The three great glaciers, or ice-mountains, which descend from the
flanks of Mont Blanc, add their ice to that of the Miage, and present a
majestic spectacle, amid the astonishing succession of icy summits, of
deep valleys, and of wide chasms, which have become channels for the
innumerable torrents and cataracts with which these mountains abound.
The view which the glacier of Talafre affords from its center, looking
toward the north, is as extraordinary as beautiful. It rises gradually
to the base of a semicircular girdle, formed of peaks of granite of a
great hight, and terminating in sharp summits, extremely varied in their
forms; while the intervals between these peaks are filled up by ice,
which falls into this mass, and this mass of ice is crowned by masses of
snow, rising in festoons between the black and vertical tables of
granite, the steepness of which does not allow them to remain. A ridge
of shattered wrecks divides this glacier lengthwise, and forms its most
elevated part, being eight thousand, five hundred and thirty-eight feet,
or upward of a mile and a half above the level of the sea. This prospect
has nothing in common with what is seen in other parts of the world. The
immense masses of ice, surrounded and surmounted by pyramidal rocks,
still more enormous in magnitude; the contrast between the whiteness of
the snow and the obscure colors of the stones, moistened by the water
which trickles down their sides; the purity of the air; the dazzling
light of the sun, which gives to these objects extraordinary brilliancy;
the majestic and awful silence which reigns in these vast solitudes, a
silence which is only interrupted at intervals by the noise of some
great mass of granite, or of ice, tumbling from the top of the mountain;
and the nakedness of these elevated rocks themselves, on which neither
animals, shrubs, nor verdure are to be seen, combined with the
recollection of the fertile country and rich vegetation which the
adjacent valleys at so small a distance present; all tend to produce a
mixed impression of admiration and terror, which tempts the spectator to
believe, that he has been suddenly transported into a world forgotten by
the great Author of nature. One of these glaciers, that of Triolet, is
covered with the wrecks of another ice-mountain, which fell some years
ago, and buried many huts, flocks, and shepherds beneath its ruins.