Chapter 10
I spent the following day roaming through the valley. I stood
beside the sources of the Arveiron, which take their rise in a
glacier, that with slow pace is advancing down from the summit of
the hills to barricade the valley. The abrupt sides of vast
mountains were before me; the icy wall of the glacier overhung me;
a few shattered pines were scattered around; and the solemn silence
of this glorious presence-chamber of imperial nature was broken
only by the brawling waves or the fall of some vast fragment, the
thunder sound of the avalanche or the cracking, reverberated along
the mountains, of the accumulated ice, which, through the silent
working of immutable laws, was ever and anon rent and torn, as if
it had been but a plaything in their hands. These sublime and
