MER DE GLACE, NEAR CHAMOUNY. HE preceding engraving contains an excellent representation of the Mer de Glace (Sea of Glass) at Montanvert, near Chamouny, in Switzerland. The name is derived from the glass-like appearance of the mountains and valleys of which the scene is composed, and which are called Glaciers. Proffessor Forbes says, that Glaciers are a compound of ice and water, which has been urged down the slopes of the mountains in the warm season. Those referred to are much visited by travellers, and admired for their peculiar grandeur. The immense extent of the huge icy masses, traversed in every direction by numerous yawning chasms descending to unknown depths, surrounded by turrets, and walls, and cliffs of ice of the most fantastic forms, fill the mind of the beholder with wonder and awe. Dr. Cheever, who visited the scene, says, in his " Wanderings of a Pilgrim,"- "At Montanvert you find yourselves in the extremity of a plateau, so situated, that on one side you may look down into the dead frozen sea, and on the other, by a few steps into the lovely green vale of Chamouny. What astonishing variety and contrast in the spectacle! Far beneath, a smiling and verdant valley, watered by the Arve, with hamlets, fields, and gardens, the abode of life, sweet children, and flowers :-far above, savage and inaccessible crags of ice and granite, and a cataract of stiffened billows, stretching away beyond sight-the throne of Death and Winter. From the bosom of the tumbling sea of ice, enormous granite needles shoot into the sky, objects of singular sublimity, one of them rising to the great height of 13,000 feet, seven thousand above the point where you are standing. This is more than double the height of Mount Waslington |