice) protected at its base by a big schrund or moat, which severed it from the snow-fields below. Then (tracking our course downwards) we saw undulating snow-fields leading down to a great glacier. The snow-fields would be easy work, but the glacier was riven and broken in every direction; huge crevasses seemed to extend entirely across it in some places, and everywhere it had that strange twisted look, which tells of the unequal motion of the ice. Where could we get on to it? At its base it came to a violent end, being cut short by a cliff, over which it poured periodical avalanches, as we saw by a great triangular bed of débris below. We could not venture there,—the glacier must be taken in flank. But on which side? Not on the west,—no one could climb those cliffs. It must, if any where, be by the rocks on the east; and they looked as if they were roches moutonnées.
So we hurried down to La Grave, to hear what Melchior Anderegg (who had just passed through the village with the family of our friend Walker) had to say on the matter. Who is Melchior Anderegg? Those who ask the question cannot have been in Alpine Switzerland, where the name of Melchior is as well known as the name of Napoleon. Melchior, too, is an Emperor in his way—a very Prince among guides. His empire is amongst the 'eternal snows,'—his sceptre is an ice-axe.
Melchior Anderegg, more familiarly, and perhaps more generally known simply as Melchior, was born at Zaun, near
