more. Through all these centuries Mont Blanc was regarded as absolutely inaccessible. It was supposed that the cold was so intense that no living thing could possibly exist. It was regarded as a white world of death, whose silence would never be broken by anything save the thundering roar of the avalanche. In 1762, however, there was born in the tiny village of Pellarius, at the foot of the Monarch, one Jacques Balmat, who was destined to break the spell of mystery that had surrounded the mountain from the beginning of time. Balmat's parents were the poorest of peasants, very humble and very ignorant. In their wildest dreams—if they indulged in dreams—they could never have hoped for fame or wealth. But what was wealth to them was to come through their son; and it was ordaned that by his great deed the name of Balmat should go down through the ages, and perish not until the mountain itself perishes from the face of the earth. Young Balmat was endowed with all the qualities that are found in the true mountaineer. He had the eye of an eagle, the strength and endurance of a lion, and the dauntless courage of a true man. From an early age he showed a love for the glaciers, and a yearning for the mountains. As he grew in years he displayed a talent for botanising, and in his search for plants he would scale dizzy precipices, while no dweller in the whole of the lovely valley had such an intuitive knowledge where to find the mountain crystals as he had.
Mont Blanc.
Jacques was only a little more than twenty when he began to make excursions on the upper glaciers, and to express a desire to penetrate to Mont Blanc's frozen solitudes. The mountain fascinated him. The more he looked at it the stronger grew the spell. His friends and neighbours told him that it were worse than madness, it was a tempting of Providence to even think of reaching those white regions of ice and snow. But he was undeterred. That dazzling dome that towered so far up into the thin blue air seemed to invite him to tread its virgin snows, which sometimes looked ghastly in their leaden pallor, and at others glowed with such a glory of rose and crimson that it almost seemed as if a light not of earth but heaven streamed straight was to come down upon them. And at last, unable to withstand the fascination any longer, young Balmat essayed to reach the lofty height on which the stars in the courses sometimes seemed to rest. But his first attempt was a failure, though he was not discourages. He had in him the stern stuff that makes heroes; and it was death or glory with him. A little later, in company with some companions, he made another attempt, and succeeded in getting beyond what is known as the Grand Plateau, but here the courage of the others failed, and they decided to go back. Utterly undaunted, Balmat refused to descend with them, and decided on passing the night in the awful wilderness of snow and ice.
The Grand Plateau is an immense cirque,
