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Mont Blanc, in Savoy: Glacier

In less than six hours we arrived at the hut in which we had slept the evening before, and should have proceeded much further down the mountain, had we not been afraid of passing the Glacier de la Coté at the close of the day, when the snow, from the effect of the sunbeams, was extremely rotten. Our evening's repast being finished, I was soon asleep; but in a few hours I was awakened with a tormenting pain in my face and eyes. My face was one. continued blister, and my eyes I was unable to open; nor was I without apprehensions of losing my sight for ever, till my guides told me, that if I had condescended to have taken their advice, of wearing, as they did, a mask of black crape, the accident would not have befallen me, but that a few days would perfectly restore the use of my eyes. After I had bathed them with warm water for half an hour, I found, to my great satisfaction, that I could open them a little; on which I determined upon an instant departure , that I might cross the Glacier de la Coté before the sun was sufficiently high for its beams to be strongly reflected from the snow. But, unluckily, the sun was already above the horizon; so that the pain of forcing open my eyes in the bright sunshine, in order to avoid the chasms and other hazards of my way, rendered my return more irksome than my ascent.

Fortunately, one of the guides, soon after I had passed the glacier, picked up in the snow a pair of green 3 I spectacles, which M. Bourret had lost, and which gave me wonderful relief. "At eleven o'clock of August 10, after an absence of fiftytwo hours, of which twenty were passed in the hut, I returned again to the village of Chamouni. From the want of instruments. (the scale of the barometer I had being graduated no lower than twenty inches, which was not sufficiently extended,) the observations I made were but few, yet the effects which the air in the heights I visited produced on the human body, . may not perhaps be considered as altogether uninteresting, nor will the proof I made of the power of the lens on the summit of Mont Blanc, if confirmed by future experiments, be regarded as of no account in the theories of light and heat. At any rate, the having determined the latitude of Mont Blanc may assist in some particulars the observations of such persons as shall visit it in future; and the knowledge which my journey has afforded, in addition to that which is furnished by M. de Saussure, may facilitate the ascent of those who, with proper instruments, mav wish to make on that elevated level, experiments in natural philosophy."