DESCRIPTION OF THE HOSPICE ON THE GREAT ST. BERNARD.
THE Hospice, or convent, erected on the summit of this terrific pass, as mentioned
the preceding section, is, doubtless, the most elevated habitation known to exist on
i, since, according to monsieur de Saussure's measurement, it is found to be
tvfelve hundred and fifty-one toises, or about eight thousand English feet, above the
level of the sea. Yet it does not stand on the highest part of the mountain; for
the contracted valley in which it is built is still commanded by high and tremendous
peaks, which serve, as it were, for a shelter, and are many of them fifteen hundred feet
above the small lake, on the edge of which stands the convent.
These acute points, called aiguilles, or needles, which appear like frozen pyramids,
from being always covered with eternal ice and snow, are not granitic, though deemed
to form one of the highest primitive chain of the Alps; but, on the contrary, seem to be
a species of lamellated rock, of which the integral parts arc in general argil, quartz,
mica, and horn-stone; and whose strata incline so much towards the perpendicular,
that in many places they have even a vertical direction. And though the molecules of
those same strata have a great degree of coherency, yet are the bases of these spiry tops
totally covered with their fragments, which are of different sizes, and in general assume
a parallelopiped, or tetrahedron figure; which difference of form most probably depends
on the more or less quantity of horn-stone, horn-blende, feldspath, and siliceous earth,
contained in them. I have however remarked, at no considerable distance from the
convent, nearly contiguous to the mountain of La Drossa, another species of rock, of
thickcr strata and closer texture, neither so rough nor shaggy, but glossy, and the
surface of which, in many parts, was not only polished, but spotted with small grains of
black grey quartz, wjiich give it the appearance of granite, and render this kind of
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