[MOUNTAINEERING] Glacier des Bossons.

A$175 · Offered by Douglas Stewart Fine Books

[Zürich : Schroeder Cie., 1885]. Large format albumen print, 220 x 275 mm, captioned in the negative 399.Glacier des Bossons ; mounted recto of a nineteenth-century album leaf; in very good condition, the mount annotated with the word Switzerland (in error) in blue fountain pen at lower left; the verso with another albumen print in identical format by the same company, captioned 421. Tête Noire. Roche percée . The Bossons Glacier is one of the larger glaciers of the Mont Blanc massif of the Alps, found in the Chamonix valley of Haute-Savoie département, south-eastern France. It is fed from icefields lying on the northern side of Mont Blanc, and descends down close to the Aiguille du Midi and ends on the southern side of the Arve valley, close to the town of Chamonix. It has the largest altitudinal drop of all the alpine glaciers in Europe, and formerly extended much further down the valley than it does today. It is now approximately 7.5 km long, with a surface area of approximately 10 km2. In the 17th century the Bossons glacier extended right down into Chamonix, reaching the settlement of Le Fouly, engulfing farmland, barns and houses. Local bishops were called upon to exorcise the demons within the glacier. In 1777 the traveller and correspondent, William Coxe, observed in his letters that we mounted by the side of the glacier of Bosson, to les Murailles de Glace, so called from their resemblance to walls: they form the large ranges of ice of prodigious thickness and solidi

• Binding: Hardcover

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