The universal geography : earth and its inhabitants

GENERAL ASPECTS.—MOUNTAINS. 87
winters, however, enable these mountaineers to acquire some education ; and
formerly many Savoyard teachers were to be found in tlie towns of the IthOne
valley.
The granitic ranges to the west of Muurionne run in a direction conformable
to that of the Jura, and are intersected by the rugged gorges through which the
Isere, the Romanche, and the Arc iind their way to the west. The group of the
Grandes Eousses (11,910 feet) is the highest summit here. Farther west, above
Grenoble, rises the thrcc-peakcd Belledone (0,778 feet), from the summit of which
we look down upon the verdant valley of Graisivaudau and the limestone moun-
tains which bound it on the west.
From a geological point of view the mountain mass of which Mont IJlanc
(15,777 feet) is the centre is but a norlliern continuation of these western ranges
of Savoy. Its relief, however, marks it ofV verj' distinctly. Tlie enormous
mass of talcose granite or protogine of which it is formed is separated by the
Passes of the Little St. Bernard (0,897 feet) and Bonhomme (8,151 feet) from
the other mountains of Savoy in the south ; sinks down steei^ly into the vallej^ of
the Ehonc on the north ; presents steep, glacier-covered slojjes towards Italy ; and
descends more gently towards the French valley of Chamonix. At an anterior
period, when Mont Blanc was several thousand feet higher than it is now, it
formed but a single mountain mass with the Aiguilles-Rougc?, now separated from
it by the valley of Chamonix.
The area occupied by Mont Blanc and its buttresses cannot compare with
certain mountains of Switzerland, nor docs it give rise to any great rivers, for only
the Arveiron, or Arve, and the Dora Baltea rise on it, the one flowing to the
Khone, the other to the To. Its glaciers and snow-ticlds, however, are without a
rival in Europe. They cover 104 square miles, of which 64 drain into the valley
of Chamonix. The most famous of these glaciers is the Mer de Glace, or " sea of
ice," which slides down the valley at a rate of 828 feet annually, and gives birth
to the Arve.
Discovered as it were by two Englishmen, Pococke and "Wyndham, about the
middle of the eighteenth century, and ascended for the first time by Jacques
iSalinat in 1780, Mont Blanc has since become one of the great attractions of all
admirers of nature. Chamonix (3,444 feet), at its foot, has grown into a town of
hotels; and other villages in its vicinity, sucli as St. Gervais and Cormayeur
(4,007 feet), particijjate in the profits derived from tourists.
The mountains in Northern Savoy, which occupy the region between Mont
Blune, the Rhone, and the Lake of Geneva, form a sort of link between the Alps and
the Jura, and from a geological point of view it is sometimes difficult to determine
of which of either of these systems a certain mountain may be assumed to form
a part. The cretaceous and Jurassic ranges generally run from the south-west to
the north-east ; that is, parallel with the Jura. Such is the direction of the pine-
clad ranges of the Grande Chartreuse (Chamechaude, 6,847 feet), of the parallel
ridges of the Beauges (4,996 feet) to the north of Chambery, and of the ranges
of Saleve (4,523 feet) and Voirons, near Geneva.