Mary Shelley knows from experience of what she writes. There were actually two such
huts on Montanvert above the Sea of Ice, one made of wood and erected by an Englishman
named Blair in 1779, and the other of stone constructed by a Frenchmen, Desportes,
in the year 1795 (Charles Edward Mathews, The Annals of Mont Blanc [Boston: L.C. Page,
1900]).