336 PRÆTERITA-II

July, we saw a herd of more than thirty chamois on the Argentière. “Pour les voir, faut aller où ils sont,” said Couttet; and he might have added, where other living things are not; for, whether by shepherd or traveller, the snows round the Aiguilles of Chardonnet and Argentière are the least trodden of all the Mont Blanc fields. The herd was in three groups, twelve in one of them only; and did not put itself to speed, but retired slowly when we got within a quarter of a mile of them, each stopping to look back from the ridge behind which they disappeared.

100. “Iceland moss” (says the diary), “in enormous quantities amongst the Alpine roses, above the Argentière glacier-not growing at all, so far as I recollect, but on the hills on the north-east of the valley. Where we took the snow, the top of the glacier” (Tours) “was wreathed in vast surges which took us from twenty minutes to half an hour (each) to climb,-green lovely lakes in their hollows, no crevices.” On the 29th July I went up the Buet, and down to Sixt, where I found myself very stiff and tired, and determined that the Alps were, on the whole, best seen from below. And after a walk to the Fer-à-cheval, considering the wild strawberries there to taste of slate, I went rather penitently down to Geneva again.

Feeling also a little ashamed of myself before papa-in the consciousness that all his pining in cold air, and dining on black bread, and waiting, day after day, not without anxiety, while I rambled he knew not whither, had not in the least advanced the object nearest his heart,-the second volume of Modern Painters. I had, on the contrary, been acutely and minutely at work in quite other directions-felt tempted now to write on Alpine botany, or devote myself to painting myrtilles¹ and mica-slate for the rest of my days. The Turner charm was indeed as potent as ever; but I felt that other powers were now telling on me besides his,-even beyond his; not in delight, but in

¹ [The bilberry: see Vol. XXV. p. 238 (§ 20).]

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