[1][2]: 5, 20 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.The glacier lies above the Chamonix valley.

[2]: 20 However, if the Mer de Glace is considered in its broadest sense (i.e. from source to tongue), it is a compound valley glacier, gaining ice from snowfields that cover the heights directly north of Mont Blanc at an altitude of around 4,000 metres.

On 24 July 1842, Scottish physicist James David Forbes observed the pattern of light and dark dirt bands on the Mer de Glace from the nearby Aiguille des Grands Charmoz and began to consider whether glaciers flowed in a similar fashion to a sluggish river and with a viscous or plastic manner.

At that time the river Arveyron emerged from the glacier under a grotto-like vault (grotte d'Arveyron)[6] and, through the accounts of early writers and explorers,[7] attracted many more visitors, painters and later photographers, for example J. M. W. Turner's Source of the Arveron in the Valley of Chamouni Savoy, 1816.

[8] This episode inspired the 1991 opera Mer de glace by Australian composer Richard Meale to a libretto by his compatriot David Malouf.