Up to
the time of reaching this little village, which seemed to be called
Sagnette, our path had been that which leads to _La Brevine_, the
highest valley in the canton; but now we turned off abruptly up the
steeper face on the left hand, and in a very few minutes came upon a dry
wilderness of rock and grass, which we at once recognised as 'glaciere
country;' and when I told our guide that we must be near the place, he
replied by pointing to the trees round the mouth of the pit.
Shortly after we first left Couvet, a gaunt elderly female, with a
one-bullock char, had joined our party, and tried to bully us into
giving up the cave and going instead to a neighbouring summit, whence
she promised us a view of unrivalled extent and beauty. She told us that
there was nothing to be seen in the glaciere, and that it was a place
where people lost their lives. The guide said that was nonsense; but
she reduced him to silence by quoting a case in point. She said, too,
that if a man slipped and fell, there was nothing to prevent him from
going helplessly down a run of ice into a subterranean watercourse,
which would carry him for two or three leagues underground; and on this
head our boy had no counter-statement to make.
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