8 VILLAGE OF TOURS.
valley became bare of trees as we advanced,
and was entirely denuded before we arrived
at the village of Tours, which is about two
miles above Argentière. The pasturage is
good here, but owing to its elevated and
exposed situation, the harvest is very late.
The last of the cultivated fields contained
bailey, oats, flax, and potatoes; the crops
were at that time (August 28th) in about
the same state of maturity as in the Peak
of Derbyshire at the same season of the
year. In another part of Savoy, we had
seen the barley harvest nearly over two
months earlier, on June 26th.
The houses of the village o f Tours are
built near to each other; our guide informed
us, that in the winter they were
often entirely buried under the snow for
several weeks, and the inhabitants cut passages
through it, to form a communication
from one house to the other. The ascent
from Tours to the summit of the Col de
Balme is in some parts rough and difficult:
the first steep, for there are two, brouo-ht
us to an elevated plain, which extends to
the foot of the second steep, that forms the
summit of the Col. From the first there
is a very fine view of the valley of Chamouny
and Mont Blanc, and many of the
ATMOSPHERIC PHENOMENON.
sketches of this mountain that have been
published were taken from this station. A
little beyond it, there is a large chalet,
where milk or whey may be procured.
The sky was transparent, and clear from
clouds over our heads, but in the north it
was overcast, and clouds were driving towards
Mont Blanc, which threatened to hide
it entirely from our view, but I observed
that, when they came within a certain distance
of the mountain, they remained
motionless, and dissolved as rapidly as
they advanced. It was remarkable, that
though volumes of clouds were moving
directly towards Mont Blanc all the day
the mountain remained brilliantly illumined
by the sun till the evening. It
seemed as though the clouds were repelled
by the north wind striking against
the mountain and reverberating from i t ;
but it is more probable that a current of
warm air from the south-west, met the one
from the north, and dissipated them before
they could reach the southern range of
mountains in the valley of Chamouny.
Having ascended the summit of the Col
de Balme, we saw on the eastern side below
us the upper valley of the Bhone, and the