XI. L’HOTEL DU MONT BLANC 445

But there are any quantity of iron crosses on the Western Alps, and the proper name of this dominant peak is that given in M. Dajoz’s lithographed Carte des rives du Lac de Genève*-“Mont Fleury”; though the more usual one with the old Chamouni guides was “Montagne des Fours”; but I never heard any name given to its castellated outwork. In Studer’s geological map it is well drawn, but nameless; in the Alpine Club’s map of South-Western Alps, it is only a long ridge descending from the Mont Fleury, which, there called “Pointe Percée,” bears a star, indicating a view of Mont Blanc, as probably of Geneva also, from that summit. But the vision from the lower promontory, which commands the Chamouni aiguilles with less foreshortening, and looks steep down into the valley of Cluse from end to end, must be infinitely more beautiful.

216. Its highest ridge is just opposite the Nant d’Arpenaz, and might in future descriptions of the Sallenches mountains be conveniently called the “Tower of Arpenaz.” After passing the curved rock from which the waterfall leaps into its calm festoons, the cliffs become changed in material, first into thin-bedded blue limestone, and then into dark slates and shales, which partly sadden, partly enrich, with their cultivable ruin, all the lower hill-sides henceforward to the very gate of Chamouni. A mile or two beyond the Nant d’Arpenaz, the road ascends over a bank of their crumbling flakes, which the little stream, pendent like a white thread over the mid-cliff of the Aiguille de Varens, drifts down before it in summer rain, lightly as dead leaves. The old people’s carriage dips into the trough of the dry bed, descends the gentle embankment on the other side, and turns into the courtyard of the inn under one of the thin arches, raised a foot or two above the gap in the wall, which give honourable distinction

* Chez Briquet et Fils, éditeurs, au bas de la Cité à Genève, 1860; extremely careful in its delineation of the lower mountain masses, and on the whole the best existing map for the ordinary traveller. The Alpine Club maps give nothing clearly but the taverns and footpaths.

[Version 0.04: March 2008]