noon
There was a cabin there -- the spot is called the Caillet -- and a spring of ice-cold water . On the door of the cabin was a sign , in French , to the effect that `` One may here see a living chamois for fifty centimes . '' We did not invest ; what we wanted was to see a dead one . A little after noon we ended the ascent and arrived at the new hotel on the Montanvert , and had a view of six miles , right up the great glacier , the famous Mer de Glace . At this point it is like a sea whose deep swales and long , rolling swells have been caught in mid-movement and frozen solid ; but further up it is broken up into wildly tossing billows of ice . We descended a ticklish path in the steep side of the moraine , and invaded the glacier . There were tourists of both sexes scattered far and wide over it , everywhere , and it had the festive look of a skating-rink .