3-053-227 - The London Archives (City of London)/Heritage Images

Mr. Albert Smith's "Ascent of Mont Blanc" - the Grands Mulets, 1852. British author, entertainer, and mountaineer Albert Smith presented lectures at the Egyptian Hall in London. The scene is '...the Grands Mulets rocks by sunset. We have to imagine the travellers safely passed over the dangerous crevice in the Glacier du Tacconay, by means of the ladder, and then scrambling up the steep ice-cliff, tied together, and pulled up by a cord one after the other, until, braving much peril, they attained a desirable station. Here they came to the scene of our Illustration - two or three conical rocks which rise from island peaks from the snow and ice at the head of the Glacier des Bossons...They are chosen for a halting-place, not less from their convenient station on the route than from their situation out of the way of the avalanches'.