To Thomas Henry Huxley   19th. July 1857

Montanvert, Chamoni, Savoy | 19th. July 1857.

My dear Huxley,

Here I sit on the Montanvert¹ with blistered hands and weary legs from trampling over this weary ice sea. It must have been called so from the resemblance of its surface to a billowy ocean. Otherwise a ‘fleuve’² and not a ‘mer’³ would be its proper designation. I have a friend⁴ with me here whose youthful wife⁵ was buried during the short time I spent in Paris, and whom I carried away with me to separate him from scenes which would remind him incessantly of his loss. He is up to all Trigonometrical observations, and therefore very useful to me.

Thus far I have confined myself to the observation of the motion, and to obtaining a general notion of the glacier. I have been up at the Talèfre⁶ and down to the end of the glacier des Bois.⁷ The whole thing is a puzzle. I have found out the dirt bands described by Forbes.⁸ He has represented them very fairly on his map, and they are different from any which I have hitherto seen. There is a kind of hotel here with three bed rooms, one of which is occupied by my friend.⁹ To escape the tramping of the travellers I have slung my hammock in a little temple erected many years ago by a Mr Blaire:¹⁰ the walls are wet, the stone floor is wet and I have a goat-skin to keep my feet from the flags.¹¹ When I sit there at night watching the stars, listening to the moaning of the wind over the glacier, or to the incessant rumble of the stones as they fall into the crevasses, with my pine fire gleaming upon me and my octagonal castle, I feel quite like a philosopher. I am strong, and so will you be, when you come out here. Let the thought of this urge you forward. Tell Mrs Huxley¹² that I will watch over you as she does over young Noel.¹³ Give my love to her, nothing less remember and believe me

Always yours | J. Tyndall.

IC HP 8:27

RI MS JT/1/TYP/9/2878

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