2-982-418 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

A Party of Tourists Crossing the Mer de Glace, 1858. 'Foremost...are a couple of German students...[who] on finding a loose block of ice conveniently near the chasm's edge, they heave, raise, and lever it over into the blue abyss; down it will tumble between the cerulean walls, splintering their surface and its own, jumping, rebounding from side to side, and breaking by the deep-heard reverberations the solemn hush of the nature around. To the left are a lady and gentleman resting...The lady, rather fatigued, does not scruple to crush her crinoline by taking a seat on a granite fragment, which, torn from some neighbouring pinnacle perhaps centuries ago, now rests on a bed of ice...A little further in the background a young man supports the shuddering figure of a girl as they both peep awe-stricken into the chasm; these are English; they stand on the levelled top just snow-crusted of a wall of ice; the chasm slants beneath them. Further back is another lady glad enough to feel the rough grasp of the Savoyard guide in a moment of such need...Three others, scrambling, striding, and leaping with the aid of their "alpenstoks," and occasionally of their limbs, in a quadrupedal fashion, bring up the rear of this winding caravan'. From "Illustrated London News", 1858.