money for the families of the victims." In one of his ballads Schiller says, "The crevasse returns not its prey;" but science was to prove the falsity of this; for the celebrated geologist, Doctor Forbes, predicted in 1858 that in about forty years from the time of the accident, the great glacier where the catastrophe had taken place would give up its dead, and this prediction was strikingly verified.
On August 15, 1861, it was the National fête, and the people were leaving the church where a solemn Mass had been held, when a Chamonix guide, breathless and dust-stained, arrived at the house of the Mayor, bearing on his shoulders a sack containing a number of human remains. He had found them at the tongue of the Glacier de Bossous, which streams down into the valley from Mont Blanc. An inquiry was at once opened, and a medical examination left not a shadow of doubt that the remains were those of the guides who had perished in a crevasse of the glacier in 1820. The flesh had been so perfectly preserved by the ice that it was lifelike, and a leg of mutton which one of the three guides had carried, was, when first taken out of the ice, absolutely sweet and fresh, but on exposure to the air soon went bad. Some of the survivors of the catastrophe identified their comrades without any difficulty. In addition to these human relics, their hats and clothes were recovered, also part of a tin lantern, and a wing of a pigeon. Doctor Hamel had taken a cage of pigeons with him, with a view to liberating them at various altitudes. When Doctor Hamel heard that the remains had been recovered, he cynically suggested they should be placed in a museum at Chamonix, and they would attract thousands of travellers to the place. It is needless to say this proposal was not carried out, at any rate not altogether, for all the remains were buried, with the exception of a foot which was placed in the museum at Annecy, where it may still be seen under a glass case.
In October, 1834, the mountain was ascended by Count Henri De Tilly, who had formerly been an officer of dragoons. He had ascended Etna, and was ambitious of doing Mont Blanc. He succeeded, but narrowly escaped coming to grief: as it was, he and his guides suffered very much, and he had his feet frost-bitten. Eighteen years after the catastrophe of 1820, a Swiss lady, Mademoiselle D'Angeville, expressed a desire to emulate Marie Paradis' feat, and reach the summit of Mont Blanc. Unlike the hardy Marie, who had been born and reared amongst the mountains, Mademoiselle D'Angeville was a delicate, fragile young woman, but of a romantic and excitable temperament. Having resolved to attempt the ascent she repaired to Chamonix, and changing her feminine costume for that of a man she started with four guides, and after tremendous fatigue, which she bore well, she reached the summit, and there she insisted on her guides hoisting her on their shoulders in order that she might say she had been higher than Mont Blanc. This lady died in 1872, at the age of 62.
At intervals between the date of Mademoiselle d'Angeville's ascent and 1851 there were various ascents, though none very noteworthy. But in the latter year Albert Smith gained the summit, and afterwards popularised—if he did not vulgarise—Mont Blanc by his lectures. Three years later a third woman—an English lady named Hamilton—climbed the mountain; and two years after that event a Miss Forman ascended in company with her father; and in 1857 Professor Tyndall added his illustrious name to the roll of successful climbers.
The next accident that took place was that of 1864, when a young porter named Ambroise Couttet lost his life through his own stupidity. Refusing to be roped, he broke through a crust of snow that covered a profound crevasse, and was never seen again. A companion, in the hope of recovering the body at least, insisted on being lowered into the crevasse by means of a rope attached to his waist. He went down for eighty feet, but as there were no signs of the bottom, and as he was losing his breath, owing to the rarity of the air in the profound abyss of ice, he signalled to be drawn up, and on reaching the surface he was greatly exhausted. A bottle attached to a cord was next lowered for over two hundred feet, but without touching the bottom. When it was drawn up again it was thickly encased in ice, thereby proving that no human being could long survive in that icy tomb.
In 1866 the Great Mountain again exacted his tribute of victims, but this accident was also due to foolhardiness. In that year Sir George Young and his two brothers, James and Albert, insisted on making the ascent without guides. They
