The Desportes refuge of hewn stone in a nineteenth-century photograph -- from Charles Edward Mathews, The Annals of Mont Blanc (Boston: L.C. Page, 1900), facing p. 16. | This drawing -- from Charles Edward Mathews, The Annals of Mont Blanc (Boston: L.C. Page, 1900), titlepage vignette -- shows the two huts together. |
In this early ninteenth-century romantic vista of the Mer de Glace only the Desportes hut is visible, but the illustration shows how prominent an intrusion this human imposition made upon an otherwise sublime landscape.
from William Beattie, Switzerland, illustrated in a series of views taken expressly for this work by W. H. Bartlett, Esq., Volume 1 (London: G. Virtue, 1836).