2-913-635 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Summit of the Pic du Midi d'Osseau, Pyrenees, 1854. Mountains in France. 'Advancing still further, we begin to see glimpses of the Pic du Pau de Pau, rising in slopes of snow above shaggy forests of elm, oak, and pine, whitened with the drift of the avalanches; and then a high ridge of precipice, edged with a bank of snow, from which continually huge masses of snow fell in thunder down to the slope below. These, however, were but the outworks of the pic, which, amid a sea of minor pics, all clad in eternal snow, the cloven peaks of the Pic de Pau rose high above them - pouring down continual avalanches - which no living thing has ever touched, save, mayhap, the talons of the shrieking eagle'. From "Illustrated London News", 1854.