page_title: Mer de Glace
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Mer de Glace / History
caption_attribution_description: Mer de Glace sketchmap by John Tyndall, 1857 Fig. 7&#91;1&#93; shows Aiguille Noire to the south (bottom-right) dividing the Cascade at the west (bottom) from Glacier des Périades (right) which flows north to join Glacier du Géant flowing south to north (14 degrees clockwise) between Mont Tacul on the east (centre right) and Aiguilles de Charmoz to the west (bottom alongside morraine 'b'). This forms the medial morraine 'a'. Some 3 kilometres downstream, Glacier de Lechaud joins du Géant, forming medial morraine 'c'. Just prior to this confluence, Cascade du Talèfre, with its own medial morraine 'e', joins Lechaud forming morraine 'd'. Here the glacier is known as the Mer De Glace and flows north-north-west (leftwards) between Aiguille du Moine on the east and Trélaporte on the west. Notes ↑ Tyndall page 53 "Fig 7." References John Tyndall (1896) The Glaciers of the Alps, Longmans, Green and Co. Retrieved on 29 February 2008.
context_page_description: The Mer de Glace is a valley glacier located on the northern slopes of the Mont Blanc massif, in the French Alps. It is 7.5 km long and 200 metres deep but, when all its tributary glaciers are taken into account, it can be regarded as the longest and largest glacier in France, and the second longest in the Alps after the Aletsch Glacier.
  I can no otherwise convey to you an image of this body of ice, broken into irregular ridges and deep chasms than by comparing it to waves instantaneously frozen in the midst of a violent storm.
  — William Coxe 1777
context_section_description: In the 18th and 19th centuries the glacier descended all the way down to the hamlet of Les Bois, where it was known as Glacier des Bois. At that time the river Arveyron emerged from the glacier under a grotto-like vault (grotte d'Arveyron) and, through the accounts of early writers and explorers, attracted many more visitors,  painters and later photographers, for example Joseph Mallord William Turner's "Source of the Arveron in the Valley of Chamouni Savoy", 1816. The position of its front end fluctuated over the years but its maximum extent was in the mid-19th century.
caption: John Tyndall explored the glacial tributaries feeding Mer de Glace in 1857
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