We were now approaching the higher and narrower portion of the immense cleft or channel in the mountain that I have described. On our right towered the Dome du Gouter, and on the left the walls of the Mont Maudit and its outlying pinnacles. Snowy ridges and peaks shone afar in the moonlight on all sides. It was a wilderness of white.
[Illustration: ADÉLE BALMAT, HOSTESS AT THE GRANDS MULETS STATION.]
At the height of twelve thousand feet we came upon the Petit Plateau, a comparatively horizontal lap of snow which is frequently swept clear across with avalanches of ice descending from the enormous séracs that hang like cornices upon the precipices above. The frosty splinters of a recent downfall sparkled and crunched under our feet. It is one of the most dangerous places on the mountain. "Men have lost their lives here and will again lose them," is the remark of Mr. Conway, the Himalayan climber, in describing his passage of the place. "Many times I have crossed it," said Monsieur Vallot, the mountain meteorologist, last summer, "but never without a sinking of the heart, and the moment we are over the Petit Plateau I always hear my guides, trained and fearless men, mutter, 'Once more we are out of it.'"
Knowing these things, it is needless to say that I found the Petit Plateau keenly interesting. The menacing séracs leaned from the cliffs, glittering icily, and threw black shadows upon the _névé_ beneath, but suffered us to pass unmolested.
Above the Petit Plateau is a steep ascent called the Grands Montées which taxes the breath. Having surmounted this, we were on the Grand Plateau, a much wider level than the other, edged with tremendous ice cliffs and crevasses, and situated at an elevation of thirteen thousand feet. For some time now it had been broad day, but the clouds had thickened rapidly, and the summit was wrapped and completely hidden in them. Blasts of frigid wind began to whistle about us, driving stinging pellets of ice into our faces. We quickened our steps, for it would not do to be caught in a storm here. The Grand Plateau has taken more lives than its ill-starred neighbor below.
We now bore off to the right, in order to clamber up the side of the great channel, or depression, that we had thus far followed, because at its upper end, where it meets the base of the crowning pyramid of Mont Blanc, it abuts against ice-covered precipices that no mortal will ever scale. Snow commenced to fall, and the wind rose. As we neared the crest of the ridge connecting the Dome du Gouter with the Bosses du Dromadaire and the summit, the tempest burst fiercely upon us. In an instant we were enveloped by a cloud of whirling snow that blotted out sky and mountains alike. It drove into my eyes, and half blinded me. It was so thick that objects a few yards away would have been concealed even without a violent wind to confuse the vision. At times Couttet, close ahead of me, was visible only in a kind of gray outline, like a wraith. On an open plain such a storm in such a temperature would have had its dangers for a traveller seeking his way. We were seeking our way, not on an open plain, but two miles and a half above sea level, in a desert of snow and ice, encompassed with precipices, chasms, and pitfalls, treading on we knew not what, assailed by a wild storm, all landmarks obliterated, and our footsteps filling so fast with drifted snow that in two minutes we could not see from what direction we had last come.