stopped. After a long pause he shouted to his brother, saying that he was not able to return by the way he had ascended. Jean was evidently uneasy about him, and for some time we watched him with much anxiety. At length he began to hew out steps in the snow along the face of the peak towards us. Jean now left us, and, making for the ice-cliff mentioned above, chopped away until, after about a quarter of an hour's labour, he contrived, somehow or other, to worm himself up it, and began to cut steps to meet his brother. Almost every step appeared to be cut right through the snowy crust into the hard ice below, and an incipient stream of snow came hissing down the sides of the peak as they dug it away with their axes. Michel could not have been much more than 100 yards from us, and yet it was full three quarters of an hour before the brothers met. This done, they descended carefully, burying their axe-heads deep in the snow at every step.
Michel's account was that he had reached the arete with great difficulty, and saw that it was practicable for some distance, in fact, as far as he could see; but that the snow was in a most dangerous condition, being very incoherent and resting on hard ice; that when he began to descend in order to tell us this, he found the rocks so smooth and slippery that return was impossible; and that for some little time he feared that he should not be able to extricate himself, and was in considerable danger. Of course the arête could have been reached by the way our guides had descended, but it was so evident that their judgment was against proceeding, that we did not feel justified in urging them on. We had seen so much of them that we felt sure they would never hang back unless there was real danger, and so we gave the word for retreating."[1]
On both of these expeditions there was fine weather and plenty of time. On each occasion the parties slept out at, and started from, a considerable elevation, and arrived at the base of the final peak of the Ecrins early in the clay, and with plenty of
- ↑ Alpine Journal, June 1863.
