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The pioneers came here." Right behind them there was a gap, the pass
between their mountain and the Aiguille du Chardonnet. "From that pass
Moore and Whymper first tried to reach the top by following the crest of
the cliffs, but they found it impracticable. Whymper tried again, but
this time up the face of the cliffs further on to the south and just to
the left of the summit. He failed, came back again and conquered. We
follow his road."

And while they looked up the dead white of that rounded summit ridge
changed to a warm rosy color and all about that basin the topmost peaks
took fire.

"It is the sun," said he.

Sylvia looked across the valley. The great ice-triangle of the Aiguille
Verte flashed and sparkled. The slopes of the Les Droites and Mont Dolent
were hung with jewels; even the black precipices of the Tour Noir grew
warm and friendly. But at the head of the glacier a sheer unbroken wall
of rock swept round in the segment of a circle, and this remained still
dead black and the glacier at its foot dead white. At one point in the
knife-like edge of this wall there was a depression, and from the


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