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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14012 ***
+
+  ICE-CAVES
+  OF
+  FRANCE AND SWITZERLAND.
+
+
+
+  A NARRATIVE OF
+  SUBTERRANEAN EXPLORATION.
+
+
+
+  BY THE
+  REV. G.F. BROWNE, M.A.
+
+  FELLOW AND ASSISTANT TUTOR OF ST. CATHARINE'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE;
+  MEMBER OF THE ALPINE CLUB.
+
+
+  1865.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+The existence of natural ice-caves at depths varying from 50 to 200 feet
+below the surface of the earth, unconnected with glaciers or snow
+mountains, and in latitudes and at altitudes where ice could not under
+ordinary circumstances be supposed to exist, has attracted some
+attention on the Continent; but little or nothing seems to be
+practically known in England on the subject. These caves are so
+singular, and many of them so well repay inspection, that a description
+of the twelve which I have visited can scarcely, as it seems to me, be
+considered an uncalled-for addition to the numerous books of travel
+which are constantly appearing. In order to prevent my narrative from
+being a mere dry record of natural phenomena, I have interspersed it
+with such incidents of travel as may be interesting in themselves or
+useful to those who are inclined to follow my steps. I have also given,
+from various sources, accounts of similar caves in different parts of
+the world.
+
+A pamphlet on _Glacières Naturelles_ by M. Thury, of Geneva, of the
+existence of which I was not aware when I commenced my explorations, has
+been of great service to me. M. Thury had only visited three glacières
+when he published his pamphlet in 1861, but the observations he records
+are very valuable. He had attempted to visit a fourth, when,
+unfortunately, the want of a ladder of sufficient length stopped him.
+
+I was allowed to read Papers before the British Association at Bath
+(1864), in the Chemical Section, on the prismatic formation of the ice
+in these caves, and in the Geological Section, on their general
+character and the possible causes of their existence.
+
+It is necessary to say, with regard to the sections given in this book,
+that, while the proportions of the masses of ice are in accordance with
+measurements taken on the spot, the interior height of many of the
+caves, and the curves of the roof and sides, are put in with a free
+hand, some of them from memory. And of the measurements, too, it is only
+fair to say that they were taken for the most part under very
+unfavourable circumstances, in dark caves lighted by one, or sometimes
+by two candles, with a temperature varying from slightly above to
+slightly below the freezing-point, and with no surer foot-hold than that
+afforded by slippery slopes of ice and chaotic blocks of stone. In all
+cases, errors are due to want of skill, not of honesty; and I hope that
+they do not generally lie on the side of exaggeration.
+
+CAMBRIDGE: _June_ 1865.
+
+
+
+
+  CONTENTS.
+
+  CHAPTER I. PAGE
+
+  THE GLACIÈRE OF LA GENOLLIÈRE, IN THE JURA .............1
+
+  CHAPTER II.
+
+  THE GLACIÈRE OF S. GEORGES, IN THE JURA ................19
+
+  CHAPTER III.
+
+  THE LOWER GLACIÈRE OF THE PRÉ DE S. LIVRES, IN
+  THE JURA ...............................................32
+
+  CHAPTER IV.
+
+  THE UPPER GLACIÈRE OF THE PRÉ DE S. LIVRES .............46
+
+  CHAPTER V.
+
+  THE GLACIÈRE OF GRÂCE-DIEU, OR LA BAUME, NEAR BESANÇON,
+  IN THE VOSGIAN JURA ....................................60
+
+  CHAPTER VI.
+
+  BESANÇON AND DÔLE ......................................85
+
+  CHAPTER VII.
+
+  THE GLACIÈRE OF MONTHÉZY, IN THE VAL DE TRAVERS ........97
+
+  CHAPTER VIII.
+
+  THE GLACIÈRE AND NEIGIÈRE OF ARC-SOUS-CICON ............118
+
+  CHAPTER IX.
+
+  THE SCHAFLOCH, OR TROU-AUX-MOUTONS, NEAR THE LAKE OF
+  THUN ...................................................131
+
+  CHAPTER X.
+
+  THE GLACIÈRE OF GRAND ANU, NEAR ANNECY .................157
+
+  CHAPTER XI.
+
+  THE GLACIÈRE OF CHAPPET-SUR-VILLAZ, NEAR ANNECY ........182
+
+  CHAPTER XII.
+
+  THE GLACIÈRES OF THE BREZON, AND THE VALLEY
+  OF REPOSOIR ............................................202
+
+  CHAPTER XIII.
+
+  LA BORNA DE LA GLACE, IN THE DUCHY OF AOSTA ............210
+
+  CHAPTER XIV.
+
+  THE GLACIÈRE OF FONDEURLE, IN DAUPHINÉ .................212
+
+  CHAPTER XV.
+
+  OTHER ICE-CAVES:--
+    THE CAVE OF SCELICZE, IN HUNGARY .....................237
+    THE CAVE OF YEERMALIK, IN KOONDOOZ ...................240
+    THE SURTSHELLIR, IN ICELAND ..........................244
+    THE GYPSUM CAVE OF ILLETZKAYA ZASTCHITA, ORENBURG ....249
+    THE ICE-CAVERN ON THE PEAK OF TENERIFFE ..............253
+
+  CHAPTER XVI.
+
+  BRIEF NOTICES OF VARIOUS ICE-CAVES .....................256
+
+  CHAPTER XVII.
+
+  HISTORY OF THEORIES RESPECTING THE CAUSES OF
+  SUBTERRANEAN ICE .......................................282
+
+  CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+  ON THE PRISMATIC STRUCTURE OF THE ICE IN GLACIÈRES .....300
+
+  CHAPTER XIX.
+
+  ON THE MEAN TEMPERATURE OF THE REGIONS IN WHICH
+  SOME OF THE GLACIÈRES OCCUR ............................308
+
+  APPENDIX ...............................................313
+
+
+
+
+  LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
+
+
+  ICE-COLUMNS IN THE GLACIÈRE OF LA GENOLLIÈRE ...........6
+
+  ENTRANCE TO THE GLACIÈRE OF S. GEORGES .................24
+
+  VERTICAL SECTIONS OF THE GLACIÈRE OF S. GEORGES ........26
+
+  LOWER GLACIÈRE OF THE PRÉ DE S. LIVRES .................39
+
+  SECTION OF THE LOWER GLACIÈRE OF THE
+  PRÉ DE S. LIVRES .......................................41
+
+  SECOND CAVE OF THE UPPER GLACIÈRE OF THE PRÉ DE
+  S. LIVRES ..............................................50
+
+  VERTICAL SECTIONS OF THE UPPER GLACIÈRE OF THE PRÉ
+  DE S. LIVRES ...........................................52
+
+  VERTICAL SECTION OF THE GLACIÈRE OF GRÂCE-DIEU, NEAR
+  BESANÇON ...............................................77
+
+  BATH IN THE DOUBS, AT BESANÇON .........................91
+
+  VERTICAL SECTION OF THE GLACIÈRE OF MONTHÉZY, IN THE
+  VAL DE TRAVERS .........................................108
+
+  GROUND PLAN OF THE GLACIÈRE OF MONTHÉZY ................110
+
+  VERTICAL SECTION OF THE GLACIÈRE OF GRAND ANU, NEAR
+  ANNECY .................................................173
+
+  ICE-CAVE IN THE SURTSHELLIR ............................248
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+THE GLACIÈRE OF LA GENOLLIÈRE, IN THE JURA.
+
+
+In the summer of 1861, I found myself, with some members of my family,
+in a small rustic _pension_ in the village of Arzier, one of the highest
+villages of the pleasant slope by which the Jura passes down to the Lake
+of Geneva. The son of the house was an intelligent man, with a good
+knowledge of the natural curiosities which abound in that remarkable
+range of hills, and under his guidance we saw many strange things. More
+than once, he spoke of the existence of a _glacière_ at no great
+distance, and talked of taking us to see it; but we were sceptical on
+the subject, imagining that _glacière_ was his patois for _glacier_, and
+knowing that anything of the glacier kind was out of the question. At
+last, however, on a hot day in August, we set off with him, armed, at
+his request, with candles; and, after two or three hours of pine
+forests, and grass glades, and imaginary paths up rocky ranges of hill
+towards the summits of the Jura, we came to a deep natural pit, down the
+side of which we scrambled. At the bottom, after penetrating a few yards
+into a chasm in the rock, we discovered a small low cave, perfectly
+dark, with a flooring of ice, and a pillar of the same material in the
+form of a headless woman, one of whose shoulders we eventually carried
+off, to regale our parched friends at Arzier. We lighted up the cave
+with candles, and sat crouched on the ice drinking our wine, finding
+water, which served the double purpose of icing and diluting the wine,
+in small basins in the floor of ice, formed apparently by drops falling
+from the roof of the cave.
+
+A few days after, our guide and companion took us to an ice-cavern on a
+larger scale, which, we were told, supplies Geneva with ice when the
+ordinary stores of that town fail; and the next year my sisters went to
+yet another, where, however, they did not reach the ice, as the ladder
+necessary for the final drop was not forthcoming.
+
+In the course of the last year or two, I have mentioned these glacières
+now and then in England, and no one has seemed to know anything about
+them; so I determined, in the spring of 1864, to spend a part of the
+summer in examining the three we had already seen or heard of, and
+discovering, if possible, the existence of similar caves.
+
+The first that came under my notice was the Glacière of La Genollière;
+and, though it is smaller and less interesting than most of those which
+I afterwards visited, many of its general features are merely reproduced
+on a larger scale in them. I shall therefore commence with this cave,
+and proceed with the account of my explorations in their natural order.
+It is probable that some of the earlier details may seem to be somewhat
+tedious, but they are necessary for a proper understanding of the
+subject.
+
+La Genollière is the _montagne_, or mountain pasturage and wood,
+belonging to the village of Genollier, an ancient priory of the monks of
+S. Claude.[1] The cave itself lies at no great distance from Arzier--a
+village which may be seen in profile from the Grand Quai of Geneva,
+ambitiously climbing towards the summit of the last slope of the Jura.
+To reach the cave from Geneva, it would be necessary to take train or
+steamer to Nyon, whence an early omnibus runs to S. Cergues, if crawling
+up the serpentine road can be called running; and from S. Cergues a
+guide must be taken across the Fruitière de Nyon, if anyone can be found
+who knows the way. From Arzier, however, which is nine miles up from
+Nyon, it was not necessary to take the S. Cergues route; and we went
+straight through the woods, past the site of an old convent and its
+drained fish-pond, and up the various rocky ridges of hill, with no
+guide beyond the recollection of the previous visits two and three years
+before, and a sort of idea that we must go north-west. As it was not yet
+July, the cows had not made their summer move to the higher châlets, and
+we found the mountains uninhabited and still.
+
+The point to be made for is the upper Châlet of La Genollière, called by
+some of the people _La Baronne_, [2] though the district map puts La
+Baronne at some distance from the site of the glacière. We had some
+difficulty in finding the châlet, and were obliged to spread out now and
+then, that each might hunt a specified portion of the wood or glade for
+signs to guide our further advance, enjoying meanwhile the lilies of the
+mountain and lilies of the valley, and fixing upon curious trees and
+plants as landmarks for our return. In crossing the last grass, we found
+the earliest vanilla orchis (_Orchis nigra_) of the year, and came upon
+beds of moonwort (_Botrychium Lunaria_) of so unusual a size that our
+progress ceased till such time as the finest specimens were secured.
+
+Some time before reaching this point, we caught a glimpse of a dark
+speck on the highest summit in sight, which recalled pleasantly a night
+we had spent there three years before for the purpose of seeing the sun
+rise.[3] My sisters had revisited the Châlet des Chèvres, which this
+dark speck represented, in 1862, and found that the small chamber in
+which we had slept on planks and logs had become a more total ruin than
+before, in the course of the winter, so that it is now utterly
+untenable.
+
+From Arzier to the Châlet of La Genollière, would be about two hours,
+for a man walking and mounting quickly, and never losing the way; and
+the glacière lies a few minutes farther to the north-west, at an
+elevation of about 2,800 feet above the lake, or 4,000 feet above the
+sea.[4] A rough mountain road, leading over an undulating expanse of
+grass, passes narrowly between two small clumps of trees, each
+surrounded by a low circular wall, the longer diameter of the
+enclosure on the south side of the road being 60 feet. In this
+enclosure is a natural pit, of which the north side is a sheer rock,
+of the ordinary limestone of the Jura, with a chasm almost from the
+top; while the south side is less steep, and affords the means of
+scrambling down to the bottom, where a cave is found at the foot of
+the chasm, passing under the road. The floor of this small but
+comparatively lofty cave is 52 feet below the surface of the earth,
+and slopes away rapidly to the west, where, by the help of candles,
+the rock which forms the wall is seen to stop short of the floor,
+leaving an entrance 2 or 3 feet high to an inner cave--the glacière.
+The roof of this inner cave rises slightly, and its floor falls, so
+that there is a height of about 6 feet inside, excepting where a large
+open fissure in the roof passes high up towards the world above. At
+one end, neither the roof nor the floor slopes much, and in this part
+of the cave the height is less than 3 feet.
+
+It would be very imprudent to go straight into an ice-cave after a long
+walk on a hot summer's day, so we prepared to dine under the shade of
+the trees at the edge of the pit, and I went down into the cave for a
+few moments to get a piece of ice for our wine. My first impression was
+that the glacière was entirely destroyed, for the outer cave was a mere
+chaos of rock and stones; but, on further investigation, it turned out
+that the ruin had not reached the inner cave. In our previous visit we
+had noticed a natural basin of some size and depth among the trees on
+the north side of the road, and we now found that the chaos was the
+result of a recent falling-in of this basin; so that from the bottom of
+the first cave, standing as it were under the road, we could see
+daylight through the newly-formed hole.
+
+The total length of the floor of the inner cave, which lies north-east
+and south-west, is 51 feet; and of this floor a length of about 37 feet
+was more or less covered with ice, the greatest breadth of the ice being
+within an inch or two of 11 feet. Excepting in the part of the cave
+already mentioned as being less than 3 feet high, we found the floor not
+nearly so dry, nor so completely covered with ice, as when we first saw
+the glacière, three years before, in the middle of an exceptionally hot
+August. Under the low roof all was very dry, though even there the ice
+had not an average thickness of more than 8 inches. It may be as well to
+say, once for all, that the ice in these caves is never found in a sheet
+on a pool of water; it is always solid, forming the floor of the cave,
+filling up the interstices of the loose stones, and rising above them,
+in this case with a surface perfectly level.
+
+[Illustration: ICE-COLUMNS IN THE GLACIÈRE OF LA GENOLLIÈRE.]
+
+We found four principal columns of ice, three of which, in the loftiest
+part of the cave, are represented in the accompanying engraving: I call
+them three, and not two, because the two which unite in a common base
+proceeded from different fissures. The line of light at the foot of the
+rock-wall is the only entrance to the glacière. The lowest column was
+11-2/3 feet high and 1-2/3 feet broad, not more than 6 inches thick in
+the middle, half-way up, and flattened symmetrically so as to be
+comparatively sharp at the edges, like a huge double-edged sword. It
+stood clear of the rock through its whole height, but scarcely left room
+between itself and the wall of the cave for a candle to be passed up and
+down. The other two columns shown in the engraving poured out of
+fissures in the rock, streaming down as cascades, the one being 13-1/2
+and the other 15 feet high; and when we tied a candle to the end of an
+alpenstock, and passed it into the fissures, we found that the bend of
+the fissures prevented our seeing the termination of the ice. An
+intermittent disturbance of the air in these fissures made the flame
+flicker at intervals, though generally the candle burned steadily in
+them, and we could detect no current in the cave. The fourth column was
+in the low part of the cave, and we were obliged to grovel on the ice to
+get its dimensions: it was 3-1/4 feet broad and 4-1/3 feet high, the
+roof of the cave being only 2-3/4 feet high; and it poured out of the
+vertical fissure like a smooth round fall of water, adhering lightly to
+the rock at its upper end like a fungus, and growing out suddenly in its
+full size. This column was dry, whereas on the others there were
+abundant symptoms of moisture, as if small quantities of water were
+trickling down them from their fissures, though the fissures themselves
+appeared to be perfectly dry.
+
+In one of the fissures there was a patch of what is known as
+sweating-stone, [5] with globules of water oozing out, and standing
+roundly upon it: the globules were not frozen. This stone was
+exceedingly hard, and defied all our efforts to break off a specimen,
+but at last we got two small pieces, hard and heavy, and wrapped them
+in paper; ten weeks after, we found them of course quite dry, and
+broke them easily, small as they were, with our fingers. The fissure
+from which the shortest of the four columns came was full of gnats, as
+were also several crevices in the walls of the cave, especially in the
+lowest part; and we found a number of large red-brown flies, [6]
+nearly an inch long, running rapidly on the ice and stones, after the
+fashion of the flies with which trout love best to be taken. The
+central parts of the cave, where the roof is high, were in a state
+provincially known as 'sloppy,' and drops of water fell now and then
+from above, either splashing on wet stones, or hollowing out basins in
+the remaining ice, or, sometimes, shrewdly detecting the most
+sensitive spot in the back of the human neck. We placed one of
+Casella's thermometers on a piece of wood on one of the wet stones,
+clear of the ice, and it soon fell to 34°. Probably the temperature
+had been somewhat raised by the continued presence of three human
+beings and two lighted candles in the small cavern; and, at any rate,
+the cold of two degrees above freezing was something very real on a
+hot summer's day, and told considerably upon my sisters, so that we
+were compelled to beat a retreat,--not quite in time, for one of our
+party could not effect a thaw, even by stamping about violently in the
+full afternoon sun.
+
+While we were in the cave, we noticed that the surfaces of the columns
+were covered by very irregular lines, marked somewhat deeply in the
+ice, and dividing the surface into areas of all shapes, a sort of
+network, with meshes of many different shapes and sizes. These areas
+were smaller towards the edges of the columns; the lines containing
+them were not, as a rule, straight lines, and almost baffled our
+efforts to count them, but, to the best of my belief, there were
+meshes with three, four, and up to eight sides. The column which
+stood clear of the rock was composed of very limpid ice, without
+admixture of air; but the cascades were interpenetrated by veins of
+looser white ice, and, where the white ice came, the surface lines
+seemed to disappear. As we sat on the grass outside, arranging our
+properties for departure, my attention was arrested by the columnar
+appearance of the fractured edge of the block of ice which we had used
+at luncheon. It was about 5 inches thick, and had formed part of a
+stalagmite whose horizontal section, like that of the free column,
+would be an ellipse of considerable eccentricity; and, on examination,
+it turned out that the surface areas, which varied in size from a
+large thumb-nail to something very small, were the ends of prisms
+reaching through to the other side of the piece of ice, at any rate in
+the thinner parts, and presenting there similar faces. Not only so,
+but the prisms could be detached with great ease, by using no
+instrument more violent than the fingers; while the point of a thin
+knife entered freely at any of the surface lines, and split the ice
+neatly down the sides of the prisms. When one or two of the sides of a
+prism were exposed, at the edge of the piece of ice, the prism could
+be pushed out entire, like a knot from the edge of a piece of wood. In
+some cases there seemed to be capillary fissures coincident with the
+lines where several sides of prisms met. Considering the shape of the
+whole column, it is clear that the two ends of each prism could not be
+parallel; neither was one of the ends perfectly symmetrical with the
+other, and I do not think that the prisms were of the nature of
+truncated pyramids. On descending again, I found that the columns
+were without exception formed of this prismatic ice, either in whole,
+as in the clear column, or in part, as where limpid prisms existed
+among the white ice which ran in veins down the cascades. In the free
+vertical column the prisms seemed to be deposited horizontally, and in
+the thicker parts they did not pass clear through. We carried a large
+piece of ice down to Arzier in a botanical tin, and on our arrival
+there we found that all traces of external lines had disappeared.
+
+This visit to the glacière was on Saturday, and on the following Monday
+I determined to go up alone, to take a registering thermometer, and
+leave it in the cave for the night; which, of course, would entail a
+third visit on the next day. Monday brought a steady penetrating rain,
+of that peculiar character which six Scotch springs had taught me to
+describe as 'just a bit must;' while in the higher regions the fog was
+so hopeless, that a sudden lift of the mist revealed the unpleasant fact
+that considerable progress had been made in a westerly direction, the
+true line being north-west. Instead of the rocks of La Genollière, the
+foreground presented was the base of the Dôle, and the chasm which
+affords a passage from the well-known fortress of Les Rousses into Vaud.
+There was nothing for it but to turn in the right direction, or attempt
+to do so, and force a way through the wet woods till something should
+turn up. This something took the form of a châlet; but no amount of
+hammering and shouting produced any response, and it was only after a
+forcible entrance, and a prolonged course of interior shouting, that a
+man was at length drawn. He said that he had been asleep--and why he
+put it in a past tense is still a mystery--and could give no idea of
+the direction of the châlet on La Genollière, beyond a vague suggestion
+that it was somewhere in the mist; a suggestion by no means improbable,
+seeing that the mist was ubiquitous. One piece of information he was
+able to give, and it was consoling: I was now, it seemed, on the
+Fruitière de Nyon, and therefore the desired châlet could not be far
+off, if only a guide could be found. On the whole, he thought that a
+guide could not be found; but there were men in the châlet, and I might
+go up the ladder with him and see what could be done. He led to a
+chamber with a window of one small pane, dating apparently from the
+first invention of glass, and never cleaned since. An invisible corner
+of the room was appealed to; but the voice which resided there, and
+seemed like everything else to be asleep, pleaded dreamily a total
+ignorance of the whereabouts of the châlet in question. Just as, by dint
+of steady staring through the darkness, an indistinct form of a
+mattress, with a human being reclining thereon, began to be visible,
+another dark corner announced that this new speaker had heard of a
+_p'tit sentier_ leading to the châlet, but knew neither direction nor
+distance. Here the space between the two corners put in a word; and, as
+the darkness was now becoming natural, seven or eight mattresses
+appeared, ranged round the room, some holding one, some two men, most of
+whom were sitting up on end with old caps on, displaying every variety
+of squalor. The voice which had spoken last declared that the distance
+was three-quarters of an hour, and that if the day were clear there
+would be no difficulty in reaching the châlet; as it was, the man would
+be very glad to try.
+
+A change of cap was the only dressing necessary for the volunteer, and
+we faced the fog and rain, which elicited from him such a disgraceful
+amount of swearing, that it was on all accounts well when the rain
+ceased for a few minutes, the mists rolled off, and the clouds lifted
+sufficiently to betray the surface of the Lake of Geneva, luxuriating in
+the clear warmth of an early summer's day, and making us shiver by the
+painful contrast which our own altitude presented. The deep blue of the
+lake brought to mind the story of the shepherd of Gessenay (Saanen), of
+whom it is told that when he was passing the hills with some friends for
+a first visit to Vevey, and came in sight of the lake, which he had
+never seen before, he turned and hurried home incontinent, declaring
+that he would not enter a country where the good God had made the blue
+sky to fall and fill the valleys.
+
+In this bright interval we came upon a magnificent fox, and the
+peasant's impulse was, 'Oh, for a good gun!' an exclamation which would
+have sounded horrible to English ears, if I had not been previously
+broken in to it by an invitation from a Scotch gamekeeper to a fox-hunt,
+when he promised an excellent gun, and a _stance_ which the foxes were
+sure to pass.
+
+The rain now came on again, and the guide thought he had had plenty of
+it, and must return for the afternoon milking; and just then, as good
+luck would have it, we stumbled upon an immense clump of nettles which
+had been one of our landmarks two days before, so that he was no longer
+necessary, and we said affectionate adieux.
+
+The glacière was in a state of ruin. Only the right-hand column, not
+speaking heraldically, was standing, the others lying in blocks frozen
+hard together on the ground. The column which still stood was much
+shrunken, and seemed too small for its fissure, the sides of which it
+scarcely touched. The wind blew down the entrance slope so
+determinedly, that a candle found it difficult to live at the bottom
+of the first cave; and a portion of the current blew into the
+glacière, and in its sweep exactly struck the fallen columns, the
+edges of which were already rounded by thaw. Much of this must be
+attributed to the recent opening of the second shaft (p. 5), which
+admits a thorough draught through the first cave, and so exposes the
+glacière to currents of warmer air; and I should expect to find that
+in future the ice will disappear from that part of the cave every
+summer, [7] whereas in 1861 we found it thick and dry (excepting a few
+small basins containing water) and evidently permanent, in the middle
+of a very hot August. The low part of the cave was so completely
+protected from the current, that the candle burned there quite
+steadily for an hour and a half: still, like the others, the column at
+that end of the glacière was broken down, and it therefore became
+necessary to attribute its fall to some other agency than the current
+of external air. There had been a very large amount of rain, and the
+surface of the rock in the fissures was evidently wet; so I have no
+doubt that the filtering through of the warm rain-water had thawed the
+upper supports of the ice-cascades, and then, owing to their slightly
+inclined position, the pedestal had not provided sufficient support,
+and so they had fallen. One of them, perhaps, had brought down in its
+fall the free column, which had stood two days before on its own base,
+without any support from the rock. Very probably, too--indeed, almost
+certainly,--the fall of the large mass of rock, which once formed the
+bottom of the basin on the north side of the road, has affected the
+old-established fissures, by which rain-water has been accustomed to
+penetrate in small quantities to the glacière, so that now a much
+larger amount is admitted. On this account, there will probably be a
+great diminution of the ice in the course of future summers, though
+the amount formed each winter may be greater than it has hitherto
+been. Constant examination of other columns and fissures has convinced
+me, that, before the end of autumn, the majority of the glacières will
+have lost all the columns which depend upon the roof for a part of
+their support, or spring from fissures in the wall; whereas those
+which are true stalagmites, and are self-supporting, will have a much
+better chance of remaining through the warm season, and lasting till
+the winter, and so increasing in size from year to year. Free
+stalagmites, however, which are formed under fissures capable of
+pouring down a large amount of water on the occasion of a great flood
+of rain, must succumb in time, though not so soon as the supported
+columns.
+
+A curious appearance was presented by a small free stalagmite in the
+retired part of the cave. The surface of the stalagmite was wet, from
+the drops proceeding from a fissure above, and was lightly covered in
+many parts with a calcareous deposit, brought down from the fissures in
+the roof by the water filtering through. The stalagmite was of the
+double-edged-sword shape, and the limestone deposit collected chiefly at
+one of its edges, the edge nearer to that part of the cave where thaw
+prevailed; so that the real edge was a ridge of deposit beyond the edge
+of the ice.[8] Patches of limestone paste lay on many parts of the
+ice-floor.
+
+In the loftier part of the cave, water dropped from the roof to so
+large an extent, that ninety-six drops of water in a minute splashed
+on to a small stone immediately under the main fissure. This stone was
+in the centre of a considerable area of the floor which was clear of
+ice; and it struck me that if the columns were formed by the freezing
+of water dropping from the roof, there ought to have been at some time
+a large column under this, the most plentiful source of water in the
+cave. Accordingly, I found that the edge of the ice round this clear
+area was much thicker than the rest of the ice of the floor, and was
+evidently the remains of the swelling pedestal of a column which had
+been about 12 feet in circumference. This departed column may account
+for a fact which I discovered in another glacière, and found to be of
+very common occurrence, viz., that in large stalagmites there is a
+considerable internal cavity, extending some feet up from the ground,
+and affording room even for a man to walk about inside the column.
+When the melted snows of spring send down to the cave, through the
+fissures of the rock, an abundance of water at a very low
+temperature, and the cave itself is stored with the winter's cold,
+these thicker rings of ice catch first the descending water, and so a
+circular wall, naturally conical, is formed round the area of stones;
+the remaining water either running off through the interstices, or
+forming a floor of ice of less thickness, which yields to the next
+summer's drops. In the course of time, this conical wall rises,
+narrowing always, till a dome-like roof is at length formed, and
+thenceforth the column is solid. Of course, the interior cannot be
+wholly free from ice; and it will be seen from the account of one of
+these cavities, which I explored in the Schafloch, that they are
+decked with ice precisely as might be expected.[9] Another possible
+explanation of this curious and beautiful phenomenon will be given
+hereafter.[10]
+
+The temperature was half a degree lower than when there were three of us
+in the cave two days before. I deposited one of Casella's registering
+thermometers, on wood, on a stone in that part of the floor which was
+free from ice, though there was ice all round it at some little
+distance. The thermometer was well above the surface of the ice, and
+was protected from chance drops of water from the roof.
+
+The next morning I started early from Arzier, having an afternoon
+journey in prospect to the neighbourhood of another glacière, and was
+accompanied by Captain Douglas Smith, of the 4th Regiment. On our way to
+La Genollière, we came across the man who had served as guide the day
+before, and a short conversation respecting the glacière ensued. He had
+only seen it once, many years before, and he held stoutly to the usual
+belief of the peasantry, that the ice is formed in summer, and melts in
+winter; a belief which everything I had then seen contradicted. His last
+words as we parted were, '_Plus il fait chaud, plus ça gèle_;' and,
+paradoxical as it may appear, I believe that some truth was concealed in
+what he said, though not as he meant it. Considering that his ideas were
+confined to his cattle and their requirements, and that water is often
+very difficult to find in that part of the Jura, a _hot_ summer would
+probably mean with him a _dry_ summer, that is, a summer which does not
+send down much water to thaw the columns in the cave. Extra heat in the
+air outside, at any season, does not, as experience of these caves
+proves abundantly, produce very considerable disturbance of their low
+temperature, and so summer water is a much worse enemy than extra summer
+heat; and if the caves could be protected from water in the hot season,
+the columns in them would know how to resist the possible--but very
+small--increase of temperature due to the excess of heat of one summer
+above another. And since the eye is most struck by the appearance of the
+stalagmites and ice-cascades, it may well be that the peasants have seen
+these standing at the end of an unusually hot and dry summer, and have
+thence concluded that hot summers are the best time for the formation of
+ice. Of course, at the beginning of the winter after a hot summer, there
+will be on these terms a larger nucleus of ice; and so it will become
+true that the hotter the year, the more ice there will be, both during
+the summer itself and after the following winter.
+
+The further process of the formation of ice will be this:--the colds of
+early winter will freeze all the water that may be in the glacières from
+the summer's thaw, in such caves as do not possess a drainage, and then
+the frost will have nothing to occupy itself upon but the ice already
+formed, for no water can descend from the frost-bound surface of the
+earth.[11] As soon as the snow begins to melt to so great a degree that
+the fissures are opened up once more, the extremely cold water resulting
+therefrom will descend through the limestone into a cave perfectly dry,
+and filled with an atmosphere many degrees below the freezing point,
+whose frost-power eagerly lays hold of every drop of water which does
+not make its escape in time by the drainage of the cave. Thus the spring
+months will be the great time of the formation of ice, and also of the
+raising of the temperature from some degrees below freezing to the more
+temperate register at which I have generally found it, viz., rather
+above than below 32°. Professor Tyndall very properly likens the
+external atmosphere to a ratchet-wheel, from its property of allowing
+the passage of hot rays down to the surface of the earth, and resisting
+their return: it may equally be so described on other grounds, inasmuch
+as the cold and heavy atmosphere will sink in the winter into the pits
+which lead to glacières, and will refuse to be altogether displaced in
+summer by anything short of solar radiation.
+
+We found the one column of the previous day still standing, though
+evidently in an unhappy state of decay. The sharpness of its edges was
+wholly gone, and it was withered and contorted; there were two cracks
+completely through it, dividing it into three pieces 4 or 5 feet long,
+which were clearly on the point of coming down. Externally, the day was
+fine and warm, and so we found the cave comparatively dry, only one drop
+falling in a minute on to the stone where ninety-six had fallen in the
+same time the day before. The thermometer registered 32° as the greatest
+cold of the night, and still stood at that point when we took it up.
+
+We spent some little time in exploring the neighbourhood of the pits, in
+order to find, if possible, the outlet for the drainage, but the ground
+did not fall away sufficiently for any source from so low an origin to
+show itself. The search was suggested by what I remembered of the
+Glacière of S. Georges three years before, where the people believe that
+a small streamlet which issues from the bottom of a steep rock, some
+distance off, owes its existence to the glacière.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 1: In this neighbourhood, the _montagne_ of any _commune_ is
+represented by the feminine form of the name of the village: thus,
+_L'Arzière_ is the _montagne_ of Arzier, and _La Bassine_ of Bassin.
+This has a curious effect in the case of some villages--such, for
+instance, as S. Georges--one of the landmarks of the district between
+the lakes of Joux and Geneva being the _Châlet de la S. Georges_, a
+grammatical anomaly which puzzles a stranger descending the southernmost
+slope of the Jura from the Asile de Marchairuz. This law of formation is
+not universal; for the _montagnes_ of Rolle and S. Livres are called the
+_Prè de Rolle_ and the _Prè de S. Livres_, while the _Fruitière de Nyon_
+is the rich upland possession of the town of that name.]
+
+[Footnote 2: Probably a relic of the time when the earlier Barons of
+Coppet possessed this district. The families of Grandson, Lesdiguières,
+and Dohna successively held the barony; and in later times the title _de
+Coppet_ hid a name more widely known, for on the Châlet of _Les
+Biolles_, some distance to the east of La Baronne, the name of _Auguste
+de Staël de Holstein de Coppet_ is carved, after the fashion of Swiss
+châlets. This was Madame de Staël's son, who built Biolles in 1817; it
+was afterwards sold to the commune of Nyon, and finally purchased by
+Arzier two or three years ago.]
+
+[Footnote 3: 'Cornhill Magazine,' June 1863, 'How we slept at the Châlet
+des Chèvres.']
+
+[Footnote 4: This is only a guess, made from a comparison with the
+ascertained heights of neighbouring points.]
+
+[Footnote 5: The patois of Vaud has a prettier name for this kind of
+stone--_le sex_ (or _scex) qui plliau_, the weeping-stone.]
+
+[Footnote 6: I brought one of these to England, and am told that it is
+the _Stenophylax hieroglyphicus_ of Stephens, or something very like
+that fly.]
+
+[Footnote 7: Since writing this, I have been told that some English
+officers who visited the cave in the August of 1864 found no ice in any
+part.]
+
+[Footnote 8: See also p. 231.]
+
+[Footnote 9: P. 145.]
+
+[Footnote 10: P. 301.]
+
+[Footnote 11: It is possible that the freezing of the surface may play a
+curious part in the phenomena of the spring season in such caves.
+Supposing the surface to be completely frost-bound, all atmospheric
+pressure will be removed from the upper surface of the water in the long
+fissures, and thus water may be held in suspension, in the centre of
+large masses of fissured rock, during the winter months. The first
+thorough thaw will have the same effect as the removal of the thumb from
+the upper orifice in the case of the hand-shower-bath; and the water
+thus rained down into the cave will have a temperature sufficiently high
+to destroy some portion of the cold stored up by the descent of the
+heavy atmosphere of winter, or at least to melt out the ice which may
+have blocked up the lower ends of the fissures.]
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+THE GLACIÈRE OF S. GEORGES, IN THE JURA.
+
+
+The best way of reaching this glacière from Geneva would be to take the
+steamer to Rolle, or the train to one of the neighbouring stations,
+between Geneva and Lausanne, and thence pass up the slope of the Jura by
+the road which leads through Gimel. For the train, the Allaman station
+would be the most convenient, as an omnibus runs from Allaman to
+Aubonne, where the poste for Gimel may be caught. But from Arzier there
+is a short cut of less than two hours along the side of the hills,
+leaving that village by a deep gorge not unfitly named _L'Enfer_, and a
+dark wood which retains an odour of more savage bygone times in its name
+of the 'Bear's Wood,' as containing a cavern where an old bear was
+detected in the act of attempting to winter.[12]
+
+The village of S. Georges has very respectable accommodation for a
+single traveller, _au Cavalier_. The common day-room will be found
+untenable by most Englishmen, however largely they may delight in
+rough quarters; but there is a double-bedded room at the end of a
+bricked passage up-stairs, which serves well for bedroom and
+sitting-room in one. The chief drawback in this arrangement is, that
+the landlady inexorably removes all washing apparatus during the day,
+holding that a pitcher and basin are unseemly ornaments for a
+sitting-room. The deal table, of course, serves both for dressing and
+for feeding purposes, but it is fortunately so long that an end can be
+devoted to each; and on the whole it is possible to become
+considerably attached to the room, with its three airy windows, and
+the cool unceasing hum of a babbling fountain in the village-street
+below. The Auberge is a large building, with a clock-tower of
+considerable height, containing the clock of the commune: as soon as
+the candle is put out at night, it becomes painfully evident that a
+rectangular projection in one corner of the room is in connection with
+this tower, and in fact forms a part of the abode of the pendulum,
+which plods on with audible vigour, growing more and more audible as
+the hours pass on, and making a stealthy pervading noise, as if a
+couple of lazy ghosts were threshing phantom wheat. The clocks of
+Vaud, too, are in the habit of striking the hour twice, with a short
+interval; so that if anyone is not sure what the clock meant the first
+time, he has a second chance of counting the strokes. This is no doubt
+an admirable plan under ordinary circumstances, but it does certainly
+try the patience of a sleepless dyspeptic after a surfeit of
+café-au-lait and honey; and when he has counted carefully the first
+time, and is bristling with the consciousness that it is only
+midnight, it is aggravating in the extreme to have the long slow story
+told a second time within a few feet of his head.
+
+The Cavalier had retained a guide overnight, Henri Renaud by name, and
+he appeared punctually at eight o'clock in the morning, got up in the
+short-tail coat of the country, and a large green umbrella with mighty
+ribs of whalebone. The weather was extremely unpleasant, a cold pitiless
+rain rendering all attempts at protection unavailing; but, fortunately,
+the glacière is only an hour and a quarter from the village. The path is
+tolerably steep, leading across the _petit Pré de Rolle_, and through
+woods of beech and fir, till the summit of one of the minor ridges of
+the Jura is reached, whence a short descent leads to the mouth of the
+glacière, something more than 4,000 feet above the sea. The ground here
+slopes down towards the north; and on the slope, among fir-trees, an
+irregular circular basin is seen, some seven or eight yards across,[13]
+and perhaps two yards deep, at the bottom of which are two holes. One of
+these holes is open, and as the guide and I--for my sisters remained at
+Arzier--stood on the neck of ground between the holes, we could see the
+snow lying at the bottom of the cave; the other is covered with trunks
+of trees, laid over the mouth to prevent the rays of the sun from
+striking down on to the ice. This protection has become necessary in
+consequence of an incautious felling of wood in the immediate
+neighbourhood of the mouth, which has exposed the ice to the assaults of
+the weather. The commune has let the glacière for a term of nine years,
+receiving six or seven hundred francs in all; and the _fermier_ extracts
+the ice, and sells it in Geneva and Lausanne. In hot summers, the
+supplies of the artificial ice-houses fail; and then the hotel-keepers
+have recourse to the stores laid up for them by nature in the Glacières
+of S. Georges and S. Livres. Hence the importance of protecting the
+ice; the necessity for so doing arising in this case from the fact that
+the entrance to the cave is by a hole in the roof, which exposes the ice
+to direct radiation, unlike all other glacières, excepting perhaps the
+_Cueva del Hielo_ on the Peak of Teneriffe.[14]
+
+Autumn appears to be the usual time for cutting the ice, when it is
+carried from the cave on men's backs as far as the commencement of the
+rough mountain-road, and is there packed on chars, and so conveyed to
+the nearest railway station. Renaud had worked in the cave for two
+years, and asserted that they did not choose the night for carrying
+the ice down to the station, and did not even care to choose a cool
+day. He believed that, in the autumn of 1863, they loaded two chars a
+day for fifteen days, and each char took from 40 to 50 quintaux; the
+quintal containing 50 kilos, or 100 livres.[15] In Professor Pictet's
+time (1822) this glacière supplied the Hospital of Geneva, whose
+income depended in part on its privilege of _revente_ of all ice sold
+in the town, with 25 quintaux every other day during the summer. In my
+anxiety to learn the exact amount of ice now supplied by the glacière,
+I determined to find out the _fermier_; but Renaud could tell nothing
+of him beyond the fact that he lived in Geneva, which some promiscuous
+person supplemented by the information that his name was Boucqueville,
+and that he had something to do with comestibles. On entering upon a
+hunt for M. Boucqueville a fortnight later, it turned out that no one
+had heard of such a person, and the Directory professed equal
+ignorance; but, under the head of 'Comestibles,' there appeared a
+Gignoux-Bocquet, No. 34, Marché. Thirty-four, Marché, said, yes--M.
+Bocquet--it was quite true: nevertheless, it was clear that monsieur
+meant Sebastian aîné, on the Molard. The Molard knew only a younger
+Sebastian, but suggested that the right man was probably M.
+Gignoux-Chavaz, over the way; and when it was objected that
+Gignoux-Bocquet, and not Gignoux-Chavaz, was the name, the Molard
+replied that it made no matter,--Chavaz or Bocquet, it was all the
+same. When M. Gignoux-Chavaz was found, he said that he certainly was
+a man who had something to do with a glacière, but, instead of farming
+the Glacière of S. Georges, he had only bought a considerable quantity
+of ice two years ago from the Glacière of S. Livres, and he did not
+believe that the _fermier_ of S. Georges lived in Geneva. Part of the
+confusion was due to the custom of placing a wife's maiden name after
+her husband's name: thus Gignoux-Chavaz implies that a male Gignoux
+has married a female Chavaz; and when a Swiss marries an English lady
+with a very English name, the result in the Continental mouth is
+sufficiently curious.
+
+On arriving at the entrance to the glacière, the end of a suggestive
+ladder is seen under the protecting trunks; and after one or two steps
+have been taken down the ladder, the effect of the cave below is
+extremely remarkable, the main features being a long wall covered
+thickly with white ice in sheets, a solid floor of darker-coloured ice,
+and a high pyramid of snow reaching up towards the uncovered hole
+already spoken of. The atmosphere of the cave is damp, and this causes
+the ladders to fall speedily to decay, so that they are by no means to
+be trusted: indeed, an early round gave way under one of my sisters,
+when they visited the cave with me in 1861, and suggested a clear fall
+of 60 feet on to a cascade of ice.[16] There are three ladders, one
+below the other, and a hasty measurement gave their lengths as 20, 16,
+and 28 feet. The rock-roof is only a few feet thick in the neighbourhood
+of the hole of entrance.
+
+[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO THE GLACIÈRE OF S. GEORGES.]
+
+The total length of the cave is 110 feet, lying NE. and SW., in the line
+of the main chain of the Jura. The lowest part of the floor is a sea of
+ice of unknown depth, 45 feet long by 15 broad; and Renaud tried my
+powers of belief by asserting that in 1834 the level of this floor was
+higher by half the height of the cave than now; a statement, however,
+which is fully borne out by Professor Pictet's measurements in 1822,
+when the depth of the glacière was less than 30 feet. Indeed, the floor
+had sunk considerably since my previous visit, when it was all at the
+same level down to the further end of the cave; whereas now, as will be
+seen in the section, there was a platform of stones resting on ice at
+that end. There are two large fissures passing into the rock, one only
+of which can be represented in the section, and these were full of white
+ice, not owing its whiteness apparently to the admixture of air in
+bubbles, but firm and compact, and very hard, almost like porcelain.
+Small stalactites hung from round fissures in the roof, formed of the
+same sort of ice, and broken off short, much as the end of a leaden pipe
+is sometimes seen to project from a wall. With this exception, there was
+no ice hanging from the roof, though there were abundant signs of very
+fine columns which had already yielded to the advancing warmth: one of
+these still remained, in the form of broken blocks of ice, in the
+neighbourhood of the open hole in the roof, immediately below which hole
+the stones of the floor were completely bare, and the thermometer stood
+at 50°. At the far end of the cave, the thermometer gave something less
+than 32°; a difference so remarkable, at the same horizontal level, that
+I am inclined to doubt the accuracy of the figures, though they were
+registered on the spot with due care. The uncovered hole, it must be
+remembered, is so large, and so completely open, that the rain falls
+freely on to the stones on the floor below.
+
+By far the most striking part of this glacière is the north-west
+wall, which is covered with a sheet of ice 70 feet long, and 22 feet
+high at the highest part: in the neighbourhood of the ladders, this
+turns the corner of the cave, and passes up for about 9 feet under the
+second ladder. The general thickness of the sheet is from a foot to a
+foot and a half; and this is the chief source from which the _fermier_
+draws the ice, as it is much more easily quarried than the solid
+floor. Some of my friends went to the cave a few weeks after my visit,
+and found that the whole sheet had been pared off and carried away. On
+some parts of the wall the sheet was not completely continuous, being
+formed of broad and distinct cascades, connected by cross channels of
+ice, and uniting at their upper and lower ends, thus presenting many
+curious and ornamental groupings. On cutting through this ice, it was
+found not to lie closely on the rock, a small intermediate space being
+generally left, almost filled with minute limestone particles in a
+very wet state; and the whole cavern showed signs of more or less
+thaw.
+
+[Illustration: THE GLACIÈRE OF S. GEORGES. VERTICAL SECTIONS OF THE
+GLACIÈRE OF S. GEORGES.]
+
+It was natural to examine the structure of the ice in this glacière,
+after what we had observed on La Genollière. The same prismatic
+structure was universal in the sheet on the wall, and in the blocks
+which lay here and there on the floor and formed the sole remains of
+former columns. It was to be observed also in many parts of the
+ice-floor itself. The base of one large column still remained standing
+in its original position, and its upper end presented a tolerably
+accurate horizontal section of the column. The centre was composed of
+turbid ice, round which limpid prisms were horizontally arranged,
+diverging like the feathers of a fan; then came a ring of turbid ice,
+and then a second concentric ring of limpid prisms, diverging in the
+same manner as those which formed the inner ring. There were in all
+three or four of these concentric rings, the details showing a
+considerable amount of confusion and interference: the general law,
+however, was most evident, and has held in all the similar columns which
+I have since examined in other glacières. The rings were not accurately
+circular, but presented rather the appearance of having been formed
+round a roughly-fluted pillar on an elliptical base.
+
+The examination of the ice on the wall gave some curious results. The
+horizontal arrangement of the prisms, which we had found to prevail in
+vertical columns, was here modified to suit the altered conditions of
+the case, and the axes of the prisms changed their inclination so as to
+be always perpendicular to the surface on which the ice lay, as far as
+could be determined by the eye. Thus, in following the many changes of
+inclination of the wall, the axes of the prisms stood at many different
+angles with the vertical, from a horizontal position where the wall
+chanced to be vertical, to a vertical position on the horizontal ledges
+of the rock. The extreme edges, too, of the ice, presented a very
+peculiar appearance. The general thickness, as has been said, varied
+from a foot to a foot and a half; and this diminished gradually along
+horizontal lines, till, at the edges of the sheet, where the ice ceased,
+it became of course nothing. The extreme edge was formed of globular or
+hemispherical beads of ice, like the freezing of a sweating-stone, lying
+so loosely on the rock that I could sweep them off in detail with one
+hand, and catch them with the other as they fell. Passing farther on
+towards the thicker parts of the ice, these beads stood up higher and
+higher, losing their roundness, and becoming compressed into prisms of
+all shapes, in very irregular imitation of the cellular tissue in
+plants, the axes of the prisms following the generally-observed law.
+There seems to be nothing in this phenomenon which cannot be accounted
+for by the supposition of gradual thaw of small amount being applied to
+a sheet of prismatic ice.
+
+One fact was remarkable from its universal appearance. Wherever an
+incision was made in this sheet of ice, the prisms snapped off at the
+depth of an inch, and could be mowed down like corn by means of a stout
+knife. Although they broke naturally at this constant depth, and left a
+surface of limpid ice without any signs of external or internal
+division, still the laminae obtained by chiselling this lower surface
+carefully, broke up regularly into the shapes to be expected in sections
+of prisms cut at right angles to the axis. The roughness of my
+instruments made it impossible to discover how far this extended, and
+whether it ceased to be the case at any given depth in the ice.
+
+The sea of ice on the floor was in a very wet state at the surface,
+being at a lower level than the stones on to which the rain from the
+open hole fell; and here the prismatic structure was not apparent to the
+eye, nor do I know whether it existed at all. In the Glacière of La
+Genollière I carried a large block of perfectly prismatic ice into the
+outer cave, where it was exposed to the free currents of air passing
+from the pit of entrance to the hole newly opened by the falling in of
+the ground; and, two days after, the external lines were scarcely
+perceptible, while on the occasion of our third visit I found that they
+had entirely disappeared, and the whole block was rapidly following
+their example. This disappearance of the surface-lines under the action
+of atmospheric thaw is probably the same thing as their absence when the
+flooring of ice is thinly covered with water. Wherever the flooring rose
+slightly towards the edges of the sea of ice, the usual structure
+appeared again.
+
+There were no currents of air in the cave, the candles burning steadily
+through the whole time of our visit. Excepting for the purpose of
+detecting disturbance in the air, there is no need of candles, as the
+two holes in the roof supply sufficient light. Some account of the
+careful observations made here by M. Thury, at different seasons of the
+year, will be found in other parts of this book. We passed, on our
+return, by the source of water which springs from the foot of a rock at
+some distance from the glacière, and is supposed to form the outlet for
+the drainage of the cave; but it is difficult to understand how this can
+be the case, considering the form and character of the intervening
+ground.
+
+The two ice-caves so far described are the least interesting of all that
+I have visited; but a peasant informed me, a day or two after, that if
+we had penetrated to the back of the pyramid of snow which lay half
+under the open hole, being the remains of the large collection which is
+formed there in the winter, we might have found a deep pit which is
+sometimes exposed by the melting of the snow. He had some idea that its
+depth was 30 feet a few years ago, and that its sides were solid ice. I
+shall have occasion to mention such pits in another glacière; if one
+does exist here, it has probably been quarried in the ice by the drops
+from the hole in the roof, and there might be some interest attached to
+an attempt to investigate it.[17]
+
+We reached S. Georges again in a wretched state of wet and cold, and
+Renaud went off to bed, and imbibed abundant and super-abundant
+kirsch,--at least, when drawn thence the next morning, his manner left
+no doubt about either the fact or the abundance of the potations
+overnight. Warned by many experiences, I had gone no nearer to a
+specification of the bill of fare than a vague suggestion that
+_quelque chose_ must be forthcoming, with an additional stipulation
+that this must be something more than mere onions and fat. The
+landlady's rendering of _quelque chose_ was very agreeable, but, for
+the benefit of future diners _au Cavalier_, it is as well to say that
+those who do not like anisette had better make a private arrangement
+with their hostess, otherwise they will swallow with their soup an
+amount sufficient for many generations of the drag: they may also
+safely order savoury rice, with browned veal and wine-sauce, which is
+evidently a strong point with the Cavalier. All meals there are
+picturesque; for the omelette lay on the Castle of Grandson and a part
+of the Lake of Neufchâtel, while the butter reposed on the ruined
+Cathedral of Sion, and the honey distilled pleasantly from the comb on
+to the walls of Wufflens. No one should put any trust in the spoons,
+which are constructed apparently of pewter shavings in a chronic state
+of semi-fusion. On the evening of the second day, the landlady allowed
+a second knife at tea, as the knife-of-all-work had begun to knock up
+under the heavy strain upon its powers; but this supplementary
+instrument was of the ornamental kind, and, like other ornamental
+things, broke down at a crisis, which took the form of a piece of
+crust.
+
+Lest this account should raise anyone's expectations too high, it is as
+well to add that they have no snuffers in S. Georges, beyond such as
+Nature provided when she gave men fingers; and they burn attenuated
+tallow candles with full-bodied wicks. Also, the tea is flavoured with
+vanille, unless that precious flavouring is omitted by private contract.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 12: On our previous visit, in 1861, we passed from Arzier
+through Longirod and Marchissy, stopping to measure and admire the huge
+lime-tree in the churchyard of the latter village. Our Swiss companion
+on that occasion was anxious that we should carry home some ice from the
+cave; and as the communal law forbade the removal of the ice by
+strangers, he hunted up a cousin in Marchissy, and sent him with a
+_hotte_ across country, while we went innocently by the ordinary route
+through S. Georges. The cousin, however, contrived to lose himself in
+the woods, and we never heard of him again.]
+
+[Footnote 13: The size of this basin is exaggerated in the engraving on
+page 24, owing to the roughness of the original sketch.]
+
+[Footnote 14: See p. 253.]
+
+[Footnote 15: For further details on this point see pages 54 and 83.]
+
+[Footnote 16: These ladders have at best but little stability, as they
+consist of two uprights, careless about the coincidence of the holes,
+with bars poked loosely through and left to fall out or stay in as they
+choose, the former being the prevailing choice. One of the ladders
+happened to be firmer than the generality of its kind; but,
+unfortunately, its legs were of unequal lengths, and so it turned round
+with one of my sisters, leaving her clinging like a cat to the under
+side. When the bars are sufficiently loose, a difference of a few inches
+in the lengths of the legs is not of so much importance.]
+
+[Footnote 17: M. Thury found this hole, and fathomed it to a depth of
+6-1/2 mètres.]
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+THE LOWER GLACIÈRE OF THE PRÉ DE S. LIVRES.
+
+
+I had intended to walk on from S. Georges to Bière, after returning from
+the glacière last described, and thence, the next morning, to the Pré de
+S. Livres, the mountain pasturage of the commune of S. Livres,[18] a
+village near Aubonne. But Renaud advised a change of plan, and the
+result showed that his advice was good. He said that the _fermier_ of
+the Glacière of S. Livres generally lived in S. Georges, and, if he were
+at home, would be the best guide to the glacière; while the distance
+from S. Georges was, if anything, rather less than the distance from
+Bière; so that by remaining at the Cavalier for another night the walk
+to Bière would be saved, and the possibility of finding no competent
+guide there would be evaded. Jules Mignot, the farmer in question, was
+at home, and promised to go to the glacière in the morning, pledging his
+word and all that he was worth for the existence and soundness of the
+ladders; a matter of considerable importance, for M. Thury had been
+unable to reach the ice, as also my sisters, by reason of a failure in
+this respect.
+
+In the course of the evening Mignot came in, and confidentially took the
+other chair. He wished to state that he had three _associés_ in working
+the glacière, and that one of them knew of a similar cave, half an hour
+from the one more generally known; the _associé_ had found it two years
+before, and had not seen it since, and he believed that no one else knew
+where it was to be found. If I cared to visit it, the _associé_ would
+accompany us, but there was some particular reason--here he relapsed
+into patois--why this other man could not by himself serve as guide to
+both glacières. As this meant that I must have two guides, and suggested
+that perhaps the right rendering of _associé_ was 'accomplice,' the
+negotiation nearly came to a violent end; but the farmer was so
+extremely explanatory and convincing, that I gave him another chance,
+asking him how much the two meant to have, and telling him that,
+although I could not see the necessity for two guides, I only wished to
+do what was right. He expressed his conviction of the truth of this
+statement with such fervour, that I could only hope his moderation might
+be as great as his faith. He took the usual five minutes to make up his
+mind what to say, going through abstruse calculations with a brow
+demonstratively bent, and, to all appearance, reckoning up exactly what
+was the least it could be done for, consistently with his duty to
+himself and his family. Then he asked, with an air of resignation, as if
+he were throwing himself and his _associé_ away, 'Fifteen francs, then,
+would monsieur consider too much?' 'Certainly, far too much; twelve
+francs would be enormous. But, for the pleasure of his company and that
+of his friend, I should be happy to give that sum for the two, and they
+must feed themselves.' He jumped at the offer, with an alacrity which
+showed that I had much under-estimated his margin in putting it at three
+francs; and with many expressions of anticipatory gratitude, and
+promises of axes and ropes in case of emergency, he bowed himself out.
+The event proved that both the men were really valuable, and they got
+something over the six francs a-piece.
+
+The rain had been steadily increasing in intensity for the last
+twenty-four hours, from the insidious steeping of a Scotch mist to the
+violence of a chronic thunderstorm, and had about reached this crisis
+when we started in the morning for the Pré de S. Livres. I had already
+tested its effects before breakfast, in a search for the Renaud of the
+day before, who had made statements regarding the ice at S. Georges, and
+the time of cutting it, which a night's reflection showed to be false.
+To search for Henri Renaud in the village of S. Georges, was something
+like making an enquiry of a certain porter for the rooms of Mr. John
+Jones. The landlady of the Cavalier was responsible for the first stage
+of the journey, asserting that he lived two doors beyond the next
+auberge, evidently with a feeling that it was wrong so far to patronise
+the rival house as to live near it. That, however, was not the same
+Henri Renaud; and a house a few yards off was recommended as a likely
+place, where, instead of Henri, a Louis Renaud turned up, shivering
+under the eaves in company with the _fermier_, who introduced Louis in
+due form as the accomplice. They received conjointly and submissively a
+lecture on the absurdity of calling it a rainy morning, and the
+impossibility of staying at home, even if it came on much worse, and
+then pointed the way to the true Henri Renaud, half-way down the
+village. When I arrived at the place indicated, and consulted a
+promiscuous Swiss as to the abode of the object of my search, he
+exclaimed, 'Henri Renaud? I am he.' 'But,' it was objected, 'it is the
+_marchand de bois_ who is wanted.' 'Precisely, Henri Renaud, marchand de
+bois; it is I.' 'But, it is the cutter of ice in the glacière.' 'Ah, a
+different Henri. That Henri is in bed in the house yonder,' and so at
+last he was found. When finally unearthed, Henri confessed that when he
+had said _spring_ the day before, he ought to have said _autumn_, and
+that by autumn he meant November and December. Enquiries elsewhere
+showed that the end of summer was what he really meant, if he meant to
+tell the truth.
+
+Our route for the glacière followed the high road which leads by the
+Asile de Marchairuz to La Vallée, as far as the well-known Châlet de la
+S. Georges; and then the character of the way changed rapidly for the
+worse, and we took to the wet woods. After a time, the wood ceased for a
+while, and a large expanse of smooth rock showed itself, rising slightly
+from the horizontal, and so slippery in its present wet condition that
+we could not pass up it. Then woods again, and then the montagnes of
+_Sous la Roche_, and _La Foireuse_, till at last, in two hours, the Pré
+de S. Livres was achieved. The fog was so dense that nothing could be
+seen of the general lie of the country; but the _thalweg_ was a
+sufficient guide, and after due perseverance we came upon the glacière,
+not many yards from that line, on the north slope of the open valley,
+about 4,500 feet above the sea.
+
+To prevent cattle from falling into the pit, a wall has been built round
+the trees in which it lies. The circumference of this wall is 435 feet,
+but there are so many trees at the upper end of the enclosure that this
+gives an exaggerated idea of the size of the pit. The men fed while the
+preliminary measurements were being made; and when this was
+accomplished, they pressed their bottle of wine upon me so hospitably
+that I was obliged to antedate the result which its appearance promised,
+and plead _mal d'estomac_. Of all things, it is most unwise to give a
+reason for a negative, and so it proved in this instance; for they
+promptly felicitated themselves and me on the good luck by which it
+happened that they had brought a wine famous on all the côte as a remedy
+for that somewhat vague complaint--a homoeopathic remedy in allopathic
+doses.
+
+The glacière is entered by a natural pit in the gentle slope of grass,
+not much unlike the pit of La Genollière, but wider, and covered at
+the bottom with snow.[19] The first ladder leads down to a ledge of
+rock on which bushes and trees grow, and this ledge it is possible to
+reach without a ladder; the next ladder leads on to the deep snow, and
+descent by any ordinary manner of climbing is in this case quite
+impossible.[20] The snow slopes down towards a lofty arch in the rock
+which forms the north-west side of the pit, and this arch is the
+entrance to the glacière; it is 28-3/4 feet wide, and as soon as we
+passed under it we found that the snow became ice, and it was
+necessary to cut steps; for the surface of underground ice is so
+slippery, unlike the surface of ordinary glaciers, that the slightest
+defect from the horizontal makes the use of the axe advisable. The
+stream of ice falls gradually, spreading out laterally like a fan, so
+as to accommodate itself to the shape of the cave, which it fills up
+to the side walls; it increases in breadth from 28-3/4 feet at the top
+to 72 feet at the bottom of the slope, and the distance from the top
+of the first ladder to this point is 177 feet. Here we were arrested
+by a strange wall of ice 22 feet high, down which there seemed at
+first no means of passing; but finding an old ladder frozen into a
+part of the wall, we chopped out holes between the upper steps, and so
+descended, landing on a flooring composed of broken blocks and columns
+of ice, with a certain amount of what seemed to be drifted snow. This
+wall of ice, which was 72 feet long and 22 feet high, was not
+vertical, but sloped the wrong way, caving in under the stream of ice;
+and from the projecting top of the wall a long fringe of vast icicles
+hung down, along the whole breadth of the fan. The effect of this was,
+that we could walk between the ice-wall and the icicles as in a
+cloister, with solid ice on the one hand and Gothic arcades of ice on
+the other, the floor being likewise of ice, and the roof formed by the
+junction of the wall with the top of the icicle-arcade. The floor of
+this cloister was not 22 feet below the top of the wall, for it formed
+the upper part of a gentle descending slope of ice, rounded off like a
+fall of water, which seemed to flow from the lower part of the wall;
+and the height of 22 feet is reckoned from the foot of this slope,
+which terminated at a few feet of horizontal distance from the foot of
+the wall. The wall of ice was plainly marked with horizontal bands,
+corresponding, no doubt, to a number of years of successive deposits;
+sometimes a few leaves, but more generally a strip of minuter débris,
+signified the divisions between the annual layers. There had been many
+columns of ice from fissures in the rock, but all had fallen except
+one large ice-cascade, which flowed from a hole in the side of the
+cave on to the main stream, about two-thirds of the distance down from
+the snow. One particularly grand column had stood on the very edge of
+the ice-wall, and its remains now lay below.
+
+The flooring of mingled ice and snow, on which we stood, sloped through
+about five vertical feet from the foot of the wall, and came to an end
+on broken rocks, from which the terminal wall of the cave sprang up. The
+effect of the view from this point, as we looked up the long slope of
+ice to where the ladders and a small piece of sky were visible, was most
+striking. The accompanying engraving is from a sketch which attempts to
+represent it; the reality is much less prim, and much more full of
+beautiful detail, but still the engraving gives a fair idea of the
+general appearance of the cave.
+
+While I was occupied in making sketches and measurements, Mignot was
+engaged in chopping discontentedly at the floor, in two or three
+different places. At length he seemed to find a place to his mind, and
+chopped perseveringly till his axe went through, and then he suggested
+that we should follow. The hole was not tempting. It opened into the
+blackest possible darkness, and Mignot thrust his legs through,
+feeling for a foothold, which, by lowering himself almost to his
+armpits, he soon discovered: the foothold, however, proved to be a
+loose stone, which gave way under him and bounded down, apparently
+over an incline of like stones, to a distance which sounded very
+alarming. But he would not give in, and at length, descending still
+further by means of the snow in which the hole was made, he was
+rewarded by finding a solid block which bore his weight, and he
+speedily disappeared altogether, summoning me to follow. I proposed to
+light a candle first, not caring to go through such a hole, in such a
+floor, into no one knew what; but he was so very peremptory, evidently
+thinking that if he had gone through without a pioneering candle his
+monsieur might do the same, that there was nothing for it but to obey.
+The hole was very near the junction of the floor with the slope of
+stones where the floor terminated, and the space between the hole and
+the slope seemed to be filled up with a confused mass of snow and ice,
+in which the snow largely predominated; so that there was good hold
+for hands and feet in passing down to the stones, which might be about
+7 feet below the upper surface of the floor. Here we crouched in the
+darkness, with our faces turned away from the presumed slope of
+stones, till a light was struck. The accomplice did not find it in the
+bond that he should go down, and he preferred to reserve his energies
+for his own peculiar glacière.
+
+[Illustration: LOWER GLACIÈRE OF THE PRÉ DE S. LIVRES.]
+
+As soon as the candle had mastered a portion of the darkness, we found
+that we were squatting on a steeply sloping descent of large blocks of
+stone, while in face of us was a magnificent wall of ice, evidently the
+continuation of the wall above, marked most plainly with horizontal
+lines. This wall passed down vertically to join the slope on which we
+were, at a depth below our feet which the light of the candle had not
+yet fathomed. The horizontal bands were so clear, that, if we had
+possessed climbing apparatus, we could have counted the number of layers
+with accuracy. Of course we scrambled down the stones, and found after a
+time that the angle formed by the ice-wall and the slope of stones was
+choked up at the bottom by large pieces of rock, one piled on another
+just as they had fallen from the higher parts. These blocks were so
+large, that we were able to get down among the interstices, in a spiral
+manner, for some little distance; and when we were finally stopped,
+still the ice-wall passed on below our feet, and there was no possible
+chance of determining to what depth it went. The atmosphere at this
+point was a sort of frozen vapour, most unpleasant in all respects, and
+the candles burned very dimly. The thermometer stood at 32°, half-way
+down the slope of stones.
+
+We were able to stretch a string in a straight line from the lowest
+point we reached, through the interstices of the blocks of stone, and
+up to the entrance-hole, and this measurement gave 50 feet.
+Considering the inclination of the upper ice-floor, and the sharpness
+of the angle between the wall of ice and the line of our descent to
+this lowest point, I believe that 50 feet will fairly represent the
+height of the ice-wall from this point to the foot of the slope from
+the upper wall; so that 72 feet will be the whole depth of ice, from
+the top of the third ladder to the point where our further progress
+downwards was arrested. The correctness of this calculation depends
+upon the honesty of Mignot, who had charge of the farther end of the
+string, and was proud of the wonders of his cave. A dishonest man
+might easily, under the circumstances, have pulled up a few feet more
+of string than was necessary, but 50 feet seemed in no way an
+improbable result of the measurement.
+
+[Illustration: SECTION OF THE LOWER GLACIÈRE OF THE PRÉ DE S. LIVRES.]
+
+The ice was as solid and firm as can well be conceived. The horizontal
+bands would seem to prove conclusively that it was no coating of greater
+or less thickness on the face of a vertical wall of rock, an idea which
+might suggest itself to anyone who had not seen it, and I think it
+probable that the amount of ice represented in the section of the cave
+is not an exaggeration. We were unable to measure the whole length of
+the wall in the lower cave, from the large number of blocks of stone
+which had fallen at one end, and lay against its face. Probably, from
+the nature of the case, it was not so long as the 72 feet of wall above;
+but we measured 50 feet, and could see it still passing on to the right
+hand as we faced it. In trying to penetrate farther along the face, I
+found a wing of the brown fly we had seen in considerable abundance on
+the ice in La Genollière, frozen into the remains of a column.
+
+There was so very much to be observed on all sides, and the measurements
+took up so much time, owing to the peculiar difficulties which attended
+them, that I did not examine with sufficient care the curious floor of
+ice through which we cut our way to the lower cavern. Neither did I
+notice the roof of the cavern thus reached, which may be very different
+from the shape of the upper surface of the floor composing it. If the
+ice-wall goes straight up, and the roof is formed of the ice-floor
+alone, then it is a very remarkable feature indeed. But, more probably,
+the lower wall leans over more and more towards the top, and so forms as
+it were a part of the roof. It is possible that, as the wall has grown,
+each successive annual layer has projected farther and farther, till at
+last some year very favourable to the increase of ice has carried the
+projection for that year nearly to the opposite stones, and then an
+unfavourable year or two would form the foot of the upper wall. This
+seems more probable, from the loose constitution of the floor at the
+point where it joins the stones, as if it were there only made up of
+drift and débris, while the part of the floor nearer the foot of the
+wall is solid ice. It has been suggested to me that possibly water
+accumulates in the time of greatest thaw to a very large extent in the
+lower parts of the cave, and the ice-floor is formed where the frost
+first takes hold of this water. But the slope of the ice-floor is
+against this theory, to a certain extent; and the amount of water
+necessary to fill the cavity would be so enormous, that it is contrary
+to all experience to imagine such a collection, especially as the cave
+showed no signs of present thaw. The appearance of the rocks, too, in
+the lower cave, and the surface of the ice-wall there, gave no
+indications of the action of water; and there was no trace of ice among
+the stones, as there certainly would have been if water had filled the
+cave, and gradually retired before the attacks of frost, or in
+consequence of the opening up of drainage. There were pieces of the
+trunks of trees, also, and large bones, lying about at different levels
+on the rocks. I never searched for bones in these caves, owing to the
+absence of the stalagmitic covering which preserves cavern-bones from
+decay; nor did I take any notice of such as presented themselves without
+search, for the _bergers_ are in the habit of throwing the carcases of
+deceased cows into any deep hole in the neighbourhood of the place where
+the carcases may be found, in consequence of the general belief that
+living cows go mad if they find the grave of a companion; so that I
+should probably have made a laborious collection of the bones of the
+_bos domesticus_. This belief of the bergers respecting the cows is
+supported by several circumstantial and apparently trustworthy accounts
+of fearful fights among herds of cattle over the grave of some of the
+herd. The sight of a companion's blood is said to have a similar effect
+upon them. Thus a small pasturage between Anzeindaz and the Col de
+Cheville, on the border of the cantons Vaud and Valais, is still called
+_Boulaire_ from legendary times, when the herdsmen of Vaud (then Berne)
+won back from certain Valaisan thieves the cattle the latter were
+carrying off from La Varraz. Some of the cows were wounded in the
+battle, and the sight of their blood drove the others mad, so that they
+fought till almost all the herd was destroyed; whence the name
+Boulaire, from _ébouëler_, to disembowel,--a word formed from _bouë_,
+the patois for _boyau_.
+
+When we left the lower darkness and ascended to the floor of ice once
+more, Mignot expressed a desire to see my attempt at a sketch of the
+glacière from that point, as he had been much struck during his
+negotiatory visit of the night before by the sketch of the entrance to
+the Glacière of S. Georges, chiefly because he had guessed what it was
+meant for. He was evidently disappointed with the representation of his
+own cave, for he could see nothing but a network of lines, with
+unintelligible words written here and there, and after some hesitation
+he confessed that it was not the least like it. A little explanation
+soon set that right, and then he began to plead vigorously for the wall
+which surrounded the trees at the mouth of the pit. Why was it not put
+in? He was told, because it could not be seen from below; but
+nevertheless he strongly urged its introduction, on the ground that he
+had built it himself, and it was such a well-built wall; facts which far
+more than balanced any little impossibility that might otherwise have
+prevented its appearance. After we had reached the grass of the outer
+world again, he made me sketch the entrance to the pit, pointing to the
+containing wall with parental pride, and standing over the sketch-book
+and the sketcher with an umbrella which speedily turned inside out
+under the combined pressure of wind, and rain, and years; a feat which
+it had already performed _des fois_, he said, in the course of his
+acquaintance with it.
+
+Before finally leaving the glacière, I examined the structure of the
+great stream of ice, at different points near the top of the limiting
+wall. From its outward appearance it might have been expected to be
+rough, but it was not so; it was knotty to the eye, but perfectly smooth
+to the foot, and, when cut, showed itself perfectly clear and limpid. It
+did not separate under the axe into misshapen pieces, with faces of
+every possible variation from regularity, that is, with what is called
+vitreous fracture, but rather separated into a number of nuts of limpid
+ice, each being of a prismatic form, and of much regularity in shape and
+size. It was smooth, dark-grey, and clear; free from air, and free from
+surface lines; very hard, and suggesting the idea of coarse internal
+granulation. In the large ice-streams of some darker glacières, this ice
+assumed a rather lighter colour by candle-light, but always presented
+the same granular appearance, and cut up into the same prismatic nuts,
+and was evidently free from constitutional opacity.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 18: _Sancti Liberii locus_, the Swiss Dryasdust explains.
+There is nothing to connect any known S. Liberius with this
+neighbourhood, unless it be the Armenian prince who secretly left his
+father's court for Jerusalem, and was sought for throughout Burgundy and
+other countries. It seems that Saint Oliver is merely a corruption of S.
+Liberius, the Italian form of the latter, Santo Liverio, having become
+Sant-Oliverio, as S. Otho became in another country Sant Odo, and thence
+San Todo, thus creating a new Saint, S. Todus.--Act SS. May 27.]
+
+[Footnote 19: My sisters made a two-days' excursion from Arzier to this
+glacière in the autumn of 1862, and found no snow in the bottom of the
+pit. They took the route by Gimel to Bière, intending to defer the visit
+to the glacière to the morning of the second day; but being warned by
+the appearance known locally as _le sappeur qui fume_, a vaporous cloud
+at the mouth of a cavern near the Dent d'Oche, on the other side of the
+Lake of Geneva, they caught the communal forester at once, and put
+themselves under his guidance. The distance from Bière is two hours'
+good walking, and an hour and a half for the return. There was no ladder
+for the final descent, and the neighbouring châlet could provide nothing
+longer than 15 feet, the drop being 30 feet. Two Frenchmen had attempted
+to make their way to the cave a week before; but the old 30-foot ladder
+of the previous year broke under the foremost of them, and he fell into
+the pit, whence he was drawn up by means of a cord composed of
+rack-ropes from the châlet, tied together. However useful a string of
+cow-ties may be for rescuing a man from such a situation, A. and M. did
+not care to make use of that apparatus for a voluntary descent, so they
+were perforce contented with a distant view of the ice from the lower
+edge of the pit.]
+
+[Footnote 20: See the section of this cave and pit on page 41.]
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE UPPER GLACIÈRE OF THE PRÉ DE S. LIVRES.
+
+
+We now put ourselves under the guidance of the accomplice, Louis, who
+began to express doubts of his ability to find the upper glacière,
+administering consolation by reminding us that if he could not find it
+no one else could.
+
+As we walked on through the mist and rain, it became necessary to
+circumvent a fierce-looking bull, and Mignot and the accomplice told
+rival tales of the dangers to which pedestrians are exposed from the
+violence of the cattle on some montagnes, where the bulls are allowed
+to grow to full size and fierceness. Mignot was quite motherly in his
+advice and his cautions, recommending as the surest safeguard a
+pocket-pistol, loaded with powder only, to be flashed in the bull's
+face as he makes his charge. When informed that in England an umbrella
+or a parasol is found to answer this purpose, he shook his head
+negatively, evidently having no confidence in his own umbrella, and
+doubting its obeying his wishes at the critical moment; indeed, it
+would require a considerable time, and much care and labour, to unfurl
+a lumbering instrument of that description. He had the best of the
+tale-contest with Renaud in the end, for he had himself been grazed by
+a bull which came up with him at the moment when he sprang into a
+tree.
+
+Before very long we reached a little kennel-like hut of boughs, which no
+decent dog would have lived in, and no large dog could have entered, and
+from this we drew a charcoal-burner. No, he said, he did not know the
+glacière; he had heard that one had been discovered near there, and he
+had spent hours in searching for it without success. A herdsman on his
+way from one pasturage to another could give no better help, and we
+began to despair, till at length Louis desired us to halt in a place
+sheltered from the rain, while he prosecuted the search alone. We had
+abundant time for observing that, like other leafy places sheltered from
+the rain, our resting-place was commanded by huge and frequent drops of
+water; but at last a joyful _Jodel_ announced the success of the
+accomplice, and we ran off to join him.
+
+At first sight there was very little to see. Louis had lately been
+enunciating an opinion that the cave was not worth visiting, and I now
+felt inclined to agree with him. The general plan appeared to be much
+the same as in the one we had just left, but the scale was
+considerably smaller. The pit was not nearly so deep or so large, and,
+owing to the falling-in of rock and earth at one side, the snow was
+approached by a winding path with a gradual fall. As soon as the snow
+was reached, the slope became very steep, and led promptly to an arch
+in the rock, where the stream of ice began. The cave being shallow,
+the stream soon came to an end, and, unlike that in the lower
+glacière, it filled the cave down to the terminal wall, and did not
+fill it up to the left wall. Here the ground of the cave was visible,
+strewn with the remains of columns, and showing the thickness of the
+bottom of the stream to be about 6 feet only. The arch of entrance had
+evidently been almost closed by a succession of large columns, but
+these had succumbed to the rain and heat to which they had been
+exposed by their position.
+
+The left side of the cave, in descending, that is the west side, was
+comparatively light, being in the line from the arch; but the other side
+was quite dark, and after a time we found that the ice-stream, instead
+of terminating as we had supposed with the wall of rock at the end of
+the cavern, turned off to the right, and was lost in the darkness. Of
+course candles were brought out, though Louis assured us that he had
+explored this part of the cave on his previous visit, and had found that
+the right wall of the cave very soon stopped the stream: we, on the
+contrary, by tying a candle to a long stick, and thrusting it down the
+slope of ice, found that the stream passed down extremely steeply, and
+poured under a narrow and low arch in the wall of the cave, beyond
+which nothing could be seen. We despatched pieces of ice along the
+slope, and could hear them whizzing on after they had passed the arch,
+and landing apparently on stones far below; so I called for the cords,
+and told Louis that we must cut our way down. But, alas! the cords had
+been left at the other glacière! One long bag, with a hole in the middle
+like an old-fashioned purse, had carried the luncheon at one end and the
+ropes at the other; and when the luncheon was finished, the bag had been
+stowed away under safe trees till our return. This was of course
+immensely annoying, and I rang the changes on the few words of abuse
+which invention or knowledge supplied, as we sat damp and shivering on
+the verge of the slope, idly sending down pieces of broken columns which
+brought forth tantalising sounds from the subterranean regions. At
+length Renaud was moved to shame, and declared that he would cut his way
+down, rope or no rope; but this seemed so horribly hazardous a
+proceeding under all the circumstances, that I forbad his attempting it.
+Seeing, however, that he was determined to do something, we arranged
+ourselves into an apparatus something like a sliding telescope. Louis
+cut a first step down the slope, and there took his stand till such time
+as Mignot got a firm grasp of the tail of his blouse with both hands, I
+meanwhile holding Mignot's tail with one hand, and the long stick with
+the candle attached to it with the other; thus professedly supporting
+the whole apparatus, and giving the necessary light for the work. Even
+so, we tried again to persuade Renaud to give it up, but he was warmed
+to his work, and really the arrangement answered remarkably well: when
+he wished to descend to a new step, Mignot let out a little blouse, and,
+being himself similarly relieved, descended likewise a step, and then
+the remaining link of the chain followed. The leader slipped once, but
+fortunately grasped a projecting piece of rock, for the stream was here
+confined within narrow walls, and so the strength of the apparatus was
+not tested; it could scarcely have stood any serious call upon its
+powers.
+
+After a considerable period of very slow progress, Renaud asked for the
+candlestick, never more literally a stick than now, and thrust it under
+the arch, stooping down so as to see what the farther darkness might
+contain. We above could see nothing, but, after an anxious pause, he
+cried _On peut aller!_ with a lively satisfaction so completely shared
+by Mignot, that that worthy person was on the point of letting Renaud's
+blouse go, in order to indulge in gestures of delight. The step-cutting
+went on merrily after this announcement, and one by one we came to the
+arch and passed through, finding it rather a trough than an arch; the
+breadth was about 4 feet, and the height from 1-1/4 to 1-1/2 feet, and,
+as we pushed through, our breasts were pressed on to the ice, while our
+backs scraped against the rock which formed the roof.
+
+[Illustration: SECOND CAVE OF THE UPPER GLACIÈRE OF THE PRÉ DE S.
+LIVRES.]
+
+As soon as this trough was passed, the ice spread out like a fan, and
+finally landed us in a subterranean cavern, 72 feet long by 36 feet broad,
+to which this was the only entrance. The breadth of the fan at the
+bottom was 27 feet; and near the archway a very striking column poured
+from a vertical fissure in the wall, and joined the main stream. The
+fissure was partially open to the cave, and showed the solid round
+column within the rock: this column measured 18-1/2 feet in
+circumference, a little below the point where it became free of the
+fissure, and it had a stream of ice 22 feet long pouring from its base.
+The colour of the column was unusual, being a dull yellowish green, and
+the peculiar structure of the ice gave the whole mass the appearance of
+coursing down very rapidly, as if the water had been frozen while thus
+moving, and had not therefore ceased so to move. At the bottom of the
+fan, the flooring of the cave consisted of broken stones for a small
+space, and then came a black lake of ice, which occupied all the centre
+of the cave, and afforded us no opportunity of even guessing at its
+depth. From the manner, however, in which it blended with the stones at
+its edge, I am not inclined to believe that this depth was anything very
+great.
+
+Renaud, in his impetuosity, had ceased to cut steps towards the bottom
+of the slope, and had slipped down the last few feet, of course cutting
+the remaining steps before attempting to reascend. We found him
+strutting about the floor of the cave, tossing his wet cap in the air,
+and crying _No one! No one! I the first!_, declining to take any part in
+measurements until the full of his delight and pride had been poured
+out. He shouted so loud that I was obliged to stop him, lest by some
+chance the unwonted disturbance of the air should bring down an unstable
+block from the roof of the arch, and seal us up for ever. There was no
+sign of incipient thaw in the cave, and the air was very dry, so much so
+as at once to call attention to the fact. At the farthest end, a lofty
+dome opened up in the roof; and possibly at some time or other the rock
+may here fall through, and afford another means of entrance. Beneath
+this dome a very lovely cluster of columns had grouped itself, formed of
+the clear porcelain-like ice, and fretted and festooned with the utmost
+delicacy, as if Andersen's Ice Maiden had been there in one of her
+amiable moods, and had built herself a palace. This dome in the roof was
+similar to many which I afterwards observed in other glacières, being a
+vertical fissure with flutings from top to bottom--not a spherical dome,
+but of that more elegant shape which the female dress of modern times
+assumes on a tall person.
+
+[Illustration: VERTICAL SECTIONS OF THE UPPER GLACIÈRE OF THE PRÉ DE S.
+LIVRES. [21]]
+
+Between the base of the circular column and the wall, we found a rare
+instance of clear jelly-like ice, without any lines external or
+internal, such as is formed in the open air under very favourable
+circumstances. The ordinary number of undergraduate May Terms had
+afforded various opportunities for studying the comparative clearness of
+different pieces of ice, but certainly no one ever saw a lemon pippin
+through an inch and a half of that material so clearly as we now saw the
+white rock through 1-1/2 feet. Mignot, indeed, said 2 feet; but it was
+his way to make a large estimate of dimensions, and he constantly
+interrupted my record of measurements by the assertion that I had made
+them _moins que plus_. We were all disappointed by the actual size of
+the ice-fall which it had cost us so much time and trouble to descend,
+the distance from the first step to the last being only 26 feet: as
+this, however, was given by a string stretched from the one point to the
+other, and not following the concave surface of the ice, the real
+distance was something more than this.
+
+It was now getting rather late, considering the journey one of us had
+yet to perform, and we walked quickly away from the glacière, agreeing
+that it was not improbable that in that part of the Jura there might be
+many hidden caves containing more or less ice, with no entrance from the
+world outside, except the fissures which afford a way for the water. The
+entrance to this cave was so small, that the same physical effect might
+well be produced by one or two cracks in the rock, such as every one is
+well acquainted with who has walked on the fissured limestone summits
+of the lower mountains; and, indeed, Renaud positively affirmed that at
+the time of his former visit there was not even this entrance to the
+lower cave, for the ice-stream reached then a higher point of the wall,
+and completely filled and hid the arch we had discovered. It is very
+difficult to see how ice can exist in a cave which has no atmospheric
+communication with the colds of winter, as would apparently be the case
+with this cave if the one entrance were closed; but where the cracks and
+small fissures in the rock do provide such communication, there is no
+reason why we should not imagine all manner of glacial beauties
+decorating unknown cavities, beyond the general physical law to which
+all the glacières would seem to be exceptions.
+
+Mignot now became communicative as to the amount of ice supplied by his
+glacière, the lower of the two we had seen; and his statistics were so
+utterly confused, that I gave him ten centimes and an address, and
+charged him to write it all down from his account-book, and send it by
+post. The letter was accordingly written on July 24, and after trying
+many unsuccessful addresses in various parts of Switzerland, it finally
+reached England in the middle of September. It tells its own tale
+sufficiently well, and is therefore given here with all the mistakes of
+the original.
+
+'Mon cher Monsieur Browne,--J'ai beaucoup tardé a vous écrire les
+détails promis, sans doute je ne voulait pas vous oublier; nous sommes
+affligés dans nôtre maison ma femme et gravement malade ce qui me donne
+beaucoup de tourment jour et nuit, enfin ce n'est pas ce qui doit faire
+nôtre entretient.
+
+En 1863. Nous avons exploité comme suit. (Dépenses.)
+
+
+  Aoust    27    10 journées pour confectionner les Echelles et les poser.
+    "      29     3 journées pour couper la glasse.
+    "      31    11 journées pour sortir la glasse avec les hôtes.
+    "      31     4 chars a deux chevaux pour ammener
+  Menés          la charge a deux: dès St. Georges a
+  Septembre 1    Gland plusieurs autres journées pour accompagner
+                 les chars. 70 pots de vin bu
+                 en faisant ces chargements, pour trois
+                 cordes pour se tenir.
+  Septembre 2    Trois journées pour couper.
+         le 3    12 journées pour sortir.
+
+
+'Cher Monsieur.--Je ne vous ait pas mis le prix de chaque articles; ni
+tout-a fait tous les traveaux mais pour vous donner une idée, je veux
+vous donner connaissance du coût général des dépences pour deux
+chargements s'élève a 535 francs. Je vous donne aussi connaissance de la
+quantité de glasse rendue 235 quinteaux a 3 francs, qui produit 705
+francs reste net sur ces deux chargements 175 francs: par conséquent mon
+cher Monsieur je n'ai pas besoin de vous donner des détails des
+chargements suivants c'est a peu près les mêmes frais, et la quantité de
+glasse aussi.
+
+'Nous en avons refait trois chargements:--
+
+  Un le 15 Septembre.
+   2 le 13 Octobre.
+   3 le 14 Novembre.
+
+'Cela comprend toute l'exploitation de 1863.
+
+'Vous m'excuserez beaucoup de mon retard.
+
+'Je termine en vous présentant mes respectueuses salutations. Vous
+noublierez pas ce que vous mavez promis'[22]St. Georges, le 24 Juillet,
+1864. _Dimanche_.
+
+'JULES MIGNOT.'
+
+Instead of three francs the quintal, Mignot had previously told me that
+he got four francs, delivered at Gland, and five at Geneva. His ordinary
+staff during the time of the exploitation was ten men to carry and load,
+and two to cut the ice in the cave.
+
+It was a matter of considerable importance to catch the Poste at
+Gimel, and the two Swiss groaned loudly on the consequent pace,
+unnecessary, as far as they were concerned, for the Poste was nothing
+to them. As a general rule, the Swiss of this district cannot walk so
+fast as their Burgundian or French neighbours, unless it is very much
+to their interest to do so, and then they can go fast enough. A legend
+is still preserved in the valleys of Joux and Les Rousses, to the
+following effect. While the Franche Comté was still Spanish, in 1648,
+commissioners were appointed to fix the boundaries between Berne and
+Burgundy, on the other side of the range of hill we were now
+descending, and they decided that one of the boundary stones must be
+placed at the distance of a common league from the Lake of Les
+Rousses. Unfortunately, no one could say what a common league was,
+beyond the vague definition of 'an hour's walk;' so two men were
+started from the shore of the lake, the one a Burgundian and the other
+a Swiss, with directions to walk for an hour down the Orbe towards
+Chenit, the stone to be placed half-way between the points they should
+respectively reach at the end of the hour. It was for the interest of
+the Franche Comté that the stone should be as near the lake as
+possible, and accordingly the Swiss champion made such walking as had
+never been seen before, and gained for Berne a considerable amount of
+territory. There was no such tragic result in this case as that which
+induced the Carthaginians to pay divine honours to the brothers whose
+speed, on a like occasion, had added an appreciable amount to the
+possessions of the republic.
+
+At length we reached the point where the roads for Gimel and S.
+Georges separate, and there, under a glorious sapin, we said our
+adieux, and wished our _au revoirs_, and settled those little matters
+which the best friends must settle, when one is of the nature of a
+monsieur, and the others are guides. They burdened their souls with
+many politenesses, and so we parted. The inclemency of the weather was
+such, that the people in the lower country asked, as they passed,
+whether snow had fallen in the mountains, and the cold rain continued
+unceasingly down to the large plain on which the Federal Camp of
+Bière[23] is placed. Here for a few moments the sun showed itself,
+lighting up the white tents, and displaying to great advantage the
+masses of scented orchises, and the feathery _reine-des-prés_, which
+hemmed the road in on either side. All through the earlier part of the
+day, flowers had forced themselves upon our notice as mere vehicles
+for collected rain, when we came in contact with them; but now, for a
+short time, they resumed their proper place,--only for a short time,
+for the rain soon returned, and did not cease till midnight. Not all
+the garden scenery about Aubonne and Allaman (_ad Lemannum_), nor all
+the vineyards which yield the choice white wine of the Côte, could
+counterbalance the united discomfort of the rain, and the cold which
+had got into the system in the two glacières; and matters were not
+mended by the discovery that _Bradshaw_ was treacherous, and that a
+junction with dry baggage at Neufchâtel could not be effected before
+eleven at night.
+
+There are some curious natural phenomena in this neighbourhood, due to
+the subterranean courses which the fissured limestone of the Jura
+affords to the meteoric waters. Not far from Bière, the river Aubonne
+springs out at the bottom of an amphitheatre of rock, receiving
+additions soon after from a group of twenty natural pits, which the
+peasants call unfathomable--an epithet freely applied to the strange
+holes found in the Jura. It is remarkable that the way seems to stand
+at different levels in the various pits.[24] The plain of Champagne,
+in which they occur, is unlike the surrounding soil in being formed of
+calcareous detritus, evidently brought down by some means or other
+from the Jura, and is dry and parched up to the very edges of the
+pits. The Toleure, a tributary of the Aubonne, frequently large enough
+to be called a confluent, flows out from the foot of a wall of rock
+composed of regular parallelopipeds, and in the spring, when the snows
+are melting freely, its sources burst out at various levels of the
+rock. Farther to the west, the Versoie, famous for its trout, pours
+forth a full-sized stream near the Château of Divonne, which is said
+to take its name (_Divorum unda_) from this phenomenon. Passing to the
+northern slope of this range of the Jura, the Orbe is a remarkable
+example of the same sort of thing, flowing out peacefully in very
+considerable bulk from an arch at the bottom of a perpendicular rock
+of great height. This river no doubt owes its origin to the
+superfluous waters of the Lake of Brenets, which have no visible
+outlet, and sink into fissures and _entonnoirs_ in the rock at the
+edge of the lake. Notwithstanding that the lake is three-quarters of a
+league distant, horizontally, and nearly 700 feet higher, the belief
+had always been that it was the source of the stream, and in 1776 this
+was proved to be the fact. For some years before that date, the waters
+of the Lake of Joux had been inconveniently high, and the people
+determined to clean out the _entonnoirs_ and fissures of the Lake of
+Brenets, which is only separated from the Lake of Joux by a narrow
+tongue of land, in the expectation that the water would then pass away
+more freely. In order to reach the fissures, they dammed up the outlet
+of the upper into the lower lake; but the pressure on the embankment
+became too great, and the waters burst through with much violence,
+creating an immense disturbance in the lake; and the Orbe, which had
+always been perfectly clear, was troubled and muddy for some little
+time. The source of the Loue, near Pontarlier, is more striking than
+even that of the Orbe.[25]
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 21: A point common to the two sections, which are made by
+planes nearly at right angles to each other.]
+
+[Footnote 22: The dimensions of the two caves, and of the various masses
+of ice.]
+
+[Footnote 23: The Cartulary of Lausanne states that the wealthy village
+of Bière received its name from the following historical fact:--In 522,
+the Bishop of Lausanne, S. Prothais, was superintending the cutting of
+wood in the Jura for his cathedral, when he died suddenly, and was
+carried down on a litter to a place where a proper _bier_ could he
+procured, whence the place was named Bière.]
+
+[Footnote 24: The most curious pit of this kind is the _frais-puits_ of
+Vesoul, in the Vosgian Jura, which pours forth immense quantities of
+water after rain has fallen in the neighbourhood. The water rushes out
+in the shape of a fountain, and on one occasion, in November 1557, saved
+the town of Vesoul from pillage by a passing army. This pit is carefully
+described by M. Hassenfratz, in the _Journal de Physique_, t. xx. p. 259
+(an. 1782), where he says that Cæsar was driven away from the town of
+Vesoul, which he had intended to besiege, by the floods of water poured
+forth from the _frais-puits_. I know of no such incident in Cæsar's
+life, though M. Hassenfratz quotes Cæsar's own words: the town of
+Vesoul, too, had no historical existence before the 9th or 10th century
+of our era. There is also a pit near Vesoul which contains icicles in
+summer, and may be the same as the _frais-puits_, for the old historian
+of Franche Comté, Gollut, in describing the latter, mentions that it is
+so cold that no one cares to explore it (pp. 91. 92).]
+
+[Footnote 25: See p. 122.]
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+THE GLACIÈRE OF THE GRÂCE-DIEU, OR LA BAUME, NEAR BESANÇON.
+
+
+The grand and lovely scenery of the Val de Travers has at length been
+opened up for the ordinary tourist world, by the railway which connects
+Pontarlier with Neufchâtel. The beauties of the valley are an
+unfortunate preparation for the dull expanse of ugly France which greets
+the traveller passing north from the former town; but the country soon
+assumes a pleasanter aspect, and nothing can be more charming than the
+soft green slopes, dotted with the richest pines, which form the
+approach to the station of Boujeailles. It is impossible for the most
+careless traveller to avoid observing the ill effects produced upon the
+trees on the south side of the forest of Chaux, by the crowded and
+neglected state in which they have been left, and the wet state of the
+soil. The branches become covered with moss, which first kills them, and
+then breaks them off, so that many tall and tapering sapins point their
+heads to the sky with trunks wholly guiltless of branches; while in
+other cases, where decay has not yet gone so far, the branches wear the
+appearance of gigantic stags' horns, with the velvet; and when a number
+of these interlace, the mosses unite in large dark patches, giving a
+cedar-like air to the scene of ruin.
+
+Up to this point, an elderly Frenchman in the carriage had been
+extremely offensive, from the evil odour of his Macintosh coat; but in
+answer to a remark upon the improvement which the railway would effect,
+by providing ventilation for the forest, he gave so much information on
+that subject, and gave it so pleasantly, and had evidently so good a
+knowledge of the topography of Franche Comté, that his coat speedily
+lost its smell, and we became excellent friends.
+
+It is a tantalising thing to be whirled on a hot and dusty day through
+districts famous for their wines, the dust and heat standing out in
+more painful colours by contrast with the recollection of cooling
+draughts which other occasions have owed to such vineyards; though,
+after all, the true method of facing heat with success is to drink no
+wine. At any rate, the vineyards of Arbois must always be interesting,
+and if the stories of the Templars' orgies be true, we may be sure
+that the chapelry which they possessed in that town would be a
+favourable place of residence with the order; possibly Rule XVI. might
+there be somewhat relaxed. 'The good wine of Arbois,' _la meilleure
+cave de Bourgougne_, a judicious old writer says, had free entry into
+all the towns of the Comté; and when Burgundy was becoming imperial,
+Maximilian extended this privilege through all the towns of the
+empire. A hundred years later, it had so high a character, that the
+troops of Henri IV. turned away from the town, announcing that they
+did not wish to attack _ceulx estoient du naturel de leur vin, qui
+frappe partout_;[26] and the king was forced to come himself, with his
+constable and marshals, to beat down the walls, in the course of which
+undertaking his men felt the vigour of the inhabitants to a greater
+extent than he liked. It is said that when he had taken the town, the
+municipality received him in state, and supplied him with wine of the
+country. He praised the wine very highly, on which one of the body had
+the ill taste to assure him that they had a better wine than that.
+'You keep it, perhaps,' was the royal rebuke, 'for a better occasion.'
+Henry had a great opinion of this wine; and the Duc de Sully states,
+in his Memoirs, that when the Duc de Mayenne retired from the league
+against the king, and came to Monceaux to tender his allegiance, Henry
+punished him for past offences by walking so fast about the grounds of
+the château, that the poor duke, what with his sciatica, and what with
+his fat, at last told him with an expressive gesture that a minute
+more of it would kill him. The king thereupon let him go, and promised
+him some _vin d'Arbois_ to set him right again.[27]
+
+The present appearance of the town, as seen from the high level followed
+by the railway, scarcely recalls the time when Arbois was known as _le
+jardin de noblesse_, and Barbarossa dated thence his charters, or Jean
+Sans-peur held there the States of Burgundy. Gollut[28] tells a story of
+a dowager of Arbois, mother-in-law to Philip V. and Charles IV. of
+France, which outdoes legend of Bishop Hatto. Mahaut d'Artois was an
+elderly lady remarkable for her charities, and was by consequence always
+surrounded by large crowds of poor folk during her residence at the
+Châtelaine, the ruins of which lie a mile or two from Arbois. On the
+occasion of a severe famine in Burgundy, she collected a band of her
+mendicant friends in a stable, and burned them all, saying that '_par
+pitié elle hauoit faict cela, considerant les peines que ces pauvres
+debuoient endurer en temps de si grande et tant estrange famine_.'
+
+There is a Val d'Amour near Arbois, but the more beautiful valley of
+that name lies between Dôle and Besançon, and, as we passed its
+neighbourhood, my friend with the Macintosh informed me that as it was
+clear from my questions that I was drawing up a history of the Franche
+Comté, he must beg me to insert a legend respecting the origin of this
+name, Val d'Amour, which, he believed, had never appeared in print. I
+disclaimed the history, but accepted the legend, and here it is:--The
+Seigneur of Chissey was to marry the heiress of a neighbouring
+seigneurie, and, it is needless to add, she was very lovely, and he was
+handsome and brave. A lake separated the two châteaux, and the young man
+not unfrequently returned by water rather late in the evening; and so it
+fell out that one night he was drowned. The lady naturally grieved
+sorely for her loss, and put in train all possible means for recovering
+her lover's body. Time, however, passed on, and no success attended her
+efforts, till at length she caused the hills which dammed up the waters
+to be pierced, and then De Chissey was found. A village sprang up near
+the outlet thus made, and took thence its name Percée, or, as men now
+spell it, Parcey; and the rich vegetation which speedily covered the
+valley, where once the lake had been, gave it such an air of happiness
+and beauty, that the people remembered its origin, and called it the
+Valley of Love. It is a fact that Parcy was not always so spelled, for
+Noble Constantin Thiehault, Sieur de Perrecey, was a witness to the
+treaty for the transference of a miraculous host from Faverney to Dôle
+in 1608, and old maps and books give it as Perrecey and Parrecey
+indifferently. The De Chisseys, whose names may be found among the
+female prebends of Château-Chalon, with its necessary sixteen quarters,
+filled a considerable place in the history of the Comté from the
+Crusades downwards, and known as _les Fols de Chissey_, the brave[29]
+and dashing, and witty De Chisseys--qualities which no doubt were
+possessed by the poor young man for whom the fair Chatelaine drained the
+Val d'Amour.
+
+As we drew nearer to Besançon, each turn of the small streams, and each
+low rounded hill, might have served as an illustration to Cæsar's
+'Commentaries.' Now at length it was seen how, whatever the result of a
+battle, there was always a _proximus collis_ for the conquered party to
+retire to; and it would have been easy to find many suitable scenes for
+the critical engagement, where the woods sloped down to a strip of
+grass-land between their foot and the stream.
+
+The Frenchman knew his Cæsar, but he put that general in the fourth
+century B.C. He made mistakes, too, in quoting him, which were easily
+detected by a memory bristling with the details of his phraseology, the
+indelible result of extracting the principal parts of his verbs, and the
+nominatives of his irregular nouns, from half a dozen generations of
+small boys. He promised me a rich Julian feast in Besançon, and was
+greatly affected when he found that the Englishman could give him
+Cæsar's description of his native town. He wholly denied the
+amphitheatre with which one of our handbooks has gifted it; and this
+denial was afterwards echoed by every one in Besançon, some even
+thinking it necessary to explain the difference between an amphitheatre
+and an arch of triumph, the latter still existing in the town. The
+Jesuit Dunod relates that the amphitheatre was to be seen at the
+beginning of the seventeenth century, in the ruined state in which the
+Alans and Vandals had left it after their successful siege in 406. It
+seems to have stood near the present site of the Madeleine.
+
+It was a great satisfaction to find that the Frenchman had himself
+visited the glacière which was the object of my search, and was able to
+give some idea as to the manner of reaching it, for my information on
+the subject was confined to a vague notice that there was an ice-cave
+five leagues from Besançon. As so often happened in other cases, he
+advised me not to go to it, but rather, if I must see a cave, to go to
+the Grotto of Ocelles,[30] a collection of thirty or more caverns and
+galleries near the Doubs, below Besançon. Seeing, however, that I was
+bent on visiting the glacière, he advised me not to go on Sunday, for
+the Cardinal Archbishop had ordered the Trappists at the Chartreuse near
+not to receive guests on that day; while Saturday, he thought, was
+almost as bad, for nothing better than an omelette could be obtained on
+days of abstinence. Saturday, then, was clearly the day to be chosen.
+
+The first sight of Besançon explains at once why Cæsar was so anxious
+to forestall Ariovistus by occupying Vesontio, although the hill on
+which the citadel stands is not so striking as the similar hill at
+Salins, and the engines of modern warfare would promptly print their
+telegrams on every stone and man in the place, from the neighbouring
+heights. The French Government has wisely taken warning from the
+bombardment by the Allies, and has covered the heights which command it
+on either side with friendly fortifications, in which lie the keys of
+the place. Historically, Besançon is a place of great interest. It
+witnessed the catastrophe of Julius Vindex, who had made terms with
+Rufus, the general sent against him by Nero, but was attacked by the
+troops of Rufus before they learned the alliance concluded between the
+two generals. Vindex was so much grieved by the slaughter of his troops,
+and the blow thus struck, by an unhappy accident, at his designs against
+the emperor, that he put himself to death at the gates of the town,
+while the fight was still going on.[31] The Bisuntians claim to
+themselves the glory acquired by the Sequani, whose chief city Vesontio
+was, by the overthrow of Julius Sabinus, who asserted that he was the
+grandson of a son of Julius Cæsar, and proclaimed himself emperor in
+the time of Vespasian. The Sequani proceeded against him of their own
+accord, and conquered him in the interest of the reigning emperor; and
+he and his wife Peponilla lived hid in a tomb for nine years. Here two
+sons were born to them; and when they were all discovered and carried to
+Rome, Peponilla prettily told the emperor that she had brought up two
+sons in the tomb, in order that there might be other voices to intercede
+for her husband's life besides her own. They were, however, put to
+death.[32]
+
+To judge from the style of the hotels, Besançon is not visited by many
+English travellers; and yet it well repays a visit, providing those who
+care for such things with a full average of vaulted passages, and feudal
+gateways, and arcaded court-yards, with much less than the average of
+evil smell. There are gates of all shapes and times--Louis-Quatorze
+towers, and fortifications specially constructed under Vauban's own eye;
+while the approach to the town, from the land side, is by a tunnel, cut
+through the live rock which forms a solid chord to the arc described by
+the course of the river Doubs. This excavation, called appropriately the
+_Porte Taillée_, is attributed by the various inhabitants to pretty
+nearly all the famous emperors and kings who have lived from Julius
+Cæsar to Louis XIV.: it owes its origin, no doubt, to the construction
+of the aqueduct which formerly brought into the town the waters pouring
+out of the rock at Arcier, two leagues from Besançon, and was the work
+probably of M. Aurelius and L. Verus. Local antiquaries assign the
+aqueduct to Agrippa, the son-in-law of Augustus, apparently for no
+better reason than because he built a similar work in Rome. The arch of
+triumph[33] at the entrance to the upper town has been an inexhaustible
+subject of controversy for many generations of antiquaries, and up to
+the time of Dunod was generally attributed to Aurelian: that historian,
+however, believed that its sculptures represented the education of
+Crispus, the son of Constantine, and that the name Chrysopolis, by which
+Besançon was very generally known in early times, was only a corruption
+of Crispopolis. Earlier writers are in favour of the natural derivation
+of Chrysopolis, and assert that when the Senones lost their famous
+chief, the Brennus of Roman history, before Delphos, they built a town
+where Byzantium afterwards stood, and called it Bisantium and
+Chrysopolis, in memory of their city of those names at home.
+
+The Hôtel du Nord is a rambling old house, comfortable after French
+ideas of comfort, and rejoicing in an excellent cuisine; though it is
+true that on one occasion, at least, _haricots verts à l'Anglaise_ meant
+a mass of fibrous greens, swimming in a most un-English sea of
+artificial fat. It is a good place for studying the natural manners of
+the untravelled Frenchman, who there sits patiently at the table, for
+many minutes before dinner is served, with his napkin tucked in round
+his neck, and his countenance composed into a look of much resignation.
+The waiters are for the most part shock-headed boys, in angular-tail
+coats well up in the back of the neck, who frankly confess, when any
+order out of the common run of orders is given, that a German patois
+from the left bank of the Rhine is their only extensive language. One of
+these won my eternal gratitude by providing a clean fork at a crisis
+between the last savouries and the _plat doux_; for the usual practice
+with the waiters, when anyone neglected to secure his knife and fork for
+the next course, was to slip the plate from under the unwonted charge,
+and leave those instruments sprawling on the tablecloth in a vengeful
+mess of gravy. Chickens' bones were there dealt with on all sides as
+nature perhaps intended that they should be dealt with, namely, by
+taking them between finger and thumb, and removing superfluities with
+the teeth; and French officers with wasp-like waists, and red trousers
+gathered in plaits to match, boldly despised the sophistication of
+spoons, and ate their vanilla cream like men, by the help of bread and
+fingers. The manners and broken French of the stranger formed an open
+and agreeable subject of conversation, and the table was much quieter
+than a Frenchman's _table d'hôte_ is sometimes known to be: on one
+occasion, however, all decorum was scattered to the winds, and the
+guests rushed out into the court-yard with disordered bibs and tuckers,
+on the announcement by the head waiter of a '_chien à l'Anglaise_, not
+so high as a mustard-pot,' which one of the company promptly bought for
+twenty-four francs, commencing its education on the spot by a lesson in
+cigar-smoking.
+
+It frequently happens in France that _café noir_ is a much more ready
+and abundant tap than water, and so it was here; notwithstanding which,
+the bedroom apparatus was most comfortable and complete. The chambermaid
+was a boy, and under his auspices a sheet of postage-stamps and a lead
+pencil vanished from the table. When it was suggested to him that
+possibly they had been blown into some corner, and so swept away, he
+brought a dustpan from a distant part of the house, and miraculously
+discovered the stamps perched upon a small handful of dust therein,
+deferring the discovery and his consequent surprise till he reached my
+room. It was curious that the stamps, which had before been in an open
+sheet, were now folded neatly together, and curled into the shape of a
+waistcoat-pocket. He was inexorable about the pencil.
+
+No certain information could be obtained in the hotel respecting the
+glacière; so an owner of carriages was summoned, and consulted as to the
+best means of getting there. He naturally recommended that one of his
+own carriages should be taken as far as the Abbey of Grâce-Dieu, and
+that we should start at five o'clock the next morning, with a driver who
+knew the way to the glacière from the point at which the carriage must
+be left.[34] Five o'clock seemed very early for a drive of fifteen
+miles; but the man asserted that instead of five leagues it was a good
+seven or eight, and so it turned out to be. This glacière may be called
+a historical glacière, being the only one which has attracted general
+attention; and the mistake about its distance from Besançon arose very
+many years ago, and has been perpetuated by a long series of copyists.
+The distance may not be more than five leagues when measured on the map
+with a ruler; but until the tunnels and via-ducts necessary for a crow
+line are constructed, the world must be content to call it seven and a
+half at least. The man bargained for two days' pay for the carriage, on
+the plea that the horse would be so tired the next day that he would not
+be able to do any work, and as that day was Sunday, the great day for
+excursions, it would be a dead loss. It so happened that the charge for
+two days, fifteen francs, was exactly what I paid elsewhere for one day,
+so there was no difficulty about the price.
+
+We started, accordingly, at five o'clock. The day was delightfully
+fine, and in spite of the driver's peculiarity of speech, caused by a
+short tongue, and aggravated by a villanous little black pipe clutched
+between his remaining teeth, we got through a large amount of question
+and answer respecting the country through which we passed. Of course,
+the reins were carried through rings low down on the kicking-strap,
+ingeniously placed so that each whisk of the horse's tail caught one or
+other rein; and then the process of extraction was a somewhat dangerous
+one, for there was no splashboard, and the driver had to stow his legs
+away out of reach, before commencing operations. The landlord of the inn
+at Mühlinen, on the road from Kandersteg to Thun, has a worse
+arrangement than even this, both reins passing through one small leather
+loop at the top of the kicking-strap; so that when the horse on one
+occasion ran away down a steep hill in consequence of the break refusing
+to act, the man in his flurry could not tell which rein to pull, to
+steer clear of the wall of rock on one side, and the unfenced slope on
+the other, and finally flung himself out in despair, leaving his English
+cargo behind.
+
+There has evidently been at some time a vast lake near Besançon, and the
+old bottom of the lake is now covered with heavy meadow-grass, while the
+corn-fields and villages creep down from the higher grounds, on the
+remains of promontories which stretch out into the plain. The people are
+in constant fear of inundation, and the driver informed me that in
+winter large parts of the plain are flooded, the superfluous waters
+vanishing after a time into a great hole, whose powers of digestion he
+could not explain. The villages which lie on the shores, as it were, of
+the lake, rejoice in church-towers with bulbous domes, rising out of
+rich clusters of trees, and the early bells rang out through the crisp
+air with something of a Belgian sweetness. Farther on, the road passed
+through glorious wheat, clean as on an English model farm, save where
+some picturesque farmer had devoted a corner to the growth of poppies.
+Here, as elsewhere, potatoes did not grow in ridges, but each root had a
+little hillock to itself; an unnatural early training which may account
+for the strange appearance of _pommes de terre au naturel_.
+
+Anyone who has driven through the morning air for an hour or two before
+breakfast, will understand the satisfaction with which, about seven
+o'clock, we deciphered a complicated milestone into 14 kilomètres from
+Besançon, which meant breakfast at the next village, Nancray. The
+breakfast was simple enough, owing to the absence of butter and other
+things, and consisted of coffee in its native pot, and dry bread: the
+milk was set on the table in the pan in which it had been boiled, and a
+soup-ladle and a French wash-hand basin took the place of cup and spoon.
+A cat kept the door against sundry large and tailless dogs, whose
+appetites had not gone with their tails; and an old woman kindly
+delivered a lecture on the most approved method of making a ptisan from
+the flowers of the lime-tree, and on the many medicinal properties of
+that decoction, to which she attributed her good health at so advanced
+an age. I silently supplemented her peroration by attributing her
+garrulity to a more stimulating source.
+
+When we started again, it was time to learn something about the scene of
+our further proceedings, and the driver enunciated his views on monks in
+general, _à propos_ to the Convent of Grâce-Dieu, the Chartreuse at
+which we were to leave our carriage, and obtain food for man and horse.
+The Brothers, he said, were possessed of many mills, and were in
+consequence enormously rich. Among the products of their industry, a
+liqueur known as _Chartreuse_ seemed to fill a high place in his esteem,
+for he considered it to be better--and he said it as if that
+comparative led into an eighth heaven--better even than absinthe. I had
+an opportunity of tasting this liqueur some weeks after, a few minutes
+below the summit of Mont Blanc, and certainly no one would suspect its
+great strength, which is entirely disguised by an innocent and insidious
+sweetness, as unlike absinthe as anything can possibly be: impressions,
+however, respecting meat and drink, and all other matters, are not very
+trustworthy when received near the top of the Calotte. It has lately
+been found that the worthy Brothers of the Grande Chartreuse have been
+systematically defrauding the revenue, by returning their profits on the
+manufacture of this liqueur at something merely nominal as compared with
+the real gains. I could not learn whether the ceremony of blessing each
+batch of the liqueur, before sending it out to intoxicate the world, is
+performed with so much solemnity at Grâce-Dieu as at Grenoble; and,
+indeed, it rests only on the assertion of the short-tongued Bisuntian
+that the manufacture is carried on at all at the former place.[35]
+
+Having communicated such information as he possessed, the man seemed to
+think he had a right to learn something in return, and administered
+various questions respecting customs which he believed to prevail in
+England. He evidently did not credit the denial of the truth of what he
+had heard, nor yet the assertion, in answer to another question, that
+English hothouse grapes are three or four times as large as the ordinary
+grapes of France, and well-flavoured in at least a like proportion. The
+roadside was planted with apple-trees, and these were overgrown with
+mistletoe; so, by way of correcting his idea that the English are a sad
+and gloomy people, I informed him of the use made of this parasite by
+young people in the country at Christmas-time. Instead, however, of
+being thereby impressed with our national liveliness, he looked with a
+sort of supercilious contempt upon a people who could require the
+intervention or sanction of anything external in such a matter, and
+turned the conversation to some more worthy subject.
+
+At length we passed into a pleasant valley, with thrushes singing, and
+much chirping of those smaller birds, in the murder of which, sitting,
+consists _le sport_ in the eyes of many gentlemen of France. Up to this
+point, nothing could have been more unlike the scenery which I had so
+far found to be associated with glacières; but now the country became
+slightly more Jurane, and limestone precipices on a small scale rose up
+on either hand, decked with the corbel towers which result from the
+weathering of the rock. It was the Jura in softer as well as smaller
+type, for all the desolate wildness which characterises the more rocky
+part of that range was gone, and there were no signs of the grand
+pine-scenery, or needle-foliage, as the Germans call it; the trees were
+all oak and ash and beech, and the rocks were much more neat and
+orderly, and of course less grand, than their contorted kindred farther
+south. The valley speedily became very narrow, and a final bend brought
+us face-to-face with the buildings of the Abbaye de Grâce-Dieu, striking
+from their position--filling, as they do, the breadth of the
+valley,--but in no way remarkable architecturally. The journey had been
+so long that it was now ten o'clock; and as we were due in Besançon at
+five in the evening, we put the horse up as quickly as possible, in a
+shed provided by the Brothers, and set off on foot for the glacière,
+half an hour distant. About a mile and a half from the convent, the
+valley comes to an end, the rocks on the opposite sides approaching so
+close to each other as only to leave room for a large flour-mill,
+belonging to the Brothers, and for the escape-channel of the stream
+which works the mill. This building is quite new, and might almost be
+taken for a fortification against inroads by the head of the valley,
+especially as the words _Posuerunt me custodem_ appear on the face,
+applying, however, to an image of the Virgin, which presides over the
+establishment. The monks have expended their superfluous time and
+energies upon the erection of crosses of all sizes on every projecting
+peak and point of rock, one cross more sombre than the rest marking the
+scene of a recent death. As I had no means of determining the elevation
+of this district above the sea,[36] I made enquiries as to the climate
+in winter; and one of the Brothers told me, that it was an unusual thing
+with them to have a fall of snow amounting to two joints of a remarkably
+dirty finger.
+
+At the mill, the path turns up the steep wooded hill on the right, and
+leads through young plantations to a small cottage near the glacière,
+where the plantations give place to a well-grown beech wood. Here my
+conductor startled me by announcing that there was 20 centimes to pay
+to the farmer of the cave for entrance; an announcement which seemed to
+take all the pleasure out of the expedition, and invested it with the
+disagreeable character of sightseeing. The poor driver thought, no
+doubt, with some trepidation upon the small amount of _pour-boire_ he
+could expect from a monsieur on whom a demand for two pence produced so
+serious an effect, and it was difficult to make him understand that the
+fact and not the amount of payment was the trouble. When I illustrated
+this by saying that I would gladly give a franc to be allowed to enter
+the glacière free, he seemed to think that if I would entrust him with
+the franc, he might possibly arrange that little matter for me.
+
+The immediate approach to the glacière is very impressive. The surface
+of the ground slopes slightly upwards, and the entrance, from north to
+south, is by a broad inclined plane, of gentle fall at first, which
+rapidly becomes steep enough to require zigzags. The walls of rock on
+either side are very sheer, and increase of course in height as the
+plane of entrance falls. The whole length of the slope is about 420
+feet, and down a considerable part of this some grasses and flowers are
+to be found: the last 208 feet are covered more or less with ice;
+though, at the time of my visit, the furious rains of the end of June,
+1864, had washed down a considerable amount of mud, and so covered some
+of the ice. There were no ready means of determining the thickness of
+this layer of ice, for the descent of which ten or eleven zigzags had
+been made by the farmer. In one place, within 24 feet of its upper
+commencement, it was from 2-1/2 to 3 feet thick; but the prominence of
+that part seemed to mark it out as of more than the average thickness.
+Even where to all appearance there was nothing but mud and earth, an
+unexpected fall or two showed that all was ice below. Whether the driver
+had previously experienced the treacherousness of this slope of ice,
+or whatever his motive might be, he left me to enter and explore alone.
+
+The roof of the entrance is at first a mere shell, formed by the thin
+crust of rock on which the surface-earth and trees rest high overhead;
+but this rapidly becomes thicker, as shown in the section of the cave,
+and thus a sort of outer cave is formed, the real portal of the glacière
+being reached about 60 feet above the bottom of the slope. This outer
+cave presents a curious appearance, from the distinctness with which the
+several strata of the limestone are marked, the lower strata weathered
+and rounded off like the seats of an amphitheatre of the giants, and
+all, up to the shell-like roof, arranged in horizontal semicircles of
+various graduated sizes, showing their concavity; while at the bottom of
+the whole is seen a patch of darkness, with two masses of ice in its
+centre, looming out like grey ghosts at midnight. This darkness is of
+course the inner cave, the entrance to which, though it seems so small
+from above, is 78 feet broad.
+
+The glacière itself may be said to commence as soon as this entrance,
+or perpendicular portal, is passed, and thus includes 60 feet of the
+long slope of ice, from the foot of which to the farther end of the
+cave is 145 feet, the greatest breadth of the cave being 148 feet.
+Immediately below the portal I found a piece of the trunk of a large
+column of ice, 7 feet long and 12 feet in girth, its fractured ends
+giving the idea of the interior of a quickly-grown tree, in
+consequence of the concentric arrangement of convergent prisms
+described in the account of the Glacière of S. Georges. The wife of
+the farmer told me afterwards that there had been two glorious
+columns at this portal, which the recent rains had swept away.
+Excepting a short space at the foot of the slope, and another towards
+the farther end of the cave, the floor was covered with ice, in some
+parts from 3 to 4 feet thick: of this a considerable area had been
+removed to a depth of 2 1/2 or 3 feet, leaving a pond of water a foot
+deep, with bottom and banks of ice. The rock which composes the true
+floor rises at the farthest end of the cave, and the roof is so
+arranged that a sort of private chapel is there formed; and from a
+fissure in the dome a monster column of ice had been constructed on
+the floor, which, at the time of my visit, had lost its upper parts,
+and stood as a hollow truncated cone with sides a foot thick, and with
+seas of ice streaming from it, and covering the rising pavement of the
+chapel. Without an axe, and without help, I was unable to measure the
+girth of this column, which had not been without companions on a
+smaller scale in the immediate neighbourhood. At the west end of the
+cave, the wall was thickly covered for a large space with small
+limestone stalactites, producing the effect of many tiers of fringe on
+a shawl; while from a dark fissure in the roof a large piece of fluted
+drapery of the same material hung, calling to mind some of the vastly
+grander details of the grottoes of Hans-sur-Lesse in Belgium: down
+this wall there was also a long row of icicles, on the edges of a
+narrow fissure. The north-west corner was very dark, and an opening in
+the wall of rock high above the ground suggested a tantalising cave up
+there: the ground in this corner was occupied by the shattered remains
+of numerous columns of ice, which had originally covered a circular
+area between 60 and 70 feet in circumference.
+
+[Illustration: VERTICAL SECTION OF THE GLACIÈRE OF GRÂCE-DIEU, NEAR
+BESANÇON.]
+
+The three large masses of ice which rendered this glacière in some
+respects more remarkable than any of those I have seen, lay in a line
+from east to west, across the middle of the cave, on that part of the
+floor where the ice was thickest. The central mass was extremely
+solid, but somewhat unmeaning in shape, being a rough irregular
+pyramid; its size alone, however, was sufficient to make it very
+striking, the girth being 66-1/2 feet at some distance from the
+ice-floor with which it blended. The mass which lay to the east of
+this was very lovely, owing to the good taste of some one who had
+found that much ice was wont to accumulate on that spot, and had
+accordingly fixed the trunk of a small fir-tree, with the upper
+branches complete, to receive the water from the corresponding fissure
+in the roof. The consequence was, that, while the actual tree had
+vanished from sight under its icy covering, excepting on one side
+where a slight investigation betrayed its presence, the mass of ice
+showed every possible fantasy of form which a mould so graceful could
+suggest. At the base, it was solid, with a circumference of 37 feet.
+The huge column, which had collected round the trunk of the fir-tree,
+branched out at the top into all varieties of eccentricity and beauty,
+each twig of the different boughs becoming, to all appearance, a solid
+bar of frosted ice, with graceful curve, affording a point of
+suspension for complicated groups of icicles, which streamed down side
+by side with emulous loveliness. In some of the recesses of the
+column, the ice assumed a pale blue colour; but as a rule it was white
+and very hard, not so regularly prismatic as the ice described in
+former glacières, but palpably crystalline, showing a structure not
+unlike granite, with a bold grain, and with a large predominance of
+the glittering element. But the westernmost mass was the grandest and
+most beautiful of all. It consisted of two lofty heads, like weeping
+willows in Carrara marble, with three or four others less lofty,
+resembling a family group of lions' heads in a subdued attitude of
+grief, richly decked with icy manes. Similar heads seemed to grow out
+here and there from the solid sides of the huge mass. The girth was
+76-1/2 feet, measured about 2 feet from the floor. When this column was
+looked at from the side removed from the entrance to the cave, so
+that it stood in the centre of the light which poured down the long
+slope from the outer world, the transparency of the ice brought it to
+pass that the whole seemed set in a narrow frame of impalpable liquid
+blue, the effect of light penetrating through the mass at its extreme
+edges. The only means of determining the height of this column was by
+tying a stone to the end of a string, and lodging it on the highest
+head; but this was not an easy process, as I was naturally anxious not
+to injure the delicate beauty which made that head one of the
+loveliest things conceivable; and each careful essay with the stone
+seemed to involve as much responsibility as taking a shot at a hostile
+wicket, in a crisis of the game, instead of returning the ball in the
+conventional manner. When at last it was safely lodged, the height
+proved to be 27 feet. I had hoped to find it much more than this, from
+the grandeur of the effect of the whole mass, and I took the trouble
+to measure the knotted string again with a tape, to make sure that
+there was no mistake. The column formed upon the fir-tree was 3 or 4
+feet lower.
+
+I have since found many notices of this glacière in the Memoirs of the
+French Academy and elsewhere, extracts from which will be found in a
+later chapter. These accounts are spread over a period of 200 years,
+extending from 1590 to 1790, and almost all make mention of the columns
+or groups of columns I have described; but, without exception, the
+heights given or suggested in the various accounts are much less than
+those which I obtained as the result of careful measurement. The latest
+description of a visit to the glacière states a fact which probably will
+be held to explain, the present excess of height above that of earlier
+times.[37] The citizen Girod-Chantrans, who wrote this description, had
+procured the notes of a medical man living in the neighbourhood, from
+which it seemed that Dr. Oudot made the experiment, in 1779, of fixing
+stakes of wood in the heads of the columns, then from 4 to 5 feet high,
+and found that these stakes were the cause of a very large increase in
+the height of the columns, ice gathering round them in pillars a foot
+thick. So that it is not improbable that the largest of the three masses
+of the present day owes its height, and its peculiar form, to a series
+of stakes fixed from time to time in the various heads formed under the
+fissures in the roof, though nothing but the most solid ice can now be
+seen. It would be very interesting to try this experiment in one of the
+caves where, without any artificial help, such immense masses of ice are
+formed; and by this means columns might, in the course of a year or two,
+be raised to the very roof. Further details on this subject will be
+given hereafter.
+
+There was no perceptible draught of air in any part of the cave, and the
+candles burned steadily through the whole time of my visit, which
+occupied more than two hours. The centre was sufficiently lighted by the
+day; but in the western corner, and behind the largest column,
+artificial light was necessary. The ice itself did not generally show
+signs of thawing, but the whole cave was in a state of wetness, which
+made the process of measuring and investigating anything but pleasant.
+I had placed two thermometers at different points on my first
+entrance--one on a drawing-board on a large stone in the middle of the
+pond of water which has been mentioned, and the other on a bundle of
+pencils at the entrance of the end chapel, in a part of the cave where
+the ice-floor ceased for a while, and left the stones and rock bare. The
+former gave 33°, the latter, till I was on the point of leaving, 31
+1/2°, when it fell suddenly to 31°. It was impossible, however, to stay
+any longer for the sake of watching the thermometer fall lower and lower
+below the freezing point; indeed, the results of sundry incautious
+fathomings of the various pools of water, and incessant contact of hands
+and feet with the ice, had already become so unpleasant, that I was
+obliged to desert my trusty hundred feet of string, and leave it lying
+on the ice, from want of finger-power to roll it up. The thermometers
+were both Casella's, but that which registered 31° was the more lively
+of the two, the other being mercurial, with a much thicker stem: the
+difference in sensitiveness was so great, that when they were equally
+exposed to the sun in driving home, the one ran up to 93° before the
+other had reached 85°.
+
+In leaving the glacière, I found a little pathway turning off along the
+face of the rock on the left hand, a short way up the slope of entrance,
+and looking as if it might lead to the opening in the dark wall on the
+western side of the cave. After a time, however, it came to a corner
+which it seemed an unnecessary risk to attempt to pass alone; and my
+prudence was rewarded by the discovery that, after all, the supposed
+cave could not be thus reached. It is said that this other cave was the
+place to which the inhabitants fled for refuge when their district was
+invaded, probably by the Duke of Saxe-Weimar with his 10,000 Swedes,
+and that a ladder 40 feet long is necessary for getting at it.
+
+The driver had long ago absconded when I returned to the upper regions;
+but the wife of the farmer of the grotto was there, and communicated
+all that she knew of the statistics of the ice annually removed. She
+said that in 1863 two chars were loaded every day for two months, each
+char taking about 600 kilos, the wholesale price in Besançon being 5
+francs the hundred kilos. Since the quintal contains 50 kilos, it will
+be seen that this account does not agree with the statement of Renaud as
+to the amount of ice each char could take. No doubt, a char at S.
+Georges may mean one thing, and a char in the village of Chaux another;
+but the difference between 12 quintaux and 50 or 60 is too great to be
+thus explained, and probably Madame Briot made some mistake. Her
+husband, Louis Briot, works alone in the cave, and has twelve men and a
+donkey to carry the ice he quarries to the village of Chaux, a mile from
+the glacière, where it is loaded for conveyance to Besançon. He uses
+gunpowder for the flooring of ice, and expects the eighth part of a
+pound to blow out a cubic metre; and if, by ill luck, the ice thus
+procured has stones on the lower side, he has to saw off the bottom
+layer. Madame Briot said I was right in supposing March to be the great
+time for the formation of ice, as she had heard her husband say that the
+columns were higher then than at any other time of the year: she also
+confirmed my views as to the disastrous effects of heavy rain. As with
+every other glacière of which I could obtain any account, excepting the
+Lower Glacière of the Pré de S. Livres, she complained that the ice had
+not been so beautiful and so abundant this year as last, although the
+winter had been exceptionally severe.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 26: Jean Bontemps, Conseiller au bailliage d'Arbois.]
+
+[Footnote 27: 'Allez vous en reposer, rafraischir et boire un coup au
+chasteau, car vous en avez bon besoin; j'ay du vin d'Arbois en mes
+offices, dont je vous envoyeray deux bouteilles, car je scay bien que
+vous ne le hayés pas.'--_Petitot_. iii. 9.]
+
+[Footnote 28: Mém. de la Comté de Bourgougne, Dôle, 1592, p. 486.]
+
+[Footnote 29: One of the Seigneurs de Chissey, Michaud de Changey, who
+died in high office in 1480, was known by preeminence as _le Brave_.]
+
+[Footnote 30: Dr. Buckland visited these caves in 1826, to look for
+bones, of which he found a great number. Gollut (in 1592) spelled the
+name _Aucelle_, and derived it from _Auricella_, believing that the
+Romans worked a gold mine there. It is certain that both the Doubs and
+the Loue supplied very fine gold, and the Seigneurs of Longwy had a
+chain made of the gold of those rivers, which weighed 160 crowns.]
+
+[Footnote 31: Dion Cass. lib. lxiii.]
+
+[Footnote 32: Ib. lib. lxvi.]
+
+[Footnote 33: Known locally as the _Porte Noire_, like the great _Porta
+Nigra_ at Treves, and other Roman gates in Gaul.]
+
+[Footnote 34: I should be inclined, from what I saw of the country, to
+go to the station of Baume-les-Dames on any future visit, and walk
+thence to the glacière, perhaps three leagues from the station.]
+
+[Footnote 35: He was in error. The Paris correspondent of the 'Times'
+gave, some months since (see the impression of Jan. 20, 1865), an
+account of an interesting trial respecting the manufacture of the
+liqueur peculiar to the Abbey of Grâce-Dieu. From this account it
+appears that the liqueur was formerly called the Liqueur of the
+Grâce-Dieu, but is now known as Trappistine. It is limpid and oily;
+possesses a fine aroma, a peculiar softness, a mild but brisk flavour,
+and so on. It was invented by an ecclesiastic who was once the Brother
+Marie-Joseph, and prior of the convent, but is now M. Stremler, having
+been released by the Pope from his vows of obedience and poverty, in
+order that he might teach Christianity to the infidels of the New World.
+The Brothers took the question of the renunciation of poverty into their
+own hands, by declining to give up the money which Brother Marie-Joseph
+had originally brought into the society; so M. Stremler, being now
+moneyless, commenced the secular manufacture of the seductive
+Trappistine, in opposition to the regular manufacture within the walls
+of the Abbey, abstaining, however, from the use of the religious label
+which is the Brothers' trade-mark. The unfortunate inventor was fined
+and condemned in costs for his piracy.]
+
+[Footnote 36: See p. 310.]
+
+[Footnote 37: _Journal des Mines_, Prairial, an iv., pp. 65, &c.]
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+BESANÇON AND DÔLE.
+
+
+The afternoon was so far advanced when I returned to the convent, that
+it was clearly impossible to reach Besançon at five o'clock, and
+consequently there was time to inspect the Brothers and their buildings.
+The field near the convent was gay with haymakers; and the brown monks,
+with here and there a priest in _ci-devant_ white, moved among the hired
+labourers, and stirred them up by exhortation and example,--with this
+difference, that while it was evidently the business of the monks so to
+do, the priests, on the other hand, had only taken fork in hand for the
+sake of a little gentle exercise. One unhappy Jacques Bonhomme made hot
+and toilsome hay in thick brown clothes, plainly manufactured from a
+defunct Brother's gown; for, to judge from appearances, a cast-off gown
+is a thing unknown. It was good to see a Brother, in horn spectacles of
+mediæval cut, tenderly chopping a log for firewood, and peering at it
+through his spectacles after each stroke, as a man examines some
+delicate piece of natural machinery with a microscope; to see another
+Brother, the sphere of whose duties lay in the flour-mill, standing in
+the doorway with brown robe and shaven crown all powdered alike with
+white, and a third covered from head to foot with sawdust; or, best of
+all, to see an antique Brother, with scarecrow legs, and low shoes which
+had presumably been in his possession or that of his predecessors for a
+long series of years, wheeling a barrow of liquid manure, with his gown
+looped up high by means of stout whipcord and an arrangement of large
+brass rings. The Brother whose business it was to do such cooking as
+might be required by visitors, grinned in the most friendly and
+engaging manner from ear to ear when he was looked at; and, by fixing
+him steadily with the eye, he could be kept for considerable spaces of
+time standing in the middle of the kitchen, knife in hand, with the
+corners of his mouth out of sight round his broad cheeks. His ample
+front was decked with a blue apron, suspended from his shoulders, and
+confined round the convexity of his waist by an old strap which no
+respectable costermonger would have used as harness. The soup served was
+by courtesy called _soupe maigre,_ but it was in fact _soupe maigre_
+diluted by many homoeopathic myriads, and the Brother showed much
+curiosity as to my opinion of its taste--a curiosity which I could not
+satisfy without hurting his professional pride. When that course was
+finished, the large-faced cook suggested an omelette, as the most
+substantial thing allowed on eves, proceeding to draw the materials from
+a closet which so fully shared in the general abstinence from water as a
+means of cleansing, that I shut my eyes upon all further operations, and
+ate the eventual omelette in faith. Its excellence called forth such
+hearty commendations, that there seemed to be some danger of the mouth
+not coming right again. Then salads, and bread and butter, and wine, and
+various kinds of cheese were brought, which made in all a very fair
+dinner for a fast-day.
+
+The culinary monk knew nothing of the history of his convent, beyond the
+bare year of its foundation, and displayed a monotonous dead level of
+ignorance on all topographical and historical questions: to him the
+_Pain d'Abbaye_[38] meant nothing further than the staff of life there
+provided, and he neither knew himself nor could recommend any Brother
+who knew anything about the glacière. He was a German, and we talked of
+his native Baiern and the modern glories of his capital; and when his
+questions elicited a declaration of my profession, he passed up to
+Saxony, and pinned me with Luther. Finding that I objected to being so
+pinned, and repudiated something of that which his charge involved, he
+waived Luther, of whom he knew nothing beyond his name, and came down
+upon me triumphantly with the word Protestant. I explained to him, of
+course, that the worthy Elector, and his friends who protested, had not
+much to do with the Anglican branch of the Church Catholic; and then the
+old task had to be gone through of assuring the assembled Brothers that
+we in England have Sacraments, have Orders, have a Trinitarian Creed.
+
+At length, about half-past three, we started for Besançon, paying of
+course _à volonté_ for food and entertainment, as we did not choose to
+qualify as paupers. The driver told me on the way that there was another
+glacière at Vaise, a village three or four kilomètres from Besançon, and
+at no great distance from the road by which we should approach the town;
+so, when we reached the crest above Morre, where the road passes the
+final ridge by means of a tunnel, I paid the carriage off, and walked to
+the village of Vaise. The public-house knew of the glacière--knew indeed
+of two,--further still, kept the keys of both. This was good news,
+though the idea of keys in connection with an ice-cave was rather
+strange; and I proposed to organise an expedition at once to the
+glacières. The male half of the auberge declared that he was forbidden
+to open them to strangers, except by special order from a certain
+monsieur in Besançon; but the female half, scenting centimes, stated her
+belief that the monsieur in Besançon could never wish them to turn away
+a stranger who had come so many kilomètres through the dust to see the
+ice. She put the proposed disobedience in so persuasive and Christian a
+form, that I was obliged to take the husband's side,--not that he was in
+any need of support, for he had been longer married than Adam was, and
+showed no signs of giving way. It turned out, after all, that though
+there was no doubt about the existence of the glacières, there was
+equally no doubt that they were _glacières artificielles_, being simply
+ice-houses dug in the side of a hill, and the property of a _glacier_ in
+Besançon; so that my friend the driver had sent me to a mare's-nest.
+
+The pathway across the hills to Besançon was rather intricate, and by
+good fortune an old Frenchman appeared, who was returning from his work
+at a neighbouring church, and served as companion and guide. He had bid
+farewell to sixty some years before, and, being a builder, had been
+going up and down a ladder all day, with full and empty _hottes_, to an
+extent which outdid the Shanars of missionary meetings; and yet he
+walked faster than any foreigner of my experience. He talked in due
+proportion, and told some interesting details of the bombardment of
+Besançon, which he remembered well. When he learned that I was not
+German, but English, he told me they did not say _Anglais_ there, but
+_Gaudin_,--I was a _Gaudin_. This he repeated persistently many times,
+with an air worthy of General Cyrus Choke, and half convinced me that
+there was something in it, and that I might after all be a Gaudin. It
+was not till some hours after, that I remembered the indelible
+impression made by the piety of speech of recent generations of
+Englishmen upon the French nation at large, and thus was enabled to
+trace the origin of the name _Gaudin_. The old man evidently believed
+that it was the proper thing to call an Englishman by that name; thus
+reminding me of a story told of a French soldier in the Austrian service
+during the long early wars with Switzerland. The Austrians called the
+Swiss, in derision, Kühmelkers--a term more opprobrious than _bouviers_;
+and it is said that, after the battle of Frastens--one of the battles of
+the Suabian war,--a Frenchman threw himself at the feet of some Grisons
+soldiers, and innocently prayed thus for quarter; '_Très-chers,
+très-honorables, et très-dignes Kühmelkers! au nom de Dieu, ne me tuez
+pas_!'
+
+The town of Besançon seems to spend its Sunday in fishing, and is
+apparently well contented with that very limited success which is wont
+to attend a Frenchman's efforts in this branch of _le sport_. There is a
+proverb in the patois of Vaud which says '_Kan on vau dau pesson, sé fo
+molli_;'[39] and on this the Bisuntians act, standing patiently half-way
+up the thigh in the river, as the Swiss on the Lake of Geneva and other
+lakes may be seen to do. It is all very well to wade for a good salmon
+cast, or to spend some hours in a swift-foot[40] Scotch stream for the
+sake of a lively basket of trout; but to stand in a Sunday coat and hat,
+and 2-1/2 feet of water, watching a large bung hopelessly unmoved on the
+surface, is a thing reserved for a Frenchman indulging in a weekly
+intoxication of Sabbatical sport, under the delirious form of the
+_chasse aux goujons_.
+
+Clean as the town within the circuit of the river is, the houses which
+overhang the water on the other side are picturesque and dirty in the
+extreme, story rising above story, and balcony above balcony. It does
+not increase their beauty, and to a fastidious nose it must militate
+against their eligibility as places of residence, that there is
+apparently but one drain, an external one, which follows the course of
+the pillars supporting the various balconies: nevertheless, from the
+opposite side of the river, and when the wind sets the other way, they
+are sufficiently attractive. In this quarter is found the finest church,
+the Madeleine, with a very effective piece of sculpture at the east end.
+The sculpture is arranged on the bottom and farther side of a sort of
+cage, which is hung outside the church, but is visible from the inside
+through a corresponding opening in the east wall. The subject of the
+sculpture is 'The Sepulchre,' and the ends of the cage or box are
+composed of rich yellow glass, through which the external light streams
+into the cave of the Sepulchre; and when the church itself is becoming
+dark, the effect produced by the light from the evening sky, passing
+through the deep-toned glass, and softly illuminating the Sepulchre, is
+indescribably solemn.
+
+[Illustration: BATH IN THE DOUBS, AT BESANÇON.]
+
+When Besançon was supplied by the aqueduct with the waters of Arcier,
+there was a great abundance of baths, as the remains discovered in
+digging new foundations show; but in the present state of the town such
+things are not easily met with. The floating baths on the river are
+appropriated to the other sex, and the only thing approaching to a male
+bath was of a nature entirely new to me, being constructed as
+follows:--There is a water-mill in the town, with a low weir stretching
+across the river, down which the water rushes with no very great
+violence. At the foot of this weir a row of sentry-boxes is placed,
+approached by planks, and in these boxes the adventurer finds his
+bath.[41] A stout piece of wood-work is fixed horizontally along the
+face of the weir, and has the effect of throwing the downward water out
+of its natural direction, and causing it to describe an arch, so that it
+descends with much force on to the weir at a point below the wood-work.
+Here two planks are placed, forming a seat and a support for the back,
+and a little lower still another plank for the feet to rest upon,
+without which the bather would have a good chance of being washed away.
+The water boils noisily and violently on all sides and in all
+directions, coming down upon the subject's shoulders with a heavy thud,
+which calls to mind the tender years when something softer than a cane
+was used, and sends him forth like a fresh-boiled lobster. All this,
+with towels, is not dear at fourpence.
+
+The citadel is the great sight of Besançon, and the polite
+Colonel-commandant attends at his office at convenient hours to give
+passes. What it might be to storm the position under the excitement of
+the sport of war, I cannot say; but certainly it is a most trying affair
+on a hot Sunday's afternoon, even when all is made smooth, and the gates
+are opened, by a comprehensive pass. The wall mentioned by Cæsar as a
+great feature of the place cut the site of the citadel off from the
+town, and many signs of it were found when the cathedral of S. Stephen
+was built, the unfortunate church which went down before the exigencies
+of a siege under Louis XIV. The barrack-master proved to be a most
+interesting man, knowing many details of Cæsar's life and campaigns
+which I suspect were not known to that captain himself. He had served in
+Algeria, and assented to the proposition that more soldiers died there
+of absinthe than of Arabs, stating his conviction that three-fourths of
+the whole deaths are caused by that pernicious extract of wormwood, and
+that he ought himself to have died of it long ago. He pointed out the
+difference between the massive masonry of the period of the Spanish
+occupation and the less impressive work of more recent times, and showed
+the dungeon from which Marshal Bourmont bought his escape, in the time
+of the first Napoleon.
+
+The floor of one of the little look-out towers is composed of a
+tombstone, representing a priest in full ecclesiastical dress, and my
+question as to how it came there elicited the following story:--When
+Louis XIV. was besieging the citadel, he placed his head-quarters, and a
+strong battery, on the summit of the Mont Chaudane,[42] which commands
+the citadel on one side as the Brégille does on the other. Among the
+besieged was a monk named Schmidt, probably one of the Low-country men
+to whom the Franche Comté was then a sort of home, as forming part of
+the dominions of Spain; and this monk was the most active supporter of
+the defence, against the large party within the walls which was anxious
+to render the town. He was also an admirable shot; and on one of the
+last days of the siege, as he stood in the little tower where the
+tombstone now lies, the King and his staff rode to the front of the
+plateau on the Mont Chaudane to survey the citadel; whereupon some one
+pointed out to Schmidt that now he had a fair chance of putting an end
+at once to the siege and the invasion. Accordingly, he took a musket
+from a soldier and aimed at the King; but before firing he changed his
+aim, remarking, that he, a priest, ought not to destroy the life of a
+man, and so he only killed the horse, giving the Majesty of France a
+roll in the mud. When the town was taken, the King enquired for the man
+who killed his horse, and asked the priest whether he could have killed
+the rider instead, had he wished to do so. 'Certainly,' Schmidt replied,
+and related the facts of the case. Louis informed him, that had he been
+a soldier, he should have been decorated for his skill and his impulse
+of mercy; but, being a priest, he should be hung. The sentence was
+carried out, and the priest's body was buried in the floor of the tower
+from which he had spared the King's life. If this be true, it was one of
+the most unkingly deeds ever done.[43]
+
+This siege took place in the second invasion or conquest of the Franche
+Comté by Louis XIV., when Besançon held out for nine days against Vauban
+and the King: on the first occasion it had surrendered to Condé after
+one day's siege, making the single stipulation that the Holy Shroud
+should not be removed from the town.[44] The _Saincte Suaire_ was the
+richest ecclesiastical treasure of the Bisuntians, being one of the two
+most genuine of the many Suaires, the other being that of Turin, which
+was supported by Papal Infallibility. Both were brought from the
+Crusades; and the one was presented to Besançon in 1206, the other to
+Turin in 1353. Bede tells a story of the proving of a Shroud by fire in
+the eighth century, by one of the caliphs; and as its dimensions were 8
+feet by 4, like that of Besançon, while the Shroud of Turin measured 12
+feet by 3, the people of Besançon claimed that theirs was the one spoken
+of by Bede.
+
+The Cathedral of Besançon is no longer S. Stephen, since the destruction
+of that church by Louis XIV. The small Church of the Citadel is now
+dedicated to that saint, an inscription on the wall stating that it
+takes the place of the larger church, _ex urbis obsidio anno 1674
+lapsae_, and offering an indulgence of 100 days for every visit paid to
+it, with the sensible proviso _una duntaxat vice per diem._ Soldiers not
+being generally made of the confessing sex, or of confessing material,
+there is only one confessional provided for the 6,000 souls which the
+citadel can accommodate.
+
+The Cavalry Barracks are in the lower part of the town, and near them is
+a large building with evident traces of ecclesiastical architecture on
+the outside. It is, in fact, a very fine church converted into stables,
+retaining its interior features in excellent preservation. Under the
+corn-bin lies a lady who had two husbands and fifteen children,
+_Antigone in parentes, Porcia in conjuges, Sempronia in liberos_; while
+a few yards further east, less agreeably placed, is an ecclesiastic of
+the Gorrevod family, who reckoned Prince and Bishop and Baron among his
+titles. The nave of this Church of S. Michael accommodates thirty
+horses, and the north aisle thirteen; the south is considered more
+select, and is boarded off for the decani, in the shape of officers'
+chargers. The north side of the chancel gives room for six horses, and
+the south side for a row of saddle-blocks. It had been an oversight on
+the part of the original architect of the church that no place was
+prepared for the daily hay; a fault which the military restorers have
+remedied by improvising a lady-chapel, where the hay for the day is
+placed in the morning. With Spelman in my mind, I asked if the stables
+were not unhealthy; but the soldiers said they were the healthiest in
+the town.[45]
+
+The Glacière of Vaise had proved, as has been seen, to be a
+mare's-nest; and yet, after all, it produced a foal; for while I was
+endeavouring to overcome the evening heat of Besançon in a
+_spécialité_ for ice, I found that the owner of the establishment was
+also the owner of the two glacières of Vaise; and in the course of the
+conversation which followed, he told me of the existence of a natural
+glacière near the village of Arc-sous-Cicon, twenty kilomètres from
+Pontarlier, which he had himself seen. As I had arranged to meet my
+sisters at Neufchâtel, in two days' time, for the purpose of visiting
+a glacière in the Val de Travers, this piece of information came very
+opportunely, and I determined to attempt both glacières with them.
+
+Some of the trains from Besançon stop for an hour at Dôle in passing
+towards Switzerland by way of Pontarlier, and anyone who is interested
+in the Burgundian and Spanish wars of France should take this
+opportunity of seeing what may be seen of the town of Dôle and its
+massive church-tower. The sieges of Dôle made it very famous in the
+later middle ages, more especially the long siege under Charles
+d'Amboise, at the crisis of which that general recommended his soldiers
+to leave a few of the people for seed,[46] and the old sobriquet _la
+Joyeuse_ was punningly changed to _la Dolente_. It has had other claims
+upon fame; for if Besançon possessed one of the two most authentic Holy
+Shrouds, Dôle was the resting-place of one of the undoubted miraculous
+Hosts, which had withstood the flames in the Abbey of Faverney. It was
+for the reception of this Host that the advocates of the Brotherhood of
+Monseigneur Saint Yves built the Sainte Chapelle at Dôle.[47]
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 38: One of the rights of the sovereigns of Burgundy was known
+by this name. The sovereign had the power of sending one soldier
+incapacitated by war to each abbey in the County, and the authorities of
+the abbey were bound to make him a prebendary for life. In 1602, after
+the siege of Ostend, the Archduke Albert exercised this right in favour
+of his wounded soldiers, forcing lay-prebendaries upon almost all the
+abbeys of the County of Burgundy. The Archduchess Isabella attempted to
+quarter such a prebendary upon the Abbey of Migette, a house of nuns,
+but the inmates successfully refused to receive the warrior among them
+(Dunod, _Hist. de l'Église de Besançon_, i. 367). For the similar right
+in the kingdom of France, see Pasquier, _Recherches de la France_, l.
+xii. p. 37. Louis XIV. did not exercise this right after his conquest of
+the Franche Comté, perhaps because the Hôtel des Invalides, to which the
+Church was so large a contributor, met all his wants.]
+
+[Footnote 39: '_Quand on veut du poisson, il se faut mouiller_;'
+referring probably to the method of taking trout practised in the Ormont
+valley, the habitat of the purest form of the patois. A man wades in the
+Grand' Eau, with a torch in one hand to draw the fish to the top, and a
+sword in the other to kill them when they arrive there; a second man
+wading behind with a bag, to pick up the pieces.]
+
+[Footnote 40: 'Swift-foot Almond, and land-louping Braan.']
+
+[Footnote 41: The sentry-box is omitted in the accompanying
+illustration.]
+
+[Footnote 42: Believed to be derived from _Collis Dianæ_. Dunod found
+that _Chaudonne_ was an early form of the name, and so preferred _Collis
+Dominarum_, with reference to the house of nuns placed there.]
+
+[Footnote 43: Schmidt was not without the support of example in the
+indulgence of his warlike tastes. Thirty-eight years before, the
+religious took so active a part in the defence of Dôle against Louis
+XIII., that the Capuchin Father d'Iche had the direction of the
+artillery; and when an officer of the enemy had seized the Brother
+Claude by the cowl, the Father Barnabas made the officer loose his hold
+by slaying him with a demi-pique. When Arbois was besieged by Henry IV.,
+the Sieur Chanoine Pécauld is specially mentioned as proving himself a
+_bon harquebouzier._]
+
+[Footnote 44: There is a painting by Vander Meulen, representing this
+siege, in the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge.]
+
+[Footnote 45: The Church of S. Philibert, in Dijon, now a forage
+magazine, has an inscription let into the wall almost ludicrously out of
+keeping with the present desecrated state of the building,--_Dilexi
+Domine Decorem Domus tuæ_, 1648.]
+
+[Footnote 46: 'Qu'on les laisse pour grain!']
+
+[Footnote 47: In the year 1648, it was suspected that some decay was
+going on in the material of this Host, and the following translation
+from the Latin describes the investigation entered into by the Dean and
+a large body of clergy and laity, in order to quiet the public
+mind:--'Après que tous les susnommés (viz. the Dean, Canons, President
+of the Parliament, &c.) étant présents eurent adorés le S. Sacrement, la
+custode fut ouverte avec tout le respect possible; et alors le dit Doyen
+aperçut un vermisseau roulé en spirale, qu'il saisit avec la pointe
+d'une épingle et plaça sur un corporal où chacun l'examina; puis on le
+brûla avec un charbon pris dans l'encensoir, et ses cendres furent
+jetées dans la piscine. On put alors constater tout le dommage que ce
+misérable petit animal avait causé aux espèces sacrées dont les débris
+ici tombaient en poussière, là se trouvaient rongés et lacérés, de telle
+sorte que l'Hostie n'avait presque plus rien de sa forme circulaire, et
+présentait de profondes découpures partout où le vermisseau s'était
+livré à ses sinueus es évolutions.']
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+THE GLACIÈRE OF MONTHÉZY, IN THE VAL DE TRAVERS.
+
+
+I rejoined my sisters at Neufchâtel on the 5th of July, and proceeded
+thence with them by the line which passes through the Val de Travers.
+One of them had been at Fleurier, in 1860, on the day of the opening of
+this line, and she added an interest to the various tunnels, by telling
+us that a Swiss gentleman of her acquaintance, who had taken a place in
+one of the open carriages of the first train, found, on reaching the
+daylight after one of the tunnels, that his neighbour had been killed by
+a small stone which had fallen on to his head. Where the stone came
+from, no one could say, nor yet when it fell, for the unfortunate man
+had made no sign or movement of any kind.
+
+Every one must be delighted with the wonders of the line of rail, and
+the beauties through which the engineer has cut his way. In valleys on a
+less magnificent scale, cuttings and embankments on the face of the hill
+are sad eyesores, as in railway-ruined Killiecrankie; but here Nature's
+works are so very grand, that the works of man are not offensively
+prominent, being overawed by the very facts over which they have
+triumphed. When we reached the more even part of the valley, where the
+Reuse no longer roars and rushes far below, but winds quietly through
+the soft grass on a level with the rail, the whole grouping was so
+exceedingly charming, and the river itself so suggestive of lusty trout,
+and the village of Noiraigue[48] looked so tempting as it nestled in a
+sheltered nook among the headlong precipices, that I registered in a
+safe mental pigeon-hole a week at the auberge there with a fishing-rod,
+and excursions to the commanding summit in which the _Creux de Vent_ is
+found. The engine-driver knew that he was in a region of beauties, and,
+when he whistled to warn his passengers that the train was about to move
+on, he remained stationary until the long-resounding echoes died out,
+floating lingeringly up the valley to neighbouring France.
+
+We had no definite idea as to the _locale_ of the glacière we were now
+bent upon attacking. M. Thury's list gave the following
+information:--'_Glacière de Motiers, Canton de Neufchâtel, entre les
+vallées de Travers et de la Brévine, près du sentier de la Brévine_;'
+and this I had rendered somewhat more precise by a cross-examination of
+the guard of the train on my way to Besançon. He had not heard of the
+glacière, but from what I told him he was inclined to think that Couvet
+would be the best station for our purpose, especially as the 'Ecu' at
+that place was, in his eyes, a commendable hostelry. Some one in Geneva,
+also, had believed that Couvet was as likely as anything else in the
+valley; so at Couvet we descended.[49]
+
+This is a very clean and cheerful village, devoted to the lucrative
+manufacture of _absinthe_, and producing inhabitants who look like
+gentlemen and ladies, and promenade the ways in bonnets and hats,
+after a most un-Swiss-like fashion. They carefully restrict
+themselves to the making of the poisonous product of their village,
+and have nothing to do with the consumption thereof:[50] hence nature
+has a fair chance with them, and they are a healthy and energetic
+race. The beauties of the surrounding mountains, with their fitful
+alternations of pasture and wood, and grey face of rock, are not
+marred by the outward appearance, at least, of that which Bishop Heber
+lamented in a country where 'every prospect pleases.' An old lady is
+commemorated in the annals of Couvet as an example of the healthiness
+of the situation, who saw seven generations of her family, having
+known her great-grandfather in her early years, and living to nurse
+great-grandchildren in her old age. The landlord of the inn informed
+us, with much pride, that Couvet was the birthplace of the man who
+invented a clock for telling the time at sea; by which, no doubt, he
+meant the chronometer, invented by M. Berthoud. At Motiers, the next
+village, Rousseau wrote his _Lettres de la Montagne_, and thence it
+was that he fled from popular violence to the island on the Lake of
+Bienne.
+
+The 'Ecu' promised us dinner in half an hour, and we strolled about in
+the garden of that unsophisticated hotel for an hour and a half,
+reconciled to the delay by the beauty of the neighbouring hills, the
+winding of the valley giving all the effect of a mountain-locked plain,
+with barriers decked with firs. It will readily be conceived, however,
+that three practical English people could not be satisfied to feed on
+beauty alone for any very great length of time, and we caught the
+landlady and became peremptory. She explained that dinner was quite
+ready, but she had intended to give us the pleasure of an agreeable
+society, consisting of sundry Swiss who were due in another half-hour or
+so: she yielded, nevertheless, to our representations, and promised to
+serve the meal at once. We were speedily summoned to the
+_salle-à-manger,_ and entered a low smoke-stained wooden chamber, with
+no floor to speak of, and with huge beams supporting the roof, dangerous
+for tall heads. The date on the door was 1690, and the chamber fully
+looked its age. There was a long table of the prevailing hue, with a
+similar bench; and on the table three large basins, presumably
+containing soup, were ranged, each covered with its plate, and
+accompanied by a ricketty spoon of yellow metal and a hunch of black
+bread. A., who was hungry enough and experienced enough to have known
+better, began promptly a most pathetic 'Why surely!' but the landlady
+stopped her by opening a side door, and displaying a comfortable room in
+which a well-appointed table awaited us:--she had taken us through the
+kitchen rather than through the _salon_, in which were peasants smoking.
+We were somewhat disconcerted when we heard that the unwashed-looking
+place was the kitchen; but the landlady had made up for it by scrubbing
+her husband, who waited upon us, to a high pitch of presentability, and
+further experience showed that the 'Ecu' is to be highly commended for
+the excellence and abundance and cheapness of its foods.
+
+There are many natural curiosities in and near the Val de Travers, which
+well repay the labour that must be expended upon them. The _Temple des
+Fées_, on the western side of the Valley of Verrières, used to be called
+the most beautiful grotto in Switzerland; and the great Cavern of La
+Baume, near Motiers, is said to be exceedingly wonderful. We were shown
+the entrance to a line of caverns in the hills above Couvet, and were
+informed that it was possible to pierce completely through the range,
+and pass out at the other side within sight of Yverdun. One of the
+caverns in this valley had been explored by some of A. and M.'s Swiss
+friends, and the account of what they had gone through was by no means
+inviting, seeing that the prevailing material was damp clay of a solid
+character, arranged in steep slopes, up which progression must be made
+by inserting the fingers and toes as far as might be into the clay; and,
+of course, when the handful of unpleasant mud came away, the result was
+the reverse of progression. To anyone who has only known the rope up the
+pure white side of some snow mountain, the idea of being roped for the
+purpose of grappling with underground banks of adhesive mud and clay
+must be horrible in the extreme. Another interesting natural phenomenon
+is presented by the source of the Reuse, that river gushing out from the
+rock in considerable volume, probably formed by the drainage of the Lake
+of Etallières, in the distant valley of La Brévine; while the
+Longe-aigue, on the contrary, is lost in a gulf of such horror that the
+people call the mill which stands on its edge the _Moulin d'enfer_.
+
+As usual, we were assured that many of these remarkable sights were far
+better worth a visit than the glacière, of which no one seemed to know
+anything. A guide was at length secured for the next morning, who had
+made his way to the cave once in the winter-time and had been unable to
+enter it, and we settled down quietly to an evening of perfect rest. The
+windows of the bedrooms being guiltless of blinds and curtains, the
+effect of waking, in the early morning, to find them blocked up, as it
+were, by the green slopes of pasture and the dark bands of fir-woods
+which clothed the limiting hills, seemed almost magical, the foreground
+being occupied solely by the graceful curve of the dome of the
+church-tower, glittering with intercepted rays, and forming a bright
+omen for the day thus ushered in.
+
+In due time the promised guide appeared, a sickly boy of unprepossessing
+appearance, and of _patois_ to correspond. I was at first tempted to
+propose that we should attack him stereoscopically, A. administering
+French and I simultaneous German, in the hope that the combination
+might convey some meaning to him; but, after a time, we succeeded with
+French alone. Perhaps Latin would have made a more likely _mélange_ than
+German, and to give it him in three dimensions would not have been a bad
+plan. The route for the glacière runs straight up the face of the hill
+along which the railway has been constructed; and as we passed through
+woods of beech and fir, with fresh green glades rolling down below our
+feet, or emerged from the woods to cross large undulating expanses of
+meadow-land, we were almost inclined to believe that we had never done
+so lovely a walk. The scenery through which we passed was thoroughly
+that of the lower districts of the Alps, with nothing Jurane in its
+character, and the elevation finally achieved was not very great:
+indeed, at a short distance from the glacière, we passed a collection of
+very neat châlets, with gardens and garden-flowers, one of the châlets
+rejoicing in countless beehives, with three or four 'ekes' apiece. Up to
+the time of reaching this little village, which seemed to be called
+Sagnette, our path had been that which leads to _La Brévine_, the
+highest valley in the canton; but now we turned off abruptly up the
+steeper face on the left hand, and in a very few minutes came upon a dry
+wilderness of rock and grass, which we at once recognised as 'glacière
+country;' and when I told our guide that we must be near the place, he
+replied by pointing to the trees round the mouth of the pit.
+
+Shortly after we first left Couvet, a gaunt elderly female, with a
+one-bullock char, had joined our party, and tried to bully us into
+giving up the cave and going instead to a neighbouring summit, whence
+she promised us a view of unrivalled extent and beauty. She told us that
+there was nothing to be seen in the glacière, and that it was a place
+where people lost their lives. The guide said that was nonsense; but
+she reduced him to silence by quoting a case in point. She said, too,
+that if a man slipped and fell, there was nothing to prevent him from
+going helplessly down a run of ice into a subterranean watercourse,
+which would carry him for two or three leagues underground; and on this
+head our boy had no counter-statement to make. She asserted that without
+ladders it was utterly impossible to make the descent to the
+commencement of the glacière; and she vowed there was no ladder now, nor
+had been for some time. Here the boy came in, stating that the cave
+belonged to a mademoiselle of Neufchâtel, who had a summer cottage at no
+great distance, and loved to be supplied with ice during her residence
+in the country, for which purpose she kept a sound ladder on the spot,
+and had it removed in the winter that it might not be destroyed. There
+was a circumstantial air about this statement which for the moment got
+the better of the old woman; but she speedily recovered herself, and
+repeated positively that there was no ladder of any description, adding,
+somewhat inconsequently, that it was such a bad one, no Christian could
+use it with safety. The boy retorted, that it was all very well for her
+to run the glacière down, as she lived near it, but for the world from a
+distance it was a most wonderful sight; and, as for the ladder, he
+happened to know that it was at this time in excellent preservation. The
+event proved that in saying this he drew entirely upon his imagination.
+It is, perhaps, only fair to suppose that they don't mean anything by
+it, and it may be mere ignorance on their part; but the simple fact is,
+that some of those Swiss rustics tell the most barefaced lies
+conceivable,--_unblushing_ is an epithet that cannot be safely applied
+without previous soap and water,--and tell them in a plodding systematic
+manner which takes in all but the experienced and wary traveller. I have
+myself learned to suspend my judgment regarding the most simple thing in
+nature, until I have other grounds for forming an opinion than the
+solemn asseverations of the most stolid and respectable Swiss, if it so
+be that money depends upon his report.[51]
+
+As in the case of two of the glacières already described, the entrance
+is by a deep pit, which has the appearance of having been at one time
+two pits, one less deep than the other; and the barrier between the two
+having been removed by some natural process, a passage is found down the
+steep side of the shallower pit, which lands the adventurer on a small
+sloping shelf, 21 feet sheer above the surface of the snow in the deeper
+pit, the sides of the latter rising up perpendicularly all round. It is
+for this last 21 feet that some sort of ladder is absolutely necessary.
+Our guide flung himself down in the sun at the outer edge of the pit,
+and informed us that as it was cold and dangerous down below, he
+intended to go no farther: he had engaged, he said, to guide us to the
+glacière, and he felt in no way bound to go into it. He was not good for
+much, so I was not sorry to hear of his determination; and when my
+sisters saw the sort of place they had to try to scramble down, they
+appeared to be very glad that only I was to be with them.
+
+Leaving them to make such arrangements with regard to dress as might
+seem necessary to them, I proceeded to pioneer the way down the first
+part of the descent. This was extremely unpleasant, for the rocks were
+steep and very moist, with treacherous little collections of
+disintegrated material on every small ledge where the foot might
+otherwise have found a hold. These had to be cleared away before it
+could be safe for them to descend, and in other places the broken rock
+had to be picked out to form foot-holes; while, lower down, where the
+final shelf was reached, the abrupt slope of mud which ended in the
+sheer fall required considerable reduction, being far too beguiling in
+its original form. Here there was also a buttress of damp earth to be
+got round, and it was necessary to cut out deep holes for the hands
+and feet before even a man could venture upon the attempt with any
+comfort. The buttress was not, however, without its advantage, for on
+it, overhanging the snow of the lower pit, was a beautiful clump of
+cowslips (_Primula elatior_, Fr. _Primevère inodore_), which was at
+once secured as a trophy. The length of the irregular descent to this
+point was between 70 and 80 feet. On rounding the buttress, the upper
+end of the ladder presented itself, and now the question, between the
+boy and the old woman was to be decided. I worked down to the edge of
+the shelf, and looked over into the pit, and, alas! the state of the
+remaining parts of the ladder was hopeless, owing partly to the decay
+of the sidepieces, and partly to the general absence of steps--a
+somewhat embarrassing feature under the circumstances. A further
+investigation showed that for the 21 feet of ladder there were only
+seven steps, and these seven were not arranged as conveniently as they
+might have been, for two occurred at the very top, and the other five
+in a group at the bottom. A branchless fir-tree had at some time
+fallen into the pit, and now lay in partial contact with the ruined
+ladder; and there were on the trunk various little knobs, which might
+possibly be of some use as a supplement to the rare steps of the
+ladder. The snow at the bottom of the pit was surrounded on all sides
+by perpendicular rock, and on the side opposite to the ladder I saw an
+arch at the foot of the rock, apparently 2 or 3 feet high, leading
+from the snow into darkness; and that, of course, was the entrance to
+the glacière. I succeeded in getting down the ladder, by help of the
+supplement, and looked down into the dark hole to see that it was
+practicable, and then returned to report progress in the upper
+regions. We had brought no alpenstocks to Couvet, so we sent the guide
+off into the woods, where we had heard the sound of an axe, to get
+three stout sticks from the woodmen; but he returned with such
+wretched, crooked little things, that A. went off herself to forage,
+and, having found an impromptu cattle-fence, came back with weapons
+resembling bulbous hedge-stakes, which she skinned and generally
+modified with a powerful clasp-knife, her constant companion. She then
+cut up the crooked sticks into _bâtons_ for a contemplated repair of
+the ladder, while M. and I investigated the country near the pit. We
+found two other pits, which afterwards proved to communicate with the
+glacière. We could approach sufficiently near to one of these to see
+down to the bottom, where there was a considerable collection of snow:
+this pit was completely sheltered from the sun by trees, and was 66
+feet deep and 4 or 5 feet in diameter. The other was of larger size,
+but its edge was so treacherous that we did not venture so near as to
+see what it contained: its depth was about 70 feet, and the stone and
+a foot or two of the string came up wet. The sides of the main pit, by
+which we were to enter the glacière, were, as has been said, very
+sheer, and on one side we could approach sufficiently near the edge to
+drop a plummet down to the snow: the height of this face of rock was
+59 feet, measuring down to the snow, and the level of the ice was
+eventually found to be about 4 feet lower. Although it was now not
+very far from noon, the sun had not yet reached the snow, owing partly
+to the depth of the pit as compared with its diameter, and partly to
+the trees which grew on several sides close to the edge. One or two
+trees of considerable size grew out of the face of rock.
+
+We were now cool enough to attempt the glacière, and I commenced the
+descent with A. The precautions already taken made the way tolerably
+possible down to the buttress of earth and the shelving ledge, and so
+far the warm sun had accompanied us; but beyond the ledge there was
+nothing but the broken ladder, and deep shade, and a cold damp
+atmosphere, which made the idea, and still more the feel, of snow very
+much the reverse of pleasant. A. was not a coward on such occasions,
+and she had sufficient confidence in her guide; but it is rather
+trying for a lady to make the first step off a slippery slope of mud,
+on to an apology for a ladder which only stands up a few inches above
+the lower edge of the slope, and so affords no support for the hand:
+nor, after all, can bravery and trust quite make up for the want of
+steps. We were a very long time in accomplishing the descent, for her
+feet were always out of her sight, owing to the shape which female
+dress assumes when its wearer goes down a ladder with her face to the
+front, especially when the ladder has suffered from ubiquitous
+compound fracture, and the ragged edges catch the unaccustomed
+petticoats. It was quite as well the feet were out of sight, for some
+of the supports to which they were guided were not such as would have
+commended themselves to her, had she been able to see them. At length,
+owing in great measure to the opportune assistance of two of the
+batons we had brought down with us for repairs, thanks also to the
+trunk of the fir-tree, we reached the snow; and poor A. was planted
+there, breaking through the top crust as a commencement of her
+acquaintance with it, till such time as I could bring M. down to join
+her. The experience acquired in the course of A.'s descent led us to
+call to M. that she must get rid of that portion of her attire which
+gives a shape to modern dress; for the obstinacy and power of
+_mal-à-propos_ obstructiveness of this garment had wonderfully
+complicated our difficulties. She objected that the guide was there;
+but we assured her that he was asleep, or if he wasn't it made no
+matter; so when I reached the top, she emerged shapeless from a
+temporary hiding-place, clutching her long hedge-stake, and feeling,
+she said--and certainly looking--a good deal like a gorilla. The most
+baffling part of the trouble having been thus got over, we soon joined
+A., blue already, and shivering on the snow. The sun now reached very
+nearly to the bottom of the pit, and I went up once more for
+thermometers and other things, leaving a measure with my sisters, and
+begging them to amuse themselves by taking the dimensions of the snow:
+on my return, however, to the top of the ladder, I found them
+combining over a little bottle, and they informed me plaintively that
+they had been taking medicinal brandy and snow instead of
+measurements,--a very necessary precaution, for anyone to whom brandy
+is not a greater nuisance than utter cold. We found the dimensions of
+the bottom of the pit, i.e. of the field of snow on which we stood, to
+be 31-1/2 feet by 21; but we were unable to form any idea of the depth
+of the snow, beyond the fact that 'up to the ancle' was its prevailing
+condition. The boy told us, when we rejoined him, that when he and
+others had attempted to get ice for the landlord, when it was ordered
+for him in a serious illness the winter before, they had found the pit
+filled to the top with snow.
+
+[Illustration: VERTICAL SECTION OF THE GLACIÈRE OF MONTHÉZY, IN THE VAL
+DE TRAVERS.]
+
+As we stood at the mouth of the low entrance, making final
+preparations for a plunge into the darkness, I perceived a strong cold
+current blowing out from the cave--sufficiently strong and cold to
+render knickerbocker stockings a very unavailing protection. While
+engaged in the discovery that this style of dress is not without its
+drawbacks, I found, to my surprise, that the direction of the current
+suddenly changed, and the cold blast which had before blown out of the
+cave, now blew almost as strongly in. The arch of entrance was so low,
+that the top was about on a level with my waist; so that our faces and
+the upper parts of our bodies were not exposed to the current, and the
+strangeness of the effect was thus considerably increased. As a
+matter of curiosity, we lighted a _bougie_, and placed it on the edge
+of the snow, at the top of the slope of 3 or 4 feet which led down the
+surface of the ice, and then stood to watch the effect of the current
+on the flame. The experiment proved that the currents alternated, and,
+as I fancied, regularly; and in order to determine, if possible, the
+law of this alternation, I observed with my watch the exact duration
+of each current. For twenty-two seconds the flame of the _bougie_ was
+blown away from the entrance, so strongly as to assume a horizontal
+position, and almost to leave the wick: then the current ceased, and
+the flame rose with a stately air to a vertical position, moving down
+again steadily till it became once more horizontal, but now pointing
+in towards the cave. This change occupied in all four seconds; and the
+current inwards lasted--like the outward current--twenty-two seconds,
+and then the whole phenomenon was repeated. The currents kept such
+good time, that when I stood beyond their reach, and turned my back, I
+was enabled to announce each change with perfect precision. On one
+occasion, the flame performed its semicircle in a horizontal instead
+of a vertical plane, moving round the wick in the shape of a
+pea-flower. The day was very still, so that no external winds could
+have anything to do with this singular alternation; and, indeed, the
+pit was so completely sheltered by its shape, that a storm might have
+raged outside without producing any perceptible effect below. It would
+be difficult to explain the regularity of these opposite currents, but
+it is not so difficult to see that some such oscillation might be
+expected. It will be better, however, to defer any suggestions on this
+point till the glacière has been more fully described.
+
+[Illustration: GROUND PLAN OF THE GLACIÈRE OF MONTHÉZY. Note: The
+candle stood at this point.]
+
+We passed down at length through the low archway, and stood on the floor
+of ice. As our eyes became accustomed to the darkness, we saw that an
+indistinct light streamed into the cave from some low point at a
+considerable distance, apparently on a level with the floor; and this we
+afterwards found to be the bottom of the larger of the two pits we had
+already fathomed, the pit A of the diagram; and we eventually discovered
+a similar but much smaller communication with the bottom of the pit B.
+In each of these pits there was a considerable pyramid of snow, whose
+base was on a level with the floor of the glacière: the connecting
+archway in the case of the pit A was 3 or 4 feet high, allowing us to
+pass into the pit and round the pyramid with perfect ease, while that
+leading to the pit B was less than a foot high, so that no passage could
+be forced.
+
+As we stood on the ice at the entrance and peered into the comparative
+darkness, we saw by degrees that the glacière consisted of a continuous
+sea of smooth ice, sloping down very gently towards the right hand. The
+rock which forms the roof of the cave seemed to be almost as even as the
+floor, and was from 4 to 5 feet high in the neighbourhood in which we
+now found ourselves, gradually approaching the floor towards the bottom
+of the pit B, where it became about a foot high, and rising slightly in
+that part of the cave where the floor fell, so as to give 9 or 10 feet
+as the height there. The ice had all the appearance of great depth; but
+there were no means of forming a trustworthy opinion on this point,
+beyond the fact that I succeeded in lowering a stone to a considerable
+depth, in the small crevice which existed between the wall and the block
+of ice which formed the floor. The greatest length of the cave we found
+to be 112 ft. 7 in., and its breadth 94 ft., the general shape of the
+field of ice, which filled it to its utmost edges, being elliptical. The
+surface was unpleasantly wet, chiefly in the line of the currents, which
+were now seen to pass backwards and forwards between the pits A and C.
+In the neighbourhood of the pit B the water stood in a very thin sheet
+on the ice, which there was level, and rendered the style of locomotion
+necessitated by the near approach of the roof extremely disagreeable, as
+I was obliged to lie on my face, and push myself along the wet and
+slippery ice, to explore that corner of the cave, being at length
+stopped by want of sufficient height for even that method of
+progression.
+
+The circle marked D represents a column from the roof, at the foot of
+which we found a small grotto in the ice, which I entered to a depth of
+6 feet, the surface of the field of ice showing a very gracefully
+rounded fall at the edges of the grotto. At the point E there was a
+beautiful collection of fretted columns, white and hard as porcelain,
+arranged in a semicircle, with the diameter facing the cave, measuring
+22 ft. 9 in. along this face. On the farther side of these columns there
+were signs of a considerable fall in the ice; and by making use of the
+roots of small stalagmitic columns of that material, which grew on the
+slope of ice, I got down into a little wilderness of spires and
+flutings, and found a small cave penetrating a short way under the solid
+ice-floor. G marks the place of a free stalagmite of ice, formed under a
+fissure in the roof; and each F represents a column from the roof, or
+from a lateral fissure in the wall.
+
+The most striking features of this cave were the three domes, marked H
+in the ground-plan, in which they ought strictly not to appear, as being
+confined to the roof: one of them is shown also in the vertical section
+of the cave. They occur where the roof is from 3 to 4 feet above the
+floor. It will be understood, that the bent attitude in which we were
+obliged to investigate these parts of the cave was exceedingly
+fatiguing, and we hailed with delight a sudden circular opening in the
+roof which enabled us to stand upright. This delight was immensely
+increased when our candles showed us that the walls of this vertical
+opening were profusely decorated with the most lovely forms of ice. The
+first that we came under passed up out of sight; and in this, two solid
+cascades of ice hung down, high overhead, apparently broken off short,
+or at any rate ending very abruptly: the others did not pass so far
+into the roof, and formed domes of very regular shape. In all three, the
+details of the ice-decoration were most lovely, and the effect produced
+by the whole situation was very curious; for we stood with our legs
+exposed to the alternating cold currents, the remaining part of our
+bodies being imbedded as it were in the roof; while the candles in our
+hands brought out the crystal ornaments of the sides, flashing fitfully
+all round us and overhead, when one or other of us moved a light, as if
+we had been surrounded by diamonds of every possible size and setting.
+One of the domes was so small, that we were obliged to stand up by turn
+to examine its beauties; but in the others we all stood together. On
+every side were branching clusters of ice in the form of club-mosses,
+with here and there varicose veins of clear ice, and pinnacles of the
+prismatic structure, with limpid crockets and finials. The pipes of ice
+which formed a network on the walls were in some cases so exquisitely
+clear, that we could not be sure of their existence without touching
+them; and in other cases a sheet 4 or 6 inches thick was found to be no
+obstruction to our view of the rock on which it was formed. In one of
+the domes we had only one candle, and the bearer of this after a time
+contrived to let it fall, leaving us standing with our heads in perfect
+darkness; while the indistinct light which strayed about our feet showed
+faintly a circle of icicles, hanging from the lower part of the dome,
+the fringe, as it were, of our rocky petticoats.
+
+In one of the lower parts of the cave, where darkness prevailed, and
+locomotion was only possible on the lowest reptile principles, M.
+announced that she could see clear through the ice-floor, as if there
+were nothing between her and the rock below. I ventured to doubt this,
+for there was an air of immense thickness about the whole ice; and as
+soon as A. and I had succeeded in grovelling across the intervening
+space, and converged upon her, we found that the appearance she had
+observed was due to a most perfect reflection of the roof, as shown by
+the candles we carried, which may give some idea of the character of the
+ice. We did not care to study this effect for any very prolonged time,
+inasmuch as we were obliged meanwhile to stow away the length of our
+legs on a part of the ice which was thinly covered with water,--one
+result of its proximity to the arch communicating with the smallest pit.
+
+It has been said that the whole ice-floor sloped slightly towards one
+side of the cave, the slope becoming rather more steep near the edge.[52]
+Clearly, ever so slight a slope would be sufficiently embarrassing, when
+the surface was so perfectly smooth and slippery; and this added much to
+the difficulty of walking in a bent attitude. On coming out of one of
+the domes, I tried progression on all-fours--threes, rather, for the
+candle occupied one hand,--and I cannot recommend that method, owing to
+the impossibility of putting on the break. The pace ultimately acquired
+is greater than is pleasant, and the roof is too near the floor to allow
+of any successful attempt to bring things to an end by the reassumption
+of a biped character.
+
+We placed a thermometer in the line of greatest current, and another in
+a still part of the cave. The memorandum is lost of their register--if,
+indeed, we ever made one, for we were more concerned with the beauties
+than the temperature was surprisingly high in the line of current, as
+compared with the ordinary temperature of ice-caves.
+
+When we came to compare backs, after leaving the cave, we mutually found
+that they were in a very disreputable condition. The damp and ragged
+roof with which they had been so frequently in contact had produced a
+marked effect upon them, and I eventually paid a tailor in Geneva three
+francs for restoring my coat to decency. M. took great credit to herself
+for having been more careful of her back than the others, and declined
+to be laughed at for forgetting that she was only about half as high as
+they, to begin with. A. still remembers the green-grey stains, as the
+most obstinate she ever had to deal with, especially as her three-days'
+knapsack contained no change for that outer part of her dress.
+
+The 'Ecu' gave us a charming dinner on our return; then a moderate bill,
+and an affectionate farewell; and we succeeded in catching the early
+evening train for Pontarlier.[53]
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 48: _Aigue_, or _egue_, in the patois of this district, is
+equivalent to _eau_, the Latin _aqua_.]
+
+[Footnote 49: Ebel, in his _Swiss Manual_ (French translation of 1818,
+t. iii.), mentions this glacière under the head _Motiers_, and observes
+that it and the grotto of S. Georges are the only places in the Jura
+where ice remains through the summer. This statement, in common with a
+great part of Ebel, has been transferred to the letterpress of
+_Switzerland Illustrated_.]
+
+[Footnote 50: Switzerland sent 7,500,000 gallons of absinthe to France
+in 1864.]
+
+[Footnote 51: _Point d'argent, point de Suisse_, is a proverbial
+expression which the Swiss twist into a historical compliment, asserting
+that it arose in early mercenary times, from the fact that they were too
+virtuous to accept the suggestion of the general who hired them, and
+wished them to take their pay in kind from the defenceless people of the
+country they had served.]
+
+[Footnote 52: It is probable that the ice is on the increase in this
+glacière, and that an archway, now filled up by the growing ice, has at
+one time existed in the wall on this side of the care, through which the
+ice and water used to pour into the subterranean depths of which the old
+woman had told us. At the time of our visit, we could find no outlet.]
+
+[Footnote 53: The following remarks may give some explanation of the
+phenomenon of alternating currents in this cave, I should suppose that
+during the night there is atmospheric equilibrium in the cave itself,
+and in the three pits A, B, C. When the heat of the sun comes into
+operation, the three pits are very differently affected by it, C being
+comparatively open to the sun's rays, while A is much less so, and B is
+entirely sheltered from radiation. This leads naturally to atmospheric
+disturbance. The air in the pit C is made warmer and less heavy than
+that in A and B, and the consequence is, that the column of air in C can
+no longer balance the columns in A and B, which therefore begin to
+descend, and so a current of air is driven from the cave into the pit C.
+Owing to the elasticity of the atmosphere, even at a low temperature,
+this descent, and the consequent rush of air into C, will be overdone,
+and a recoil must take place, which accounts for the return current into
+the cave from the pit C. The sun can reach A more easily than B, and
+thus the air is lighter and more moveable in the former pit, so that the
+recoil will make itself more felt in A than in B: accordingly, we found
+that the main currents alternated between A and C, with very slight
+disturbance in the neighbourhood of B. B will, however, play its part,
+and the weighty column of air contained in it will oscillate, though
+with smaller oscillations than in the case of A. Probably, when the sun
+has left A, while acting still upon C, the return current from C will be
+much slighter, and there will be a general settling of the atmosphere in
+the pits A and B, until C also is freed from the sun's action, when the
+whole system will gradually pass into a state of equilibrium.
+
+With respect to the action of the more protected pits, the principle of
+the hydraulic ram not unnaturally suggests itself.
+
+In considering the minor details of the currents, such elements as the
+refrigeration of the air in its passage across the face of the ice must
+be taken into account. It may be observed that the candle did not occupy
+an _intermediate_ position with respect to two opposing currents, for it
+was practically on the floor of the cave, owing to the continuity of the
+slope of snow on which it stood, as shown in the vertical section on p.
+108.]
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+THE GLACIÈRE AND NEIGIÈRE OF ARC-SOUS-CICON.
+
+
+The beauties of the Val de Travers end only with the valley itself, at
+the head of which a long tunnel ushers the traveller into a tamer
+country,--a preparation, as it were, for France. After the border is
+passed, the scenery begins to improve again, and the effect of the two
+castles of Joux, the new and the old, crowning the heights on either
+side of the narrow gorge through which the railway runs, is very fine.
+The guide-books inform us that the Château of Joux was the place of
+imprisonment of the unfortunate Toussaint L'Ouverture, and that there he
+died of neglect and cold; and it was in the same strong fortress that
+Mirabeau was confined by his father's desire. The old castle, however,
+is more interesting from its connection with the history of Charles the
+Bold, who retired to La Rivière after the battle of Morat, and spent
+here those sad solitary weeks of which Philip de Comines tells with so
+many moral reflections; weeks of bodily and mental distress, which left
+him a mere wreck, and led to his wild want of generalship and his
+miserable death at Nancy. He had melted down the church-bells in this
+part of Burgundy and Vaud, to make cannon for the final effort which
+failed so fatally at Morat; and the old chroniclers relate--without any
+allusion to the sacrilege--that the artillery was wretchedly served on
+that cruel[54] day. It is some comfort to Englishmen to know that their
+ancestors under the Duke of Somerset displayed a marvellous courage on
+the occasion.
+
+We reached Pontarlier in time for a stroll through the quiet town; but
+we searched in vain for the tempting convents and gates, which were
+marked on my copy of an old plan of the place, dedicated to the Prince
+d'Arenberg, in the well-known times when he governed the Franche
+Comté. The convents had become for the most part breweries, and the
+gates had been improved away. Our enquiries respecting the place of
+our destination were fortunately more successful. The idea of a
+glacière was new to the world of Pontarlier; but the landlord of the
+Hôtel National had heard of Arc-sous-Cicon, and had no doubt that we
+could find a carriage of some sort to take us there. His own horses
+were all engaged in haymaking, but his neighbours' horses might be
+less busy, and accordingly he took us first to call upon M. Paget, a
+friend who added to his income by keeping a horse and voiture for
+hire. The Pagets in general had gone to bed, and the door was
+fastened; but our guide seemed to know the ways of the house, and we
+found Madame in the stables, and arranged with her for a carriage at
+seven o'clock the next morning.
+
+At the time appointed, M. Paget did not come, and I was obliged to go
+and look him up. He proved to me that it was all right, somehow, and
+evidently understood that his convenience, not ours, was the thing to be
+consulted. The hotel is in a narrow street, and, apparently on that
+account, a stray passer-by was caught, and pressed into M. Paget's
+service to help to turn the carriage,--a feat accomplished by a bodily
+lifting of the hinder part, with its wheels. After-experience showed
+that the narrowness of the street had nothing to with it, and we
+discovered that the necessity for the manoeuvre was due to a chronic
+affection of some portion of the voiture; so that whenever in the course
+of the day it became necessary for us to turn round, M. Paget was
+constrained to call in foreign help.
+
+The country through which we passed was uninteresting in the extreme,
+although we had been told by the landlord that our drive would introduce
+us to a succession of natural beauties such as few countries in the
+world could show. The line of hills, at the foot of which we expected
+our route to lie, looked exceedingly tempting as seen from Pontarlier;
+but, to our disappointment, we left the hills and struck across the
+plain. About ten or eleven kilomètres from Pontarlier, however, the
+character of the country changed suddenly, and we found the landlord's
+promise in some part fulfilled. Rich meadow-slopes were broken by
+solitary trees arranged in Nature's happiest style, and grey precipices
+of Jurane grimness and perpendicularity encroached upon the woods and
+grass. We were coming near the source of the Loue, M. Paget said, which
+it would be necessary for us to visit. He told us that we must leave the
+carriage at an _auberge_ on the roadside, and walk to the neighbouring
+village of Ouhans, which was inaccessible for voitures, and thence we
+should easily find our way to the source. The distance, he declared, was
+twenty minutes. The woman at the _auberge_ strongly recommended the
+source, but did her best to dissuade us from the glacières, of which she
+said there were two. She had visited them herself, and told her husband,
+who had guided her, that there was nothing to see. That, we thought,
+proved nothing against the glacières, and her dulness of appreciation we
+were willing to accept without further proof than her personal
+appearance. Besides, to go to the source, and not to Arc, would mean
+dining with her; so that she was not an impartial adviser.
+
+M. Paget was a short square man, of very few words, and his one object
+in life seemed to be to save his black horse as much as possible; a
+very creditable object in itself, so long as he did not go too far in
+his endeavours to accomplish it. On the present occasion he certainly
+did go too far. The road was quite as good as that which we had left,
+and there was no reason in the world why the carriage should not have
+taken us to the village. Worse still, we discovered eventually that
+the 'twenty minutes' meant twenty minutes from the village to the
+source, and represented really something like half the time necessary
+for that part of the march, while there was a hot and dusty walk of
+half an hour before we reached the village. As he accompanied us in
+person, we had the satisfaction of frequently telling him our mind
+with insular frankness. He pretended to be much distressed, but
+assured us each time we returned to the charge--about every quarter of
+an hour--that we were close to the desired spot. From the village to
+the source, the way led us through such pleasant scenery and such
+acceptable strawberries, that we only kept up our periodical
+remonstrances on principle, and, after we had wound rapidly down
+through a grand defile, and turned a sudden angle of the rock, the
+first sight of that which we had come to see amply repaid us all the
+trouble we had gone through. The source of the Orbe is sufficiently
+striking, but the Loue is by far more grand at the moment of its
+birth. The former is a bright fairy-like stream, gushing out of a
+small cavern at the foot of a lofty precipice clothed with clinging
+trees; but the Loue flows out from the bottom of an amphitheatrical
+rock much more lofty and unbroken. The stream itself is broader and
+deeper, and glides with an infinitely more majestic calmness from a
+vast archway in the rock, into the recesses of which the eye can
+penetrate to the point where the roof closes in upon the water, and so
+cuts off all further view. The calmness of the flow may be in part
+attributed to a weir, which has been built across the stream at the
+mouth of the cave, for the purpose of driving a portion of the water
+into a channel which conveys it to various mill-wheels; for, at a very
+short distance below the weir, the natural stream makes a fall of 17
+feet, so that, if left to itself, it might probably rush out more
+impetuously from its mysterious cavern. The weir is a single timber,
+below the surface, fixed obliquely across the stream on a shelving
+bank of masonry, and the farther end meets the wall of rock inside the
+cave. Near it we saw some glorious hart's-tongue ferns, which excited
+our desires, and I took off boots and stockings, and endeavoured to
+make my way along the weir; but the face of the masonry was so very
+slippery, and the nails in the timber so unpleasant for bare feet, and
+the stream was so unexpectedly strong, that I called to mind the
+proverbial definition of the better part of valour, and came back
+without having achieved the ferns. The biting coldness of the water,
+and the boiling of the fall close below the weir, did not add to my
+confidence in making the attempt, but I should think that in a more
+favourable state of the water the cave might be very well explored by
+two men going alone. The day penetrated so completely into the
+farthest corners, that when I got half-way along the weir, I could
+detect the oily look on the surface where it first saw the light,
+which showed where the water was quietly streaming up from its unknown
+sources. The people in the neighbourhood were unable to suggest any
+lake or lakes of which this river might be the subterranean drainage.
+It is liable to sudden and violent overflows, which seldom last more
+than twenty-four hours; and from the destruction of property caused by
+these outbursts, the name of _La Loue_, sc. _La Louve_, has been given
+to it. The rocky valley through which the river runs, after leaving
+its underground channel, is exceedingly fine, and we wandered along
+the precipices on one side, enjoying the varying scenes so much that
+we could scarcely bring ourselves to turn; each bend of the fretting
+river showing a narrow gorge in the rock, with a black rapid, and a
+foaming fall. It is said that although the mills on the Doubs are
+sometimes stopped from want of water, those which derive their motive
+power from this strange and impressive cavern have never known the
+supply to fail.
+
+Before we started for our ramble among the woods and precipices which
+overhang the farther course of the Loue, we had sent off M. Paget to the
+_auberge_, with strict orders that he should at once get out the black
+horse, and bring the carriage to meet us at Ouhans, as one of us was not
+in so good order for walking as usual, and the day was fast slipping
+away. Of course we saw nothing of him when we reached Ouhans; and as it
+was not prudent to wait for his arrival there, which might never take
+place, we walked through the broiling sun in the direction of the
+_auberge_, and at last saw him coming, pretending to whip his horse as
+if he were in earnest about the pace. We somewhat sullenly assisted him
+to turn the old carriage round, and then bade him drive as hard as he
+could to Arc-sous-Cicon, still a long way off. This he said he would do
+if he knew which was the way; but since he was last there, as a much
+younger man, there had been a general change in the matter of roads, and
+how the new ones lay he did not know. This was not cheerful
+intelligence, especially as we had set our hearts upon getting back to
+Pontarlier in time for the evening train, which would give us a night at
+the charming _Bellevue_ at Neufchâtel, instead of the poisonous coffee
+and the trying odours of the _National_: the old man's instinct,
+however, led him right, and we reached Arc at half-past twelve. One
+obstacle to our journey on the new road promised at first to be
+insurmountable, being an immense _sapin_, the largest I have seen
+felled, which lay on a combination of wood-chairs straight across the
+road. It had been brought down a narrow side-road through a wheat-field,
+and one end occupied this road, while the other was jammed against the
+wall on the opposite side of the main road; and half-a-dozen men, with
+as many draught oxen, were mainly endeavouring to turn it in the right
+direction. M. Paget knew how much was required to turn his own carriage,
+and he calculated that the road would not be free for two or three
+hours, which involved a rest for his black horse, a pipe for himself,
+and, possibly, a short sleep. The oxen were lazy, and their hides
+impervious; the whips were cracked in vain, and in vain were brought
+more directly to bear upon the senses of the recusants; the men howled,
+and rattled the chains, and re-arranged the clumsy head-gear, but all to
+no purpose. The man who did most of the howling was a black Burgundian
+dwarf, in a long blouse and moustaches; and he did it in so frightful a
+patois, that the oxen were right in their refusal to understand. We
+represented to M. Paget that it would be possible to make our way
+through the wheat; but he declared himself perfectly happy where he was,
+and declined to take any steps in the matter; whereupon I assumed the
+command of the expedition, and led the horse through the corn, thus
+turning the flank of the _sapin_ and its attendants. Our driver
+submitted to this act of violence much as a member of the Society of
+Friends allows a chamberlain to remove his hat from behind when he is
+favoured with an audience of the sovereign; and when we regained the
+high road, he meekly took up the reins and drove us at a good pace to
+Arc.
+
+The village lies in a curiously open plain, with a girdle of hills, in
+one of which the glacières were supposed to lie. The first _auberge_
+refused us admittance, on the ground that the dinner was all
+pre-engaged, and the result was that we found a pleasanter place higher
+up the village, near a vast new _maison de ville_ with every window
+shattered by recent hail. The people groaned over the unnecessary
+expense of this huge building, which might well, from its size, have
+been a home for the whole village; and they told us that the communal
+forests had been terribly over-cut to provide the money for it. Our
+first demand was for food; our next, for a guide to the glacières. Food
+we could have; but why _should_ we wish to go to the glacières, when
+there was so much else worth seeing at a little distance?--a guide might
+without doubt be found, but there was nothing to be seen when we got
+there. We ordered prompt dinner, anything that happened to be ready, and
+desired the landlord to look out for a man to show us the way up the
+hills. When the dinner came, it was cold; and the main dish consisted
+apparently of something which had made stock for many generations of
+soup, and had then been kept in a half-warm state, ready to be heated
+for any passer-by who called for hot meat, till the cook had despaired
+of its ever being used, and had allowed it to become cold: at least, no
+other supposition seemed to account for its utter want of flavour, and
+the wonderful development of its fibres. As a matter of politeness, I
+asked the man what it was; when he took the dish from the table, smelled
+at it, and pronounced it veal.
+
+There were also several specimens of the original old turnip-radish,
+with large shrubs of heads, and mature feelers many inches long. As all
+this was not very inviting, we ordered an omelette and some cheese; and
+when the omelette came, we found that the cook had combined our ideas
+and understood our order to mean a cheese-omelette, which was not so bad
+after all.
+
+By this time, the landlord's visit to his drinking-room had procured a
+man willing to act as our guide. He was, unfortunately, more willing
+than able; for his sojourn in the drinking-room had told upon his
+powers of equilibrium. He asserted, as every one seemed in all cases
+to assert, that neither rope nor axe was in any way necessary. When I
+pressed the rope, he said that if monsieur was afraid he had better
+not go; so we told the landlord privately that the man was rather too
+drunk for a guide, and we must have another. The landlord thereupon
+offered himself, at the suggestion of his wife, who seemed to be the
+chief partner in the firm, and we were glad to accept his offer; while
+the incapacitated man whom we had rejected acquiesced in the new
+arrangement with a bow so little withering, and with such genuine
+politeness, that, in spite of his over-much wine, he won my heart. The
+landlord himself did not profess to know the glacières; but he knew
+the man who lived nearest to them, and proposed to lead us to his
+friend's châlet, whence we should doubtless be able to find a guide.
+
+We stole a few moments for an inspection of the Church of Arc, and
+found, to our surprise, some very pleasing paintings in good repair, and
+open sittings which looked unusually clean and neat. Then we crossed the
+plain towards the north, and proceeded to grapple with a stiff path
+through the woods which climb the first hills. It turned out that there
+was no one available for our purpose in the châlet to which the landlord
+led us; but a small child was despatched in search of the master or the
+domestic, and returned before long with the latter individual, who
+received the mistress's instruction respecting the route, and received
+also an axe which I had begged in case of need. The accounts we had
+heard of the glacière or glacières--every one declined to call them
+caves--were so various, and the total denials of their existence so
+many, that we quietly made up our minds to disappointment, and agreed
+that what we had seen at the source of the Loue was quite sufficient to
+repay us for the trouble we had taken; while the idea of a rapid raid
+into France had something attractive in it, which more than
+counterbalanced the old charms of Soleure. Besides, we found that we
+were now in a good district for flowers, and the abundant _Gnaphalium
+sylvaticum_ brought back to our minds many a delightful scramble in
+glacier regions, where its lovely velvet kinsman the _pied-de-lion_
+grows. On the broad top of the range of hills, covered with rich grass,
+we came upon large patches of a plant, with scented leaves and pungent
+seeds, which we had not known before, _Meum athamanticum_, and, to
+please our guide, we went through the form of pretending that we rather
+liked its taste. My sisters were in ecstasies of triumph over a wild
+everlasting-pea, which grew here to a considerable height--_Lathyrus
+sylvestris_, they said, Fr. _Gesse sauvage_, distinct from _G.
+hétéropyhlle,_ which is still larger, and is almost confined to a
+favourite place of sojourn with us, the little Swiss valley of Les
+Plans. It is said that on the top of these hills springs of water rise
+to the surface, though there is no higher ground in the neighbourhood; a
+phenomenon which has been accounted for by the supposition of a
+difference of specific gravity between these springs and the waters
+which drive them up.
+
+The character of the ground on the plateau changed suddenly, and we
+passed at one step, apparently, from a meadow of flowers to a wilderness
+of fissured rock, lying white and skeleton-like in the afternoon sun. We
+only skirted this rock in the first instance, and made for a clump of
+trees some little way off, in which we found a deep pit, with a path of
+sufficient steepness leading to the bottom. Here we came to a collection
+of snow, much sheltered by overhanging rocks and trees; and this, our
+guide told us, was the _neigière_, a word evidently formed on the same
+principle as _glacière_. The snow was half-covered with leaves, and was
+unpleasantly wet to our feet, so that we did not spend much time on it,
+or rather in it. A huge fragment of rock had at some time or other
+fallen from overhead, and now occupied a large part of the sloping
+bottom of the pit: by squeezing myself through a narrow crevice between
+this and the live rock, which looked as if it ought to lead to
+something, I found a veritable ice-cave, unhappily free from ornament,
+and of very small size, like a round soldier's tent in shape, with walls
+of rock and floor of ice. We afterwards found an easier entrance to the
+cave; but the floor was so wet, and the constant drops of water from the
+roof so little agreeable, that we got out again as soon as possible,
+especially as this was not the glacière we had come to see.
+
+When we reached the surface once more, the landlord and the domestic
+both assured us that the _neigière_ was the great sight, the glacière
+being nothing at all, but, such as it was, they would lead us to it.
+They took us to the fissured rock mentioned above; and when we looked
+down into the fissures, we saw that some of them were filled at the
+bottom with ice. They were not the ordinary fissures, like the crevasses
+of a glacier, but rather disconnected slits in the surface, opening into
+larger chambers in the heart of the rock, where the ice lay. In one part
+of this curious district the surface sank considerably, and showed
+nothing but a tumbled collection of large stones and rocks, piled in a
+most disorderly manner. By examining the neighbourhood of the larger of
+these rocks, we found a burrow, down which one of the men and I made our
+way, and thus, after some windings in the interior, reached a point from
+which we could descend to the ice. The impression conveyed to my mind
+by the whole appearance of the rock and ice was not unlike that of the
+domes in the Glacière of Monthézy; only that now the lower part of the
+dome was filled with ice, and we stood in the upper part. There were two
+or three of these domes, communicating one with another, and in all I
+found abundant signs of the prismatic structure, though no columns or
+wall-decoration remained. My sisters were accomplished in the art of
+burrowing, but they did not care to come down, and we soon rejoined
+them, spending a little time in letting down lighted _bougies_ into the
+various domes and fissures, in order to study the movements of the air,
+but our experiments did not lead to much.
+
+The landlord had evidently not believed in the existence of ice in
+summer, and his first thought was to take some home to his wife, to
+prove that we had reached the glacière and had found ice: such at least
+were the reasons he gave, but evidently his soul was imbued with a deep
+obedience to that better half, and the offering of a block of ice was
+suggested by a complication of feelings. When we reached the _auberge_
+again, we found the rejected guide still there, and more unstable than
+before. The general impression on his mind seemed to be that he had been
+wronged, and had forgiven us. In our absence he had been meditating upon
+the glacière, and his imagination had brought him to a very exalted idea
+of its wonders. Whereas, in the former part of the day, he had stoutly
+asserted that no cord could possibly be necessary, he now vehemently
+affirmed that if I had but taken him as guide, he would have let me down
+into holes 40 mètres deep, where I should have seen such things as man
+had never seen before. Had monsieur seen the source of the Loue? Yes,
+monsieur had. Very fine, was it not? Yes, very fine. Which did monsieur
+then prefer--the glacière, or the source? The source, infinitely. _Then_
+it was clear monsieur had not seen the glacière:--he was sure before
+that monsieur had not, _now_ it was quite clear, for in all the world
+there was nothing like that glacière. The Loue!--one might rather see
+the glacière once, than live by the source of the Loue all the days of
+one's life.
+
+It was now five o'clock, and the train left Pontarlier at half-past
+seven. We represented to M. Paget that he really ought to do the twenty
+kilomètres in two hours and a quarter, which would leave us a quarter of
+an hour to arrange our knapsacks and pay the _National_. He promised to
+do his best, and certainly the black horse proved himself a most willing
+beast. There was one long hill which damped our spirits, and made us
+give up the idea of catching the train; and here our driver came to the
+rescue with what sounded at first like a promising story--the only one
+we extracted from him all through the day--_à propos_ of a
+memorial-stone on the road-side, where a man had lately been killed by
+two bears; but, when we came to examine into it, the romance vanished,
+for the man was a brewer's waggoner with a dray of beer, and the bears
+were tame bears, led in a string, which frightened the brewer's horses,
+and so the man was killed. Contrary to our expectations and fears, we
+did catch the train, and arrived in a thankful frame of mind at
+comfortable quarters in Neufchâtel.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 54: _Cruel comme à Morat_ was long a popular saying.]
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+THE SCHAFLOCH, OR TROU-AUX-MOUTONS, NEAR THE LAKE OF THUN.
+
+
+The next morning, my sisters went one way and I another; they to a
+valley in the south-west of Vaud, where our head-quarters were to be
+established for some weeks, and I to Soleure, where a Swiss _savant_ had
+vaguely told us he believed there was a glacière to be seen. That town,
+however, denied the existence of any approach to such a thing, with a
+unanimity which in itself was suspicious, and with a want of imagination
+which I had not expected to find. One man I really thought might be
+persuaded to know of some cave where there was or might be ice, but
+after a quarter of an hour's discussion he finally became immovable on
+the negative side. A Frenchman would certainly have been polite enough
+to accommodate facts to my desires. It was all the more annoying,
+because the Weissenstein stood overhead so engagingly, and I should have
+been only too glad to spend the night in the hotel there, if anyone had
+given me the slightest encouragement. I specially pointed at the
+neighbourhood of this hotel to my doubtful friend, as being likely for
+caves; but he was not in the pay of the landlord, and so failed to take
+the hint. There is a curious hole in which ice is found near
+Weissenstein in Carniola,[55] and it is not impossible that this may
+have originated the idea of a glacière near Soleure.
+
+The Schweizerhof at Berne is a very comfortable resting-place; but, in
+spite of its various excellences, if a tired traveller is told that No.
+53 is to be his room, he will do well to seek a bed elsewhere. No. 53 is
+a sort of closet to some other number, with a single window opening low
+on to the passage, and is adjudged to the unfortunate individual who
+arrives at that omnipresent crisis which raises the charge for
+bed-rooms, and silences all objections to their want of comfort--namely,
+when there is only one bed left in the house. In itself, No. 53 would be
+well enough; but the throne of the chambermaid is in the passage, by the
+side of the window, and the male attendant on that particular stage
+naturally gravitates to the same point, when the bells of the stage do
+not summon him elsewhere, and often enough when they do. This
+combination leads of course to local disturbances of a somewhat noisy
+character, and however entirely a sleepy man may in principle sympathise
+with the causes of the noise, it becomes rather hard to bear after
+midnight. The precise actors on the present occasion have, no doubt,
+quarrelled or set up a _café_ before now, or perhaps have achieved both
+results by taking the latter first; but there is reason to believe that
+so long as the window of No. 53 is the seat of the chambermaid for the
+time being, so long will that room be--as the landlord neatly expressed
+it when a protest was made--_etwas unruhig_.
+
+All Switzerland has been playing at soldiers for some time, and as we
+left Berne the next morning, we saw three or four hundred Federal men of
+war marching down the road which runs parallel with the rails. The three
+officers at the head of the column were elderly and stout; moreover,
+they were mounted, and that fact was evidently due rather to the
+meekness of their chargers than to the grip of their own legs. When they
+saw the train coming, they took prompt measures. They halted the troops,
+and rode off down a side lane to be out of harm's way; and when we had
+well passed, they rejoined the column, and the march was resumed.
+
+The early train from Berne catches the first boat on the Lake of Thun,
+and I landed at the second station on the lake, the village of Gonten or
+Gunten. M. Thury's list states that the glacière known as the Schafloch
+is on the Rothhorn, in the Canton of Berne, 4,500 mètres of horizontal
+distance from Merligen, a village on the shore of the lake; and from
+these data I was to find the cave. Gonten was apparently the nearest
+station to Merligen, and as soon as the small boat which meets the
+steamer had deposited me on the shore, I asked my way, first to the
+_auberge_, and then to Merligen. The _auberge_ was soon found, and
+coffee and bread were at once ordered for breakfast; but when the people
+learned my eventual destination, they would not let me go to Merligen. A
+man, to whom--for no particular reason--I had given two-pence, called a
+council of the village upon me, and they proceeded to determine whether
+I must have a guide from Gonten, or only from a nameless châlet higher
+up. The discussion was noisy, and was conducted without words: they do
+not speak, those men of Gonten--they merely grunt, and each interprets
+the grunts as he wills. My two-penny friend told me what it all meant,
+in an obliging manner, but in words less intelligible than the grunts;
+and one member of the council drew out so elaborate a route--the very
+characters being wild patois--splitting the morning into quarter-stundes
+and half-quarter-stundes, with a sharp turn to the right or left at the
+end of each, that, as I drank my coffee, I determined to take a guide
+from the village, whatever the decision of the council might be.
+Fortunately, things took a right turn, and when breakfast was finished,
+a deputation went out and found a guide, suspiciously like one of their
+number who did not return, and I was informed that Christian Opliger
+would conduct me to the Schafloch for five francs, and a _Trinkgeld_ if
+I were satisfied with him. In order to prove to me that he had really
+been at the cave, six days before, with two Bernese gentlemen, he seized
+my favourite low-crowned white hat, and endeavoured to knead it into the
+shape of the cave.
+
+Our affairs took a long time to arrange, for grunts and pantomime are
+not rapid means of communication, when it comes to detail. The great
+question in Christian's mind seemed to be, what should we take with us
+to eat and drink? and when he propounded this to me with steady
+pertinacity, I, with equal pertinacity, had only one answer--a cord and
+a hatchet. At last he provided these, vowing that they were ridiculously
+unnecessary, but comprehending that they must be forthcoming, as a
+preliminary to anything more digestible; and then I told him, some dry
+bread and no wine. This drove him from grunts to words. No wine! it
+would be so frightfully hot on the mountains!--I told him I never drank
+wine when I was hot. But it would be so terribly cold in the cave!--I
+never drank wine when I was cold. But the climbing was _sehr stark_--we
+should need to give ourselves strength!--I never needed to give myself
+strength. There was no good water to be found the whole way!--I never
+drank water. Then, at last, after a brief grunt with the landlord, he
+struck:--he simply would not go without wine! I never wished him to do
+so, I explained; he might take as much as he chose, and I would pay for
+it, but he need not count me for anything in calculating how much was
+necessary. This made him perfectly happy; and when I answered his
+question touching cheese in a similar manner, only limiting him to a
+pound and a half, he rushed off for a large wicker _hotte_, spacious
+enough for the stowage of many layers of babies; and in it he packed all
+our properties, and all his provisions. The landlord had made his own
+calculations, and put it at 3lbs. of bread and 2lbs. of cheese; but I
+cut down the bread on account of its bulk, before I saw the size of the
+_hotte_, and Christian seemed to think he had quite enough to carry.
+
+It was about half-past nine when we started from the _auberge_; and
+after a short mount in the full sun, we were not sorry to reach the
+pleasant shade of walnut trees which accompanied us for a considerable
+distance. The blue lake lay at our feet on the right, and beyond it the
+Niesen stood, with wonted grandeur, guarding its subject valleys; more
+in front, as we ascended transversely, the well-known snow-peaks of the
+Bernese Oberland glittered high above the nearer foreground, and, sheer
+above us, on the left, rose the ragged precipices whose flank we were to
+turn. The Rothhorn of the Canton Berne lies inland from the Lake of
+Thun, and sends down towards the lake a ridge sufficiently lofty,
+terminating in the Ralligstöcke, or Ralligflue, the needle-like point,
+so prettily ridged with firs, which advances its precipitous sides to
+the water. These precipices were formed in historic times, and the sheer
+face from which half a mountain has been torn stands now as clear and
+fresh as ever, while a chaos of vast blocks at its foot gives a point to
+the local legends of devastation and ruin caused by the various
+berg-falls. Two such falls are clearly marked by the _débris_: one of
+these, a hundred and fifty years ago, reduced the town of Ralligen to a
+solitary Schloss; and the other, in 1856, overwhelmed the village of
+Merligen, and converted its rich pastures into a desert cropped with
+stones. A traveller in Switzerland, at the beginning of this century,
+found that the inhabitants of Merligen were considered in the
+neighbourhood to be _d'une stupidité et d'une bêtise extrêmes_, and I
+am inclined to believe that after the last avalanche a general migration
+to Gonten must have taken place.
+
+Christian's patois was of so hopeless a description, that I was tempted
+to give it up in despair, and walk on in silence. Still, as we were
+together for a whole long day, for better or for worse, it seemed worth
+while to make every effort to understand each other, else I could learn
+no local tales and legends, and Christian would earn but little
+_Trinkgeld_; so we struggled manfully against our difficulties. A
+confident American lady, meditating Europe, and knowing little French
+and no German, is said to have remarked jauntily that if the worst came
+to the worst she could always talk on her fingers to the peasants; but I
+did not attempt to avail myself of the results of early practice in that
+universal language. Christian's answers--the more intelligible parts of
+them--were a stratified succession of _yes_ and _no_, and as he was a
+man naturally polite and acquiescent, the assentient strata were of more
+frequent occurrence; but of course, beyond showing his good-will, such
+answers were of no practical value. At length, after long perseverance,
+we were rewarded by the appearance of a curiosity which eventually gave
+each the key to the other's cipher. This was a strong stream of water,
+flowing out of the trunk of a growing tree, at a height of six feet or
+so from the ground; and I was so evidently interested in the phenomenon,
+that Christian exerted himself to the utmost, at last with success, to
+explain the construction of the fountain. A healthy poplar, seven or
+eight years old, is taken from its native soil, and a cold iron borer is
+run up the heart of the trunk from the roots, for six feet or more, by
+which means the pith is removed, and the trunk is made to assume the
+character of a pipe. A hole is then bored through from the outside of
+the trunk, to communicate with the highest point reached by the former
+operation, and in this second hole a spout is fixed. The same is done
+at a very short distance above the root, in the part of the trunk which
+will be buried in the earth when the tree is replanted, and the poplar
+is then fixed in damp ground, with the pipe at its root in connection
+with one of the little runs of water which abound in meadows at the foot
+of hills. A well-known property of fluids produces then the strange
+effect of an unceasing flow of water from an iron spout in the trunk of
+a living tree; and, as poplars love water, the fountain-tree thrives,
+and is more vigorous than its neighbours. This sort of fountain may be
+common in some parts of Switzerland, but I have not seen them myself
+except in this immediate neighbourhood. There is said to be one near
+Stachelberg.
+
+In the endeavour to explain all this to me, Christian succeeded so
+perfectly, that for the rest of the day we understood each other very
+well. When I told him that he spoke much better German than the rest of
+the people in Gonten, he informed me that he had worked among
+foreigners, in proof whereof he held out his fingers; but all that I
+could gather from the invited inspection was, that, whatever his
+employment might have been, he could not be said to have come out of it
+with clean hands. He had been employed, he explained, in German
+dye-works, and there had learned something better than the native
+patois. About this time, too, I was able to make him understand that, as
+he carried more than I, he must call a halt whenever he felt so
+inclined; upon which he patted me affectionately on the back, and, if I
+could remember the word he used, I believe that I should now know the
+Swiss-German for a brick.
+
+Our object was to pass along the side of the lake, at a considerable
+elevation, till we reached the east side of the Rothhorn range, when we
+were to turn up the Jüstisthal, and mount towards the highest point of
+the ridge, the glacière lying about an hour below the summit, in the
+face of the steep rock. The cliffs became very grand on either side, as
+soon as we entered this valley, the Jüstisthal, especially the
+precipices of the Beatenberg on the right; and our path lay through
+woods which have sprung up on the site of an early _Berg-lauine._ The
+guide-books call attention to a cavern with a curious intermittent
+spring in this neighbourhood. English tourists should feel some interest
+in the Cave of S. Beatus, inasmuch as its canonised occupant went from
+our shores to preach the Gospel to the wild men of the district, and
+died in this cave at a very advanced age. His relics remaining there,
+his fête-day attracted such crowds of pilgrims, that reforming Berne
+sent two deputies in 1528 to carry off the saint's skull, and bury it
+between the lakes; but still the pilgrimages continued, and at length
+the Protestant zeal of Berne went to the expense of a wall, and they
+built the pilgrims out in 1566. S. Beatus is said to have been converted
+by S. Barnabas in Britain, and to have gone to Rome, whence S. Peter
+sent him out to preach. His relics were conveyed to Lucerne in 1554,
+because heresy prevailed in the country where his cave lies, and an arm
+is among the proud possessions of pilgrim-pressed Einsiedeln. The saint
+was originally a British noble, by name Suetonius; and Dempster drops a
+letter from his name, and with much ingenuity makes him collateral
+ancestor of a Scottish family--'The Setons, tall and proud.'[56]
+
+When we arrived at the last châlet, Christian turned to mount the grass
+slope on our left hand, which led to the part of the rocks in which the
+entrance to the Schafloch was to be sought. I never climbed up grass so
+steep, and before we had gone very far we were hailed by a succession of
+grunts, which my companion interpreted into assurances from some
+invisible person that we were going wrong. The man soon appeared, in the
+shape of a charcoal-burner, and told us that we were making the ascent
+much more difficult than it need be made, and also, that we should come
+to some awkward rock-climbing by the route we had chosen. It was too
+late, however, to turn back; so we persevered.
+
+Before long, I heard a _Meinherr_! from Christian, in a tone which I
+knew meant rest and some food. He explained that he would rather take
+two small refreshments, one here and one at the Schafloch, than one
+large refreshment at the cave; so we propped ourselves on the grass, and
+tapped the _hotte_. The cheese proved to be delightful--six years old,
+the landlady told us afterwards, and apparently as hard as a bone, but
+when once mastered its flavour was admirable. Christian persuaded me to
+taste the wine, of which he had a high opinion, and he was electrified
+by the universal shudder the one taste caused. The grapes from which it
+was brewed had been grown in a gooseberry garden, and all the saccharine
+matter carefully extracted; the wine had been left without a cork since
+the first dawn of its existence, and the heat and jolting of its travels
+on Christian's back had reduced it to the condition of warm flat
+vinegar. He drank it with the utmost relish, and was evidently
+reconciled to my verdict by the consideration that there would be all
+the more for him.
+
+From the appearance of the bread and cheese when the meal had come to an
+end, I concluded that my companion had changed his mind in the course of
+feeding, and had resolved to compress the whole eating of the day into
+one large refreshment here. The consumptive powers of the Swiss-German
+peasant, when his meal is franked, has not unfrequently reminded me of
+the miraculous eating performed by a yellow domino of that nation, at
+the fête by which Louis XIV. celebrated the second marriage of the
+Dauphin. This domino was of large size, and ate and drank voraciously
+throughout the entertainment, which lasted many hours, retiring every
+five minutes or so, and returning speedily with unabated appetite. The
+thing became at length so portentous, that enquiries were instituted,
+and it was found that the trusty _Cent-Suisses_ had joined at a domino,
+and were drawing lots all through the evening for the next turn at
+eating; so that each man's time was necessarily limited, and he
+accordingly made the most of it.
+
+We soon took to the rocks, and found them, as the charcoal-burner had
+promised, sufficiently stiff work. Colonel (now General) Dufour visited
+the Schafloch with a party of officers in 1822, and he describes[57] the
+path as a dangerous one, so much so that several of the gallant members
+of his party could not reach the cave: he uses rather large words about
+the precipices, and it is a matter of observation that military service
+on the Continent tends to induce a habit of body which is not the most
+suitable for doubtful climbing. The mountain seemed to be composed, in
+this part, of horizontal layers of crumbling shale, with a layer now and
+then of stone, about the thickness of an ordinary house-tile. The stone
+layers project from the looser masonry, and afford an excellent
+foot-hold; but a slip might be unpleasant. Every one who has done even a
+small amount of climbing has met with an abundance of places where 'a
+slip would be certain death,' as people are so fond of saying; but
+equally he has discovered that a slip is the last thing he thinks of
+making in such situations. Christian had told me that if I had the
+slightest tendency to _Schwindelkopf_, I must not go by the improvised
+route; but it proved that there were really no precipices at all, much
+less any of sufficient magnitude to turn an ordinary head dizzy. He
+chose these rocks as the text for a long sermon on the necessity for
+great caution when we should arrive at the cave, telling of an
+Englishman who had tried to visit it two years before, and had cut his
+knee so badly with his guide's axe that he had to be carried down the
+mountain to Gonten, and thence to the steamer for Thun, in which town he
+lay for many weeks in the hands of the German doctor; this last
+assertion being by no means incredible. Also, of a native who attempted
+the cave alone, and, making one false step near the top of a fall of
+ice, slipped down and down almost for ever, and finally landed with
+broken limbs on a floor of ice, where he was found, two days after,
+frozen stiff, but still alive.
+
+It was not necessary to mount much, for we were almost as high as the
+mouth of the cave, according to Christian's belief, and our work
+consisted chiefly in passing along the face of the rock, round
+projecting buttresses and re-entering angles, till we reached that part
+of the mountain where we might expect to find our glacière. While we
+were thus engaged, two hoarse and ominous ravens took us under their
+charge, and accompanied us with unpleasant screams, which argued the
+proximity of food or nest. We soon found that we had disturbed their
+meal, for we came to marks of blood, and saw that some animal had
+slipped on the rocks above, and landed on the ledge on which we were
+walking, bounding off again on to a shelf below, where the ravens had
+already torn the body to pieces. I must confess to a very considerable
+shudder when we discovered the reason of their screams, and neither of
+us seemed to enjoy the circling and croaking of the unclean birds.
+
+Very soon after this, Christian announced that we had reached the cave,
+and a steep little climb of six feet or so brought us to the entrance.
+Here we were haunted still by the presence of pieces of the fallen goat,
+which lay about here and there on the ground; and the flutter of wings
+overhead explained to us that the old ravens had built their nest in the
+mouth of the cave, and had brought morsels of raw flesh to their young
+ones, which were scarcely able to fly. I am ashamed to say that we were
+so angry with the old birds for shrieking so suggestively in our ears,
+and parading before us the results of a slip on the rocks, that we
+charged ourselves with stones, and put an end to the most noisy member
+of the foul brood; Christian making some of the worst shots it is
+possible to conceive, and raining blocks of stone and lumps of wood in
+all directions, with such reckless impartiality, that the only safe
+place seemed to be between him and the bird. One of us, at least,
+regretted the useless cruelty as soon as it was perpetrated, and it came
+back upon me very reproachfully at an awkward part of our return
+journey.
+
+The Schafloch does not take its name from the bones contained in it, as
+is the case with the Kühloch in Franconia,[58] but from the fact that
+when a sudden storm comes on, the sheep and goats make their way to the
+cave for shelter, never, I was told, going so far as the commencement of
+the ice. The entrance faces ESE., and is of large size, with a low wall
+built partly across it to increase the shelter for the sheep: Dufour
+calls the entrance 50 feet wide and 25 feet high, but I found the width
+at the narrowest part, a few yards within the entrance, to be 33
+feet.[59] For a short distance the cave passes horizontally into the
+rock, in a westerly direction, and is quite light; it then turns sharp
+to the south, the floor beginning to fall, and candles becoming
+necessary. Here the height increases considerably, and the way lies over
+a wild confusion of loose masses of rock, which have apparently fallen
+from the roof, and make progression very difficult. We soon reached a
+point where ice began to appear among the stones; and as we advanced it
+became more and more prominent, till at length we lost sight of the
+rock, and stood on solid ice.
+
+On either side of the cave was a grand column of ice forming the
+portal, as it were, through which we must pass to further beauties.
+The ice-floor rose to meet these columns in a graceful swelling curve,
+perfectly continuous, so that the general effect was that of two
+columns whose roots expanded and met in the middle of the cave; and,
+indeed, that may have been really the order of formation. The
+right-hand column was larger than its fellow, but, owing to the more
+gradual expansion of the lower part of its height, and the steepness
+of the consequent slope, we were unable to measure its girth at any
+point where it could be fairly called a column. Christian had been in
+the cave a few days before, and he assured me that the swelling base
+of this column had increased very considerably since his last visit,
+pointing out a solid surface of ice, at one part of our track, where
+he had before walked on bare rock. The cave was by no means extremely
+cold, that is to say, it was rather above than below the freezing
+point, and the splashing of drops of water was audible on all sides;
+so that, if Christian spoke the truth,--it was sad to be so often
+reminded of Legree's plaintive soliloquy in the opening pages of
+'Uncle Tom's Cabin,'--the explanation, I suppose, might be that the
+drops of water, falling on the top of the column or stalagmite, run
+down the sides, and carry with them some melted portion from the upper
+part of the column, and after a course of a few yards become so far
+refrigerated as to form ice.[60] The pillar on the left was more
+approachable, but we were unable to determine its dimensions; for on
+the outer side, where it stood a few feet or yards clear of the side
+of the cave, the rounded ice at its foot fell off at once into a dark
+chasm, a sort of smooth enticing _Bergschrund_, which we did not care
+to face. Christian declared that this column was not so high as it was
+a day or two before, which may go to support the theory expressed
+above, or at least that part of it which depends upon the supposition
+of water dropping on to the head of the column, and melting certain
+portions of it.
+
+If we were unable to take the external dimensions of this column, I
+had no doubt that we should find internal investigations interesting;
+so, to Christian's surprise, I began to chop a hole in it, about two
+feet from the ground, and, having made an entrance sufficiently large,
+proceeded to get into the cavity which presented itself. The flooring
+of the dome-shaped grotto in which I found myself, was loose rock, at
+a level about two feet below the surface of the ice-floor on which
+Christian still stood. The dome itself was not high enough to allow me
+to stand upright, and from the roof, principally from the central
+part, a complex mass of delicate icicles passed down to the floor,
+leaving a narrow burrowing passage round, which was itself invaded by
+icicles from the lower part of the sloping roof, and by stubborn
+stalagmites of ice rising from the floor.[61] The details of this
+central cluster of icicles, and in fact of every portion of the
+interior of the strange grotto, were exceedingly lovely, and I crushed
+with much regret, on hands and knees, through fair crystal forests and
+frozen dreams of beauty. In making the tour of this grotto, contorting
+my body like a snake to get in and out among the ice-pillars, and do
+as little damage as might be, but yet, with all my care, accompanied
+by the incessant shiver and clatter of breaking and falling ice, I
+came to a hole in the ground, too dark and deep for one candle to show
+its depth; so I called to Christian to come in, thinking that two
+candles might show it better. He asked if I really meant it, and
+assured me he could be of no use; but I told him that he must come,
+and informed him that he, being the smaller man, would find the
+passage quite easy. It was very fortunate that I had not waited a
+minute longer before summoning him, for just as he had dropped into
+the hollow, and was beginning his journey to the side where I now was,
+a drop of water and a simultaneous icicle came upon my candle, and
+left me in darkness, curled up like a dormouse in a nest of ice, at
+the edge of the newly discovered shaft; while my troubles were brought
+to a climax by an incursion of icy drops, which had me at their mercy.
+If all this had happened while Christian was still outside, he would
+probably have staid there wringing his hands till it was time to go
+home, and I should certainly not have liked to move without a light.
+As it was, I did not inform him of the catastrophe, but let him come
+toiling on, wondering audibly what madness could drive Herrschaft into
+such places; and when he arrived, we cut off the wet wick, and lighted
+the candle again. We could make nothing of the hole, so he returned by
+the way he had come, and I completed the tour of the grotto, finding
+the same difficult passage, and the same ice beauties, all the way
+round.
+
+Having squeezed ourselves out again through the narrow hole, we now
+passed between the two gigantic columns, and found that the sea of ice
+became still broader and bolder. I much regret that I neglected to take
+any measurements in this part of the cave; but farther down, where it
+was certainly not so broad, I found the width of the ice to be 75 feet.
+It was throughout of the crystalline character which prevails in all the
+large masses in the glacières I have visited. For some distance beyond
+the columns, we found neither stalactites nor stalagmites--indeed, I
+forgot to look at the roof--until we came to the edge of a glorious
+ice-fall, down which Christian said it was impossible to go--no one had
+ever been farther than where we now stood. I have seen no subterranean
+ice-fall so grand as this, round and smooth, and perfectly unbroken,
+passing down, like the rapids of some river too deep for its surface to
+be disturbed, into darkness against which two candles prevailed nothing.
+The fall in the Upper Glacière of the Pré de S. Livres was strange
+enough, but it was very small, and led to a confined corner of the
+cavern; whereas this of the Schafloch rolls down majestically, cold and
+grey, into a dark gulf of which we could see neither the roof nor the
+end, while the pieces of ice which we despatched down the steep slope
+could be heard going on and on, as M. Soret says, _à une très-grande
+distance_. The shape, also, of the fall was very striking. Beginning at
+the left wall of the cave, the edge ran out obliquely towards the
+middle, when it suddenly turned and struck straight across to the
+right-hand wall, so that we were able to stand on a tongue, as it were,
+in the middle of the top of the fall. To add to the effect, precisely
+from this tongue or angle a fine column of ice sprang out of the very
+crest of the fall, rising to or towards the roof, and to this we clung
+to peer down into the darkness.
+
+The rope we had brought was not long, and the idea was hopeless of
+cutting steps down this great fall, leading we knew not where, with an
+incline which it frightened Christian even to look at. I began to
+consider, however, whether it was not possible to make our way down the
+left branch of the ice, which fell rather towards the side wall than
+into the dark gulf below. On examining more closely, I found that a
+large stone, or piece of rock, projected from the face of this branch of
+the fall, about 12 feet from the top, and to this I determined to
+descend, as a preliminary to further attempts, the candles not showing
+us what there was beyond. Accordingly, I tied on the rope, and planted
+Christian where he had a safe footing, telling him to hold tight if I
+slipped, for he seemed to have little idea what the rope was meant for.
+The ice was very hard, and cutting steps downwards with a short axe is
+not easy work; so when I came within 3 or 4 feet of the rock, I forgot
+the rope, and set off for a short glissade. Christian, of course,
+thought something was wrong, and very properly put a prompt strain upon
+the rope, which reduced his Herr to a spread-eagle sort of condition, in
+which it was difficult to explain matters, so as to procure a release.
+When that was accomplished, I saw it would be easy to reach the point
+where the ice met the wall, so I called to Christian to come down, which
+he did in an unpremeditated, avalanche fashion; and then, by cutting
+steps here and there, and making use of odd points of rock, we skirted
+down the edge of the great fall, and reached at last the lower regions.
+
+When I came to read Dufour's account of his visit in 1822, I found that
+the ice must have increased very much since his time. He uses
+sufficiently large words, speaking of the _vaste, horrible et pourtant
+magnifique_--of the _horreur du séjour_, and the _grandeur des demeures
+souterraines_; but he only calls the glorious ice-fall a _plan incliné_,
+and says that the whole was less remarkable for the amount of ice, than
+for the characteristics indicated by the words I have quoted. He says
+that it required _une assez forte dose de courage_ to slip down to the
+stone of which I have spoken; the fact being that at the time of my
+visit it would have been impossible to do so with any chance of stopping
+oneself, for the flat surface of the stone was all but even with the
+ice. M. Soret, who saw the cave in 1860, determined that cords were then
+absolutely necessary for the descent, which he did not attempt; and the
+only Englishman I have met who has seen this cave, tells me that he and
+his party went no farther than the edge of the fall.[62] Probably each
+year's accumulation on the upper floor of ice has added to the height
+and rapidity of the fall; but at any rate, when Dufour was there, _des
+militaires_--as he dashingly tells--were not to be stopped, and he and
+his party--such of them as had not been already stopped by the
+precipices outside--let themselves slip down to the stone, and thence
+descended as we did.
+
+We soon found that the larger ice-fall looked extremely grand when seen
+from below, and that in a modified form it reached far down into the
+lower cave, and terminated in a level sea of ice; but, before making any
+further investigations into its size, we pressed on to look for the end
+of the cave. This soon appeared, and as a commentary on Christian's
+assertion that no one had ever been beyond the head of the fall, I
+called his attention to some initials smoked on the wall by means of a
+torch. There was an abrupt piece of rock-floor between this end and the
+termination of the ice. The western wall was ornamented with a long
+arcade of lofty columns of very white ice, looking strangely ghostlike
+by the light of two candles, crystallised, and with the porcelain
+appearance I have described before. We could not measure the height of
+these columns, but we found that they extended continuously, so as to be
+in fact one sheet of columns, connected by shapes of ice now graceful
+and now grotesque, for 27 yards. The ice from their feet flowed down to
+join the terminal lake, which formed a weird sea 28 yards by 14. My
+notes, written on the spot, tell me that between this lake, which I have
+called terminal, and the end of the cave, there is a sheet of ice 48
+yards long, but it has entirely vanished from my recollection.
+
+I now sent Christian back with a ball of string, up the steps we had cut
+for the descent, with directions to get as near as he could to the top
+of the main fall, and then send down a stone tied to the string, as I
+wished to determine the length of the fall. While he was making his way
+up, I amused myself by chopping and carving at the ice at various
+points to examine its structure, until at length a _Jodel_ from above
+announced that Christian had reached his post; and a vast amount of
+hammering ensued, of which I could not understand the meaning. Presently
+he called out that 'it' was coming, and assuredly it did come. There was
+a loud crash on the upper part of the fall, and a shower of fragments of
+ice came whizzing past, and almost dislodged me; while the sound of
+pieces of ice bounding and gliding down the slope seemed as if it never
+would cease. It turned out to mean that my friend had not been able to
+find a stone; so he had smashed a block of ice from the column which
+presided over the fall, and having attached the string to this, had
+hurled the whole apparatus in my direction, fortunately not doing as
+much damage as he might have done. My end of the string was not to be
+seen, so he repeated the experiment, with a piece of wood in place of
+the block of ice, and this time it succeeded. We found that from top to
+bottom of the fall was 45 yards. There was all the appearance of immense
+thickness, especially towards the upper part.
+
+Christian had placed his candle in a niche in the column, while he
+arranged the string for measuring the fall, and the effect of the spark
+of light at the top of the long steep slope was extremely strange from
+below. The whole scene was so remarkable, that it required some effort
+to realise the fact that I was not in a dream. Christian stood at the
+top invisible, jodeling in a most unearthly manner, and developing an
+astonishing falsetto power, only interrupting his performance to assure
+me that he was not coming down again; so I was obliged to measure the
+breadth of the fall by myself. I chose a part where the ice was not very
+steep, and where occasional points of rock would save some of the labour
+of cutting steps; but even so it was a sufficiently tedious business.
+The string was always catching at something, and mere progression,
+without any string to manage, would have been difficult enough under the
+circumstances. It was completely dark, so a candle occupied one hand,
+and, as every step must be cut, save where an opportune rock or stone
+appeared, an axe occupied the other; then there was the string to be
+attended to, and both hands must be ready to clutch at some projecting
+point when a slip came, and now and then a ruder rock required
+circumvention. Add to all this, that hands and feet had not been
+rendered more serviceable by an hour and a half of contact with ice, and
+it will easily be understood that I was glad when the measurement was
+over. At this point the breadth was 25 yards, and, a few feet above the
+line in which I crossed, all traces of rock or stone disappeared, and
+there was nothing but unbroken ice. I had of course abundant
+opportunities for examining the structure of the ice, and I found in all
+parts of the fall the same large-grained material, breaking up, when
+cut, into the usual prismatic nuts.
+
+I now rejoined Christian, and we worked our way upwards to the mouth of
+the cave, penitently desisting from stoning a remaining raven. We
+observed at the very mouth, by watching the flame of the candles, a
+slight current outwards, extremely feeble, and on our first arrival I
+had fancied there was a current, equally slight, inwards, but neither
+was perceptible beyond the entrance of the cave. M. Soret was fortunate
+enough to witness a curious phenomenon, at the time of his visit to the
+Schafloch, in September 1860, which throws some light upon the
+atmospheric state of the cave. The day was externally very foggy, and
+the fog had penetrated into the cavern; but as soon as M. Soret began to
+descend to the glacière itself, properly so called, he passed down out
+of the fog, and found the air for the rest of the way perfectly
+clear.[63]
+
+M. Soret states that he has not absolute confidence in his
+thermometrical observations, but as he had more time than I to devote to
+such details, inasmuch as he did not pass down into the lowest part of
+the cave, I give his results rather than my own, which were carelessly
+made on this occasion:--On a stone near the first column of ice,
+0°·37 C.; on a stick propped against the column on the edge of the great
+ice-fall, 2°·37 C.; in a hole in the ice, filled with water by drops
+from the roof, 0° C. approximately.[64] The second result is
+sufficiently remarkable. My own observations would give nearer 33° F.
+than 32° as the general temperature of the cave.
+
+Christian was so cold when we had finished our investigations, that he
+determined to take his second refreshment _en route_, and, moreover,
+time was getting rather short. We had started from Gonten at half-past
+nine in the morning, and reached the glacière about half-past twelve.
+It was now three o'clock, and the boat from Gonten must reach the
+steamer at half-past six precisely, so there was not too much time for
+us; especially as we were to return by a more mountainous route, which
+involved further climbing towards the summit of the Rothhorn, and was
+to include a visit to the top of the Ralligflue. On emerging from the
+cave, we were much struck by the beauty of the view, the upper half of
+the Jungfrau, with its glittering attendants and rivals, soaring above
+a rich and varied foreground not unworthy of so glorious a
+termination. There was not time, however, to admire it as it deserved,
+and we set off almost at once up the rocks, soon reaching a more
+elevated table-land by dint of steep climbing. The ground of this
+table-land was solid rock, smoothed and rounded by long weathering,
+and fissured in every direction by broad and narrow crevasses 2 or 3
+feet deep, at the bottom of which was luxuriant botany, in the shape
+of ferns, and mallows, and monkshood, and all manner of herbs. The
+learned in such matters call these rock-fallows _Karrenfelden_. When
+we had crossed this plateau, and came to grass, we found a gorgeous
+carpet of the huge couched blue gentian (_G. acaulis_, Fr. _Gentiane
+sans tige_), with smaller patterns put in by the dazzling blue of the
+delicate little flower of the same species (_G. verna_ ); while the
+white blossoms of the grass of Parnassus, and the frailer white of the
+_dryade à huit petales_, and the modest waxen flowers of the _Azalea
+procumbens_ and the _airelle ponctuée_ (_Vaccineum vitis idaea_),
+tempered and set off the prevailing blue. There were groves, too,
+rather lower down, of Alpine roses (the first I had come across that
+year), not the fringed or the green-backed species which botanists
+love best, but the honest old rust-backed rhododendron, which every
+Swiss traveller has been pestered with in places where the children
+are one short step above mere mendicity, but, equally, which every
+Swiss traveller hails with Medean delight when he comes upon it on the
+mountain-side. We were now, too, in the neighbourhood of the first
+created Alpen rose. The story is, that a young peasant, who had
+climbed the precipices behind Oberhausen for rock-flowrets, as the
+price of some maiden's love, fell at the moment when he had secured
+the flowers, and was killed. From his blood the true Alpen rose
+sprang, and took its colour.
+
+We were now passing along the summit of one of the lower spurs of the
+Rothhorn range, and making for the peak of the Ralligflue, which lay
+considerably below us. In descending near the line of crest, we found a
+large number of very deep fissures, narrow and black, some of them
+extending to a great distance across the face of the hill; sometimes
+they appeared as mere holes, down which we despatched stones, sometimes
+as unpleasant crevasses almost hidden by flowers and the shrubs of
+rhododendron. In many of these we dimly discovered accumulated snow at
+the bottom, and we observed that the Alpine roses which overhung the
+snow-holes were by far the deepest coloured and most beautiful we could
+find.
+
+To reach the Ralligflue, we had to cross a smooth green lawn completely
+covered with the sweet vanilla orchis (_O. nigra_), which perfumed the
+air almost too powerfully. No one can ever fully appreciate the grandeur
+of the lion-like Niesen till he has seen it from this verdant little
+paradise, on the slope near the Bergli Châlet, with a diminutive limpid
+lake in the meadow at his feet, and the blue lake of Thun below. The
+Kanderthal and the Simmenthal lie exposed from their entrance at the
+foot of the Niesen; and when the winding Kanderthal is lost, the
+Adelbodenthal takes up the telescope, and guides the eye to the parent
+glaciers. This view I was fortunately able to enjoy rather longer than
+that from the mouth of the Schafloch; for we had made such rapid way,
+that Christian found there was time for a meal of milk in the châlet,
+and meanwhile left me lying in perfect luxury on the sweet grass.
+
+From the Ralligflue a long and remarkably steep zigzag leads to the
+lower ground, and down this Christian ran at full speed, jodeling in a
+most trying manner; indeed, at one of the sudden turns of the path he
+went off triumphantly into a falsetto so unearthly, that he lost his
+legs, and landed in a promiscuous sort of way on a lower part of the
+zigzag, after which he was slower and less vocal.
+
+We eventually reached Gonten so soon, that there was time to cool and
+have a bath in the lake; and when that was nearly finished, Christian
+brought a plate of cherries and a detachment of the village, and I
+ate the cherries and held a levée in the boat--very literally a levée,
+as the dressing was by no means accomplished when the deputation
+arrived. My late guide, now, as he said, a friend for life, made a
+speech to the people, setting forth that he had done that day what he
+had never thought to do; for, often as he had been to the entrance of
+the Schafloch--five or six times at the least--he had never before
+reached the end of the cave. And to whom, he asked, did he owe it? All
+previous Herrschaft under his charge had cried _Immer zurück!_ but
+this present Herr had known but one cry, _Immer vorwärts!_ Luckily the
+steamer now approached, so the speech came to an end, and he shook
+hands affectionately, with a vigour that would certainly have
+transmitted some of the dye, if that material had not become a part of
+the skin which it coloured. Then the village also shook hands, having
+evidently understood what Christian said, notwithstanding the fact
+that it was intelligible German, and I returned to Thun and Berne.
+
+No. 53 was still the only bed disengaged, for it was very late when I
+reached Berne; but on my vehement protestations against that unquiet
+chamber, the landlord most obligingly converted a sofa in his own
+sitting-room into a temporary bed, and made it over to me. This room was
+separated by a door of ground-glass from another sitting-room
+brilliantly lighted, in which a number of German young gentlemen were
+fêting the return of a comrade after the national manner. The landlord
+said he thought it must soon be over, for he doubted whether they could
+last much longer; but their powers of endurance were greater than he had
+supposed. It will readily be imagined that German songs with a good
+chorus, the solo parts being very short, and received with the utmost
+impatience by the chorus, were even less soporific in their effect than
+the flirtations--though boisterous beyond all conventional propriety--of
+German housemaids and waiters.[65]
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 55: See p. 258.]
+
+[Footnote 56: Acta SS. Bolland. May 9.--If possessed of the
+characteristics of his race--'tall and proud'--his activity belies the
+first line of the old saying,
+
+  'Lang and lazy,
+  Little and loud;
+  Red and foolish,
+  Black and proud:'
+
+though possibly the personal habits which a modern spirit loves to point
+out, as the great essential of hermit-life, united with the family
+characteristic of the early Seton to verify the last line of the
+saying.]
+
+[Footnote 57: _Bibl. Univ. de Genève_, First Series, xxi. 113. See also
+_Edinburgh Philosophical Journal_, viii. 290.]
+
+[Footnote 58: _Philosophical Magazine_, Aug. 1829.]
+
+[Footnote 59: Colonel Dufour guessed the elevation of the cave, in 1822,
+at two-thirds the height of the Niesen, and forty years after, as
+General Dufour, he published the result of the scientific survey of
+Switzerland, which makes it 1,780 mètres; so that his early guess was
+not a bad one.]
+
+[Footnote 60: There is a hint of something of this kind in an editorial
+note in the _Journal des Mines_ (now _Annales des Mines_) of Prairial,
+an. iv. pp. 71, 72, in connection with the glacière near Besançon.]
+
+[Footnote 61: M. Soret, who visited the Schafloch in September 1860, and
+communicated his notes to M. Thury, speaks of many columns in this part
+of the glacière, where we found only two. 'L'un d'entre eux,' he says,
+'présentait dans sa partie inférieure une petite grotte ou cavité, assez
+grande pour qu'un homme pût y entrer en se courbant.']
+
+[Footnote 62: See also the note at the end of this chapter.]
+
+[Footnote 63: 'Toute la couche supérieure au plan de niveau passant par
+le seuil était chargée de brouillard; toute la couche inférieure à ce
+niveau était parfaitement limpide.' (_Thury_, p. 37.)]
+
+[Footnote 64: Respectively, 32°·666, 36°·266, and 32°, Fahrenheit.]
+
+[Footnote 65: Since I wrote this chapter, my attention has been called
+to a tourist's account of the Schafloch in _Once a Week_ (Nov. 26,
+1864), in an article called _An Ice-cavern in the Justis-Thal._ The
+writer says--'We proceeded to the farther end of the cavern, or at least
+as far as we thought it prudent, to ascertain where the flooring of ice
+rounded off into the abyss of unfathomable water we heard trickling
+below.' One of the party 'having taken some large stones with him, he
+began hurling them into the profound mystery. Presently a heavy
+double-bass gurgle issued forth with ominous depth of voice, indicating
+the danger of farther progress. Having thus ascertained that if either
+of us ventured farther he would most probably not return by the way he
+went, the signal of retreat was given, and in about forty minutes, after
+encountering the same amusing difficulties which had enlivened our
+descent, Æneas-like we gained the upper air.' It will be seen from my
+account of what we found in the 'abyss of unfathomable water,' that a
+little farther exploration might have effected a change in the writer's
+views.]
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+THE GLACIÈRE OF GRAND ANU, ON THE MONTAGNE DE L'EAU, NEAR ANNECY.
+
+
+M. Thury's list contained a bare mention of two glacières on the M.
+Parmelan, near Annecy, without any further information respecting them,
+beyond the fact that they supplied ice for Lyons. Their existence had
+been apparently reported to him by M. Alphonse Favre, but he had
+obtained no account of a visit to the caves. Under these circumstances,
+the only plan was to go to Annecy, and trust to chance for finding some
+one there who could assist me in my search.
+
+After spending a day or two in the library at Geneva, looking up M.
+Thury's references, with respect to various ice-caves, and trying to
+discover something more than he had found in the books there, I started
+for Annecy at seven in the morning in the banquette of the diligence. On
+a fresher day, no doubt the great richness of the orchards and
+corn-fields would have been very striking; but on this particular
+morning the fields were already trembling with heat, and the trees and
+the fruit covered with dust; and there was nothing in the grouping of
+the country through which the road lay to refresh the baked and
+half-choked traveller. The voyage was to last four and a half hours, and
+it soon became a serious question how far it would be possible to face
+the heat of noon, when the earlier morning was so utterly unbearable.
+
+Before very long, a counter-irritant appeared in the shape of a
+fellow-traveller, whose luggage consisted of a stick and an old pair of
+boots. The man was not pleasant to be near in any way, and he was
+evidently not at all satisfied with the amount of room I allowed him. He
+kept discontentedly and doggedly pushing his spare pair of boots farther
+and farther into my two-thirds of the seat, and once or twice was on the
+point of a protest, in which case I was prepared to tell him that as he
+filled the whole banquette with his smell, he ought in reason to be
+satisfied with less room for himself; but instead of speaking, he
+brought out a tobacconist's parcel and began to open it. Tobacco-smoke
+is all very well under suitable circumstances, but it is possible to be
+too hot and dusty and bilious to be able to stand it, and I watched his
+proceedings with more of annoyance than of resignation. The parcel
+turned out, however, to be delightful snuff, tastefully perfumed and
+very refreshing; and the politeness with which the owner gave a pinch to
+the foreign monsieur, after apportioning a handful to the driver and
+conductor, won him a good three inches more of seat. The inevitable
+cigar soon came; but it was a very good one, and no one could complain:
+all the same, I could not help feeling a malicious satisfaction when the
+_douaniers_ on the French frontier investigated the spare
+boots--guiltless, one might have thought, of anything except the
+extremity of age and dirt--and drew from them a bundle or two of
+smuggled cigars, the owner trying in vain to look as if he rather liked
+it.
+
+The Hôtel de Genève is probably the least objectionable of the hotels
+of Annecy; but the Poste-bureau is at the Hôtel d'Angleterre, and it
+was much too hot for me to fight with the waiters there, and carry off
+my knapsack to another house. It is generally a mistake--a great
+mistake--to sleep at a house which is the starting-place and the goal
+of many diligences. All the night through, whips are cracking, bells
+jingling, and men are shouting hoarsely or blowing hoarser horns.
+Moreover, the Hôtel d'Angleterre had apparently needed a fresh coat of
+paint and universal papering for many years, and the latter need had
+at this crisis been so far grappled with that the old paper had been
+torn down from the walls and now lay on the various floors, while
+large pies of malodorous sizing had been planted at the angles of the
+stairs. The natural _salle-à-manger_ was evidently an excellent room,
+with oleander balconies, but it was at present in the hands of
+joiners, and a card pointed the way to the 'provisionary
+_salle-à-manger'_--not a bad name for it--in the neighbourhood of the
+kitchen.
+
+There was one redeeming feature. The people of the house were
+nice-looking and well-dressed. But experience has taught me to view such
+a phenomenon in French towns of humbler rank with somewhat mixed
+feelings. When the house is superintended with a keen and watchful eye
+by a young lady of fashionable appearance, who takes a personal interest
+in a solitary traveller, and suggests an evening's _course_ on the lake,
+or a morning's drive to some good view, and makes herself most winning
+and agreeable; who takes the words, moreover, out of the mouth of a man
+meditating an ordinary dinner, and assures him that she knows exactly
+what he wants, and he shall be well satisfied, with a sisterly air that
+makes the idea of francs and sous not sordid only, but impossible; I
+have slowly learned to expect that this fashion and condescension will
+appear in the bill. Prettiness is a very expensive item in such a case;
+and as these three were all combined to a somewhat remarkable degree at
+the Hôtel d'Angleterre, the eventual bill made me angry, and I should
+certainly try the Hôtel de Genève on any future visit to Annecy.
+
+The first thing to be done was to determine the position of the Mont
+Parmelan. I was prepared to find the people of the town denying the
+existence of such a mountain; but, as it was visible from the door of
+the hotel, they could not go quite so far as that. The small crowd at
+the door repudiated the glacières with one voice, and pointed out how
+unlikely it was that Lyons should be supplied with ice from Annecy;
+nevertheless, I continued to ask my way in spite of protestation, till
+at length a lame man passed by, who said monsieur was quite right--he
+himself knew two glacières on the Mont Parmelan very well. He had never
+seen either of them, but he knew them as well as if he had. It was
+useless to go to them now, he added, for the owners extracted all the
+ice early in the year, and stored it in holes in the lower part of the
+mountain. He had no idea by what route they were to be approached from
+Annecy, or on which side of the Mont Parmelan they lay.
+
+I now looked on the local map, and determined that the best plan would
+be to take the Bonneville diligence as far as Charvonnaz, the point on
+the road which seemed to lie nearest to the roots of the Mont Parmelan,
+and then be guided by what I might learn among the peasants. Everyone
+said there was no chance of getting to anything by that means; but as
+the hotel people saw that it was of no use to deny the glacières any
+longer, they proposed to take me to a man who knew the M. Parmelan well,
+and could tell me all about it. This man proved to be a keeper of
+voitures,--an ominous profession under the circumstances,--and he
+assured me that I could make a most lovely _course_ the next day,
+through scenery of unrivalled beauty; and he eloquently told on his
+fingers the villages and sights I should come to. I suggested--without
+in the least knowing that it was so--that the drive might be all very
+well in itself, but it would not bring me to the glacières; on which he
+assured me that he knew every inch of the mountain, and there was not
+such a thing as a glacière in the whole district. At this moment, a
+gentlemanlike man was brought up by the waiter, and introduced to me as
+a monsieur who knew a monsieur who knew the proprietor of one of the
+glacières, and would he happy to conduct me to this second monsieur: so,
+without any very ceremonious farewell to the owner of the proffered
+voiture, we marched off together down the street, and eventually turned
+into a _café_, whose master was the monsieur for whom we were in search.
+Know the glacière?--yes, indeed! he had ice from it one year every
+morning. His wife and he had made a _course_ to the campagne of M. the
+Maire of Aviernoz, and he--the cafétier--had descended for miles, as it
+were, down and down, till he came to an underground world of ice,
+wonderful, totally wonderful: there he perceived so immense a cold, that
+he drank a bottle of rhoom--a whole bottle--and drank it from the neck,
+_à l'Anglaise_. And when they had gone so far that great dread came upon
+them, they rolled a stone down the ice, and it went into the
+darkness--boom, boom, boom,--and he put on a power of ventriloquism
+which admirably represented the strange suggestive sound. Hold a moment!
+had monsieur a crayon? Yes, monsieur had; so the things were impetuously
+swept off a round marble table, and the excited little man drew a fancy
+portrait of the glacière. The way to reach it? Go by diligence to
+Charvonnaz--exactly what I had determined upon--and walk up to Aviernoz,
+where his good friend the maire would make me see his beautiful
+glacière, through the means of a letter which he went to write. It was
+absurd to see this hot little man sign himself 'Dugravel, _glacier_,'
+that being the style of his profession, naturally recalling the
+contradictory conduct of the Latin noun _lucus_.
+
+The bones of S. Francis of Sales lie in the church of S. François in
+Annecy, and I made a pilgrimage in search of them through very
+unpleasant streets. After a time, the Italian west front of the church
+appeared; but the main door led into a demonstrative bakery, and the
+door of the north aisle was obscured by oleanders and a striped awning,
+and over it appeared the legend, '_Entrée de l'Hôtel_.' As a man
+politely explained, they had built S. Francis another church, and
+utilised the old one. The town itself seemed to be of the squalid style
+of antiquity--old, no doubt, but very dirty. It is pervaded by streams,
+which crop up among the houses, and flow through dark alleys and vaulted
+passages, rarely coming into daylight, and suggesting all manner of dark
+crimes. The red-legged French kettledrums are, if possible, more
+insolent here than in other places, and it is evident that the dogs are
+not yet reconciled to the annexation, for the guard swept through the
+streets amid a perfect tornado of howls from the negligent scavengers of
+the place. For my own part, I was not pleased with the change of rule,
+when I found that since Annecy has become French, the _vin d'Asti_ has
+become dear, as being now a foreign wine.
+
+The diligence for Bonneville was to leave Annecy at half-past four in
+the morning; so I told them to call me at four, intending to breakfast
+somewhere on the way. But of course, when four o'clock came, I had to
+call myself, and in a quarter of an hour a knock at the door announced
+half-past four. I pounced upon the man, and remonstrated with him, but
+he assured me it did not matter; and when I reminded him that the
+diligence was to leave at half-past four, he observed philosophically
+that it was quite true, and I had better make haste, for the poste was
+very punctual. At the door of the bureau a loaded diligence stood,
+marked _Annecy--Aix_, and I asked had the Bonneville diligence gone? It
+did not go till six, the clerk told me; but I reminded him he had said
+half-past four when I asked him last night. Half-past four?--true, here
+was the carriage standing at the door. But that was for Aix, not
+Bonneville, I pointed out to him. Pardon--it was marked Aix, but was in
+fact meant for Bonneville.
+
+The diligence reached the end of the by-road leading to Villaz in about
+half an hour, and all the fever of Geneva and Annecy seemed to fly away
+before the freshness of this green little lane, with clematis in full
+flower pervading the hedges, and huge clusters of young nuts peeping
+out, and promising later delights to fortunate passers-by. But, alas!
+the little lane soon came to an end, and as I faced the fields of corn
+up the mountain-side, the hot thunderous air came rolling down in
+palpable billows, and oppressive clouds took possession of the
+surrounding hills. Three-quarters of an hour brought me to Villaz, a
+close collection of houses on the hill-side, with arched stone gateways
+leading into the farmyards,--a fortified style of agricultural building
+which seems to prevail in that district. After an amount of experience
+in out-of-the-way places which makes me very cautious in saying that one
+in particular is dirtier than a dozen others, I venture to say that the
+_auberge_ of Villaz is the most squalid I have come across; and I would
+not feed there again, except in very robust health, even for a new
+glacière. Still, it was absolutely necessary to eat something, and the
+landlady promised coffee and bread. She showed me first into the
+kitchen; but as it was also the place where the domestics slept, with
+many quadrupeds, I declined to sit there. Upon this she led me to the
+_salon_, where the window resisted all our efforts for some little time,
+and then opened upon such a choice assortment of abominations, that I
+fled without my baggage. The next attempt she made was the one remaining
+room of the house, the family bedroom; but that was so much worse than
+all, that I took final refuge on the balcony, a sort of ante-room to the
+hen-house. The cocks at the _auberge_ of Villaz are the loudest, the
+hens the most talkative, and the cats the most shaggy and presuming, I
+have ever met with. Even here, however, all was not unmitigated
+darkness; for they ground the coffee while the water was boiling, and
+the consequent decoction was admirable. Moreover, the bread had a skin
+of such thickness and impervious toughness, that the inside was
+presumably clean.
+
+Aviernoz lay about an hour farther. Almost as soon as I left Villaz,
+the thunderstorm came on in earnest, with sheets of rain, a regular
+_Wolkenbruch_.[66] The rain was most refreshing; but lightning is not
+a pleasant companion in presence of a bright ice-axe, and I was glad
+when the houses of Aviernoz came in sight. The village had the
+appearance of being lost; and the houses were scattered about so
+irregularly, that it was difficult to know which was the best point to
+make for. The road studiously avoided the scattered houses, and the
+_Mairie_ seemed especially difficult to find. When at length it was
+found, the maire, like the queen in the poets, was in the kitchen; and
+he sat affably on the end of a bench and read the letter of
+introduction aloud, asking me, at the conclusion, how was our friend
+Dugravel, a man amazing in many ways. When I confessed that I had only
+made the acquaintance of the amazing man the night before, and
+therefore did not feel competent to give any reliable account of the
+state of his health, beyond the fact that he seemed to be in
+excellent spirits, the maire looked upon me evidently with great
+respect, as having won so far upon a great character like Dugravel in
+so short a time, and determined to accompany me himself. Meantime, we
+must drink some kirsch. The maire was a young man, spare and vehement.
+He talked with a headlong impetuosity which caused him to be always
+hot, and his hair limp and errant; and at the end of each sentence
+there were so many laggard halves of words to come out together, with
+so little breath to bring them out, that he eventuated in a stuttering
+scream. His clothes were of such a description, that the most
+speculative Israelite would not have gone beyond copper for his
+wardrobe, all standing. There were two women in the house, to whom he
+was exceedingly imperious: one of them received his orders and his
+vehemence with a certain amount of defiance, but the other was subdued
+and obedient, and I believe her to have been the mayoress. He poured
+himself and his household at my feet, knocked a child one way and his
+wife another, and, from the air with which he dragged off the
+tablecloth they had laid, and ordered a better, and swept away the
+glasses because they were not clean enough--which in itself was
+sufficiently true,--and screamed for poached eggs for monsieur, and
+then impetuously ate them himself--I fancy that he might have been
+taught to play Petrucio with success.
+
+When we had sat for a quarter of an hour or so, a heavy-looking young
+man, in fustian clothes and last year's linen, came into the room, and
+was introduced as the communal schoolmaster. We shook hands with much
+impressment on the strength of the similarity of our professions, and
+the maire explained that the new arrival acted also as his secretary,
+for there was really so much writing to be done that it was beyond his
+own powers; and as the schoolmaster lived _en pension_ at the _Mairie_,
+it was very convenient. M. Rosset, the schoolmaster, stated that he had
+heard us, as he sat in his room, talking of the proposed visit to the
+glacière, and he should much wish to accompany us. We both expressed the
+warmest satisfaction; but the maire suggested--how about the boys? That,
+M. Rosset said, was simple enough. The world would go to the school at
+nine o'clock, and, finding no schoolmaster, would go home again, or
+otherwise employ itself; and he could have school on the weekly holiday,
+to make up for the lost day. This weekly holiday is universally on
+Thursday, he said, because that day divides the week so well; and I
+failed to persuade him that there was a commemoration intended in the
+choice of that day, as in the observance of Friday and Sunday. The maire
+utterly refused to take a cord, on the ground that there was no
+possibility of such a thing being of the least use. Fortunately, I had
+now my own axe, which in more able hands had mounted more than once Mont
+Blanc and Monte Rosa, so I had not the usual fight to procure that
+instrument.
+
+Half an hour from the _Mairie_, when we had well commenced the steep
+ascent of the mountain-side, the maire turned suddenly round and
+exclaimed, 'But the inspector!' Rosset was a sallow man, but he
+contrived to turn white, while M. Métral (the maire) explained to me
+that the inspector of schools was to visit Aviernoz that day. The
+schoolmaster recovered before long, and said he should inform the
+inspector that a famous _savant_ had come from England, and required
+that the maire and the _instituteur_ should accompany him to the
+glacière, to aid him in making scientific observations. In order that he
+might have documentary proof to advance, he asked for my card, and made
+me write on it my college and university in full.
+
+As I have already said, the maire's style of talking required a good
+deal of breath, and so it was not unnatural that the ascent should
+reduce him to silence. The schoolmaster talked freely about scholastic
+affairs, and gave me an account of the ordinary tariff in village
+schools, though each commune may alter the prices of its school if it
+please. Under seven years of age, children pay 4 francs a year, or, for
+shorter periods than a year, at the rate of 75 centimes a month; between
+seven and thirteen, 6 francs a year, or 1 franc a month; from thirteen
+to eighteen, 8 francs a year, or 1 f. 50 c. a month. There is the same
+difficulty in France, of course, as with us, in keeping children at
+school after they are old enough to earn a few centimes by
+cattle-keeping; and the Ministry of Education had shortly before
+addressed questions to every schoolmaster in the country, asking what
+remedy each could suggest. My present friend had replied, that if the
+Government would give the education gratis, something might be done; but
+he had expressed his opinion that nothing short of an actual subsidy to
+parents of children beyond eight or nine years of age would ensure a
+general improvement.
+
+Having given me this information, he observed that it was every man's
+business to learn, though he and I might be teachers also, and therefore
+he was sure monsieur would pardon him if he asked what those black
+patches on monsieur's hands might mean,--pointing to certain large areas
+of Epsom plaster which covered the tokens of many glacières. When his
+mind was set at rest as to this phenomenon, the maire called a halt, and
+took his turn of talking. He began to tell me about himself and his
+wealth, Rosset backing him up and putting in the most telling parts. He
+had very extensive property, and the more level parts of it were
+certainly valuable, consisting of 200 _journaux_ of good arable land:
+the forests through which we walked were his, and he possessed three
+_montagnes_ and châlets higher up on the mountain. The glacière was his
+own property; and two years ago he had discovered another in the
+neighbourhood, which he had not since visited. He was assisted in his
+capacity of maire by twelve councillors--in a larger commune it would
+have been fifteen--and the council met four times in the year. If it was
+desirable that they should meet on any other occasion, he must write to
+the prefect of the arrondissement for permission, specifying the
+business which they wished to conduct, and to this specified business
+they must confine themselves entirely. Then he wished to know, had we
+maires such as he in England? Hereupon I drew a fancy picture of the
+Lord Mayor of London, receiving the Queen and the Royal Family in
+general in a friendly way, and giving them a dinner,--which, he
+observed, must cost a good deal, a great deal. However, he looked round
+upon his fields and houses and mountains, and seemed to think that he
+could himself stand a considerable drain upon his purse for the
+reception of royalty; and possibly he is now anxious that the Emperor
+should pass that way, during the five years to which the tenure of the
+mayoralty is restricted. Both of my companions were strong in their
+French sympathies--the one because under the new rule all communal
+affairs were so much better organised, the other because a wonderful
+change for the better had taken place in the government superintendence
+of schools. Theirs was formerly an odd corner of a kingdom that did not
+care much about them, and was not homogeneous; it was now an integral
+part of a well-ordered empire. They confessed that the present state of
+things cost them much more in taxes, &c., excepting in the upper
+mountains, where Rosset had a cousin who paid even less than under
+Sardinian rule.
+
+Of course, we talked a little on Church questions; and they were
+astonished to hear that I was not only an ecclesiastic, but an ordained
+priest,--a sort of thing which they had fancied did not exist in the
+English Church. Rosset said the _curés_ of small communes had about £40
+a year, but I must have more than that, or I could not afford to travel
+so far from home. Had I already said the mass that morning? Had I my
+robes in the _sac_ I had left at the _Mairie_? Was the red book they had
+seen in my hands (Bädeker's _Schweiz_) a Breviary? They branched off to
+matters of doctrine, and discussed them warmly; but some things they so
+accommodatingly understated, and others they stated so fairly, that I
+was able to tell them they were excellent Anglicans.
+
+Higher up in the forest, we were nearly overwhelmed by a party of
+charcoal-porters, who came down with their _traîneaux_ like a black
+avalanche. A _traîneau_ is nothing more than a wooden sledge, on two
+runners, which are turned up in front, to the height of a yard, to keep
+the cargo in its place. In the more level parts the porter is obliged to
+drag this, but on the steep zigzags its own weight is sufficient to send
+it down; and here the porter places himself in front, with his back
+leaning against the sacks of charcoal and the turned-up runners, and the
+whole mass descends headlong, the man's legs going at a wild pace, and
+now one foot, now the other, steering a judicious course at the turns of
+the zigzags. The charcoal is made by Italians, who live on polenta and
+cheese high up in the mountains, and bring their manufacture down to a
+certain distance, after which the porters take it in charge. The men we
+saw told us that by hard work they could make four journeys in the day,
+earning a franc by each; out of which, as they said, they must support
+stomach and boots, one journey making them ready for a meal, and eight
+journeys finishing a pair of soles.
+
+It cost us an hour and a half to reach the maire's first châlet, where
+we were to lunch on such food as the old woman who managed it might have
+on hand; that is to say, possibly bread, and, beyond that, milk only, in
+some shape or other. The forms under which milk can be taught to appear
+are manifold. A young Swiss student, who in the madness of his passion
+for beetle-hunting had spent fifteen days in a small châlet at
+Anzeindaz, sleeping each night on the hay,[67] gave me, some time
+since, a list of the various foods on which he lived and grew fat. The
+following is the _carte_, as he arranged it:--
+
+Viandes.                        Vins.
+
+Du séret.                       Du lait de vache.[68]
+
+Du caillé.                      Du lait froid.
+
+Du beurre.                      Du lait de chèvre.
+
+Du fromage gras.                Petit lait.
+
+Du fromage mi-gras.             De la crême.
+
+Du fromage maigre.              Du lait de beurre.[69]
+
+Tome de vache.                  Petit lait de chèvre.
+
+Tome de chèvre.
+
+
+_Pour les Cochons_.
+
+Du lait gâté.
+
+Cuite.
+
+Some of the solids and fluids in the earlier part of this _carte_ we
+felt tolerably sure of finding at the maire's châlet, and accordingly
+any amount of cream and _séret_ proved to be forthcoming. The maire
+asserted that _cérac_ was the true name of this recommendable article
+of food, _céré_ being the patois for the original word. Others had
+told us that the real word was _serré_, meaning _compressed_ curds;
+but the French writers who treat learnedly of cheese-making in the
+_Annales de Chimie_ adopt the form _sérets_; and in the _Annales
+Scientifiques de l'Auvergne_ I find both _seret_ and _serai_, from the
+Latin _serum_. There was also bread, which arrived when we were
+sitting down to our meal: it had been baked in a huge ring, for
+convenience of carriage, and was brought up from the low-lands on a
+stick across a boy's shoulder. When the old woman thought it safe to
+expose a greater dainty to our attacks, at a later period of the meal,
+she brought out a pot of _caillé_, a delightful luxury which prevails
+in the form of nuggets of various size floating in sour whey. Owing to
+a general want of table apparatus, we placed the pot of caillé on a
+broken wall, and speared the nuggets with our pocket-knives.
+
+After the meal, the two Frenchmen found themselves wet and exceedingly
+cold; for Frenchmen have not yet learned the blessing of flannel shirts
+under a broiling sun. They set to work to dry themselves after an
+original fashion. The fire was little more than a collection of
+smouldering embers, confined within three stone walls about a foot high;
+so they took each a one-legged stool--_chaises des vaches_, or _chaise
+des montagnes_--and attached themselves to the stools by the usual
+leathern bands round the hips; then they cautiously planted the prods of
+the stools in the middle of the embers, maintaining an unstable
+equilibrium by resting their own legs on the top of the walls. Here they
+sat, smoking and being smoked, till they were dry and warm. Of course,
+in case of a slip or an inadvertent movement, they would have gone
+sprawling into the fire. A well-known Swiss botanist, who has seen many
+strange sleeping-places in the course of sixty years of flower-hunting
+in the mountains of Vaud and Valais, has told me that on one occasion he
+had reached with great difficulty the only châlet in the neighbourhood
+of his day's researches, at a late hour of the night, the whole mountain
+being soaked with rain. It was a little upland châlet, which the people
+had deserted for the autumn and winter; and meantime a mud avalanche had
+taken possession, and covered the floor to a depth of several inches. No
+plank was to be found for lying on; but he discovered a broken
+one-legged stool, and on this he sat and slept, propped as well as might
+be in a corner. It is difficult to say which would be worse--a fall from
+the stool by daylight into the embers of a wood fire, or the shuddering
+slimy waking about midnight, after a nod more vigorous than the rest, to
+find oneself plunged in eight cold inches of soft mud.
+
+About half an hour beyond the châlet, we found the mouth of the
+glacière, on a large plateau almost bare of vegetation, and showing the
+live rock at the surface. They told me that in a strong winter there
+would be an average of 12 feet of snow on the ground here.[70] The
+glacière itself is approached by descending one side of a deep pit,
+whose circumference is larger than that of any other of the
+pit-glacières I have seen. A few yards off there is a smaller shaft in
+the rock, which we afterwards found to communicate with the glacière.
+The NW. side of the larger pit, being the side at the bottom of which is
+the arch of entrance, is vertical, and we spent the time necessary for
+growing cool in measuring the height of this face of rock from above.
+The plummet ran out 115 feet of string, and struck the slope of snow,
+down which the descent to the cave must be made, about 6 feet above the
+junction of the snow with the floor of the glacière, which was visible
+from the S. side of the edge of the pit; so that the total depth from
+the surface of the rock to the ice-floor was 121 feet.
+
+[Illustration: VERTICAL SECTION OF THE GLACIÈRE OF GRAND ANU, NEAR
+ANNECY.]
+
+When we were sufficiently cool, we scrambled down the side of the pit
+opposite to that in which the archway lies, finding the rock extremely
+steep, and then came to a slope of 72 feet of snow, completely exposed
+to the weather, which landed us at the mouth of the glacière. The arch
+is so large, that we could detect the change of light in the cave,
+caused by the passage of clouds across the sun, and candles were not
+necessary, excepting in the pits shortly to be described. We saw at once
+that rapid thaw was going on somewhere or other; and when we stepped off
+the snow, we found ourselves in a couple of inches of soft green
+vegetable mud, like a _compote_ of dark-coloured duckweed--or, to use a
+more familiar simile, like a mass of overboiled and ill-strained
+spinach. To the grief of one of us, there was ice under this, of most
+persuasive slipperiness. The maire said that he had never seen these
+signs of thaw in his visits in previous years; and as we went farther
+and farther into the cave, he was more and more surprised at each step
+to find such a large quantity of running water, and so much less ice
+than he had expected. The shape of the glacière is a rough circle, 60
+feet in diameter; and the floor, which is solid ice, slopes gradually
+down to the farther end. The immediate entrance is half-closed by a
+steep and very regular cone of snow, lying vertically under the small
+shaft we had seen in the rock above. The snow which forms the cone
+descends in winter by this shaft; and the formation must have been going
+on for a considerable time, since the lower part of the cone has become
+solid ice, under the combined influences of pressure and of _dégel_ and
+_regel_. I climbed up the side of this, by cutting steps in the lower
+part, and digging feet and hands deep into the snow higher up; and I
+found the length of the side to be 30 feet. I had no means of
+determining the height of the cave, and a guess might not be of much
+value.
+
+At first sight, the farther end of the cave was the most striking. The
+water which comes from the melting snow down which we had passed in
+reaching the glacière, had cut itself deep channels in the floor, and
+through these it coursed rapidly till it precipitated itself into a
+large pit or _moulin_ in the ice, at the lowest point. This pit, a will
+be seen by the section of the cave given on p. 174,[71] terminates the
+glacière; and the rock-wall at the farther edge falls away into a sort
+of open fissure, down which magnificent cascades of ice stream
+emulously, clothing that side of the pit, which would otherwise be solid
+rock. We cut a few steps about the upper edge of this _moulin_, to make
+all safe, and proceeded to let down a lighted candle, which descended
+safely for 36 feet, showing nothing but ice on all sides; it then came
+in contact with one of the falls of water, and the light was of course
+extinguished. We next tied a stone to the string, and found that after
+40 feet it struck on ice and turned inwards, under our feet, stopping
+finally at the end of 51 feet; but whether it was really the bottom of
+the pit that stopped it, or only some ledge or accidental impediment, we
+could not determine. The diameter of this pit might be 3 yards, but we
+took no measure of it.
+
+At the extreme right of the cave we found another pit, a yard and a
+half across, two-thirds of the circumference of which was formed by
+the plateau of ice on which we stood, and the remaining third by a
+fluting in the wall of rock. The maire said that, two years ago, this
+hole was not visible, being concealed by a large ice-column which had
+since fallen in. Here again I let down a lighted candle, with more
+hopes of getting it to the bottom, as no part of the cave drained into
+the pit. The candle descended steadily, the flame showing no signs of
+atmospheric disturbance, and revealing the fact that the opposite side
+of the pit, viz. the rock, which alone was visible from our position,
+became more and more thickly covered with ice, of exquisite clearness,
+and varied and most graceful forms. As foot after foot, and yard after
+yard, ran out, and our heads craned farther and farther over the edge
+of the pit to follow the descending light, (we lay flat on the ice,
+for more safety,) the cries of the schoolmaster became mere howls, and
+the maire lapsed into oaths heavy enough to break in the ice. It is
+always sufficiently disagreeable to hear men swear; but in situations
+which have anything impressive, either of danger or of grandeur, it
+becomes more than ever unbearable. I remember on one occasion
+over-taking a large party in the descent from the Plateau to the
+Grands Mulets, in a place where the snow was extremely soft, and any
+moment might land one of us in a crevasse; and I shall never forget
+the oaths which caught my ear, from a floundering fellow-countryman
+enveloped from the waist downwards.
+
+When 60 feet had run out, the candle stopped, and on stretching over I
+saw that it had reached a slope of ice which inclined very steeply
+northwards, and passed away under the rock, apparently into a fresh
+cavern. By raising the candle slightly and then letting it drop, we made
+it glide down this slope for 8 feet; and then it finally rested on a
+shelf of ice, showing us the shadowy beginnings of what should be a most
+glorious ice-cave. The little light which the candle gave was made the
+most of by the reflecting material which surrounded it; and we were able
+to see that the archway in the rock was rounded off with grey ice, and
+rested, as it were, on icy pillars. As far as we could judge, there
+would have been abundant room to pass down the slope under the archway,
+if only the preliminary 60 feet could by any means have been
+accomplished; and I shall dream for long of what there must be down
+there.
+
+As I was anxious to know whether the side of the pit was vertical ice
+under our feet, I contrived to get about a third of the way round the
+edge, so as almost to reach the fluting in the rock which formed the
+farther side of the pit, and then desired the schoolmaster to raise the
+candle slowly from the ledge on which it still rested. As he pulled it
+gradually up, I was startled to find that the ice fell away sharply
+immediately below the spot where we had been collected, and then formed
+a solid wall; so that we had been standing on the mere edge of a shelf,
+with nothing but black emptiness below. How far the solid wall receded
+at the bottom I was unable to determine, for the light of one candle was
+of very little use at so great a distance, and in darkness so profound.
+I persuaded the maire to make an effort to reach a point from which he
+could see the insecurity of the ice which had seemed to form so solid a
+floor; and he was so much impressed by what he saw, that he fled with
+precipitation from the cave, and we eventually found him asleep under a
+bush on the rocks above. In reaching the farther side of the pit, we
+crossed unwittingly an ice-bridge formed by a transverse pit or tunnel
+in the ice, which opened into the pit we were examining. The maire
+afterwards promised to rail off all that end of the glacière, and forbid
+his workmen to venture upon it. Considering that the hole itself was
+only opened two years before by the fall of a column, and has already
+undergone such changes, I shall be surprised if the ice-bridge, and all
+that part on which we lay to fathom the pit, does not fall in before
+very long; and then, by means of steps and ropes and ladders, it may be
+possible to reach the entrance to the lower cave, 190 feet below the
+surface of the earth. May I be there to see![72]
+
+The left side of the glacière, near the entrance, was occupied by a
+columnar cascade, behind which I forced a passage by chopping away some
+lovely ornaments of ice. Here also the solid ground-ice falls away a
+little under the surface, leaving a cavern 8 or 9 feet deep, on the rock
+side of which every possible glacial fantasy was to be found. The
+stalactites here presented the peculiar prismatic structure so often
+noticed; but on the more exposed side of the column they were tipped
+with limpid ice, free from all apparent external or internal lines. This
+reminded me of what we had observed in the Glacière of La Genollière,
+namely, that the surface-lines tended to disappear under thaw; so I cut
+a piece of prismatic ice and put it in my mouth. In a short time it
+became perfectly limpid, and on breaking it up I could discover no signs
+of prism. On some parts of the floor of the glacière, the ice was
+apparently unprismatic, generally in connection with running water or
+other marks of thaw; but, to my surprise, I found that it split into
+prisms very readily.
+
+The maire could not understand how it was that, after a winter
+especially severe, as that of 1863-4 had been, there should be even less
+ice than in the preceding summer, and we could see the marks of last
+year's cutting, down to the edge of the _moulin_. He said that they had
+never before cut down in that direction; but in the summer of 1863 they
+had been so much struck by the clearness of the ice which formed the
+floor, that they had cut it freely, and removed a large quantity. This,
+I believe, was the cause of the absence of any great amount of fresh
+ice. The slope of the whole ice-floor is considerable, and the workmen
+increased the slope by cutting away the ice in the neighbourhood of the
+edge of the _moulin_: they had also, as we could see quite plainly,
+excavated the clearer parts of the ice between the entrance to the cave
+and the _moulin_, so that a sort of trough ran down from near the foot
+of the snow to the pit at the lower end of the glacière. When we were
+there, the water rushed down this trough, and was lost in the pit; and
+very probably the same may have been the case in the earlier parts of
+the year, when, according to the view I have already expressed, the ice
+would under ordinary circumstances have been formed. If this be so, the
+caverns below must have received immense additions to their stores of
+ice or water. We observed, by the way, that the slope of ice to which
+the candle descended in the deeper pit, and the shelf on which it
+rested, were quite dry, or at any rate free from all apparent signs of
+the abundant water we should have seen, had that been the outlet for the
+streams which poured into the _moulin_. The maire said that the columns
+and cascades of ice in the cave had been much more beautiful in the
+previous summer.
+
+The whole cavern would thus appear to be something of the shape of an
+egg, with the longer axis vertical, and the entrance about half-way up
+the side. The lower end of this egg-shaped cavity in the rock is filled
+with ice, which in some parts shrinks from the rock below the surface,
+though, as far as outward appearance goes, it fills the cavern to its
+farthest corners. The depth of this ice at one side is 60 feet, and how
+much more it may be in the middle it is impossible to say. As we have
+seen, there is a second ice-cave opening out of the principal one, at a
+depth of 190 feet below the surface; and with respect to this second
+cave imagination may run riot. Rosset told me that he had noticed, the
+year before, a strong source of water springing out of the side of a
+rock, at some little distance from the glacière; but he could not reach
+it then, and could not find it now. This may possibly be the drainage of
+the glacière in its summer state.
+
+The thermometer stood at 34° in the middle of the cave; and though the
+others felt the cold very much, I was myself surprised to find so low a
+register, for the atmosphere seemed to be comparatively warm, judging
+from what I had experienced in other glacières. The only current of air
+we could detect was exceedingly slight, and came from the deeper of the
+two pits in the ice. It was so slight, that the flame of the candle
+burned apparently quite steadily when we were engaged in determining the
+depth and shape of the pit.
+
+The sun had by this time produced such an effect upon the slope of snow
+outside the glacière, that we found the ascent sufficiently difficult,
+especially as our hands were full of various instruments. The
+schoolmaster was not content to choose the straight line up, and in
+attempting to perform a zigzag, he came to a part of the slope where the
+snow lay about 2 inches thick on solid ice, and the result was an
+unscholastic descent in inverted order of precedence. He got on better
+over the rolling stones after the snow was accomplished, but the clumsy
+style of his climbing dislodged an unpleasant amount and weight of
+missiles; and though he was amiable enough to cry '_Garde_!' with every
+step he took, it will be found by experiment that it is not much use to
+the lower man to have '_Garde_!' shouted in his ears, when his footing
+is insecure to begin with, and a large stone comes full at his head, at
+the precise moment when two others are taking him in the pit of the
+stomach.
+
+We found the maire, as was said, asleep under a bush near the mouth of
+the pit; and he pronounced himself completely recovered from the effects
+of the cold, and ready to guide us to a second glacière. He told us that
+the amount of ice he sold averaged 4,000 _quintaux métriques_ a week,
+for the three months of July, August, and September; but the last winter
+had been so severe, that the lake had provided ice for the artificial
+glacières of Annecy, and no one had as yet applied to him this year. As
+only a fortnight of his usual season had passed, he may have since had
+plenty of applications, later in the year. The railways have opened up
+more convenient sources of ice for Lyons, and for some time he has sent
+none to that town.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 66: A Yorkshire farmer unconsciously adapts the German
+_Wolkenbruch_, declaring on occasion that the rain is so heavy, it is
+'ommust as if a clood had brussen someweers.']
+
+[Footnote 67: I tried the hay in this châlet one night, with such
+results that the next time I slept there, two years after, I preferred a
+combination of planks.]
+
+[Footnote 68: _i.e._ New milk, warm.]
+
+[Footnote 69: Otherwise graphically called _battu_.]
+
+[Footnote 70: I had no means of determining the elevation of the ground.
+The fact of 12 feet of snow is of no value as a guide to the height.
+Last winter (1864-5) there was 26 feet of snow on the Jura, at a height
+of less than 4,000 feet, and the position of some of the larger châlets
+was only marked by a slight boss on the plane surface.]
+
+[Footnote 71: In the section of the cave, I have brought out the deeper
+pit from the side into the middle, so as to show both in one section: I
+have also slightly shaded the pits, instead of leaving them blank like
+shafts in the rock.]
+
+[Footnote 72: I have made arrangements for completing the exploration of
+this cave, and the one which is next described, in the course of the
+present summer.]
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+THE GLACIÈRE OF CHAPPET-SUR-VILLAZ, ON THE MONT PARMELAN, NEAR ANNECY.
+
+
+We started southwards from the Glacière of _Grand Anu_, for such they
+said was the proper name for the cave last described, and passed over
+some of the wildest walking I have seen. All the most striking features
+of a glacier were here reproduced in stone: now narrow deep crevasses
+which only required a slight spring; now much more formidable rents,
+which we were obliged to circumvent by a détour; now dark mysterious
+holes with vertical shell-like partitions at various depths; and now a
+perfect _moulin_, with fluted sides and every detail appertaining to
+those remarkable pits, the hollow plunge of falling water alone
+excepted. In other parts, the smooth slab-like appearance of the surface
+reminded me of a curious district on one of the summits of the Jura,
+where the French frontier takes the line of crest, and the old stones
+marked with the _fleur-de-lys_ and the Helvetic cross are still to be
+found. In those border regions the old historic distinctions are still
+remembered, and the frontier Vaudois call the neighbouring French
+_Bourguignons_--or, in their patois, _Borgognons_. They keep up the
+tradition of old hatreds; and the strange bleak summit, with its smooth
+slabs of Jura-chalk lying level with the surface, is so much like a vast
+cemetery, that the wish in old times has been father to the thought, and
+they call it still the Cemetery of the Burgundians, _Cimetiros ai
+Borgognons_.[73]
+
+After a time, we reached a tumbled chaos of rock, much resembling the
+ice-fall of a glacier, and, on descending, and rounding a low spur of
+the mountain so as to take a north-westerly course, we found ourselves
+in a perfect paradise of flowers. One orchis I shall always regret.
+There seemed to be only a single head, closely packed with flowerets,
+and strongly scented; it was a pure white, not the green and
+straw-coloured white of other scented orchises. There were large patches
+of the delicate _faux-lis (Paradisia liliastrum)_; and though there
+might not be anything very rare, and the lovely glacier-flowers were of
+course wanting, the whole was a rich feast for anyone who cares more for
+delicacy and colour than for botany.
+
+The maire told us that he had found the glacière, for which we were now
+in search, two years before, when he accompanied the government surveyor
+to show him the forests and mountains which formed his property. As he
+had on that occasion approached the spot from the other side, we walked
+a long way to place him exactly where the surveyor and he had crossed
+the ridge of the mountain, and then started him down from the Col in the
+direction they had taken. He was certain of two things: first, that
+they had passed by the Col between the Mont Parmelan and the Montagne de
+l'Eau; and, secondly, that the glacière was within five minutes of the
+highest point of the Col. For three-quarters of an hour we all broke our
+shins, and the officials the Third Commandment. They invoked more saints
+than I had ever heard of, and, in default, did not scruple to appeal
+with shocking volubility to darker aid. It was all of no use,--and well
+it might be; for when we had given it up in despair, after long patience
+and a considerable period of the contrary, and had descended for half an
+hour in the direction of a third glacière, I chanced to look back, and
+saw that the Col in the neighbourhood of which we had been searching lay
+between two points of the Montagne de l'Eau; while the true Col between
+that mountain and the Mont Parmelan lay considerably to the west. When
+it appears that a guide has probably made a mistake, the only plan is to
+assume quietly that it is so, as if it were a matter of no consequence,
+and then he may sometimes be decoyed into allowing the fact: I therefore
+pointed out to the maire the true Col, and told him that was the one by
+which he had passed southwards, when he found the glacière; to which,
+with unnecessary strength of language, he at once assented. But all my
+efforts to take him back were unavailing. Nothing in the world should
+carry him up the mountain again, now that he had happily got so far
+down. I worked his best and his worst feelings with equal want of
+success; even national jealousy failed, and he was content to know that
+a French maire had not pluck to face three-quarters of an hour of
+climbing, when an English priest was ready to lead the way. The
+schoolmaster declined to go alone with me, on the ground that neither of
+us knew the mountain, and threatening clouds were gathering all around.
+When, at last, I proposed to go by myself, they became menacingly
+obstructive, and declared that I should certainly not be allowed to
+face the intricacy of the mountain in a fog. Besides, as the maire put
+it, he was sure of the way to the third glacière; and if I were to go up
+alone to look for the second, I should lose a certainty for a chance, as
+there was not time to visit both. So with an ill grace I continued the
+descent with them, being restored to good humour before long by the
+beauty of the Lake of Annecy, as seen from our elevated position.
+
+It is so impossible to accept in full the accounts one picks up of
+natural curiosities, that I give the maire's description of the stray
+glacière only for what it is worth. It was not extracted without much
+laborious cross-examination--_sais paw vous le dire_ being the average
+answer to my questions. The entrance to the cave is about twice as high
+as a man, and is in a small shallow basin of rock and grass. The floor
+is level with the entrance, and the roof rises inside to a good height.
+In shape it is like a Continental bread-oven; and at the time of the
+maire's visit, the floor was a confused mass of ice and stones, the
+former commencing at the very entrance. There was no ice except on the
+floor, the area of which might be as large as that of the surface of the
+ice in the Glacière of Grand Anu. No pit was to be seen, and not a drop
+of water. Snow could have drifted in easily, but they saw no signs of
+any remaining. If this account be true, especially with respect to the
+position of the entrance and the horizontal direction of the floor, I
+have seen no glacière like it.
+
+We descended for a time through fir-woods, and then again down steep and
+barren rocks, till we reached the sharp slope of grass which so
+frequently connects the base of a mountain with the more civilised
+forests and the pasturages below. The maire led us for some distance
+along the top of this grass slope, towards the west, skirting the rocks
+till they became precipitous and lofty, when he said we must be near
+our point. Still we went on and on without seeing any signs of it, and
+our guide seemed in despair; and I, for one, entirely gave up the third
+cave to the same fate as the second, and became very sulky and
+remonstrative. The entrance to the glacière, the maire told us, was a
+hole in the face of the highest rocks, 3 or 4 yards only above the
+grass; and as we had now reached a part of the mountain where the rock
+springs up smooth and high, and we could command the whole face, and yet
+saw nothing, the schoolmaster came over to my side, and told the maire
+he was a humbug. However, we were then within a few yards of the desired
+spot, and half-a-dozen steps showed us a small _cheminée_, down
+which a strong and icy current of wind blew. The maire shouted a shout
+of triumph, and climbed the _cheminée_; and when we also had done the
+necessary gymnastics, we found a hole facing almost due north, all
+within being dark. The current blew so determinedly, that matches were
+of no use, and I was obliged to seek a sheltered corner before I could
+light a candle; and, when lighted, the candle was with difficulty kept
+from being blown out. No ice was visible, nor any signs of such a
+thing,--nothing but a very irregular narrow cave, with darkness at the
+farther end. As we advanced, we found that the floor of the cave came to
+a sudden end, and the darkness developed into a strange narrow fissure,
+which reached out of sight upwards, and out of sight below; and down
+this the maire rolled stones, saying that _there_ was the glacière, if
+only one could get at it without a _tourneau_. Considering the
+persistency with which he had throughout declared that there was no
+possible need for a rope, I gave him some of my mind here, in that
+softened style which his official dignity demanded; but he excused
+himself by saying that the gentleman who owned the glacière, and
+extracted the ice for private use only, was now living at his summer
+châlet, a mile or two off, and he, the maire, had felt confident that
+the _tourneau_ would have been fitted up for the season.
+
+On letting a candle down from the termination of the floor, we found
+that the perpendicular drop was not more than 12 feet, and from the
+shelf thus reached it seemed very possible to descend to the farther
+depths of the fissure; but I had become so sceptical, that I persisted
+in asserting that there was no ice below. The maire's manner, also, was
+strange, and I suspected that the cold current of air had caused the
+place to be called a glacière, with any other qualification on the part
+of the cave. One thing was evident,--no snow could reach the fissure. M.
+Métrai was determined that I must not attempt the descent, pointing out,
+what was quite true, that though the fall was not great, there seemed no
+possibility of getting back up the smooth rock. His arguments increased
+my suspicions; so, leaving all apparatus behind, I dropped down to join
+the candle, rather hoping to have the satisfaction of sending them off
+for a rope, in case I could not achieve the last few feet in returning,
+and knowing that there was no danger of the fate which once threatened
+the chamois-hunting Kaiser Max.[74]
+
+The drop turned out to be a mere nothing, and, taking the candle, I
+scrambled on, down the sloping floor of the fissure, towards the heart
+of the mountain, expecting every moment that my further passage would be
+stopped by solid rock. But, after reaching a part so narrow that I was
+obliged to mount by both sides at once in order to get past it, I found
+a commodious gallery, opening out into a long and narrow and very lofty
+cavern, still only a fissure, the floor of which continued the regular
+and rapid slope down which I had so far come. A short way farther down,
+an opening appeared to the left; and I turned off the main passage into
+a horizontal gallery or chamber, with a floor of ice resting on rock and
+stones. This chamber seemed to be 3 or 4 yards wide at the entrance,
+narrowing regularly to 4 1/2 feet. It was 40 feet long, and at the
+farther end, which would not have been visible from the entrance, on
+account of a slight bend in the ice-gallery, even if there had been any
+light, it was closed by an ice-cascade 7 yards high and 4 1/2 feet broad
+at the bottom. The ice of much of this cascade was so clear, that I saw
+the rock upon which it rested, or in some parts did not rest, quite
+plainly, and the large air-cavities in the structure were beautifully
+shown by the richly-coloured rock behind. None of the current which we
+had observed above, and which had nearly baffled my protecting care of
+the candle during the descent, came from this gallery; but I find it
+written in my notes that the gallery was _very_ cold. Thaw was going on,
+rather rapidly; and the water stole out by the entrance, and ran down
+the main descent, over ice and among rocks, into the farther darkness.
+
+When I came out again from this gallery, I mounted the slope towards my
+companions, and tried to tempt them down. The maire felt himself to be
+too valuable to his country to be lightly risked, and declined to come;
+but Rosset took a bold heart, and dropped, after requiring from me a
+solemn promise that I would give him a back for his return up the rock.
+We visited the gallery I had already explored, and, as we stood admiring
+the cascade of ice, a skilful drop of water came from somewhere, and
+extinguished our only candle. My matches were with the maire; and I was
+equally sure that he would not bring them down to us, and that we could
+not go up to fetch them without a light. Rosset, however, very
+fortunately, had a box in his pocket for smoking purposes; and we cut
+off the wet wick, and cut down the composition to form another, and so
+contrived to light the candle again. While we were thus engaged, I
+chanced to look up for a moment, and saw far above our heads a small
+opening in the roof, through which a few rays of light entered from the
+outer world. It was so very far above us, that the uncertain rays were
+lost long before they got down to our level, being absorbed in the
+universal darkness, and being in fact rather suggested than visible even
+at their strongest. Those who have been at Lauterbrunnen in a very dry
+season, will understand how these rays presented the appearance of a
+ghostly Staubbach of unreal light. We must have been at an immense depth
+below the surface in which the opening lay; and if there had been a long
+day before us, it would have been curious to search for the fissure
+above. Sir Thomas Browne says, in the _Religio Medici,_ 'Conceive light
+invisible, and that is a spirit.' We very nearly saw a spirit here.
+
+The descent from the mouth of this chamber to the deeper recesses of the
+main fissure was very rough, but was speedily accomplished, and we
+reached a point where solid rock stopped us in face; while, to the
+right, a chamber with a threshold of ice was visible, and, to the left,
+a dark opening, down which the descent appeared to continue. From this
+opening all the strong cold current came. We took the ice-chamber first.
+
+The entrance had evidently been closed till very lately by a large
+column of ice, and we passed over the débris, between rock portals and
+on a floor of solid grey ice, into a triangular cave of any height the
+imagination might choose to fix. The entire floor of the cave was of
+ice, giving the impression of infinite thickness and firmness. A little
+water stood on it, near the threshold, so limpid that we could not see
+where it commenced. The base of this triangular floor we found to be 17
+feet, and its altitude 30 feet; and though these dimensions may seem
+comparatively small, the whole effect of the thick mass of ice on which
+we stood, with the cascades of ice in the corners, and the ice-figures
+on the walls, and the three sides of the cave passing up into sheer
+darkness, was exceedingly striking, situated, as it all was, so deep
+down in the bowels of the earth. The original entrance to the fissure,
+at the top of the _cheminée_, was, as has been said, at the base of
+lofty rocks, and we had descended very considerably from the entrance;
+so that, even without the strange light thrown upon the matter by the
+small hole overhead, through which we had seen the day struggling to
+force its way into the cavern, we should have been sure that we were now
+at an immense distance below the surface. One corner of the cave was
+occupied by a broad and solid-looking cascade, while another corner
+showed the opening of a very narrow fissure, curved like one of the
+shell-shaped crevasses of a glacier. Into this fissure the ice-floor
+streamed; and Rosset held my coat-tails while I made a few steps down
+the stream, when the fall became too rapid for further voluntary
+progress. I let down a stone for 18 feet, when it stuck fast, and would
+move neither one way nor the other. The upper wall of this fissure was
+clothed with moss-like ice, and ice of the prismatic structure,--with
+here and there large scythe-blades, as it were, attached by the sharp
+edge to the rock, and lying vertically with the heel outwards. One of
+these was 11 inches deep, from the heel to the rock, and only one-eighth
+of an inch thick at the thickest part.
+
+The angle occupied by the cascade or column was the most striking. The
+base of the column was large, and apparently solid, like a smooth
+unbroken waterfall suddenly frozen. It fitted into the angle of the
+cave, and completely filled up the space between the contiguous walls. I
+commenced to chop with my axe, and before long found that this ice was
+hollow, though very thick; and when a sufficient hole was made for me to
+get through, I saw that what had looked like a column was in truth only
+a curtain of ice hung across the angle of the cave. Within the curtain
+the ice-floor still went on, streaming down at last into a fissure
+something like that in the other corner. The curtain was so low, that I
+was obliged to sit on the ice inside to explore; and after a foot or two
+of progress, the slope towards the fissure became sufficiently great
+to require steps to be cut. The stream of ice turned round a bend in the
+fissure, very near the curtain, and was lost to view; but Rosset stood
+by the hole through which I had passed--on the safer side of it--and
+despatched blocks of ice, which glided past me round the corner, and
+went whizzing on for a long time, eventually landing upon stones, and
+sometimes, we fancied, in water. It is very awkward work, sitting on a
+gentle slope of the smoothest possible ice, with a candle in one hand,
+and an axe in the other, cutting each step in front; especially when
+there is nothing whatever to hold by, and the slope is sufficient to
+make it morally certain that in case of a slip all must go together. Of
+course, a rope would have made all safe. When I groaned over the maire's
+obstinacy, Rosset asked what could possibly be the use of a rope, if I
+were to slip; and, to my surprise, I found that he had no idea what I
+wanted a rope for. When he learned that, had there been one, he would
+have played a large part in the adventure, and that he might have had me
+dangling over an ice-fall out of sight round the corner, he added his
+groans to mine, and would evidently have enjoyed it all very much. At
+the same time, he was prudent, and, as each block of ice made its final
+plunge, he told me that was what would happen to me if I went any
+farther: and, really, the pictures he drew of deep lakes of icy water
+and jagged points of rock, between which I must make my choice down
+there, were so unpleasant, that at last I desisted, and pushed myself up
+backwards, still in a sitting posture, calling Rosset and the maire the
+worst names I could feel justified in using. On the way, I found one of
+the large brown flies which we had seen in the Glacière of La
+Genollière, and in the Lower Glacière of the Pré de S. Livres.
+
+Rosset now told me he was so cold he could stand it no longer; but,
+after a little pressure, and a declaration on my part that he should not
+have a candle for going up again, he consented to remain with me while I
+explored the remaining chamber, the lowest of all. This chamber may be
+called a continuation of the main passage. It is of about the same width
+as the highest of the three chambers, and the floor descends rapidly,
+the cold current of air becoming very strong and biting as we penetrated
+into the darkness. As the Genevese _savans_ seemed to believe in 'cold
+currents' as the cause of underground ice, I was naturally anxious to
+see as much as possible of the state of this gallery, from which every
+particle of the current seemed to come. We very soon reached a narrow
+dark lake, and, exclaiming that here was ice again, I stepped, not on
+to, but into it, and found that it was water. When our solitary candle
+was brought to bear upon it, we saw that it was so clear as not in any
+way to impede our view, producing rather the effect of slightly-clouded
+spectacles upon the stones at the bottom. This lake filled up the whole
+breadth of the gallery, here perhaps 4 or 5 feet, and rapidly passed to
+the depth of a yard; but for a little distance there were unstable
+stones at one edge, and steps in the rock-wall, by which I could pass
+on still into the darkness, supported by an alpenstock planted in the
+water. The current of cold air blew along the surface of the water from
+the farther extremity of the gallery, wherever that might be. As far as
+our eyes could reach, we saw nothing but the black channel of water,
+with its precipitous sides passing up beyond our sight. It might have
+been possible to progress in a spread-eagle fashion, with one hand and
+one foot on each side; but a fall would have been so bitterly
+unpleasant, that I made a show of condescension in acceding to Rosset's
+request that I would not attempt such a thing. In the course of my
+return to the rocks where he stood, I involuntarily fathomed the
+depth of the lake, luckily in a shallower part, and was so much struck
+by the coldness of the water, that I left Rosset with the candle, and
+struggled up without a light to the place where we had left the maire,
+or rather to the bottom of the drop from the entrance-cave, to get the
+thermometer. The maire was sunning himself on the rock, out of reach of
+the cold current; but he came in, and let down the case, and I quickly
+rejoined the schoolmaster. At first, it would have been impossible to
+move about without a light; but our eyes had now become to some extent
+accustomed to the darkness, and I had learned the difficulties of the
+way.
+
+When the thermometers were suspended in the water, Rosset asked how long
+they must stay there. I rashly answered, a quarter of an hour; on which
+he demanded indignantly whether I supposed he meant to stay in that cold
+for a quarter of an hour. He had now the candle in his own possession,
+and I was propped on a stone and an alpenstock in the lake, so he turned
+to go, vowing that he would leave me alone in the dark if I did not come
+out at once. There was no help for it, as the thermometer would have
+been of no use without a candle, and a step in the dark is not pleasant
+when all around is water, so I slowly drew up the thermometer and read
+33° F. In making final arrangements for departure, I let it lie in the
+water for a few seconds longer, and it fell to 32½°; but Rosset would
+not stay a moment longer, and I was obliged to be content with that
+result. He made himself very easy about the matter, and said we must
+call it zero; and in the evening I heard him telling the maire that the
+greatest of the wonders he had missed, by his patriotic care for his
+neck, was a lake of water which did not freeze, though its temperature
+was zero (centigrade).
+
+Among the stones at the bottom of this water, I saw here and there
+patches of a furry sort of ice. I have often watched the freezing of a
+rapid Scotch stream, where, in the swifter parts, the ice forms first at
+the bottom and gradually creeps up the larger stones till it appears on
+the surface, and becomes a nucleus, round which pieces of floating ice
+collect; and the substance in the glacière-lake had exactly the same
+appearance as the Scotch ground-ice. But it could not be the same thing
+in reality, for, as far as I understand the phenomenon of ground-ice,
+some disturbed motion of the water is necessary, to drive down below the
+surface the cold particles of water, which become ice the moment they
+strike upon any solid substance shaped like fractured stone;[75] the
+specific gravity of freezing water being so much less than that of water
+at a somewhat higher temperature, that without some disturbing cause it
+would not sink to the bottom.[76] So that it seems probable that the ice
+at the bottom of the lake was the remains of a solid mass, of which the
+greater part had been converted into water by some warm influence or
+other. We noticed that a little water trickled down among the stones
+which formed the slope of descent into the lowest gallery, so that
+perhaps the lake was a collection of water from all parts of the various
+ramifications of the fissure. Whence came the icy wind, it is impossible
+to say, without further exploration. It was satisfactory to me to find
+that the 'cold current' of the Genevese _savans_ was thus associated
+with water, and not with ice, in the only cave in which I had detected
+its presence to any appreciable extent, the currents of the Glacière of
+Monthézy being of a totally different description.
+
+When we reached the final rock, in ascending, I offered Rosset the
+promised back, but he got up well enough without it. Before leaving the
+entrance-cave, we inspected the thermometer which we had left to test
+the temperature of the current of air, and, to my surprise, found it
+standing at 48°. We saw, however, that it had been carelessly propped on
+a piece of rock which sheltered it from the influence of the current, so
+I exposed it during the time occupied in arranging the bag of tapes,
+&c., and it fell to 36°: whether it would have fallen lower, the
+impatience of Rosset has left me unable to say. If I can ever make an
+opportunity for visiting the Mont Parmelan again, I shall hope to take a
+cord, in order to investigate the mysterious corner of the triangular
+chamber; and I shall certainly make myself independent of shivering
+Frenchmen while I measure the temperature of the lake and the current of
+air. We met a man outside who said that he was employed by the owner, M.
+de Chosal of Annecy, to cut the ice; he had been down three times to the
+lowest gallery in different years, in the end of July, and had always
+found the same collection of water there. The glacière, he told us, was
+discovered about thirty years ago.
+
+The maire had basked in the sun all the time we were down below, and
+he expressed himself as much pleased that we had found so much to
+interest us, in spite of the miscarriage of our efforts to reach the
+second glacière. We set off down the steep grass at a scrambling
+sliding run, against which I was speedily obliged to protest,
+explaining that a certain ugly inflammation above the left knee was
+becoming worse every other step, and as the leg must last three days
+longer, it would be as well to humour it. They saw the force of this
+reasoning, and we descended with much gravity till we came in sight of
+the _Mairie_, still half an hour off, when Rosset cried out that he
+smelled supper, and rushed off at an infectious pace down the
+remainder of the mountain-side.
+
+We reached the _Mairie_ at six o'clock, and sat down at once 'to eat
+something.' The first course was bread and kirsch; and when that was
+finished, six boiled eggs appeared, and a quart _carafe_ of white wine.
+These having vanished, their place was taken by a dish of sodden
+cabbage, and another quart of wine; but, to save the credit of the maire
+and the schoolmaster, I will not say how often the former functionary
+descended to the cellar with a quart pitcher, with increasing
+impetuosity. Next came a dish of onions, with a pretence of
+_mange-tout,_ broiled brown after boiling, and served in a compound fat;
+and then haricots with a like condiment, and with a flavour reminiscent
+of the previous course. There was some talk of a _poulet_; but the bird
+still lived, and the talk came to nothing. The dinner ended with the
+haricots, and we then relapsed into dessert, namely, bread and kirsch.
+The mayoress came in with the dessert, and sat on the end of the bench,
+below the hats and the bread-tin, eating the remaining onions off the
+dish with the spoon of nature.
+
+During one of the maire's frequent visits to the cellar, I propounded
+a question to the schoolmaster which had puzzled me for some time: Was
+I to pay the maire? M. Rosset said that it was certainly not
+_necessary_, but I had better propose it, and I should then see how M.
+Métral took it. This I accordingly did, when the adieux in the house
+had been said, and my host was showing me the way to Thorens, where I
+was to sleep, he, also, declared that it was not necessary--the
+pleasure he had experienced in accompanying me had already fully
+recompensed him: still, if I wished to reimburse him for that which I
+had actually cost, he was a man reasonable, and in all cases content.
+I calculated that the dinner and wine which had fallen to my share
+would be dear at a franc, and the day's wage of a substitute to do the
+maire's neglected work could not come to much, so I boldly and
+unblushingly gave that great man four francs, and he said regretfully
+that it was more than enough. To his son and heir--the identical boy
+who had brought the ring of bread up the mountain to the châlet where
+we lunched. I gave something under two-pence, for guiding me across
+two doubtful fields into a beaten track, and he expressed himself as
+even more content than the maire. They both told me that it was
+impossible to miss the way; but I imagine that I achieved that
+impossibility, as I had to walk through two streams in the deepening
+twilight, and the prevailing fear of water in that region is very
+considerable.
+
+The _auberge_ at Thorens to which the maire had recommended me, as being
+the best, and kept by a personal friend of his, bore the sign _à la
+Parfaite Union_. The entry was by the kitchen, and through the steam and
+odour of onions, illuminated by one doubtful oil-lamp, I saw the
+guest-room filled with people in Sunday dress, while two fiddles played
+each its own tune in its own time. Nothing but the potent name of M. the
+Maire of Aviernoz gained me even a hearing; and, for a bed, I was
+obliged to stretch my intimacy with that exalted personage to the very
+furthest bounds of truth. Chappaz Nicolai, whose name the maire had
+written in my note-book, that there might be no mistake, appeared to be
+of that peculiar mental calibre which warrants Yorkshire peasants in
+describing a man as 'half-rocked,' or 'not plumb.' His wife, on the
+other hand, was one of those neat, gentle, sensible women, of whom one
+wonders how they ever came to marry such thick-lipped and blear-eyed
+men. Between them they informed me that if I did not object to share a
+room, I could be taken in; otherwise--maire or no maire--not. I asked
+whether they meant half a bed; but they said no, that would not be
+necessary at present; and I accepted the offered moiety of accommodation,
+as it was now seventeen hours since I had started in the morning, and I
+was not inclined to turn out in the dark to look for a whole room
+elsewhere.
+
+The stairs were a sort of cross between a ladder and nothing, and when
+we reached the proposed room a large mastiff was in possession, who
+would not let us enter till the master was summoned to expel him. The
+furniture consisted of a table and five chairs, with no bed or beds. On
+the chairs were various articles of clothing, blouses and garments more
+profound, belonging probably to members of the party below; and on the
+table, a bottle of water and a soup-plate, the pitcher and basin of the
+house. It was a mere slip of a room, with two diamond-shaped holes in
+one wall, whose purpose I discovered when my guide opened a papered
+door, in which were the holes, and displayed two beds foot to foot in an
+alcove. One of these, she was sure, would be too short for me, but she
+feared I must be satisfied with it, as the other was much broader and
+would therefore hold the two messieurs. How the _two_? I asked, and was
+told that two _pensionnaires_ lived in this room; but they were old
+friends, and for one night would sleep in the same bed to oblige
+monsieur. The ideas of length and breadth in connection with the beds
+were entirely driven from my head by the fact of their dirtiness; and I
+determined that if the two _pensionnaires_ occupied the one, the other
+should be unoccupied.
+
+After arranging things a little, I struggled down the steps again, and
+ordered coffee and bread in a little room, which commanded the assembly
+with the fiddles in the larger _salle_. The head waitress, busy as she
+was, found time to come now and then to an open window near where I sat,
+and talked to a male friend sitting outside in the dark: indeed, she
+did more than talk, and people had to rattle their glasses very hard
+before they could make her hear. From her I learned that this was a
+marriage party which had arrived; and when I asked why they did not
+dance, as the fiddles were engaged at that moment with unwonted
+unanimity upon dance-music, she gave me to understand that these were
+not people of Thorens, but only a party from another village, making the
+evening promenade after the wedding: from which it would seem that it is
+not the etiquette for people to dance under such circumstances, except
+in the home village. They sat round a table, men and women alternately,
+with their hats on, and with glasses before them. The bride and
+bridegroom were accommodated with a bench to themselves at the head of
+the table, he likewise with his hat on, and with a pipe in his mouth,
+which, seeing that he was a demonstrative bridegroom, one might have
+supposed to be an inconvenience. He managed very well, however, and
+every one seemed contented: indeed, the pipe must, I think, be held to
+be no difficulty; for the men all smoked, and yet, to judge from
+appearances, there was a prospect of as many marriages as there were
+couples in the room. The unruffled gravity, however, and the apparent
+want of zest, both in giving and receiving, which characterised the
+proceedings specially referred to, led me to suppose that it might be
+only a part of the etiquette, and so meant nothing serious.
+
+Between ten and eleven the fiddles and the party vanished, and I went
+up-stairs more determined than ever not to touch a bed, after my
+experience of the room below. Three chairs were speedily arranged
+between the table and wall, and on these I lay and tried to sleep. But
+the very chairs were populous, as I had found below, and sleep was
+impossible. Moreover, soon after eleven, a soldier came into the room,
+to arrange about his breakfast with one of the maidens in the
+house. He had heard me order fresh butter for six o'clock, and he was
+anxious to know, whether, by breakfasting at five o'clock, he could
+get my butter. The chairs which formed my bed were under the lee of
+the table, so that the figure recumbent on them was invisible, and the
+gallant soldier, under the impression that there was no one in the
+room, enforced his arguments by other than conventional means. But
+military lips, when applied personally, proved to be a rhetoric as
+unsuccessful as military words. The maid was platonic, and something
+more than platonic; and the hero got so much the worst of it, that he
+gave up the battle, and changed the subject to a conscript in his
+charge, who had locked himself in his bed-room and would not answer.
+How was he to know whether he had the conscript safe? All this lasted
+some time; and when they were gone, one of the _pensionnaires_ came
+in. With him I had to fight the battle of the window, which I had
+opened to its farthest extent. After he had got over the first
+surprise and shock of finding me on the chairs instead of in the bed,
+for whose comfort he vouched enthusiastically, he became confident
+that it was merely out of complaisance to him and his comrade that I
+had opened the window, and assured me that they really did not care
+for fresh air, even if they could feel the difference in the alcove,
+which he declared they could not. As soon as that was arranged to my
+satisfaction, the other _pensionnaire_ came in, and with him the
+battle was fought with only half success, for he peremptorily closed
+one side of the window. He was a particularly noisy _pensionnaire_,
+and shied his boots into every corner of the room before they were
+posed to his satisfaction. As far as I could tell, the removal of the
+boots was the only washing and undressing either of them did; and then
+they arranged their candles in the alcove, lighted cigars, and got
+into bed. There the wretches sat up on end, smoking and talking
+vehemently, till sheer exhaustion came to my aid, and I fell asleep;
+but the edges of the rush-bottomed chairs speedily became so sharp
+that a recumbent posture ceased to be possible, and I sat dozing on
+one chair. A little before four o'clock, the noisier man got up to
+look for his boots; and as the friends continued their discussion, I
+also turned out and made for the nearest stream, where I bathed in a
+rapid at half-past four, to wash away, if possible, the horrors of the
+night.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 73: The true _Cimetière des Bourguignons_ is the enclosure
+where René, the victor of Nancy, buried the Burgundians who fell on the
+sad Sunday when Charles the Bold went down before the deaf châtelain
+Claude de Bagemont.]
+
+[Footnote 74: Neither of my companions, I fear, would have acted as
+Sejanus did, when another emperor was in danger of his life in the cave
+on the Gulf of Amyclæ. (Tacit. Ann. iv. 59.)]
+
+[Footnote 75: Water reduced to a temperature below 32° without
+freezing, begins to freeze as soon as a crystal is dropped into it, the
+ice forming first on the faces of the crystal.]
+
+[Footnote 76: Water attains its maximum of specific gravity at 40°.
+Below 40° it becomes lighter.]
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+THE GLACIÈRES OF THE BREZON, AND THE VALLEY OF REPOSOIR.
+
+
+The bill _à la Parfaite Union_ was as small as the accommodation at that
+_auberge_, and it was an immense relief to get away from the scene of my
+sufferings. The path to Bonneville lies for the earlier part of the way
+through pleasant scenery; and when the highest ground is reached, there
+is a lovely view of the Lake of Geneva, which may be enjoyed under the
+cool shade of a high hedge of trees, in the intervals of browsing upon
+wild strawberries. But after passing the curious old town of La Roche,
+two hours' walk from Thorens, the heat and dust of the dreary high road
+became insupportable; and no pedestrian who undertakes that march with
+a heavy knapsack, under a blazing noonday sun, will arrive at Bonneville
+without infinite thankfulness that he has got through it. The road is of
+the same character as that between Bonneville and Geneva, and that will
+sufficiently express its unpleasantness in baking times of drought.
+
+The Glacière of the Brezon lies at no great distance from
+Bonneville--perhaps not more than four or five miles to the SE.--but its
+elevation is more than 4,000 feet, and the approach is steep. The
+Glacière of the Valley of Reposoir, a valley which falls into the main
+road between Bonneville and Chamouni at the village of Scionzier, is
+considerably higher, and a good deal of climbing is necessary in
+visiting it. When I arrived at Bonneville, the whole mass of mountains
+in which these caves lie was enveloped in thick dark clouds, and the
+faint roar of thunder reached our ears now and then, so that it seemed
+useless to attempt to penetrate into the high valleys. Moreover, I was
+due for an attempt upon Mont Blanc in the beginning of the next week,
+and an incipient bilious fever, with a painful lameness of one leg,
+warned me that my powers were coming to an end, and that another day
+such as the last had been would put a total stop upon the proposed
+ascent; and so I determined to take the fever and the leg to Geneva, and
+submit them to medical skill. This determination was strengthened by the
+exhortations of a Belgian, who called himself a _grand amateurdes
+montagnes_, on the strength of an ascent of the Môle and the Voiron, and
+in this character administered Alpine advice of that delightful
+description which one meets with in the coffee-rooms at Chamouni. This
+Belgian was the only other guest of the Hôtel des Balances; and his
+amiability was proof even against the inroads of some nameless species
+of _vin mousseux_, recommended to me by the waiter, which supplied
+_mal-à-propos_ wine-sauce to the various dishes from which the Belgian
+was making his dinner, and did not leave his face and waistcoat free
+from stain. He had but one remark to make, however wild might be the
+assertions advanced from the English side of the table, '_Vous avez
+raison, monsieur, vous avez parfait-e-ment raison_!' It is not quite
+satisfactory to hold the same sentiments, in every small particular,
+with a man who clips his hair down to a quarter of an inch, and eats
+haricots with his fingers; but it was impossible to find any subject on
+which he could be roused to dissentience. This phenomenon was explained
+afterwards, when he informed me that he was a flannel-merchant
+travelling with samples, and pointed out what was only too true, namely,
+that the English monsieur's coat was no longer fit to be called a coat.
+
+Professor Pictet read a paper on these glacières before the _Société
+Helvétique des Sciences Naturelles_ at Berne, in 1822, which is to be
+found in the _Bibl. Universelle de Genève._[77] M. Pictet left Geneva in
+the middle of July to visit the caves, but found himself so much knocked
+up by the first day's work, that he sent on his grandson to the Glacière
+of the Brezon, and gave up the attempt himself. The young man found it
+to be of small dimensions, 30 feet by 25, with a height of 10 or 12
+feet. The ice on the floor was believed by the guide to be formed in
+summer only, and was placed too irregularly to admit of measurement.
+Calcareous blocks almost choked the entrance, and an orifice in the
+shape of a funnel admitted the snow freely from above, and was partly
+filled with snow in July. Cold currents of air proceeded from the rocks
+in the neighbourhood of the glacière, giving in one instance a
+temperature of 38°·75, the temperature in the shade being 51°. Within
+the cave, the temperature was 41°.
+
+M. Morin visited this glacière in August 1828. He describes it as a
+sheltered hole, in which the snow collects and is preserved.
+
+M. Thury examined it in August 1859, and gives the same account. He,
+too, found the current of air which the younger Pictet discovered, but
+in the cave itself the air was perfectly still.
+
+It was clearly, then, no great loss to miss the Glacière of the Brezon;
+but that on the Mont Vergy, in the Valley of Reposoir, appears to be
+much more interesting. Professor Pictet found himself sufficiently
+strong after a day's rest to pass on to Scionzier, and up the Valley of
+Reposoir, accompanied by the well-known guide Timothée, whose botanical
+knowledge of the district is said to be perfect. He had conducted MM.
+Necker and Colladon to the glacière in 1807, and believed that no
+_savant_ had since seen it. The rocks are all calcareous, with large
+blocks of erratic granite. The glacière lies about 40 minutes from the
+Châlet of Montarquis, whence its local name of _La grand' Cave de
+Montarquis_. Before reaching it, a spacious grotto presents itself, once
+the abode of coiners: this grotto is cold, but affords no ice, and near
+it M. Morin found a narrow fissure, leading into a circular vaulted
+chamber 15 feet in diameter, in which stood a solitary stalagmite of ice
+15 feet high.
+
+The entrance to the glacière itself is elliptical in shape, 43 feet
+broad at the base, and the cave increases in size as it extends farther
+into the rock, the floor descending gently till a horizontal esplanade
+of ice is reached. This esplanade was 66 feet by 30 at the time of
+Pictet's visit, deeper in the middle than at the sides, and mounting the
+rock at the farther side of the cave; there was a small stalagmite at
+one side, but that would seem to have been the only ornamentation
+displayed. The temperature was 34°·7, a foot above the ice, and 58° in
+the external air. Timothée had been in the glacière in the previous
+April, and had found no ice,--nothing but a pool of water of
+considerable depth. M. Thury, in August 1859, found two sheets of ice
+in the lowest part of the cave: one, nearly 50 feet long, was partially
+covered with water; the other, presenting an area of about 14 square
+yards, showed more water still. There were no stalactites and columns
+such as M. Morin had found in August 1828, nor even the low stalagmite
+which Pictet saw in 1822. The summers of 1828 and 1859 were
+exceptionally hot, and this fact has been held to account for the
+smaller quantity of ice seen in those years. M. Thury found the cold due
+to evaporation to be considerably less than 1° F.,[78] and he and M.
+Morin both fixed the general temperature of the cave at 36°.5; they
+also found a current of air entering by a fissure in the lowest part of
+the cave, but it did not disturb the whole of the interior, for in one
+part the air was in perfect equilibrium. M. Gampert,[79] in the summer
+of 1823, found a strong and very cold current of air descending by this
+fissure, along with water which ran from it over the ice; he believed
+that this was refrigerated by evaporation, in passing through the
+thickness of the moist rock.
+
+Two peasants visited this cave three times in the winter season, viz. on
+October 22, November 26, and on Christmas Day; and one of them, by name
+Chavan, drew up an account of their experiences, which was read by M.
+Colladon before the _Société de Physique et d'Histoire Nat. de Genève_
+in 1824.[80] The peasants found very little ice in columns at the time
+of the October visit, and there were signs of commencing thaw. The thaw
+was much more pronounced in November, when the ice had nearly
+disappeared even from the lowest parts of the cave, and they found the
+air within quite warm. On Christmas Day they had great difficulty in
+reaching the glacière, and narrowly escaped destruction by an avalanche,
+which for a time deterred them from prosecuting the adventure: they
+persisted, however, and were rewarded by finding only water where in
+summer all was ice, and a temperate warmth in the cave. They observed
+that the roof had fissures like chimneys.
+
+This account was so circumstantial, that the only thing left was to
+attempt an explanation of the phenomena reported, and such explanations
+have not been wanting. But M. Thury was not quite satisfied, and he
+determined to visit the cave in the winter of 1860-1. Accordingly,
+accompanied by M. André Gindroz, who had already joined him in his
+unsuccessful attempt to reach the Glacière of the Pré de S. Livres, he
+left Geneva on the 10th of January, and slept at the Chartreuse in the
+Valley of Reposoir. As the party passed through the village of Pralong
+du Reposoir, the peasants told them with one accord that they would find
+nothing but warmth and water in the cave; but when M. Thury asked had
+any of them seen it themselves, they were equally unanimous in saying
+no, explaining that it was not worth anyone's while to go in the winter,
+as there was no ice to be seen then,--a circular line of argument which
+did not commend itself to the strangers.
+
+At the very entrance of the grotto, they found beautiful stalactites of
+clear ice; and here they paused, till such time as they should be cool
+enough to enter, for the thermometer stood at 70° in the sun, and their
+climb had made them hot. On penetrating to the farther recesses of the
+cave, where the true glacière lies, they found an abundance of
+stalactites, stalagmites, and columns of ice, with flooring and slopes
+of the same material: not a drop of water anywhere. The stalagmites were
+very numerous, but none of them more than three feet high; some of the
+stalactites, fifteen or so in number, were six or seven feet long, and
+there were many others of a smaller size. M. Thury was particularly
+struck by the milky appearance of much of the ice, one column in
+particular resembling porcelain more than any other substance. This is a
+not unusual character of the most beautiful part of the decorations of
+the more sheltered ice-caves, as for instance the lowest cave in the
+Upper Glacière of the Pré de S. Livres; the white appearance is not due
+to the presence of air, for the ice is transparent and homogeneous, and
+the naked eye is unable to detect bubbles or internal fissures.
+
+The temperatures at 1.25 P.M. and 2.12 P.M. respectively were as
+follows:--In the sun, between 3 and 4 feet above the snow, 72°.1 and
+70°·5; in the shade, outside the cave, 36°·7 and 35°·8; at the
+Observatory of Geneva, in the shade, 27°·3 and 28°·2, having risen from
+24°·5 since noon. In the cave, 1 foot above the surface of the
+ice-floor, the thermometer stood at 24°.8; and in a hole in the ice,
+some few inches below the surface, 24°·1. In the large fissure, which has
+been already mentioned as the source of the summer currents of air, the
+temperature at various points was from 29°·3 to 27°·5. The circumstances
+of these currents of air were now of course changed. Instead of a steady
+current passing from the fissure into the cave, and so out by the main
+entrance into the open air, strong enough to incline the flame of a
+candle 45°, M. Thury found a gentle current passing from the cave into
+the fissure, sufficient only to incline the flame 10°, and near the
+entrance 8°, while in the entrance itself no current was perceptible at
+4 P.M.
+
+M. Thury remarks that less current was to be expected in winter than in
+summer, because the upper ends of the fissures would be probably choked
+with snow, and their lower ends with ice. It is evident that the current
+which passes up into the fissure in winter, is favourable to the
+introduction of the colder air from without; while the opposite current
+in summer keeps up a supply of cold air in the cave, and so increases
+its powers of resisting the attempts of the heated external air to make
+a partial entrance. Both these currents, then, favour the glacial
+conditions of the cave, and to some extent counterbalance the
+disadvantages of its situation: viz., its aspect, towards the
+south-east; the large size of its opening to the air, and the absence of
+all shelter near the mouth, such as is so often provided by trees or
+rocks. The small depth of the cave, scarcely amounting to 18 feet below
+the level of the entrance, is also a great disadvantage.
+
+The people of Pralong asked, on the return of the party, what had been
+found in the _grand' cave_, and the answer reduced them to silence for a
+few moments. Their prejudices, however, were invincible, and they
+persisted in their belief that a true glacière ought to have no ice in
+it in the winter. M. Thury did not enquire from what source they drew
+their ideas of a true glacière.
+
+There is a book, in three volumes, on the 'Glacières of the Alps,' by M.
+Bourrit, dedicated to Buffon, in which is a description of the Valley of
+Reposoir; but no mention whatever is made of the _grand' cave_. Indeed,
+M. Bourrit merely meant by _glacière_, a glacial district, something
+more extensive than a _glacier_, and he had evidently no knowledge of
+the existence of caves containing ice.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 77: Première Série, t. xx. pp. 261, &c.]
+
+[Footnote 78: Less than 1/2° C., he says.]
+
+[Footnote 79: _Bibl. Univ. de Genève_, Première Série, t. xxv. pp. 224,
+&c.]
+
+[Footnote: 80: _Bibl. Univ_. l.c.]
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+LA BORNA DE LA GLACE, IN THE DUCHY OF AOSTA.
+
+
+The Chanoine Carrel, of Aosta, whose name is so well and so favourably
+known to Alpine men, sent a brief account of an ice-cave in his
+neighbourhood to the _Bibliothèque Universelle_ of Geneva[81] in the
+year 1841, and, as far as I know, there is no other account of it. My
+plan had been to pass from Chamouni by the Col du Géant to Courmayeur,
+and thence to Aosta for a visit to the canon and his glacière; but,
+unfortunately, the symptoms which had put an end to the expedition to
+the Brezon and the Valley of Reposoir came on with renewed vigour, as a
+consequence of Mont Blanc, and the projected fortnight with Peter Pernn
+collapsed into a hasty flight to Geneva. It was fortunate that medical
+assistance was not necessary in Chamouni itself; for one of the members
+of our large party there was mulcted in the sum of £16, with a hint that
+something beyond that would be acceptable, for an extremely moderate
+amount of attendance by the local French doctor.
+
+The glacière was thus of necessity given up. It is known among the
+people as _La Borna de la Glace_, and lies about 5,300 feet above the
+sea, on the northern slope of the hills which command the hamlet of
+Chabaudey, commune of La Salle, in the duchy of Aosta, to the north-east
+of Larsey-de-là, in a place covered with firs and larches, and called
+Plan-agex. The entrance has an east exposure, and is very small, being a
+triangle with a base of 2 feet and an altitude of 2-1/2 feet. After
+descending a yard or two, this becomes larger, and divides into two main
+branches, with three other fissures penetrating into the heart of the
+mountain, too narrow to admit of a passage. The roof is very irregular,
+and the stones on the floor are interspersed with ice, which appears
+also in the form of icicles upon the walls; and, in the eastern branch
+of the cave, there is a cylindrical pillar more than 3 feet long, with
+a diameter of rather more than a foot. The temperature at 4 P.M. on
+July 15, 1841, was as follows:--The external air, 59°; the cave, at the
+entrance, 37·2º; near the large cylinder, 35°·7; and in different parts
+of the western branch, from 33°·6 to 32°·9.
+
+M. Carrel was evidently not aware of the existence of similar caves
+elsewhere. He recommends, in his communication to the _Bibliothèque
+Universelle_, that some scientific man should investigate the phenomena,
+and explain the great cold, and the fact of the formation of ice, which
+common report ascribed to the time of the Dog-days. He doubts whether
+rapid evaporation can be the only cause, and suggests that possibly
+there may be something in the interior of the mountain to account for
+this departure from the laws generally recognised in geology.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 81: Nouvelle Série, t. xxxiv. p. 196.]
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+THE GLACIÈRE OF FONDEURLE, IN DAUPHINÉ.
+
+
+There cannot be any better place for recruiting strength than the lovely
+primitive valley of _Les Plans_, two hours up the course of the Avençon
+from hot and dusty Bex. Here I rejoined my sisters, intending to spend a
+month with them before returning to England; and the neighbouring
+glaciers afforded good opportunities for quietly investigating the
+structure of the ice which composes them, with a view to discovering, if
+possible, some trace of the prismatic formation so universal in the
+glacières. On one occasion, after carefully cutting steps and examining
+the faces of cleavage for an hour and a half, I detected a small patch
+of ice, under the overhanging rim of a crevasse, marked distinctly with
+the familiar network of lines on the surface; but I was unable to
+discover anything betokening a prismatic condition of the interior.
+This was the only case in which I saw the slightest approach to the
+phenomena presented in ice-caves.
+
+There remained one glacière on M. Thury's list, which I had so far not
+thought of visiting. It was described as lying three leagues to the
+north of Die in Dauphiné, department of the Drôme, at an altitude of
+more than 5,000 feet above the sea. M. Héricart de Thury discovered
+this cavern in 1805, and published an account of it in the _Annales
+des Mines_[82] to which M. Thury's list gave a reference. I have since
+found that this account has been translated into various scientific
+periodicals, among others the Philosophical Journal of Edinburgh.[83]
+It occurred to me that, by leaving Les Plans a few days earlier than I
+had intended, I could take advantage of the new line connecting
+Chambéry and Grenoble and Valence, and so visit this glacière without
+making the journey too long; and accordingly I bade farewell to Madame
+Chérix's comfortable room, leaving my sisters in their quarters in a
+neighbouring châlet, and started for Geneva.
+
+The line was advertised to open on the 15th of August; but on the 16th
+the officials declared that it was not within a month and a half of
+completion, so that I was compelled to go round by Lyons. I was easily
+reconciled to this by the opportunity thus afforded of a visit to the
+ancient city of Vienne, which well repays inspection. Its history is a
+perfect quarry of renowned names, Roman, Burgundian, and ecclesiastical.
+Tiberius Gracchus left his mark upon the city, by bridling the
+Rhône--_impatiens pontis_--with the earliest bridge in Gaul: and here
+tradition has it that the great Pompey loved magnificently one of his
+many loves; while the site of the Prætorium in which Pontius Pilate is
+said to have given judgment can still be pointed out. The true Mount
+Pilate lies between Vienne and Lyons, being one of the loftiest
+northern summits of the Cevennes, on the borders of the Lyonnaise.[84]
+The Romans recognised the fitness of the neighbourhood of Vienne for the
+cultivation of the grape, and the first vine in Gaul was planted on the
+Mont d'Or in the second century of the Christian era. In Burgundian
+times the city held a very prominent place, and became infamous from the
+frequent shedding of royal blood; so that early historians describe it
+as '_tousiours fatale à ceux qui vueillent la corone des
+Bourgougnons,'[85]_ and as '_fatale et de malencõtre aux tyrãs et
+mauvais princes.'[86]_ Ecclesiastically, its interest dates of course
+from a very early period, from the times of the martyrs of Gaul and the
+first Rogations. The Festival of _Les Merveilles_ long commemorated the
+restoration of the bodily forms of the Lyonnese martyrs, as their
+scattered dust floated past the home of Blandina and Ponticus; and the
+dedication of the cathedral to S. Maurice keeps alive the tradition that
+Paschasius, bishop of Vienne, was warned by an angel to watch on the
+banks of the Rhône, and so rescued the head and trunk of the
+soldier-martyr, which had been cast into the river at Agaunum (S.
+Maurice in Valais), and had floated down--probably on sounder
+hydrostatical principles than the 'Floating Martyr'--through the Lake of
+Geneva, and so to Vienne. There are still many very interesting Roman
+remains in the city, as the Temple of Augusta and Livia, the Arcade of
+the Forum, and the monument seen from the railway to the south of the
+town. The temple is being carefully restored, and the large collection
+of Roman curiosities which it contained is to be removed to the church
+of S. Peter, now in course of restoration, which will in itself be worth
+a visit to Vienne when the restoration is completed.[87] All the
+buildings connected with the Great Council in 1311 have disappeared; and
+the only relic of the council seems to be the Chalice, _or_, surmounted
+by the Sacred Host, _argent_, in the city arms, in remembrance of the
+institution of the Fête of the _S. Corps_. If the Emperor would but
+have the town and its inhabitants deodorised, few places would be better
+worth visiting than Vienne.
+
+The poste leaves Valence--the home of the White Hermitage--for Die at
+2.30 P.M., and professes to reach its destination in six hours; but sad
+experience showed that it could be unfaithful to the extent of an hour
+and a half. So long as the daylight lasted, there was no dearth of
+objects of interest; but when darkness came on, the monotonous roll of
+the heavy diligence became aggravating in the extreme. The village of
+Beaumont, once the residence of an important branch of the great
+Beaumont family,[88] retains still its square tower and old gateway; and
+the remains of a château near Montmeyran, the end of the first stage,
+mark the scene of the victory of Marius over the Ambrons and Teutons,
+local antiquaries believing that the name of Montmeyran is from _Mons
+Jovis Mariani_.[89] The road lies through the bright cool green of wide
+plantations of the silkworm mulberry,[90] with its trim stem and rounded
+head; and, in the more open parts of the valley, walnut trees of size
+and shape fit for an ornamental park in England relieve the monotony.
+The nearer hills are covered to the top with vines, and the higher and
+more distant ranges have a naked and thoroughly burned appearance,
+which suggests the idea of volcanoes to a traveller ignorant of volcanic
+facts. The villages which lie at the foot of these rocky hills are built
+of stones taken from the beds of the streams, and are so completely of
+one colour with the background of rock, that in many instances it is
+difficult to determine whether a distant mass of grey is a village or
+not. Ruined castles and towers abound; and these, and still more the
+walls which surround many of the villages, point unmistakeably to times
+of great disturbance. The valley of the Drôme, up which the road after a
+time turns, was an important locality in the religious wars; and the
+town and fort of Crest especially, as its name might suggest, was a
+famous stronghold, and resisted all the efforts of the Reformed party.
+In yet earlier times, Simon de Montfort had frequently tried to take it,
+without success; and four years after S. Bartholomew, Lesdiguières met
+with a like repulse.[91] The same story of sieges and battles might be
+told of almost every village and defile of the valley. Thus, Saillans,
+the third stage, was taken by the Protestant leader Mirabel, and the
+Catholic Gordes, in 1574, and its fortifications were razed by the Duc
+de Mayenne in 1581. Pontaix, again, a remarkable place, with a vaulted
+street and fortified houses overhanging the river, which here fills up
+the whole valley and leaves room only for the road and the narrow
+village-town, was the scene of an obstinate and murderous fight between
+the Marquis de Gordes on one side, and Lesdiguières and Dupuy-Montbrun
+on the other, when the latter was captured, and shortly after beheaded
+at Grenoble.
+
+The town of Die, _Dea Vocontiorum_, lies in a broad part of the valley.
+It claims to be not _Dea Vocontiorum_ only, but also _Augusta
+Vocontiorum_, thereby apparently defrauding the village of Aouste, near
+Crest, of the earliest form of its name. Die is possessed of old walls,
+and has four gates with towers. The great goddess from whose worship it
+derives its name was Cybele, notwithstanding the vehement assertions of
+the official in the Poste-bureau in favour of Ceres; and three different
+Tauroboles have been discovered here, one of which is in excellent
+repair, and shows a Roman inscription surmounted by three bulls' heads.
+The ceremony of the Taurobolium was new to me, and appears to have been
+conducted as follows:--A small cave was hollowed out, with a thin roof
+formed by the outer surface of the earth; and immediately above this a
+bull was sacrificed, so that the blood ran through the earth and dropped
+on to a priest who was placed in full robes in the cave. The priest and
+the blood-stained garments were thenceforth specially sacred, the
+garments retaining their sanctity for twenty years. The inscription on
+the Tauroboles which have been found in and near Die record the names
+of the priest, the dendrophore, the person who provided the victim, and
+the emperor for whose safety the sacrifice was offered.
+
+The people of Die have been quarrelsome from the earliest times. A
+century before the estates of the Dauphins of the Viennois were known as
+Dauphiné,[92] the chronic contests between the Bishops and the Counts of
+Die had come to such a crisis, that the Dauphin Guiges André intervened,
+and produced a certain amount of peace; but, twenty years after, the
+people killed Bishop Humbert before the gate which thence received its
+name of _Porte Rouge_. When the Counts of Valentinois had succeeded to
+the fiefs of the Counts of Die, Gregory X. became so weary of the
+constant wars, that he suppressed the bishopric, and united it to
+Valence in 1275; but the canons, who were not suppressed, raised a
+mercenary army and carried on the struggle. Eventually, the canons and
+the people made common cause, and joined the Pope during the Seventy
+Years; but when he left Avignon they came to terms with Charles VI. of
+France, and so the Diois was united to Dauphiné in 1404. Louis XIV.
+restored the separate bishopric, but ruined the town by the revocation
+of the Edict of Nantes.
+
+The large number of mosaics and inscriptions found in Die prove
+conclusively that in Roman times it was a favourite place of residence;
+and, so far as situation goes, it is not difficult to understand how
+this should have been the case. But in the condition in which the town
+found itself in the pitiless heat of August 1864, the only question for
+an English visitor was whether he could live through the time it was
+absolutely necessary to spend there. The poste arrived, as has been
+said, an hour and a half after its time; and the sole occupant of the
+coupé, who had lived on fruit and gooseberry syrup, and three penny
+worth of sweet cake at Crest, since a seven-o'clock breakfast, had wiled
+away the last hour by inventing choice bills of fare for the meditated
+supper. When the lumbering vehicle stopped in the main street of Die,
+which is here something under seven yards wide, an elderly woman stepped
+out from the dim crowd, with an uncovered tallow candle in her hand, and
+asked if there was anyone for the hotel. The unwonted 'yes' seemed to
+create some surprise; but she led the way promptly to her hotel,
+diplomatically meeting the rapid volley of questions respecting supper
+with an unpromising silence, and the first sight of the house itself
+dispelled for ever all hope. An entrance was effected by the kitchen;
+and not only was there no fire, but there was no light of any
+description; and the one dip we brought on to the scene betrayed such
+squalor on all sides, that the suggestion of a _salle-à-manger_ in
+connection with such a kitchen became at once an impudent mockery. When
+this farther room was reached, it proved to be even worse than the
+kitchen. It was shut up for the night--had been shut up apparently for a
+week--and was in the possession of the cats of the town, and the flies
+of Egypt. Two monstrous hounds entered with us; and the cats fled
+hastily by a window which was slightly open at the top, spitting and
+howling with fear when they missed the first spring, and came within the
+cognisance of their mortal foes.
+
+The first thing to be done was to wash off some of the accumulated dust;
+but when I asked for a bedroom for that purpose, I was conducted to a
+copper in the kitchen, the water in which had been a permanency for some
+time past, and was told to wash there. As for supper, there was some
+cold mutton; but the landlady unfortunately opened the door of the
+cupboard as she said so, and displayed a state of things which decided
+the point against the mutton. There was nothing else in the house, and
+there was no fire for cooking anything; but when they discovered that I
+really would not wait till the next morning, they proposed to light a
+fire and warm some soup, which I declined to see in its present state.
+In the way of wine, I had been recommended to make a great point of the
+_clairette de Die_, an excellent species of _vin mousseux_; but the
+chief of the women rather recommended the ordinary wine of the country,
+as the monsieur might not like to give a strong price. 'Was it, then, so
+strong?' 'Yes, the price was undoubtedly strong.' 'How much, then?' 'A
+franc a bottle.' With an eye to the future bill, the monsieur pretended
+to ponder awhile, as if in doubt whether his resources could stand such
+a strain, and then, with a reckless air, decided upon the extravagance.
+The clairette proved to be quite worthy of the praise which had been
+bestowed upon it, being a very pleasant and harmless sparkling white
+wine.[93]
+
+The neighbours kept dropping into the kitchen, to see how the landlady
+got on with the stranger of uncouth speech; and four of the female part
+of her company brought in at various times to the _salle-à-manger_ some
+piece of table-furniture, in order to indulge in a closer view than the
+open door of the room afforded. One of them told me she had seen an
+Englishman once before, a few months back; but he only had one eye, and
+she seemed to think I was out of order in possessing two. At length the
+soup came, and the first attempt upon it proved it to be utterly
+impossible. The landlady was called in, and this fact was announced to
+her. 'What to do, then?--it was a good soup, a soup which the people of
+Die loved,--it was a soup the household eat morning and night.' All the
+same, it was not a soup the present Englishman could eat, and some other
+sort of food must be provided, for she declined to furnish soup without
+garlic and fat. She suggested an omelette; but a natural generalisation
+from all I had so far seen drew an untempting picture of the probable
+state of the frying-pan, and I declined to face the idea until I was
+convinced there was nothing else to be had. But, alas! notwithstanding
+the righteous indignation with which the landlady met my request that
+the omelette might not be all fat, the manipulation of the eggs
+eventuated in a dish even more impracticable than the soup, flooded with
+unmentionable grease, and so at last the cold mutton became a necessity.
+To show how hunger may work upon the feelings, I may say that, in spite
+of the marks of the feet of mice in the cold gravy which remained on the
+dish, I forced myself to cut off a wedge, and, after removing a
+thick layer of meat on the exposed sides, essayed to eat the heart of
+the wedge. The sheep and its progenitors had been fed on garlic from all
+time, and the mutton had been boiled in a decoction of that noxious
+herb; and this dish was in its turn rejected like the others. There was
+nothing for it but salad, and bread, and wine; but when the salad
+appeared, after a long time had been spent in the kitchen in saturating
+the withered greens with oil and vitriolic vinegar, there, perched on
+the top like one of those animals which sometimes spoil one's enjoyment
+of a strawberry-bed, was a huge onion, with numerous satellites peeping
+out from under the leaves. About this time, a short diversion was caused
+by the reappearance of one of the large hounds, whose mind was not at
+ease as to the completeness of the previous elimination of the cats from
+the _salle-à-manger;_ and the diabolical noise and scuffle which ensued
+upon his investigation of a dark corner, showed that his doubts had
+been well grounded. Then I discovered that there was no butter to be
+had, and no milk; and when coffee was mentioned, a pan was brought out
+for making that beverage, which a bullet-maker with any regard for
+appearances would have declined to use for melting his lead in. Finally,
+under the pressure of dire hunger, I returned to the mutton, and
+contrived to swallow a small piece, the taste of which did not leave me
+for four or five days.
+
+The interior of the house, where the bedrooms were, gave forth an odour
+which must be familiar to all who have burrowed in out-of-the-way places
+in France, approaching more nearly, perhaps, to the smell of damp cocks
+and hens than anything else; and the bedroom door was guarded by a huge
+mis-shapen dog, which evidently intended to pass the night there, if it
+could not get into the room itself. The street on to which the window
+looked was still populous with the inhabitants of Die; and a man with
+whom I had already had a conversation respecting the glacière, who
+appeared to perform some of the functions of landlord of the hotel, was
+audibly engaged in hiring a man to accompany me on the following day.
+The man whom he was attempting to persuade was evidently of an
+independent turn of mind, and said that as it would be an affair of
+fifteen or sixteen hours at least, he would not go through so much
+unless his proposed comrade were a true _bonhomme_; a difficulty which
+the landlord set at rest by asseverations so ready and so
+circumstantial, that I determined to take everything he might tell me,
+on any subject, with many grains of allowance.
+
+It was only natural to expect a night of horrors; but in this I was most
+agreeably disappointed, and the few hours passed quietly enough till it
+was time to get up. By morning light, the _salle-à-manger_ did so
+bristle with squalor that the kitchen was made the breakfast-room;
+though as that meal only lasted two minutes, and meant nothing beyond an
+attempt to eat some of the bread I had been unable to eat the night
+before, one place was much the same as another. It is generally believed
+that coffee is to be obtained in perfection in France; but that belief
+is not founded on experience of the provinces, and had long ceased to be
+a part of my creed: nevertheless, with the idea that there is always
+some redeeming-point in the darkest situation, I had hopes of the coffee
+of Die, in spite of the appearance of the pan; and if these hopes had
+been realised, the place might still have been tolerable. But they were
+not realised. When the landlady was asked for the promised coffee, she
+brought out a small earthenware pitcher containing a black liquid, and
+proceeded to bury its lower extremity in the hot embers of the wood
+fire, by which means the liquid was speedily warmed up, and also
+thickened with unnecessary ashes. When served--in the same dusty
+pitcher--it had a green and mouldy taste, combined with a sour
+bitterness which made it utterly impossible as an article of food, and
+so the breakfast was confined to the rejected fragments of the loaf of
+the preceding night.
+
+The guide, or comrade as he preferred to call himself, appeared in good
+time, and we started about half-past six, under a sun already
+oppressively hot, and through heavy flaky dust, which made us feel very
+thankful when our route branched off from the high road. Liotir was
+strong in mulberry trees and vines, for he was a keeper of silkworms,
+and a wine-merchant. Silkworms had not been profitable for a year or
+two, and he was almost in low spirits when he talked of them.[94] An
+epidemic had visited the district, and the worms ate voraciously and
+refused to spin--a disease which he believed to be beyond the power of
+medicine.[95] As is so often the case with the Frenchman, as compared
+with the Englishman of corresponding social status, he had his
+information cut and dried, and poured it out without hesitation.
+Silkworms' eggs cost 15, 20, or 25 francs an ounce, according to
+quality; and an ounce of good seed should produce from two to three
+hundred francs' worth of cocoons. A man who 'makes' an ounce of seed
+requires six tables, 8 feet by 4, for his cages; and as some men make
+thirty-five ounces, chambers of great size are necessary for the
+accommodation of their worms; but breeders to so large an extent as this
+are the princes of the trade. As we passed a farmhouse surrounded by
+mulberry trees and vineyards, my companion informed me that the farmer
+was his partner in worms and wine both, and that the wine promised to be
+the better speculation this year, for the fruit was in immense
+abundance. I saw afterwards that, at the time of vintage, grapes sold
+for pressing at from 6 to 10 francs the hundred kilos, while 12 and 13
+francs was the price in 1863, and that in some districts of the Drôme
+the owners of the presses had not barrels enough for even the first
+pressing.
+
+The great want of wood on the hills in whose neighbourhood we now found
+ourselves, attracted attention in the time of Louis XIV., and that
+sovereign passed severe laws for the protection of the forests that
+still remained. As usual, the mere severity of the laws made them fail
+of their object. Banishment and the galleys were the punishment for
+unauthorised cutting of forest trees, and death if fire were used. There
+is a paper in the _Journal de Physique_ of 1789,[96] on the
+disappearance of the forests of Dauphiné, pointing out that when the
+woods are removed from the sides of mountains, the soil soon follows,
+and the district becomes utterly valueless. The writer traced the
+mischief to the emancipation of serfs, and the consequent formation of
+_communes_, where each man could do that which was right in his own
+eyes.
+
+At any rate, whatever the reason, nothing can be conceived more bare
+than the dun-coloured rounded hills between the town of Die and the Col
+de Vassieux, towards which we were making our way. The whole face of the
+country had the same parched look, and the soil seemed to be composed
+entirely of small stones, without any signs of moisture even in the
+watercourses. The Col de Vassieux is not much more than 4,000 feet high,
+and forms a saddle between the Pic de S. Genix (5,450 feet) and the But
+de l'Aiglette (5,200 feet). A new foot-road has been made to the Col,
+with many windings; and great care has been taken to plant the sides of
+the hill with oak and hazel; so that already there is some appearance of
+coppice, and in the course of time there will be shade by the way--a
+luxury for which we longed in vain. The lower ground was covered with
+little scrubs of box, and with lavender, dwarfed and dry; but near the
+summit of the Col the lavender became vigorous and luxuriant, and
+carpeted the hillside with a rich abundance of blue, tempting us more
+than once to lie down and roll on the fragrant bed; though some of the
+older roots were not sufficiently yielding to make that performance as
+satisfactory as it might have been. This lavender is highly prized by
+the silkworm-keepers of Die, its bushy heads being almost exclusively
+used for the worms to spin their cocoons in.
+
+When we reached the top of the Col, Liotir confessed that he did not
+know which way to turn, and we agreed to follow the path till we should
+find some one to direct us. There was a farmhouse at no great distance,
+and thither we bent our steps; but the sole inhabitant could give no
+assistance, and, in default of information, Liotir generously proposed
+to treat me to a bottle of wine, over which we might discuss our further
+proceedings. The state of fever, however, to which the garlic and the
+dirt of Die had brought me, made it seem impossible to eat or drink
+anything; so I suggested instead that I should treat him, and that
+seemed to be rather what he had meant by his proposal. Nothing much came
+of our discussion, and we marched on hot and faint for an hour more,
+when a casual man told us that our straight line to the _Foire de
+Fondeurle_ lay across the plain on our left hand, and up a most
+objectionable-looking hill beyond, thickly covered with brushwood and
+showing no signs of a path.
+
+As we crossed the plain, there was still the same total absence of
+water, and we reached the bottom of the hill in a state of mind and body
+which rebelled against the exertion of struggling with the sand and
+shingle and brushwood. Liotir thought it was useless to attempt it with
+no hope of water, and I held much the same view, only it was impossible
+really to think of giving it up. When at last we had surmounted all the
+difficulties which beset us, and stood on the highest point which had so
+far been in sight, we found ourselves on the edge of a vast plain of
+parched grass, with nothing to guide us in one direction rather than
+another. There was no human being in sight, no sign of water, nor any
+particle of shade; nothing but grass, brown and monotonous, with white
+cliffs miles away at the extremity of the plain. This was evidently the
+_Foire de Fondeurle_, and in it somewhere lay the glacière, if only we
+could make out in which direction to begin to traverse the plain. In
+the earlier part of this century, a very famous fair was held on this
+wild and out-of-the-way table-land, to which many thousands of horses
+and mules and cattle of various kinds were brought from all quarters;
+but the fair has fallen off so much, that the man who had turned us up
+the last hill said there were only fourteen head of cattle in 1863, and
+very few of those were sold. M. Héricart de Thury describes this plain
+as lying in the calcareous sub-Alpine range of the south-east of France.
+The woods here terminate at a height of 5,147 feet above the sea, and
+the _Foire de Fondeurle_ lies immediately above this point.
+
+At last we made a bold dash across the plain, and after a time came upon
+some sheep, standing in a thick row, with their heads thrust under a low
+bank which afforded a little shade; and at no great distance from them
+sat the shepherd. He was a cripple, and his clothes were something worse
+than rags. He offered us a portion of the water he had in a
+detestable-looking skin; but he assured us it was quite warm, and had
+not been good to begin with, so we did not try it, though we were
+thirsty enough to have hailed a muddy pool with delight. Our new
+acquaintance knew nothing of the glacière, but he belonged himself to
+the Chalêt of Fondeurle, and as that was the only house on the whole
+plain, he told us to make for it. The surface of the plain seemed to
+have fallen through in many places, forming larger and smaller pits with
+steep sides of limestone. These were often of the size of a large field,
+and, as the deeper of them required circumvention, the shepherd told us
+that we must follow the line of little cairns which we should find here
+and there on our way, the only guide across the plain. He could not be
+sure himself in what direction the châlet lay; but if we kept to a
+certain tortuous line, we should come to it in time.
+
+The way proved to be so very long, that we doubted whether such a
+consummation of our wishes would ever arrive: but at length, in a small
+dip at the farthest extremity of the plain, we saw the châlet, and, what
+was much more to us, saw a little run of water, carried from the rising
+ground by wooden pipes. It will be well for any future visitor to the
+châlet to go very warily, and to intrench himself in a strong position
+when he sees half-a-dozen huge dogs like black and white bears come out
+to attack him. Liotir had a stout stick, and I had a formidable ice-axe;
+and, moreover, we fortunately secured a wall in our rear: but with all
+this the dogs were nearly too much for us, and Liotir was pressing me
+earnestly to chop at the ringleader's head, when a man came and called
+off 'Dragon,' and the others then dispersed. The new-comer wished to
+know our business, but, without satisfying his curiosity, we rushed to
+the water-trough, and drank and used in washing an amount of water which
+he evidently grudged us. Then we were able to tell him that our business
+was something to eat for Liotir, and a guide to the glacière; though I
+trembled when I suggested the latter, for, after all our labours, I had
+a sort of fear that the cave would prove a myth. On this point the man
+cleared away all doubts at once,--we could certainly have a guide, as
+the _patron_ would be sure to let one of them go with us. As to food,
+there was more doubt, for the master was not yet at home, and his wife
+would not be able to give us an answer without consulting him. The wife
+confirmed this statement: they saw very few strangers, and did not
+profess to supply food to people crossing the plain. I assured her that
+we intended to pay well for anything she could let us have, but she
+merely rejoined that they did not keep an auberge; however, her husband
+would be home some time in the course of the afternoon--it was now about
+half-past twelve--and she could ask his opinion on the subject. But
+Liotir objected that he was meanwhile dying of hunger, and the monsieur
+of thirst which only milk or cream could assuage; he suggested that some
+one should be sent to look for the husband, and obtain his permission
+for us to be fed. To this she assented, very dubiously, and with a
+constrained air, as if there were some mysterious reason why the
+presence of strangers was peculiarly unacceptable on that particular
+afternoon. At any rate, she said when pressed, she thought there could
+be no harm in our entering the châlet and sitting down on a bench, where
+we should be sheltered from the sun.
+
+Here accordingly we sat, more or less patiently, till the master himself
+appeared. He had no welcome for us; but he was willing that we should
+eat some of his black bread, and try his wine. Liotir begged for cheese,
+and the wife was told she might supply cheese of two kinds, and also
+cream, for the monsieur evidently was _malade_ and could not swallow
+wine. The cream and the black bread were delicious; but still the
+horrors of Die hung about me, and I could only dispose of such a small
+amount, that Liotir waxed funny, and told me it would never do for me to
+die there, as there was not earth enough to scrape a grave in on the
+whole plain. Then, being a practical man, he declared he should like to
+contract for my keep, and thought he could afford to do it at very small
+cost to me, and still leave a fair margin for himself. He thought it
+right to make up for my want of appetite; and so, in addition to his own
+share, he took in an exemplary manner the share of wine which I should
+have taken, had I been a man like himself. The master of the châlet sat
+on the family bed, smoking silently and sullenly; and as soon as Liotir
+had come to an end of his second bottle, he proposed to accompany us
+himself to the cave, as he doubted whether any of his men knew the way,
+and he was sure they were all busy. When I came to pay his wife for what
+we had consumed, I administered thanks as well as money; to which she
+sternly rejoined, 'Who pays need not give thanks;' and to that surly
+view she held, in spite of my attempts to soften her down. There was,
+after all, much force in what she said, under the circumstances. They
+had given us no welcome, nothing but mere food, and all they expected in
+return was a due amount of money; thanks were a mockery in their eyes.
+
+The cavern was reached in a few minutes, when once we got away from the
+châlet. Two large pits, formed apparently by the subsidence of the
+surface, lay in a line about east and west, and there proved to be an
+underground communication between them. From this tunnel, as it were, a
+long low archway led to a broad slope of chaotic blocks of stone, down
+which we scrambled by the aid of such light as our candles afforded. The
+roof of this inner cave was horizontal for some distance, and then
+suddenly descended in a grand wall; and in consequence of a series of
+such inverted steps, the cave never assumed any great height. The whole
+length of the slope was 190 feet, and its greatest breadth about 140
+feet; but the breadth varied very much. Half-way down the slope the ice
+commenced, fitfully at first, and afterwards in a tolerably continuous
+sheet. The most careless explorer could not have failed to notice the
+polygonal figures stamped upon its surface. They were larger and bolder
+than any I had seen before; and the prismatic nuts into which the ice
+broke, when cut with the axe, were of course in proportion larger than
+in the previous caves. The signs of thaw, too, were unmistakeable.
+Though the upper surface of the earth had seemed to be utterly devoid of
+moisture of any kind, large drops fell freely from the roof of the
+cave,[97] and the ice itself was wet. The _patron_ said there was no ice
+whatever in the winter months, and that from June to September was the
+time at which alone it could be found. He declined to explain how it was
+that we found it so evidently in a state of general thaw in the very
+height of its season. To give us some idea of the climate of the plain
+in winter, he informed us that the snow lay for long up to the top of
+the door of his châlet.
+
+There were in all four columns of ice in the cave, only two of which
+were of any considerable size. One of these was peculiarly striking from
+the very large grain which its structure displayed; it measured 19 feet
+across the base, being flat towards the extremity of the cave, and round
+towards the entrance. Three thermometers in various parts of the
+glacière gave all the same temperature, namely, a fraction under 33° F.:
+a rough French thermometer gave 1/2° C. The extreme wall of the cavern
+was completely covered by a layer of stalagmitic material, and some of
+the forms the substance assumed were sufficiently striking. In contact
+with the wall, though standing clear of it in parts where the wall fell
+inwards, stood a thick round column of the same material, shaped like
+the ordinary ice-columns of the glacières, with a cavity near the base,
+and in all ways following the usual laws of such columns. Considering
+that I had observed a layer of limestone-paste collecting on one of the
+ice-columns of the Glacière of La Genollière, I could not help imagining
+that this stalagmitic column had been originally moulded on a norm of
+that description. It had a girth of 12 feet in the part where we were
+able to pass the tape round it. Its surface was smooth; but when we
+drove a hole through this, with much damage to the _pic_ of my axe, we
+found that the interior was in a crystalline form.
+
+There was, on the whole, very little to be seen in the glacière. Had it
+been my first experience of an ice-cave, it would doubtless have seemed
+very remarkable, as it did to Liotir, who, by the way, had steadily
+disbelieved the possibility of natural ice in summer except in the
+glaciers; but as I had now seen so many, several of them much more
+wonderful than this, I did not care to stay longer than was absolutely
+necessary for measurements and investigation. Besides, the food of
+Dauphiné rather takes the energy and love of adventure out of an
+unaccustomed visitor.
+
+Without long delay, then, we bade farewell to the _patron_, not
+returning to the inhospitable châlet, and started on our way for Die,
+each carrying a large block of ice slung in a network of string.
+Liotir's purpose was to convince some mysterious female friend that he
+really had seen ice in summer, within five or six hours of Die; and
+mine, to apply the ice to the butter which I had specially ordered the
+landlady to have ready for me, that so I might be able to get through
+the night, and leave Die by the diligence the first thing next morning.
+It was remarkable how well the ice bore the great heat. For long the
+bulk of the masses we carried seemed scarcely to diminish; and if it had
+not been for a course of heavy falls as we descended through the
+brushwood, we should have succeeded in getting a large proportion of it
+safely to Die. The precision of the prismatic structure also showed
+itself in a very marked manner; and when we came to a crisis of thirst,
+which happened at shorter and shorter intervals as the afternoon wore
+on, we separated the prisms with our fingers from the edges of the ice
+without any difficulty, and made ourselves more hot and thirsty by
+eating them.
+
+When we arrived at the farmhouse at the Col de Vassieux, we reaped full
+benefit from our ice. The wine, which had been hot and heavy and
+unpalatable in the morning, when we had tried it unmixed, became
+delightfully refreshing when disguised with an abundance of water and
+sugar and ice; and Liotir found that contracting for my keep at a low
+rate would not, after all, secure him the comfortable income he had
+before calculated. After this refreshment, he became communicative, and
+told me he had served seven years in the French army, three of which
+were spent in working on railways. He had fought the Italian campaign,
+and was full of details of the battle of Solferino, on which occasion
+his _bataillon_ was led on by the Emperor in person. According to his
+account, four _bataillons_ were drawn up for the assault of a tower, and
+when the first advanced it was swept away to a man. The second met with
+a like fate, and Liotir was in the third. His officers had all been
+killed, and a corporal was in command. The Emperor rode up and called to
+them to advance as far as he advanced. This was about a hundred yards;
+and then, after halting them for a moment, the Emperor cried, '_Allez,
+mes enfants! nous ne sommes pas tous perdus!'_ sending the fourth
+_bataillon_ close upon their heels. In answer to my question, Liotir
+said, slowly and solemnly, that he did not think the Emperor was under
+fire; a few dropping shots reached them while he was yet addressing
+them, but he believed the Emperor Napoleon was not in the fire at
+Solferino. I took the opportunity of asking whether he was green on that
+occasion, as Mr. Kinglake believes that he is in times of personal
+danger; but my companion utterly scouted the idea, and declared that he
+saw no man through all that day so cool and capable as the Emperor. Pale
+he undoubtedly was, but that was his habit. Like all other French
+soldiers with whom I have had much conversation, Liotir complained of
+the army arrangements in the matter of food; on all other points he was
+most amiable, but when he spoke of the extortions of the _cantinière_ he
+completely lost his temper. At a _café_, the soldiers could get their
+cup for 15 centimes, or 20 with liqueur; whereas the _cantinière_
+charged a franc, and gave them very bad coffee. Wine, too, which would
+cost them 60 centimes the kilo in the town, was valued at 2 francs by
+their grasping enemy. He had an idea that English soldiers are allowed
+to take their whole pay in money, and spend it as they will; whereas the
+French foot-soldier, according to his account, gets 25 centimes a day in
+money, and has everything found except coffee. A young trooper at
+Besançon was very eloquent on this subject. He represented himself as a
+man of small appetite and a gay spirit; he could well live on very
+little solid food, and yet he had as much deducted from his pay on that
+account as anyone in the army--as much, for instance, he groaned, as a
+certain stout old warrior who was then reposing on a corn-bin. If he
+could have drawn all his pay in money, and lived on almost nothing for
+food, he would have had abundance of sous for cards and tobacco; and
+what a career would that be!
+
+The blocks of ice were by this time becoming rather small; and as we had
+now once more reached the region of lavender, we cut a large quantity
+and wrapped the ice in it, and thus protected it from further thaw. For
+some time before arriving at the farm where my companion's partner
+lived, he indulged in praises of the wine which their vineyard produced,
+and assurances of the safety with which it would perform a journey to
+England. He urged its excellent _bouquet_, and gave me a card of prices
+which certainly seemed marvellously reasonable. Finally, he proposed to
+join me at a bottle of white _muscat_, from the farmer's _cave_, in
+order that I might have an opportunity of seeing how true was his
+account of the wine. We seated ourselves accordingly in the farmyard,
+and drank a bottle of delightful wine at 65 centimes the bottle, clear
+and sparkling, and with a strong muscat flavour. Liotir combined with it
+intoxication of a different kind, and showed unmistakeable signs of his
+determination to take another member of the farmer's household into
+partnership,--the mysterious friend, in fact, for whose astonishment the
+ice was intended. The white muscat, they told me, would not keep over
+the year; but they had a wine at the same price which they highly
+recommended, and warranted to keep for a considerable number of years.
+Liotir was very anxious that we should have a bottle of this, for he was
+confident that I should give them an order if I once tasted it; but we
+had been in at the death of so many bottles that day, that I declined to
+try the _muscat rosat_. I have since had a hundred _litres_ sent over by
+Liotir, and find it very satisfactory. It has a rich, clear, port-wine
+colour, sparkling, and with the true _frontignac_ flavour.
+
+The effect of the wine on Liotir was peculiar. In the earlier part of
+the walk, he had never seen Algeria; but after half a bottle of muscat,
+he had spent six months in that country, and he enlivened the remainder
+of the way with many details of his experiences there. We reached Die
+about half-past seven, and the arrival of real ice was hailed as a
+marvel. Although I had been sent off so unhesitatingly by the landlord
+in the morning, it seemed that they none of them knew what a glacière
+meant. They had determined that we should never reach the _Foire de
+Fondeurle_, and that if we did, we should find nothing there to repay
+our toil. As I sat at an open window afterwards, Liotir's voice was to
+be heard holding forth in a neighbouring café upon the wonders of the
+day; and among the crowd which is a normal condition of the evening
+streets of Die, the words _Fondeurle_, _Vassieux_, _Anglais_, _glace_,
+&c., showed what the general subject of conversation was.
+
+The landlady had obeyed orders, and was provided with butter and bread.
+The tea was served in an open earthenware pitcher, with the spout at
+right angles with the handle. There was no cup; but the woman remarked
+that if monsieur was particular about that, he could turn out the sugar
+and use the basin, which he did. The milk had a basin to itself; but it
+had offered so large and tempting a surface to the flies of the town,
+that it remained untouched. The knife and spoon were imbued with
+ineradicable garlic, and my own trusty clasp-knife was the only weapon I
+could use for all table purposes. If it had not been for the ice and the
+lavender, I think I should never have got away from Die. The former made
+it possible to eat some bread-and-butter; and of the latter I made a
+sort of respirator for nose and mouth, which modified the odour of cocks
+and hens prevailing in the house.
+
+Next morning the diligence was to start early, and, in preparation for
+the six hours' drive, I ordered two eggs to be boiled for breakfast. As
+the first proved to have been boiled in tepid water, I requested the
+landlady to boil the second afresh, which she did in a manner that may
+partly account for the observed fact that the very eggs of some towns
+taste of garlic. There was household soup simmering on the fire, reeking
+with onion and garlic, and many other abominations; and, as if it was
+quite the right and usual thing to do, she slipped the unfortunate egg
+into this, and left it there to be cooked. After all, garlic must be
+cheap as an article of food, for the whole bill amounted only to 7-1/2
+francs.
+
+This was the last glacière on my list. It was quite as well that such
+was the case; for the trials of Dauphiné had been too great, and I
+should scarcely have been inclined to face further adventures of a like
+kind.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 82: T. xxx. p. 157.]
+
+[Footnote 83: Vol. ii. p. 80.]
+
+[Footnote 84: Jean de Choul, _De variâ Quercûs Historia_, 1555.]
+
+[Footnote 85: Gollut, Mém. des Bourg. de la Franche Comté, p. 227.]
+
+[Footnote 86: Paradin de Cuyseaulx, Annales de Bourgougne, 1566, p. 14.]
+
+[Footnote 87: Several churches in Vienne are used as foundries and
+workshops. S. Peter's church was an iron-foundry four or five years ago,
+and is in future to be a museum--a considerable improvement upon its
+former use. The grand old church of S. John in Dijon has been rescued
+from the hands which made it a depôt of flour, and is being restored to
+its original purposes: but such instances are very rare.]
+
+[Footnote 88: This family took its rise in Dauphiné, before the district
+had that name: the chief place of the family was the château of
+Beaumont, near Grenoble.]
+
+[Footnote 89: The final victory was near Aquæ Sextiæ (Aix).]
+
+[Footnote 90: The cultivation of the silkworm mulberry will probably die
+out before very long. The silk crop has lately failed in Dauphiné, and a
+commission for enquiring into the relative merits of different worms has
+determined that the Senegal worm produces 633 millegrammes of silk,
+while the worm, fed on the mulberry produces only 290. The first
+mulberry trees in France were planted in that part of Provence which is
+enclosed by Dauphiné.
+
+The Bishop of Nismes has lately issued a pastoral letter, commanding
+prayers to be offered up for the cessation of the malady affecting the
+silkworms in his own and the surrounding dioceses.]
+
+[Footnote 91: The feudal buildings were razed by order of Richelieu, but
+the tower remains a landmark for the valley. Three hundred _détenus_
+were confined here after the _coup d'état_ of December 2, 1851.]
+
+[Footnote 92: The origin of the name Dauphin seems to be lost in
+obscurity, though of comparatively recent date. The Counts d'Albon took
+the title first in 1140, and their estates were not called the Terra
+Dalphini, or Dalphinatus, till 1291. The first Dauphins bore a castle,
+not a dolphin.]
+
+[Footnote 93: The old historian Gollut speaks of the _clairets_ and
+_clerets_ as red wines.]
+
+[Footnote 94: The 'Times' of Oct. 4, 1864, stated that almost no raw
+silk was offered at the last markets at Valence and Romans, and but for
+foreign supplies the mills must have been closed. The small amount that
+was offered sold at from 68 to 72 francs the kilogramme, while foreign
+cocoons from Calamata fetched only 22 francs at Marseilles.]
+
+[Footnote 95: Pausanias says that silkworms are apt to die of
+indigestion, the cocoons lying heavy on the stomach.]
+
+[Footnote 96: T. xxxv. pp. 244, &c.]
+
+[Footnote 97: M. de Thury calculated that the thickness of the roof at
+the lower part of the cave was about 60 feet of rock. He also noticed
+the peculiar structure of the ice, which afforded great surprise to his
+party. It was discovered by means of the coloured rays which were thrown
+into the different parts of the cave, when some one had casually placed
+a torch in a cavity in one of the columns.]
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+OTHER ICE CAVES.
+
+
+_The Cave of Szelicze, or Szilitze, in Hungary_.[98]
+
+Matthew Bell, the historian of Hungary, sent an account of this cavern
+to England, in the middle of the last century, which was printed in the
+original Latin in the 'Philosophical Transactions' of 1739-40 (pp. 41,
+&c.).
+
+This account states that the cave is in the county of Thorn,[99] among
+the lowest spurs of the Carpathians. The entrance, which faces the
+north, and is exposed to the cold winds from the snowy part of the
+Carpathian range, is 18 fathoms high and 9 broad; and the cave spreads
+out laterally, and descends to a point 50 fathoms below the entrance,
+where it is 26 fathoms in breadth, and of irregular height. Beyond this
+no one had at that time penetrated, on account of the unsafe footing,
+although many distant echoes were returned by the farther recesses of
+the cave; indeed, to get even so far as this, much step-cutting was
+necessary.
+
+When the external frost of winter comes on, the account proceeds, the
+effect in the cave is the same as if fires had been lighted there: the
+ice melts, and swarms of flies and bats and hares take refuge in the
+interior from the severity of the winter. As soon as spring arrives, the
+warmth of winter disappears from the interior, water exudes from the
+roof and is converted into ice, while the more abundant supplies which
+pour down on to the sandy floor are speedily frozen there. In the
+Dog-days, the frost is so intense that a small icicle becomes in one day
+a huge mass of ice; but a cool day promptly brings a thaw, and the cave
+is looked upon as a barometer, not merely feeling, but also presaging,
+the changes of weather. The people of the neighbourhood, when employed
+in field-work, arrange their labour so that the mid-day meal may be
+taken near the cave, when they either ice the water they have brought
+with them, or drink the melted ice, which they consider very good for
+the stomach. It had been calculated that 600 weekly carts would not be
+sufficient to keep the cavern free from ice. The ground above the cave
+is peculiarly rich in grass.
+
+In explanation of these phenomena, Bell threw out the following
+suggestions, which need no comment. The earth being of itself cold and
+damp, the external heat of the atmosphere, by partially penetrating into
+the ground, drives in this native cold to the inner parts of the earth,
+and makes the cold there more dense. On the other hand, when the
+external air is cold, it draws forth towards the surface the heat there
+may be in the inner part of the earth, and thus makes caverns warm. In
+support and illustration of this view, he states that in the hotter
+parts of Hungary, when the people wish to cool their wine, they dig a
+hole 2 feet deep, and place in it the flagon of wine, and, after filling
+up the hole again, light a blazing fire upon the surface, which cools
+the wine as if the flagon had been laid in ice. He also suggests that
+possibly the cold winds from the Carpathians bring with them
+imperceptible particles of snow, which reach the water of the cave, and
+convert it into ice. Further, the rocks of the Carpathians abound in
+salts, nitre, alum, &c., which may, perhaps, mingle with such snowy
+particles, and produce the ordinary effect of the snow and salt in the
+artificial production of ice.
+
+Townson[100] visited this cave half a century later, and concluded that
+Bell was in error with regard to the supposed winter thaw and summer
+frost, although he himself received information at Kaschau which
+corroborated the earlier account. He describes the approach to the
+village of Szilitze as leading by a by-road through a pleasant country
+of woods and hills, with much pasture-land, the cave lying a mile beyond
+the village, and displaying an entrance 100 feet broad, and 20 or 30
+feet high, turned towards the north. The descent of the floor of the
+cave is rapid, and was covered with thin ice, at the time of his visit,
+for the last third of the way: from the roof at the farther end, where
+the cave is not so high as at the entrance, a congeries of icicles was
+seen to hang; and in a corner on the right, completely sheltered from
+the rays of the sun, there was a large mass of the same material. It was
+a fine forenoon in July, and all was in a state of thaw, the icicles
+dropping water, and the floor of ice covered with a thin layer of water;
+while the thermometer in all parts of the cave stood at zero of
+Réaumur's scale. The rock is compact unstratified limestone, in which so
+many of the famous caverns of the world are found.
+
+
+
+_The Cave of Yeermalik, in Koondooz_[101]
+
+In the year 1840, Captain Burslem, of the 13th Light Infantry, made an
+expedition from Cabul to the North-west, accompanied by Lieutenant Sturt
+of the Bengal Engineers, who was afterwards killed in the terrible pass
+where Lady Sale, whose daughter he had married, was shot through the
+arm.
+
+After crossing the high and wild pass of Karakotul (10,500 feet), these
+travellers reached the romantic glen of the Doaub, which lies at the
+foot of the pass, and is surrounded on all sides by lofty mountains.
+Here they were hospitably entertained by Shah Pursund Khan, the chief of
+the small territory, and their curiosity was roused by the account
+given by an old moollah of a cavern seven miles off, which the Shah
+strongly advised them not to attempt to visit, for the Sheitan (the
+devil), whose ordinary place of abode it was, never allowed a stranger
+to return from its recesses. The moollah, however, scouted this idea, on
+the ground that it was much too cold for such an inhabitant; and the
+Shah eventually agreed to accompany them to the cave with a band of his
+followers.
+
+As they rode through long and rich grass, following the course of a
+gentle stream, and tormented by swarms of forest flies, or
+blood-suckers, the Shah informed them that he had once endeavoured to
+explore the cave, and had already penetrated to a considerable
+distance, when he came upon the fresh prints of a naked foot, with an
+extraordinary impression by their side, which he suspected to be the
+foot of Sheitan himself, and so he beat a precipitate retreat. The
+moollah told them that there was a large number of skeletons in the
+cave, the remains of 700 men who took refuge there during the invasion
+of Genghis Khan, with their wives and families, and defended
+themselves so stoutly, that, after trying in vain the means by which
+the M'Leods were destroyed in barbarous times, and the opponents of
+French progress in Algeria in times less remote, the invader built
+them in with huge natural blocks of stone, and left them to die of
+hunger.
+
+The entrance is half-way up a hill, and is 50 feet high, with about the
+same breadth. Not far from the entrance they found a passage between two
+jagged rocks, possibly the remains of Genghis Khan's fatal wall, so
+narrow that they had some difficulty in squeezing through; and then,
+before long, came to a drop of 16 feet, down which they were lowered by
+ropes made from the cotton turbans of the Shah and his attendants. Here
+they left two men to haul them up on their return, and bade farewell to
+the light of day. The narrow path led by the edge of a black abyss,
+sometimes over a flooring of smooth ice for a few feet, and widened
+gradually till they reached a damp and dripping hall, of dimensions so
+vast that the light of their torches did not enable them to form a
+conception of its size. In this hall they found hundreds of skeletons in
+a perfectly undisturbed state, one, for instance, still holding the
+skeletons of two infants in its bony arms, while some of the bodies had
+been preserved, and lay shrivelled like those at the Great St. Bernard.
+They were very much startled here by the discovery of the prints of a
+naked human foot, and by its side the distinct mark of the pointed heel
+of an Affghan boot,[102] precisely what had so thoroughly frightened the
+Shah twelve years before. The prints retained all the sharpness of
+outline which marks a recent impression, and led towards the farther
+recesses of the cave; but the Englishmen were called away from their
+investigation by the announcement that if they did not make haste, there
+would not be oil enough for lighting them to the ice-caves.
+
+Proceeding through several low arches and smaller caves, they reached at
+length a vast hall, in the centre of which was[103] an enormous mass of
+clear ice, smooth and polished as a mirror, and in the form of a
+gigantic beehive, with its dome-shaped top just touching the long
+icicles which depended from the jagged surface of the rock. A small
+aperture led to the interior of this wonderful congelation, the walls of
+which were nearly 2 feet thick; the floor, sides, and roof were smooth
+and slippery, and their figures were reflected from floor to ceiling
+and from side to side in endless repetition. The inside of this chilly
+abode was divided into several compartments of every fantastic shape: in
+some the glittering icicles hung like curtains from the roof; in others,
+the vault was smooth as glass. Beautifully brilliant were the prismatic
+colours reflected from the varied surface of the ice, when the torches
+flashed suddenly upon them as they passed from cave to cave. Around,
+above, beneath, everything was of solid ice, and being unable to stand
+on account of its slippery nature, they slid, or rather glided,
+mysteriously along the glassy surface of this hall of spells. In one of
+the largest compartments the icicles had reached the floor, and gave the
+idea of pillars supporting the roof.
+
+The cavern in which this marvellous mass of ice stood, branched off into
+numerous galleries, one of which led the party to a sloping platform of
+rapidly increasing steepness, where they were startled by the
+reappearance of the naked foot-prints, passing down the slope. The toes
+were spread out in a manner which showed that they belonged to some one
+who had been in the habit of going barefoot, and Captain Burslem took a
+torch and determined to trace the steps: a large stone, however, gave
+way under his weight; and this, sliding down at first, and then rolling
+and bounding on for ever, raised such a tumult of noise and echoes that
+the natives with one accord cried 'Sheitan! Sheitan!' and fled
+precipitately, extinguishing all the lights in their fear; so that but
+for Sturt's torch the whole party must have been lost in the darkness.
+Shah Pursund Khan at once called a retreat, vowing that it was of no use
+to attempt to follow the footsteps, as it was well known that the cave
+extended to Cabul! The guides had now lost their small allowance of
+pluck, and wandered about despairingly for a long time before they could
+find their way back to the ice-cave, and thence to the foot of the rock
+where the two men and the turban-ladders had been left. As soon as they
+came in sight of this, their comrades above cried out to them that they
+must make all haste, for Sheitan himself had appeared an hour before,
+running along the ledge where they now were, and finally vanishing into
+the gloom beyond; an announcement which of course produced a stampede in
+the terrified party of natives. Five or six rushed to the spot where the
+turbans hung, and only an opportune fall of stones from above prevented
+their destroying the apparatus in their blind hurry to escape. The chief
+claimed the privilege of being drawn up first, and he and all his
+followers declared that nothing should ever tempt them to visit again
+the Cave of Yeermalik.[104]
+
+
+_The Surtshellir, in Iceland_.
+
+The first account of this lava-cavern is given by Olafsen,[105] who
+visited it in 1750 and 1753. Ebenezer Henderson[106] explored it in
+1815, and Captain Forbes gives some account of it in his recent book on
+Iceland.[107] It is mentioned in some of the Sagas,[108] and appears to
+have been a refuge for robbers in the tenth century, and Sturla
+Sigvatson, with a large band of followers, spent some time here. The
+Landnama Saga derives the name Surtshellir from a huge giant called
+Surtur, who made his abode in the cave; but Olafsen believed that the
+name merely meant _black hole_, from _surtur_ or _svartur_, and was due
+to the darkness of the cave and the colour of the lava: in accordance
+with this view, it is called _Hellerin Sortur_, or _black hole_, in some
+of the earlier writings. The common people are convinced that it is
+inhabited by ghosts; and Olafsen and his party were assured that they
+would be turned back by horrible noises, or else killed outright by the
+spirits of the cave: at any rate, their informants declared they would
+no more reach the inner parts of the cavern than they had reached the
+traditional green valley of Aradal, isolated in the midst of glaciers,
+with its wild population of descendants of the giants, which they had
+endeavoured to find some time before.[109]
+
+The cave is in the form of a tunnel a mile or more in length, with
+innumerable ramifications, in the lava which has flowed from the Bald
+Yökul. It lies on the edge of the uninhabited waste called the
+Arnavatns-heidi, in a district described by Captain Forbes as distorted
+and devilish, a cast-iron sea of lava. The approach is through an open
+chasm, 20 to 40 feet in depth, and 50 feet broad, leading to the
+entrance of the cave, where the height is between 30 and 40 feet, and
+the breadth rather more than 50. Henderson found a large quantity of
+congealed snow at this entrance, and along pool of water resting on a
+floor of ice, which turned his party back and forced them to seek
+another entrance, where again they found snow piled up to a
+considerable height. Olafsen also mentions collections of snow under the
+various openings in the lava which forms the roof of the cave. The
+latter explorer discovered interesting signs of the early inhabitants of
+the Surtshellir, as, for instance, the common bedstead, built of stones,
+2-1/2 feet high, 36 feet long, and 14 feet broad, with a pathway down
+the middle, forming the only passage to the inner parts of the cave. The
+spaces enclosed by these stones were strewn with black sand, on which
+rough wool was probably laid by way of mattress. This could scarcely
+have been a bedstead in the time of the giants, for a total breadth of
+14 feet, deducting for the pathway down the middle, will not give more
+than 6 feet for the layer of men on either side, unless indeed they lay
+parallel to the passage, and required a length of 36 feet. He also found
+an old wall, built with blocks of lava across one part of the cave, as
+if for defence, and a large circular heap of the bones of sheep and
+oxen, presumably the remains of many years of feasting. Captain Forbes
+scoffs at these bones, and suggests errant wild ponies as the depositors
+thereof.
+
+Olafsen had found in his earlier visit that the way was stopped, far
+in the recesses of the cave, by a lake of water, which filled the
+tunnel to a depth of 3 feet or more, lying on ice; but in 1753 there
+was not more than a foot of water, through which they waded without
+much difficulty. The air soon became exceedingly cold and thick, and
+for some hundreds of paces they saw no light of day, till at length
+they reached a welcome opening in the roof. Beyond this, the air grew
+colder and more thick, and the walls were found to be sheeted with ice
+from roof to floor, or covered with broad and connected icicles. The
+ground also was a mass of ice, but an inch or two of fine brown earth
+lay upon it, which enabled them to keep their footing. This earth
+appeared to have been brought down by the water which filtered through
+the roof. 'The most wonderful thing,' Olafsen remarks, 'that we
+noticed here, was, that the stalactites of ice were set with regular
+figures of five and seven sides, joined together, and resembling those
+seen on the second stomach of ruminating animals. The condensed cold
+of the air must have imparted these figures to the ice; they were not
+external (merely?), but in the ice itself, which otherwise was clear
+and transparent.'
+
+Henderson and his party appear to have had much more wading to do than
+Olafsen, walking in one instance through a long tract of water up to the
+knees. In the deeper recesses of the cave, apparently in the part where
+the earlier explorers had found the reticulated ice, they found the
+whole floor of the passage covered with thick ice, with so steep a dip
+that they sat down and slid forward by their own weight--a most
+undignified proceeding for a grave gentleman on a mission from the Bible
+Society. On holding their torches close to the floor, they saw down to a
+depth of 7 or 8 feet, the ice being as clear as crystal. 'The roof and
+sides of the cave were decorated with most superb icicles, crystallised
+in every possible form, many of which rivalled in minuteness the finest
+zeolites; while from the icy floor rose pillars of the same substance,
+assuming all the curious and phantastic shapes imaginable, mocking the
+proudest specimens of art, and counterfeiting many well-known objects of
+animated nature. Many of them were upwards of 4 feet high, generally
+sharpened at the extremity, and about 2 feet in thickness. A more
+brilliant scene perhaps never presented itself to the human eye, nor was
+it easy for us to divest ourselves of the idea that we actually beheld
+one of the fairy scenes depicted in Eastern fable. The light of the
+torches rendered it peculiarly enchanting.'
+
+Captain Forbes found much ice on the floor, but he did not enjoy the
+cold and wet, and seems to have ascended by the last opening in the
+roof, mentioned by Olafsen, before reaching the cavern where the more
+beautiful parts of the ice-decoration were found by his predecessors.
+The two engravings of the interior of the cave given in his book are
+copied from the magnificent lithographs of Paul Gaimard,[110] but much
+of the effect has been lost in the process of copying.
+
+Mr. Baring Gould mentions this cavern in his book on Iceland, and
+believes that its interest has been much overrated. He seems to have
+visited the cave, but makes no allusion to the existence of ice.[111]
+
+Mr. E.T. Holland visited the Surtshellir in the course of his tour in
+Iceland, in 1861, and an account of his visit is given in the first
+volume of 'Peaks, Passes, and Glaciers.'[112] After following in
+Olafsen's steps for some time, the party reached a cave whose floor was
+composed of very clear ice, apparently of great thickness, for they
+could not see the lava beneath it. The walking on this smooth ice-floor
+Mr. Holland describes as being delightful, the whole sloping
+considerably downwards. 'In five minutes,' he continues, 'we reached the
+most beautiful fairy grotto imaginable. From the crystal floor of ice
+rose up group after group of transparent icy pillars, while from the
+glittering roof most brilliant icy pendants hung down to meet them.
+Columns and arches of ice were ranged along the crystalline walls ... I
+never saw a more brilliant scene; and indeed it would be difficult to
+imagine anything more fairy-like. The pillars were many of them of great
+size, tapering to a point as they rose. The largest were at least 8 feet
+high, and 6 feet in circumference at their base. The stalactites were on
+an equally grand scale. Through this lovely ice-grotto we walked for
+nearly ten minutes.'
+
+[Illustration: ICE-CAVE IN THE SURTSHELLIR.]
+
+The temperature of the caves, Mr. Holland states in a note, was from 8°
+to 10° C. (46·4° to 50° F.), that of the air outside being 53·6° F.
+
+
+_The Gypsum Cave of Illetzkaya-Zastchita, in the Steppes of the
+Kirghis, South of Orenburg_.
+
+The district in which this cavern occurs is a small green oasis on the
+undulating steppe, lying on a vast bed of rock-salt, which extends over
+an area of two versts in length, and a mile in breadth, with a thickness
+of more than 100 feet. When the thin cover of red sand and marl is
+removed, the white salt is exposed, and is found to be so free from all
+stain, or admixture of other material, excepting sometimes minute
+filaments of gypsum, that it is pounded at once for use, without any
+cleansing or recrystallising process.
+
+In the immediate neighbourhood of Illetzkaya-Zastchita there are two or
+three gypseous hillocks, and a cavern in one of these is used by the
+inhabitants as a cellar, having been artificially enlarged for that
+purpose. Sir Roderick Murchison and his colleagues visited this cavern
+on a hot day in August, with the thermometer at 90° in the shade, in the
+course of their travels under the patronage of the late Emperor of
+Russia.[113] They found the hillock to be an irregular cone 150 feet in
+height; the entrance was by a frail door, on a level with the village
+street, and fully exposed to the rays of the sun; and yet, when the door
+was opened, so piercing a current of cold air poured forth, that they
+were glad to beat a retreat for a while; and on eventually exploring
+farther, they found the quass and provisions, stored in the cave,
+half-frozen within three or four paces of the door. The chasm soon
+opened out into a natural vault from 12 to 15 feet high, 10 or 12 paces
+long, and 7 or 8 in width, which seemed to have numerous small
+ramifications into the impending mound of gypsum and marl. The roof of
+this inner cavern was hung with undripping solid icicles, and the floor
+was a conglomerate of ice and frozen earth. They were assured that the
+cold is always greatest within when the external air is hottest and
+driest, and that the ice gradually disappears as winter approaches, and
+vanishes when the snow comes. The peasants were unanimous in these
+statements, and asserted that they could sleep in the cave without
+sheepskins in the depth of winter.
+
+Sir Roderick Murchison and his friends were at first inclined to explain
+these phenomena by supposing that the chief fissure communicated with
+some surface of rock-salt, 'the saliferous vapours of which might be so
+rapidly evaporated or changed in escaping to an intensely hot and dry
+atmosphere as to produce ice and snow.' But Sir John Herschel, to whom
+they applied for assistance, rejected the evaporation theory, and
+suggested that the external summer wave of heat might possibly only
+reach the cave at Christmas, being delayed six months in its passage
+through the rock; the cold of winter, in the same manner, arriving at
+midsummer. To this the explorers objected, that the mound contained many
+caves, but' only in this particular fissure was any ice found. Dr.
+Robinson, astronomer at Armagh, endeavoured to explain the matter by
+referring to De Saussure's explanation of the phenomena of _cold
+caves_ in Italy and elsewhere; but this, too, was considered
+unsatisfactory. At length, Professor Wheatstone referred them to the
+memoir by Professor Pictet, in the _Bibliothèque Universelle_ of Geneva,
+where that _savant_ improves upon De Saussure's theory, and applies it
+in its new form to the case of caves containing permanent ice, in tracts
+whose mean cold is above the freezing point. This they seem to have
+accepted, adding that the climatological circumstances of Orenburg--a
+wet spring, caused by the melting of the abundant snows, followed by a
+summer of intense and dry Asiatic heat--must be particularly favourable
+for the working out of the theory, and must also act powerfully in
+producing the refrigerating effects of evaporation.[114]
+
+The traveller Pallas visited Illetzkaya in July 1769, and describes
+this gypseous hillock.[115] In his time the entrance by the side of
+the hill was unknown, as also was the existence of ice in the cavern.
+He saw at the top of the Kraoul-naï-Gora, or Watch-mountain, as it was
+called, a fissure which had once formed a large cavern, into which the
+Kirghis were in the habit of throwing furs and other materials as
+religious offerings. Although the cave had since fallen in, they still
+kept up a part of the ceremony, marching solemnly round the base of
+the hill once a year, and bathing in the neighbouring water. In
+earlier times, a man had descended through the fissure by means of
+cords, and found the cold within insupportable, having very probably
+reached the present ice-cave.
+
+Pallas describes many caves in various parts of Russia, but never
+seems to hint at the existence of ice in them, though he specially
+mentions their extreme cold. Some of these occurred in gypsum, and
+some in limestone; and the gypseous caves showed universally a very
+low temperature, though still far above the freezing-point.[116] Thus
+in the dark cavern of Barnoukova,[117] on the Piana, in a rock of
+gypsum, while the thermometer in the shade stood at 75°.2, the
+temperatures at various points in the cave were,--at the entrance
+59°.36, 25 feet from the entrance 46°.4, and in the coldest part
+42°.8. This cold he describes as insupportable. The temperature of the
+water which had accumulated in the coldest parts of the cave was
+48°.8, considerably higher than the surrounding atmosphere; from which
+Pallas concluded that the cold of gypsum-caves is due to the acid
+vapours which are generally observed in grottoes of this description.
+In May 1770, he found snow on the sloping entrance to the cavern of
+Loeklé, in the neighbourhood of the Oufa; but the air of the interior
+was not colder than was to be expected in a deep cave.
+
+Sir R. Murchison wrote to Russia for further information with respect to
+this cave in January 1865, and again in the beginning of April,
+addressing his second enquiry to the Secretary of the Imperial Academy.
+In reply, the Secretary says that he is not aware that any thermometric
+observations have been made in the cavern. He encloses a short statement
+by M. Helmersen, one of the members of the Academy, to the following
+effect:--About 50 versts SE. of Miask, in the chain of the Ural, is a
+copper mine, called Kirobinskoy, which was abandoned more than fifty
+years ago. On the 7th July, 1826, M. Helmersen found a thick wainscoting
+of ice on the sides and roof and floor of the horizontal gallery, within
+10 feet of the entrance. He was assured that this ice never melts, and
+that its thickness is greater in summer than in winter. M. Helmersen
+adds, that to the best of his belief no one has investigated the cavern
+of Illetzkaya Zastchita since Sir R. Murchison's visit.
+
+
+_The Ice-Cavern of the Peak of Teneriffe_.[118]
+
+This cave is at a height of 11,040 feet above the sea, and is therefore
+not far below the snow-line of the latitudes of the Canary Isles. The
+entrance is by a hole 3 or 4 feet square, in the roof of the cave, which
+may be about 20 feet from the floor. The peasants who convey snow and
+ice from the cave to the lower regions, enter by means of knotted ropes;
+but Professor Smyth had caused his ship's carpenter to prepare a stout
+ladder, by which photographic instruments and a lady were taken down.
+
+On alighting on a heap of stones at the bottom, the party found
+themselves surrounded by a sloping wall of snow, 3 feet high, and 7 or 8
+feet broad, the basin in which they stood being formed in the snow by
+the vertical rays of the sun, and by the dropping of water from the
+edges of the hole[119]. Beyond this ring-fence, large surfaces of water
+stretched away into the farther recesses of the cave, resting on a layer
+of ice, which appeared to be generally about 2 feet thick. At one of the
+deeper ends of the cave, water dropped continually from the crevices of
+the roof; a fact which Professor Smyth attributed to the slow advance of
+the summer wave of heat through the superincumbent rock, which was only
+now reaching the inner recesses of the loose lava, and liquefying the
+results of the past winter. There would seem to be immense infiltration
+of meteoric water on the Peak; for, notwithstanding the great depth of
+rain which falls annually in a liquid or congealed form, the sides of
+the mountain are not scored with the lines of water-torrents.
+
+Though occurring in lava, this cavern is quite different from
+lava-tunnels, such as the Surtshellir, which are recognised formations,
+produced by the cooling of the terminal surface-crust of the stream of
+lava, and the subsequent bursting forth of the molten stream within.
+This, on the contrary, proved to be a smooth dome-shaped cave, running
+off into three contracting lobes or tunnels which might be respectively
+70, 50, and 40 feet long, and were all filled to a certain depth with
+water: in the smoothness of the interior surfaces, Professor Smyth
+believed that he detected the action of highly elastic gases on a
+plastic material.
+
+The astronomer takes exception to the term 'underground glacier'[120]
+which had been applied to this cavern. He represents that the mountain
+is abundantly covered each winter with snow, in the neighbourhood of the
+ice-cave, which is nearly within the snow-line, and the stores of snow
+thus accumulated in the cave have no great difficulty in resisting the
+effects of summer heat, since all radiation is cut off by the roof of
+rocks. The importance of this protection may be understood from the fact
+that in the middle of July the thermometer at this altitude gave 130° in
+the sun, but fell to 47° when relieved from the heat due to radiation.
+At the time of this observation, there were still patches of snow lying
+on the mountain-side, exposed to the full power of direct radiation;
+and, therefore, there is not anything very surprising in the permanence
+of snow under such favourable circumstances as are developed in the
+cave. Mr. Airy, a few summers ago, found the rooms of the Casa Inglese,
+on Mount Etna, half filled with snow, which had drifted in by an open
+door, and had been preserved from solar radiation by the thick
+roof.[121]
+
+Humboldt remarks, that the mean temperature of the region in which the
+Cueva del Hielo (ice-cave) occurs, is not below 3° C. (37.4° F.), but so
+much snow and ice are stored up in the winter that the utmost efforts of
+the summer heat cannot melt it all. He adds, that the existence of
+permanent snow in holes or caves must depend more upon the amount of
+winter snow, and the freedom from hot winds, than on the absolute
+elevation of the locality.
+
+The natives of Teneriffe are men of faith. They have large belief in the
+existence and intercommunication of numerous vast caverns in the Peak,
+one of which, on the north coast, is said to communicate with the
+ice-cavern, notwithstanding 8 miles of horizontal distance, and 11,000
+feet of vertical depth. The truth of this particular article of their
+creed has been recently tested by several worthy and reverend hidalgos,
+who drove a dog into the entrance of the cavern on the sea-coast, in the
+belief that he would eventually come to light again in the ice-cave: he
+was accordingly found lying there some days after, greatly fatigued and
+emaciated, having in the interval accomplished the 11,000 feet of
+subterranean climbing. How he could enter, from below, a water-logged
+cave, does not appear to have been explained.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 98: The _Caves of Szelicze_ are mentioned in Murray's
+_Handbook of Southern Germany_ (1858, p. 555), where the following
+account is given of them:--'During the winter a great quantity of ice
+accumulates in these caves, which is not entirely melted before the
+commencement of the ensuing winter. In the summer months they are
+consequently filled with vast masses of ice broken up into a thousand
+fantastic forms, and presenting by their lucidity a singular contrast to
+the sombre vaults and massive stalactites of the cavern.'
+
+The _Drachenhöhle_ (Murray, 1. c.p. 553), a series of caverns not far
+from Neusohl in Hungary, afford another instance of an ice-cave, one of
+the largest of them being said to be coated with a sheet of translucid
+ice, through which the stalactitic fretwork of the vault is seen to
+great advantage.]
+
+[Footnote 99: Not far from Kaschau.]
+
+[Footnote 100: _Travels in Hungary_, 1797, pp. 317, &c.]
+
+[Footnote 101: _A Peep into Toorkistan_; London, 1846; chapters x. and
+xi.]
+
+[Footnote 102: They were now in a country far removed from the Affghans,
+and hostile to that people.]
+
+[Footnote 103: The remainder of this paragraph is in Captain Burslem's
+own words.]
+
+[Footnote 104: I am indebted for the knowledge of the existence of these
+caves to W.A. Sandford, Esq., F.G.S., who informed me that an account of
+them was to be found in a book of travels by an English officer. I am
+not aware that they have been visited on any other occasion than this.]
+
+[Footnote 105: _Reise durch Island_, Copenhagen, 1744 (being a German
+translation from the original Danish), i. 128 sqq.]
+
+[Footnote 106: _Henderson's Iceland_, ii. 189 sqq.]
+
+[Footnote 107: Pp. 145 sqq.]
+
+[Footnote 108: The Sturlunga, Landnama, and Holmveria Sagas.]
+
+[Footnote 109: Two priests determined to solve the mystery of this
+unapproachable valley, the Aradal, or Thoris-thal, with its rich meadows
+and gigantic inhabitants, and made an expedition for this purpose in
+1664. They reached a point where the glaciers fell off into a valley so
+deep that they could not see whether there were meadows at the bottom or
+not, and the slope was so rapid that it was impossible to descend.]
+
+[Footnote 110: _Voyage en Islande; Atlas Historique_; t. ii., pl.
+130-133.]
+
+[Footnote 111: _Iceland: its Scenes and Sagas_: pp. 97, 98.]
+
+[Footnote 112: Page 113.]
+
+[Footnote 113: _Russia and the Ural Mountains_, i. 186, sqq.]
+
+[Footnote 114: See the Papers read before the Geological Society of
+London, on March 9, 1842, by Sir John Herschel and Sir E. Murchison, the
+substance of which has been given above.
+
+See also the _Edinburgh Philosophical Journal_ for 1843 (xxxv. 191), for
+an attempt by Dr. Hope to explain the phenomena of this cave by a
+reference to the slow penetration of the winter and summer waves of cold
+and heat. Dr. Hope believes that, although the external changes do not
+travel to any great depth, they reach far enough to communicate with
+some of the fissures leading to the cave.]
+
+[Footnote 115: _Voyages_ (French translation); Paris, 1788; i. 364.]
+
+[Footnote 116: In the gypsum to the NE. of Kungur, on the banks of the
+Iren, there is a cave containing ice. Four of its chambers have ice, in
+one of which a stalagmite of ice rises almost to the roof. The farthest
+chamber, 625 fathoms from the entrance, contains a lake of water which
+stretches away out of sight under the low roof. (_Taschenbuch für die
+gesammte Mineralogie_; Leonhard, 1826; B. 2, S. 425. Published as
+_Zeitschrift für Mineralogie_.)]
+
+[Footnote 117: Pallas, _Voyages_, i. 84.]
+
+[Footnote 118: _Teneriffe_, by Professor Smyth, ch. viii., and Humboldt,
+_Voyage aux Régions Équinoctiales_; Paris, 1814; i. 124.]
+
+[Footnote 119: They afterwards discovered smoke issuing from the centre
+of this patch of stones; so that volcanic heat may possibly have had
+something to do with the disappearance of the snow.]
+
+[Footnote 120: '_Ce petit glacier souterrain_,' Humboldt, l.c.]
+
+[Footnote 121: See p. 272 for an account of the underground glacier in
+the neighbourhood of the Casa Inglese.]
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+BRIEF NOTICES OF OTHER ICE-CAVES.[122]
+
+
+On the Brandstein in Styria, in the district of Gems, there is an
+ice-hole closely resembling some of the glacières of the Jura. It is
+described by Sartori,[123] as lying in a much-fissured region, reached
+after four hours of steep ascent from the neighbouring village, through
+a forest of fir. Some of the fissures contain water and some snow,
+while others are apparently unfathomable. From one of the largest of
+these, a strong and cold current blows in summer, and in this fissure is
+the ice-hole. Sartori found _crimpons_ necessary for descending the
+frozen snow which led from the entrance to the floor of the cave, where
+he discovered pillars and capitals and pyramids of ice of every possible
+shape and variety, as if the cave had contained the ruins of a Gothic
+church, or a fairy palace. At the farther end, after passing large
+cascades of ice, his party reached a dark grey hole, which lighted up
+into blue and green under the influence of the torches; they could not
+discover the termination of this hole, and the stones which they rolled
+down into it seemed to go on for ever. The greatest height of the cave
+is about 36 feet, and its length 192 feet, with a maximum breadth of 126
+feet. Towards the end of autumn, the temperature of the ice-hole rises
+so much, that the glacial decorations disappear, and various wild
+animals are driven by the cold of winter to take shelter in the
+comparative warmth of the cave. The elevation of the district in which
+this ice-hole occurs is about 1,800 German feet above the sea.
+
+In Upper Styria, where the Frauenmauer overlooks the basin in which the
+mining town of Eisenerz is situated, an ice-cave has been explored, and
+a description of it has been given by certain members of the Austrian
+Alpine Club.[124] The Brandstein is spoken of as one of the peaks in the
+immediate neighbourhood; and as the cave previously described is stated
+by Sartori to be on the Brandstein, that district would seem to be rich
+in glacières. The cavern is most easily explored from Eisenerz, and on
+that side the entrance is 4,539 Vienna feet above the sea. Its other
+outlet, in the Tragöss valley, is 300 feet higher. The total length of
+the cave is 2,040 Vienna feet. After passing the entrance, which is an
+archway from 12 to 18 feet high, the main course of the cave is soon
+left, and a branch is followed which leads to the _Eis-kammer_. This
+ice-chamber consists of a grotto from 30 to 40 fathoms long, decked with
+ice-crystals, pillars of ice, and cascades of the same material, the
+floor being composed of ice as smooth as glass. In the summer,
+pleasure-parties assemble in the cave and amuse themselves with the game
+of _Eisschiessen_, so popular in Upper Styria as a winter diversion. The
+hotter the summer, the more ice is found in the Eiskammer, and the
+general belief is that it all disappears in winter.
+
+The cave proper, which assumes stupendous dimensions in its long course,
+shows no ice. It seems to be formed in the Muschelkalk of the Trias
+formation, and so far no limestone stalactites have been discovered. It
+has not, however, as yet been fully explored. The editor of the
+proceedings of the Austrian Alpine Club gives a reference to Scheiner,
+'_Ausflug nach der Höhle der Frauenmauer,' (Steiermarkische Zeitschrift,
+neue Folge_, i. 2, 1834, p. 3.)
+
+At Latzenberg, near Weissenstein in Carniola, there is another ice-cave,
+described by Rosenmüller.[125] It is entered by a long dark passage in
+which are pillars of ice arranged like the pipes of an organ, varying
+from the thickness of a man's body to the size of a straw. All these are
+said to melt in winter. Farther on are two other passages, one of which
+passes upwards over _Stufe_, and is coated in summer with ice; the other
+has not been explored.
+
+Near Glaneck in the Untersberg, not far from Salzburg, is a cave called
+the Kolowrathöhle, of which a description is given by Gümbel in his
+great geological work on the Bavarian Alps.[126] It is a spacious
+cavern, opening in a steep wall of rock above the _Rositenschlucht_
+between the Platten and _Dachstein-kalk._[127] An ice-current rushes
+from within, and ice is found on the threshold, becoming more prevalent
+in the farther recesses of the cave. The lower parts are tolerably
+roomy, and masses of ice of various shapes are found piled one upon
+another, lighting up with magical effect when torches are brought to
+bear upon them. Gümbel believes that the cold currents which stream into
+the cave from the numerous fissures in its walls are the cause of the
+ice; and though this is the only known ice-cave far and near, he
+imagines that the icy-currents which are frequently met with in that
+district, and in the _Hochgebirge_, would be found to proceed in reality
+from like caves, if the fissures from which they blow could be
+penetrated.
+
+Behrens[128] describes two ice-caves near Questenberg, in the county of
+Stollberg, on the Harz mountains. They both occur in limestone, and are
+known as the Great and Little Ice-holes. The one is close to the village
+of Questenberg, and consists of a chasm several fathoms deep, so cold
+that in summer the water trickling down its edges is frozen into long
+icicles. The opening is large and faces due south, and yet the hotter
+the day the more ice is found; whereas in winter a warm steam comes out,
+as if from a stove. The other cave is farther into the mountain; it is
+spacious and light, and very cold in summer.
+
+In Gehler's _Physik. Wörterbuch_ (Art Höhle), a small hole is mentioned
+near Dôle, which is said to be remarkable for the large and
+curiously-shaped icicles found there; but no sufficient account of it
+seems to have been given.
+
+An ice-hole is also spoken of in the same article, which occurs on the
+east side of the town of Vesoul.[129] The hole is described as being
+small, with a little rivulet of water: this water, and also that which
+trickles down the walls of the cave, is converted into ice, and so much
+is formed on a cold day that it requires eight warm days to melt it.
+Gollut, in his description of the _fré-puits_ of Vesoul,[130] observes
+that the remarkable pit known by that name was so cold, that in his time
+it had never been fully explored. Gehler's expression, however, 'a small
+hole,' cannot possibly apply to the _fré-puits_; so that these would
+seem to be two different examples of cold caves near Vesoul.
+
+There is an interesting account in Poggendorff's Annalen[131] of a visit
+made by Professor A. Pleischl to a mountain in the circle of Leitmeritz,
+where ice is found in summer under very curious circumstances. The
+mountain is called Pleschiwetz, and lies above Kameik, in Bohemia, not
+far from the town of Leitmeritz. On the 24th of June in each year, large
+numbers of pilgrims assemble at the romantic chapel of S. John the
+Baptist in the Wilderness; and it is a part of their occupation to
+search for ice under the basaltic rocks, and carry it home wrapped in
+moss, as a proof that they have really made the pilgrimage. Professor
+Pleischl visited this district at the end of May 1834. The weather was
+hot for the season, as had been the case in April also, and there had
+been very little snow in the winter. A path leads from the chapel of S.
+John through the woods which deck the Pleschiwetz, and then over a small
+plain to the foot of the basaltic rocks. Here the mountain slopes away
+very steeply to the south, and the slope is thickly strewn with basaltic
+_débris_. From east to west this slope measures about 40 fathoms, and
+its length is about 70 fathoms. It is surrounded on both sides and at
+the foot by trees and shrubs. The sun burned so directly on to the
+_débris_, that the basaltic blocks were in some cases too hot to be
+touched by the naked hand.
+
+Professor Pleischl spent three hours of the early afternoon on this
+spot. The upper surface of the basaltic blocks had a temperature of at
+least 122° F. The presence of an icy current was detected by inserting
+the hand into the lower crevices; and on removing the loose stones to a
+depth of 1-1/2 or 2 feet, ice was found in considerable quantities. On
+the 27th of August, he proceeded to make a further investigation of this
+phenomenon; but he found the temperature of the blocks only 106° F., and
+in the crevices, at a depth of 2 or 3 feet, the lowest temperature
+reached was 38°·75 F. The external temperature in the shade was at the
+same time 83° F.
+
+A third visit, in January 1835, gave no results; but on January 21,
+1838, the Professor succeeded in determining some very remarkable
+facts. A depression in the sloping plain is called, _par excellence_,
+the ice-hole; and this is surrounded by firs and birches, which grow
+within three or four fathoms of the edge of the hole, so that the
+rays of the sun do not reach the hole in winter. Fresh snow lay on
+these trees; and there was nowhere any sign of melted snow, or of the
+formation of icicles. The basaltic _débris_, in which ice had been
+found in the summer, covers here a space of 5 fathoms long by 3 or 4
+broad, immediately at the foot of a steep basaltic precipice. At
+eleven in the morning the temperature was 14° F. in the shade; and
+snow lay all round the ice-hole, to a thickness of 1-1/2 or 2 feet.
+The snow which covered the _débris_ was pierced by holes, which could
+not have been caused by the sun, for its rays did not penetrate the
+trees; and, indeed, no sun had been visible for some days. These holes
+were generally turned towards the north, and were like chimneys. On
+investigation, it was found that icicles hung down into them, showing,
+of course, past or present thaw, and within the cavities no ice was
+found. The thermometer gave here from 27°·5 F. to 25°·15 F.; but in
+the crevices, into which the thermometer could not be pushed, the hand
+discovered a warm air. The moss drawn from these crevices was found to
+be steeped in unfrozen water, and it froze promptly when brought into
+the outer air.
+
+The party afterwards climbed up the precipitous basalt, and reached, at
+3 P.M., a level covered with large blocks of the same material, where
+the thermometer was slightly under 12° F. in the shade. The blocks were
+for the most part stripped of snow, and in some cases thin shields of
+ice were observed standing out two or three inches from them, forming
+hollow chambers, in which an agreeable warmth was found. These shields
+were invariably on the south side of the stones, the north side being
+free from ice and snow alike. In some places vapours were seen to rise.
+The thermometer gave 41° F. at a depth of six inches among the stones,
+though the external temperature, as has been said, was 12° F. For eight
+days previously, the thermometer had been always far below the freezing
+point, and on the 17th (four days before) had been 13° below zero (F.).
+On the 19th and 20th heavy snow had fallen. All these facts seem to show
+that the warmth which had caused the chimneys in the snow over the
+ice-holes, and the heated vapours on the higher parts of the mountains,
+proceeded from within, and not from without.
+
+The people of the district assured Professor Pleischl that the hotter
+the summer, the more ice is formed; and that it disappears when the
+nights become long and the days short. Dr. Weiss, for six years head of
+the Gymnasium of Leitmeritz, stated that when one of the holes was
+emptied of ice in the summer, it filled again in a few days. The
+explanation given by the Professor of this phenomenon is, that the
+blocks of basalt, that being an excellent conductor of heat, pass so
+much warmth through to their under surfaces--which form the roof of
+small chambers filled with a spongy mass of decaying leaves--that the
+rapid evaporation thereby caused produces the cold air and the ice. He
+omits to explain why there should be anything exceptional in the winter
+phenomenon of the crevices among the stones.
+
+There are two other places in Bohemia where ice is found in summer. One
+is on the Steinberg, in the county of Konaged;[132] it is a small basin,
+surrounded by trees, where, in the middle of summer, lumps of ice are
+found under basaltic _débris_. This ice is only formed, according to
+Sommer, in the hottest part of the year. The other is on the
+Zinkenstein, one of the highest points of the Vierzehnberg, in the
+circle of Leitmeritz. It is described by Sommer[133] as a cleft, five
+fathoms deep, in the basaltic rock, where ice is found in the hottest
+seasons. Professor Pleischl put this assertion to the test by visiting
+the spot in the end of August, when he found no signs of ice.
+
+Another writer in Poggendorff[134] describes a somewhat similar
+appearance on the Saalberg. Here ice is found on the surface from June
+to the middle of August; and that, too, with a west exposure and in
+moderate shade. In July, the ice was so abundant that it could be seen
+from some distance: it was half a foot thick, and yielded neither to sun
+nor rain. In the middle of August there was no ice on the surface; but
+when the loose _débris_ was removed, the most beautiful ice appeared,
+and at a little depth all was frozen as hard as if it had been the depth
+of winter.[135] The people who work in the neighbourhood declare that
+the place remains open, and free from ice or snow, in the greatest cold,
+and that no ice begins to form till the month of June. When the writer
+of the account in Poggendorff visited the ice-hole, the peasants were in
+the habit of carrying large masses of ice down to their houses, through
+a temperature of 81° F.
+
+Reich[136] gives a detailed and valuable account of the prevalence of
+subterranean ice on the Sauberg, a hill which forms one side of a ravine
+near Ehrenfriedersdorf. The surface is about 2,000 feet above the sea,
+and its mean temperature, as determined by many careful observations,
+about 45° F. There are several tin-mines in this district, and the
+extended observations made by the authorities establish the curious fact
+that the mean temperature is considerably lower beneath than at the
+surface. For instance, in the S. Christoph pit, it is found that the
+mean temperature, at 15 fathoms below the surface, is only slightly
+above 42° F.; while at the Morgenröther cross-cut the same mean
+temperature is found at a depth of 46 fathoms. The annual change of
+temperature is very small in these mines, and the maximum and minimum
+are reached very late; so that, if a point could be found with a mean
+temperature of 32° F., ice would increase there up to June or even July,
+and then diminish until December or January; in which case the
+phenomenon so often said to be observed in connection with subterranean
+ice--the melting in winter and forming in summer--would really be
+presented.
+
+The ice on the Sauberg is frequently found to commence at a depth of 3
+or 4 fathoms, and in the years 1811 and 1813 it extended to 24 fathoms
+below the surface: this depth, however, was exceptionally great, and as
+a rule the limit is reached at about 14 fathoms.[137] The ice is usually
+not very firm, and can be broken by stout blows with a stick; but
+between the years 1790 and 1800, when it was found at a depth of from 3
+to 9 fathoms, it was so hard that blasting became necessary, and at that
+time the miners were with difficulty protected from the effects of the
+severe cold. The greatest quantity of ice is found in the interstices of
+the rubbish-beds of old workings, and here it assumes a crystalline
+form, the rocks being covered with a 'fibrous' structure, arranged
+perpendicularly to their surface.
+
+Reich reports the universal presence of cold currents of air in these
+shafts and mines, and, in consequence, takes the opportunity of
+contradicting a statement in Horner's _Physik. Wörterbuch,_[138] that
+the absence of all current of air is essential to the formation of
+subterranean ice. He quotes the case of the cheese-caves of Roquefort as
+a further confirmation of his own observations with regard to the
+connection between ice in caves and cold currents of air; but of the
+many accounts which I have met with of the curious caves referred to,
+both in books and from the lips of those who have visited them, not one
+has made any mention of ice.[139] He states, too, that when the strength
+of the current is diminished, its temperature is increased; a fact which
+all observations of the cold currents in caves, especially those made
+with so much care by M. Saussure, abundantly establish.
+
+In the way of explanation, Reich mentions the possibility of rocks of
+peculiar formation possessing actually a low degree of temperature;[140]
+but he rejects this suggestion, preferring to believe that in some cases
+the cold resulting from evaporation is the cause of ice, and in others
+the greater specific gravity of cold as compared with warmer air.
+
+In the _Bulletin des Sciences Naturelles_,[141] it is stated that a
+large quantity of ice is found in one of the recesses of the grotto of
+Antiparos--a fact which I have not seen mentioned elsewhere. After
+penetrating a long way through difficult fissures, a square chamber is
+at length reached, measuring 300 feet in length and breadth, with a
+height of about 80 feet. The walls and roof and floor are beautifully
+decorated with ice, and reflect all the colours of the rainbow. There
+are groups of pyramidal and round columns, and in some parts of the cave
+screens or curtains of ice 10 or 12 feet broad hang down to the floor.
+
+In a later volume of the same periodical,[142] there is a description of
+a hill in Virginia where ice is found in summer. This hill lies near the
+road between Winchester and Romney, on the North River, latitude 39º N.
+One side of the hill is entirely composed of loose stones from ten to
+twenty pounds in weight, and under these the ice is found, although
+their upper surface is exposed to the full sun from 9 or 10 A.M. till
+sunset. In all seasons there is an abundance of ice. A writer in the
+'London and Paris Observer'[143] visited the spot on the 4th of July,
+after a time of stifling heat, and in ten minutes he found more ice than
+the whole party could have carried away. He did not explore any farther
+than the foot of the hill; but the neighbours, who used the ice
+regularly in summer, assured him that it was to be found high up also.
+A constant and strong current issued from the crevices, stronger and
+infinitely colder than the current in the famous 'blowing cave' of
+Virginia. A man had built a store-room for meat within the influence of
+one of these currents, and hard dry icicles were seen hanging from the
+wooden supports inside: the flies, too, which had been attracted by the
+meat, were found frozen on to the stones. This is not the only district
+where ice is found within temperate latitudes in North America. In
+Professor Silliman's 'American Journal of Science,'[144] in a sketch of
+the geology of the township of Salisbury, Con. (latitude 43° N.),
+'natural ice-houses' are mentioned. These consist of chasms of
+considerable extent in the mica-state, where ice and snow remain during
+the greater part of the year. The principal of these chasms lies in the
+east part of the town, and is several hundred feet long, sixty feet
+deep, and about forty wide. The slate is of a very compact kind; and the
+walls are perpendicular, and correspond with much exactness. At the
+bottom is a cold spring, and a cave of considerable extent, in which it
+is probable that the ice lies--for the writer does not specify the
+position in which it is found. The chasm is a favourite retreat in
+summer, and is called the Wolf-hollow, from its having formerly been a
+famous haunt for wolves.
+
+Similar receptacles for summer-ice are found in several places in North
+America. In the forty-ninth volume of the _Sitzungsberichte der Kaiserl.
+Akademie in Wien_ (1te. Abth.), a list of references to various
+ice-holes is appended to a paper by Dr. Boué on the geology of Servia.
+Many of the passages referred to have nothing to do with ice-caves, as,
+for instance, the sections of De Saussure's book describing his
+observations of 'cold caves', or the account of the mass of ice and
+snow from which the river Jumna springs, for which Dr. Boué refers to
+the 'Philosophical Magazine' for November 1823, meaning, in fact, the
+'London Magazine'. The 'Description des Glacières' of M. Bourrit is also
+given as a part of the literature on ice-caves; whereas (see the account
+of the Glacière of Montarquis, in the Valley of Reposoir) by 'glacière'
+M. Bourrit meant only a locality where ice is to be found, or a glacier
+district. Dr. Boué, however, gives some references to the 'American
+Journal of Science' which it is possible to make out by a careful search
+in the neighbourhood of the volume and page he mentions. In vol. iv.
+(1822,--Dr. Boué says 1821) there is an account by the editor[145] of a
+natural ice-house in the township of Meriden, Con., between Hartford and
+Newhaven, at an elevation of not more than 200 feet above the level of
+the sea. The ice is found in a narrow defile, which is hemmed in by
+perpendicular sides of trap-rock, and displays a perfect chaos of fallen
+blocks of stone. The defile is so narrow, that the sun's rays only reach
+it for an hour in the course of the day; and even the trees and rocks,
+and beds of leaves, protect the ice from any very material damage. Dr.
+Silliman visited this defile on the 23rd July, 1821,[146] with Dr. Isaac
+Hough, the keeper of a neighbouring inn, and found that the ice was only
+partially visible, in consequence of the large collection of leaves
+which lay on it: they sent a boy down with a hatchet, and he brought up
+some large firm masses, one of which, weighing several pounds, they
+carried twenty miles to Newhaven, where it did not entirely disappear
+till the morning of the third day. Seven miles from Newhaven, in the
+township of Branford, there is a similar collection of ice. In both of
+these cases, the ice is mixed with a considerable quantity of leaves and
+dirt.
+
+In the same volume (p. 331,--Dr. Boué says p. 33), two accounts are
+given of a natural ice-house near the summit of a hill in the
+neighbourhood of Williamstown (Mass.). In the next volume there is a
+further account of it by Professor Dewey, stating that since the trees
+in the neighbourhood had been cut, the snow and ice had disappeared
+each year about the first of August.
+
+In vol. xlvi. (p. 331) an ice mountain in Wallingford, Rutland County
+(Vt.), is described, which is ordinarily known in the neighbourhood as
+the ice-bed. An area of thirty or fifty acres of ground is covered with
+massive _débris_ of grey quartz from the mountains which overhang it;
+and here--especially in a deep ravine into which many of the falling
+blocks of stone have penetrated--ice is found in large quantities. It
+appears to be formed during the melting of the snow in February, March,
+and April, and vanishes in the course of the summer, in hot years as
+early as the last days of June.
+
+These descriptions call to mind the Glacière of Arc-sous-Cicon, in which
+many of the features of the American ice-caves are reproduced. An
+American photograph is current in this country, in the form of a
+stereoscopic slide, representing an ice-cave in the White Mountains, New
+Hampshire; but it is only a winter cave, and in no way resembles any of
+the glacières I have seen. It is merely a collection of long and slender
+icicles, with beds of ice formed upon stones and trunks of trees on the
+ground; nothing more, in fact, than is to be seen in any tolerably
+severe winter in the neighbourhood of a cascade in a sheltered Scotch
+burn.
+
+The 'American Journal of Science' (xxxvi. 184) gives a curious instance
+of a freezing-well near the village of Owego, three-quarters of a mile
+from the Susquehanna river. The depth of the well is 77 feet, and for
+four or five months in the year the surface of the water is frozen so
+hard as to render the well useless. Large masses of ice have been found
+in it late in July. A thermometer, which stood at 68° in the sun, fell
+to 30° in fifteen minutes at the bottom of the well; and the men who
+made the well were forced to put on thick clothing in June, and even so
+could not work for more than two hours at a time. No other well in that
+neighbourhood presents the same phenomenon. A lighted candle was let
+down, and the flame became agitated and thrown in one direction at a
+depth of 30 feet, but was quite still at the bottom; where, however, it
+soon died out. The water is hard or limestone water.
+
+Rocks of volcanic formation would seem to afford favourable
+opportunities for the formation of ice. Scrope mentions this fact in an
+account of the curious district called Eiffel or Eifel, in Rhenish
+Prussia, which was published originally in the 'Edinburgh Journal of
+Science,'[147] and has since been translated in Keferstein's
+Deutschland.[148] The village of Roth, near Andernach, is built on a
+current of basalt, derived from the cone above it, which has at some
+time sent down a stream of lava to the north and west. A small cavern
+near the village, forming the mouth of a deep fissure in the
+lava-stream, half-way up the cone, displays a phenomenon which the
+writer says he has often observed in volcanic formations. The floor of
+the cavern was covered with a crust of ice at the time of his visit,
+about noon on a very hot day in August. The peasants report that there
+is always ice in summer, and never in winter, when the sheep retreat to
+the cave on account of its warmth. Steininger[149] found a thickness of
+3 feet of ice on September 19, 1818, but it was evidently in a melting
+state, and the thermometer stood at 36·5 F. in the cavern. He describes
+it as possessing a narrow entrance facing north, entirely sheltered from
+the sun by lava-rocks, and by the trees of a wood which covers the cone
+of scoria.
+
+Scrope believes that this is the mouth of one of the arched galleries so
+frequently met with under lava in Iceland, Bourbon, and elsewhere; and
+on this he founds his explanation of the phenomenon. If the other
+extremity is connected with the external air at a much lower level, a
+current of air must be constantly driven up this gallery, and in its
+passage will be dried by the absorbent nature of the rock--which is
+perhaps partly owing to the sulphuric or muriatic acid it
+contains[150]--and the evaporation caused by this current produces a
+coating of ice on the floor of the grotto, where there is a superficial
+rill of water. The more rarified the lower external air, the more rapid
+will be the current of cool air; and, therefore, the greater the
+evaporation. The winter phenomenon is to be explained by the fact that
+the current of air will be about the mean annual temperature of the
+district, taking its temperature, in fact, from the rocks through which
+it passes; and, therefore, by contrast the grotto will appear warm.
+
+The same writer mentions a similar example of summer ice in
+Auvergne.[151] There is a natural grotto in the basalt near Pont Gibaud,
+some miles to the north-west of Clermont, in which a small spring is
+found partly frozen during the greatest heats of summer, while the water
+is said to be warm in winter; probably, Scrope observes, only seeming to
+be warm by contrast with the external temperature. The water is
+apparently frozen by means of the powerful evaporation produced by a
+current of very dry air proceeding from some long fissures or arched
+galleries which communicate with the cave. In this case also the writer
+suggests that the air owes its dryness to the absorbent qualities of the
+lava through which it passes: he repeats, too, the remark that the
+phenomenon is of common occurrence in caverns in volcanic
+districts.[152]
+
+There is a remarkable instance of ice occurring under lava, near the
+_Casa Inglese_ on Mount Etna, which it may be as well to mention, though
+the causes of its existence have probably nothing in common with the
+phenomena of ice-caves, or summer ice. An account of it is to be found
+in Sir Charles Lyell's 'Elements of Geology.'[153] It appears that the
+summer and autumn of 1828 were so hot, that the artificial ice-houses of
+Catania and the adjoining parts of Sicily failed. Signer M. Gemmellaro
+had long believed that a small mass of perennial ice at the foot of the
+highest cone of Etna was only a part of a large and continuous glacier
+covered by a lava current, and from this he expected to derive an
+abundant supply of ice. He procured a large body of workmen, and
+quarried into the ice; but though he thus proved the superposition of
+lava for several hundred yards, the ice was so hard, and the expense of
+quarrying consequently so great, that the works were abandoned. This was
+on the south-east of the cone, not far from the _Casa Inglese_. Sir
+Charles Lyell suggests that, probably, at the commencement of some
+eruption, a large mass of snow has been thickly covered with volcanic
+sand, showered upon it before the arrival of the lava itself. This sand
+is a non-conductor of heat, and would therefore tend to preserve the
+snow from complete fusion when the hot lava-stream passed over it, and
+thus the existence of the underground glacier may be explained. The
+peasants of the district are so well acquainted with the non-conducting
+properties of volcanic sand, that they secure an annual store of snow,
+for providing water in summer, by strewing a layer of sand a few inches
+thick upon a field of snow, thus effectually shutting out the heat of
+the sun. It is curious that when De Saussure visited Chamouni for the
+first time, his attention was arrested by the sight of women sowing what
+seemed to be grain of some kind in the snow; but, on enquiring, he found
+that it was only black earth, which the inhabitants spread on the snow
+in spring, in order to make it disappear sooner. He was told that snow
+thus treated would melt a fortnight or three weeks before the ordinary
+time for its disappearance in the valley; but it will be seen that this
+does not contradict the theory of the Sicilian peasants.[154]
+
+Sir Charles Lyell adds that, after what he saw on Mount Etna, he should
+not be surprised to find layers of glacier and lava alternating in some
+parts of Iceland.
+
+Something similar was observed by Von Kotzebue, near the sound which
+bears his name.[155] His party was encamped on a large plain covered
+with moss and grass, when they discovered a fissure which revealed the
+fact that the moss and grass were but a thin coating on a layer of ice a
+hundred feet thick. This was not mere frozen ground, but aboriginal ice;
+for, in the ice which formed the walls of the fissure, they found the
+bones and teeth of mammoths embedded.
+
+The frozen soil of Jakutsk, in Siberia, has for many years attracted
+considerable attention. The ordinary law of increase of temperature in
+descending below the surface of the earth would appear, however, to be
+only modified here; for it is found in sinking a well which has
+afforded opportunities for observing the state of the soil, that the
+temperature gradually increases with the depth.[156]
+
+Two ice-caverns were examined by Georgi, in the course of his travels in
+Russia.[157] One occurs near the mines of Lurgikan, on the east side of
+a hill about 450 feet high, not far from the confluence of the Lurgikan
+stream with the Schilka (a tributary of the Amur), in the province of
+Nertschinsk. In the course of driving an adit in one of the lead-mines,
+in the year 1770, the workmen were struck by the hollow sound given
+forth by the rock, and, on investigation, they found an immense grotto
+or fissure, of which the entrance was so much blocked up by ice that
+they had much difficulty in sliding down by means of ropes. The fissure
+extended under the hill, in a direction from north to south, and was 130
+fathoms long, from 1 to 8 broad, and from 3 to 12 high. Where it
+approached nearest the surface, the thickness of the roof was about 10
+fathoms. The rock is described by Georgi as _quarzig, bräunlich, und von
+einem starken Kalkschuss_. He found the greater part of the walls
+covered with ice, and many pillars and pyramids of ice on the floor. The
+cold was moderate, and was said to be much the same in summer and
+winter. Patrin has given a fuller description of the same cavern in the
+_Journalde Physique_.[158] The lead-mine is in limestone rock,
+containing a third part of clay. The entrance to the glacière was still
+difficult at the time of his visit, and it was necessary to use a rope,
+and also to cut steps, for the descent was made along a ridge of ice
+with almost perpendicular sides. The spectacle presented by the
+decoration of the roof was remarkably beautiful, long festoons and tufts
+of ice hanging down, light and brilliant as silver gauze: this ice was
+supposed to be formed from the abundant vapours of the beginning of
+winter, and resembled glass blown to the utmost tenuity. It was
+crystallised, too, in a wonderful manner. Patrin found long bundles of
+hexahedral tubes, the walls of which were formed of transverse needles:
+the diameter of these tubes was from two to six lines only, but at the
+lower extremities they opened out into hollow six-sided pyramids, more
+than an inch in diameter, so that the festoons, sometimes as large round
+as a man, presented terminal tufts of some feet in diameter, which
+glittered like diamonds under the influence of the torches. Towards the
+farther end of the fissure, stalactites of solid ice were found,
+displaying all the forms and more than all the beauty of limestone
+stalactites. The other instance mentioned by Georgi occurred in the
+mines of Serentvi, where two of the levels yielded perennial ice, and
+were thence (Georgi says) called _Ledenoi_. A spring of water flowed
+from the rock at a depth of thirty fathoms below the surface, and was
+promptly frozen into a coating of ice a foot thick. Patrin[159] visited
+Serentvi, but he did not observe any ice in the mines. He believed the
+rock to be very ancient lava.
+
+Reich[160] mentions a cavern on Mount Sorano which contains ice, quoting
+Kircher;[161] but he seems to have misinterpreted his author's
+Latin.[162] He also refers to the existence of ice in the mines of
+Herrengrund in Hungary, and Dannemora in Sweden. Kircher, who has the
+credit of having been the first to call attention to the increase of
+temperature in the earth, made full enquiries into the temperature of
+the mines at Herrengrund, but he was not informed of the existence of
+ice.[163]; Townson visited these mines in the course of his travels in
+Hungary, and neither does he make any mention of ice in connection with
+them. He describes them as lying south of Teplitz, in a limestone
+district, with sandstone in the more immediate neighbourhood. The mines
+themselves (copper mines) are in a kind of mica-schist, which the people
+call granite. The superintendent of mines informed Reich that one of the
+shafts is called the ice-mine, from the fact that when the workmen
+attempted to drive a gallery from south to north, they came upon ice
+filling up the interstices of the _Haldenstein_, within five fathoms of
+the commencement of the gallery. The temperature was so low, and the
+expense caused by the frozen mass so great, that the working was
+stopped.
+
+The iron mines of Dannemora, eleven leagues from Upsal, contain a large
+quantity of ice, according to a manuscript account by Mr.
+Over-assessor-of-the-board-of-mines Winkler:[164] Jars, however, in his
+_Voyages Métallurgiques_,[165] gives a full description of them without
+mentioning the existence of ice. He states that ice is found in the
+mines of Nordmarck, three leagues from Philipstadt in Wermeland, a
+province of Sweden: these mines are merely numerous shafts sunk in the
+earth, reaching to the bottom of the vein of ore, so that they are fully
+exposed to the light, and yet the walls of the shafts become covered
+with ice at the end of winter, which remains there till the middle of
+September. Jars believed that, if it were not for the heat caused by
+blasting, and by the presence of the workmen, the ice would be
+perennial. Humboldt[166] speaks of the ice in these mines and on the
+Sauberg. Reich states that ice is found in the mill-stone quarry of
+Nieder-Mendig, quoting Karsten's _Archiv für Bergbau_.[167] The ice is
+found in the hottest days of summer, although the interior of the quarry
+is connected with the outer air by many side shafts. The porous nature
+of the stone is assigned as the cause of the phenomenon. Daubeny (On
+Volcanoes) describes the remarkable basaltic deposits at
+Niedermennig--as he spells it--but says nothing of the existence of ice.
+
+Daubuisson[168] speaks of a _Schneegrube_, on a summit of the
+_Riesengebirge_, in Silesia, 4,000 feet above the sea; but such holes
+are common enough at that elevation, and I have seen two or three
+remarkable instances on the Jura, within the compass of one day's walk.
+Voigt[169] describes an _Eisgrube_ in the Rhöngebirge, on the
+_Ringmauer_, the highest point of the _Tagstein_, where abundant ice is
+found in summer under irregular masses of columnar basalt. Reich had
+received from a forest-inspector an account of an ice-hole in this
+neighbourhood, called _Umpfen_, which is apparently not the same as that
+mentioned by Voigt.
+
+In the Saxon Erzgebirge there are three points remarkable for their low
+temperature,[170] in addition to the mines on the Sauberg mentioned
+above. These are the _Heinrichssohle_, in the Stockwerk at Altenberg,
+where the mean of two years' observations gives the temperature 0°·54 F.
+lower at a depth of 400 feet than at the surface; the adit of
+_Henneberg_, on the Ingelbach, near Johanngeorgenstadt, where the
+temperature was again 0°·54 F. lower than in shafts some hundred feet
+higher; and the _Weiss Adler_ adit, on the left declivity of the valley
+of the Schwarzwasser, above the Antonshütte. It would appear that there
+are local causes which affect the temperature in the Erzgebirge, for
+Reich found that in several places the mean temperature of the soil was
+higher than that of the air: for instance--
+
+                         Soil.         Air.     Height above the sea.
+
+  Altenberg       ...   42·732° Fahr.  41·27°     2,450 feet
+  Markus Röhling  ...   43·542° "      41·832°    1,870"
+  Johanngeorgenstadt.   43·115° "      41·09°     2,460"
+
+The temperature at Markus Röhling is peculiarly anomalous, considering
+the elevation of the surface above the sea.
+
+There is said to be an ice-cave in Nassau, but I have been unable to
+obtain any account of it, unless it be the same as the _ice-field_
+mentioned on page 303.
+
+There is a cave in the south-east of Hungary[171] which presents the
+same features as several of the glacières I have visited. It is called
+the Ice-hole of Scherisciora, and is described as lying in the
+Jura-kalk, at a distance of 2-1/2 hours north-east from the
+forest-house of Distidiul. The approach is by ladders, down a pit 30
+fathoms wide and 24 deep; and when the bottom of this pit is reached,
+an entrance is found to the cave in the north wall, in the
+neighbourhood of which is congealed snow which shortly becomes ice.
+The floor of the first chamber is composed of glacier-ice, separated
+from the side walls by a cleft from 1 to 3 feet wide, where it shows a
+depth of from 4 to 6 feet; it is as smooth as glass, and about 6
+fathoms from the entrance a cone of ice stands upon it, 8 or 9 feet
+high. Both the floor and the cone are at once seen to be transformed
+remains of ancient masses of snow, and are of a dirty yellow colour.
+
+At the back of this chamber, a narrow passage opens towards the interior
+of the mountain, and winds steeply down with a height of 4 feet, and a
+length of a few fathoms, till a magnificent dome is reached, on the
+beauties of which Herr Peters becomes eloquent. The floor is so smooth
+that crimpons are necessary, and stalagmites and stalactites of ice are
+found in rich profusion, the latter being generally formed on small
+limestone stalactites, while the former have no such nucleus.
+
+There is another opening near the original entrance to the cave, a sort
+of fissure covered with elegant forms of ice, leading to a steep shaft.
+The imperial forester of Topfanalva was bold enough to let himself down
+the slope of ice which formed the edge of the shaft, on a rope ladder 60
+feet long, notwithstanding the difficulty of grasping the iron steps
+which of course lay pressed on to the ice; but when he had descended
+about 30 feet, the shaft became perpendicular, and stones thrown in
+showed a very considerable depth. There appeared to be no sound of water
+in the abyss below.
+
+Both entrances, that to the shaft as well as that to the second chamber,
+were ornamented with delicate ice crystals, which occurred both on the
+limestone stalactites and on the walls, and presented almost the
+appearance of plants of cauliflower. The ice-floor of the first chamber
+is described as consisting of a 'coarse-grained' material.
+
+In the south-east of Servia, on the western slope of Mount Rtagn, is a
+pit 20 feet in diameter, and 40 or 50 feet deep, the bottom of which is
+reached by a succession of trunks of trees with the branches lopped off,
+a sort of ladder called _stouba_ by the natives.[172] The peasants
+assert that the snow and ice disappear from this pit in September, and
+do not reappear before June. The Swiss peasants have never yet got so
+far as to say that the _snow_ in their pits disappears in winter and
+returns in summer. Boué[173] found the temperature of the bottom of the
+pit to be 28°.4 F., while that of the air outside was 76° F. The same
+writer[174] mentions a source in a mill-stone quarry in Bosnia which is
+frozen till the end of June.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 122: Several of these caves are referred to by Reich,
+_Beobachtungen über die Temperatur des Gesteins in verschiedenen Tiefen
+in den Gruben des Sächsischen Erzgebirges;_ Freiberg, 1834.]
+
+[Footnote 123: _Naturwunder des Oesterr. Kaiserthums_, iii. 40.]
+
+[Footnote 124: _Mittheil. des Oesterr. Alpen-Vereins_, ii. 441. I am
+indebted to G.C. Churchill, Esq., one of the authors of the well-known
+book on the Dolomite Mountains, for my knowledge of the existence of
+this cave, and of the Kolowrathöhle.]
+
+[Footnote 125: _Beschreibung merkwürdiger Höhlen_, ii. 283.]
+
+[Footnote 126: _Geognostísche Reschreibung des bayerischen
+Alpengebirges_; Gotha, 1861.]
+
+[Footnote 127: These constitute the upper bone bed and Dachstein
+limestone beds of the uppermost part of the Trias formation.]
+
+[Footnote 128: _Hereynia Curiosa_, cap. v. The same account is given in
+Behren's _Natural History of the Harz Forest_, of which an English
+translation was published in 1730.]
+
+[Footnote 129: See also Muncke, _Handbuch der Naturlehre_, iii. 277;
+Heidelberg, 1830.]
+
+[Footnote 130: See page 58. The more modern spelling is _frais-puits_.]
+
+[Footnote 131: liv. 292.]
+
+[Footnote 132: Described by Schaller, _Leitmeritzer Kreis_, p. 271, and
+by Sommer, in the same publication, p. 331. I have not been able to
+procure this book.]
+
+[Footnote 133: _Böhmens Topogr._, i. 339. This reference is given by
+Professor Pleischl.]
+
+[Footnote 134: _Annalen_, lxxxi. 579.]
+
+[Footnote 135: I was told, in 1864, by a chamois-hunter of Les Plans, a
+valley two hours above Bex, that some years before he was cutting a
+wood-road through the forest early in September, when, at a depth of 6
+inches below the surface, he found the ground frozen hard. We visited
+the place together, but could find no ice. The whole ground was composed
+of a mass of loose round stones, with a covering of earth and moss, and
+the air in the interstices was peculiarly cold and dry.]
+
+[Footnote 136: _Beobachtungen_, &c. (see note on p. 258), 181.]
+
+[Footnote 137: Reich found the temperature of the ice to be 31·982° F.,
+that of the air in the immediate vicinity 34·025°, and the rock, at a
+little distance, 32·765°.]
+
+[Footnote 138: iii. 150.]
+
+[Footnote 139: See many careful descriptions of these caves in the
+_Annales de Chimie_; also, an account by Professor Ansted, in his
+_Science, Scenery, and Art_, p. 29. M. Chaptal (_Ann. de Chimie_, iv.
+34) found the lowest temperature of the currents of cold air to be 36º·5
+F.; but M. Girou de Buzareingues _(Ann. de Chimie et de Phys_., xlv. 362)
+found that with a strong north wind, the temperature of the external air
+being 55º·4 F., the coldest current gave 35º·6 F.; with less external
+wind, still blowing from the north, the external air lost half a degree
+centigrade of heat, while the current in the cave rose to 38º·75 F. The
+cellars in which the famous cheese of Roquefort is ripened are not
+subterranean, but are buildings joined on to the rock at the mouths of
+the fissures whence the currents proceed. They are so valuable, that
+one, which cost 12,000 francs in construction, sold for 215,000 francs.
+The cheese of this district has had a great reputation from very early
+times. Pliny (_Hist. Nat_. xi. 97) mentions, with commendation, the
+cheeses of Lesura (_M. Lozère_ or _Losère_) and Gabalum (_Gevaudan,
+Javoux_). The idolaters of Gevaudan offered cheeses to demons by
+throwing them into a lake on the Mons Helanus _(Laz des Helles?_) and it
+was not till the year 550 that S. Hilary, Bishop of Mende, succeeded in
+putting a stop to this practice.]
+
+[Footnote 140: It would seem from his own account of the Sauberg, and
+from the description given above of the presence of ice among the rocky
+_débris_, as well as from the account on this page of ice in Virginia,
+that a formation of loose stones is favourable to the existence of a low
+degree of temperature. See also the note on p. 263, with respect to the
+loose stones near Les Plans. Forchhammer found, on the Faroë Islands,
+that springs which rise from loose stones are invariably colder than
+those which proceed from more solid rock at the same elevation, as
+indeed might have been expected.]
+
+[Footnote 141: xvii. 337. The account is taken from a Dutch journal.]
+
+[Footnote 142: xix. p. 124.]
+
+[Footnote 143: October 11, 1829.]
+
+[Footnote 144: viii. 254.]
+
+[Footnote 145: Pp. 174-6.]
+
+[Footnote 146: Thermometer about 85° F.]
+
+[Footnote 147: v. 154.]
+
+[Footnote 148: iv. 300.]
+
+[Footnote 149: _Die erlöschenen Vulkane in der Eifel_, S. 59.]
+
+[Footnote 150: Dr. Gmelin, of Tubingen, detected the presence of ammonia
+both in clinkstone lava and in columnar basalt (_American Journal of
+Science_, iv. 371).]
+
+[Footnote 151: _Geology and Extinct Volcanoes of Central France_, p. 60
+(second edition).]
+
+[Footnote 152: Mr. William Longman has informed me that some years ago
+he had ice given him in summer, when he was on a visit to the inspector
+of mines at Pont Gibaud, and he was told that it was formed in a
+neighbouring cavern during the hot season.]
+
+[Footnote 153: Original edition of 1830, i. 369.]
+
+[Footnote 154: See Professor Tyndall's _Glaciers of the Alps_, for an
+account of glacier-tables, sand-cones, &c. Anyone who has walked on a
+glacier will have noticed the little pits which any small black
+substance, whether a stone or a dead insect, sinks for itself in the
+ice.]
+
+[Footnote 155: Gilbert, _Annalen_, lxix. 143.]
+
+[Footnote 156: According to the latest accounts I have been able to
+obtain, a temperature of 29·75° F. had already been reached some years
+ago; the temperature, a few feet from the surface, being 14° below
+freezing. The soil here only thaws to a depth of 3 feet in the hottest
+summer. Sir R. Murchison wrote to Russia, in February last, for further
+information regarding this well.
+
+Since I wrote this, Sir Roderick Murchison has applied to the Secretary
+of the Imperial Academy of St. Petersburg for further information
+respecting the investigations at Jakutsk. The Secretary gives a
+reference to Middendorff's _Sibirische Reise_, Bd. iv. Th. i., 3te
+Lieferung, _Klima_, 1861. I have only been able to find the edition of
+1848-51; but in that edition, under the heading _Meteorologische
+Beobachtungen_, elaborate tables of the meteorological condition of
+Jakutsk are given (i. 28-49). Also, under the heading _Geothermische
+Beobachtungen_, very careful information respecting the frozen earth
+will be found (i. 157, &c., and 178, &c.). The point at which a
+temperature of 32° will be attained, is reckoned variously at from 600
+to 1,000 feet below the surface.]
+
+[Footnote 157: Reise im Russischen Reich_, i. 359; St. Petersburg,
+1772.]
+
+[Footnote 158: xxxviii. 231 (an. 1791), in an article called _Notice
+minéral, de la Daourie]
+
+[Footnote 159: L.c., p. 236.]
+
+[Footnote 160: _Beobachtungen_, &c., 194.]
+
+[Footnote 161: _Mundus Subterraneus_, i. 220 (i. 239, in the edition of
+1678).]
+
+[Footnote 162: 'Vidi ego in Monte Sorano cryptam veluti glacie
+incrustatam, ingentibus in fornice hinc inde stiriis dependentibus, e
+quibus vicini mentis accolæ pocula æstivo tempore conficiunt, aquæ
+vinoque quæ iis infunduntur refrigerandis aptissima, extremo rigore in
+summas bibentium delicias commutato.']
+
+[Footnote 163: Both here and at Schemnitz, Kircher made particular
+enquiries on a subject of which scientific men have altogether lost
+sight. At Schemnitz he asked the superintendent, _an comparcant
+Dæmunculi vel pygmæi in fodinis?--respondit affirmative, et narrat plura
+exempla_; and at Herrengrund, _utrum appareant Dæmunculi seu
+pygmæi?--respondit tales visos fuisse, et auditos pluries_. (Edition of
+1678, ii. 203, 205.)]
+
+[Footnote 164: Reich, 199.]
+
+[Footnote 165: i. 108 (Lyon, 1794).]
+
+[Footnote 166: _Ueber die unterirdischen Gasarten_, 101.]
+
+[Footnote 167: xvii. 386.]
+
+[Footnote 168: _Mém. sur les Basaltes de la Saxe_, p. 147.]
+
+[Footnote 169: _Mineralog. Reisen_, ii. 123.]
+
+[Footnote 170: Reich, 200, 201; Bischof, _Physical Researches on the
+Internal Heat of the Globe_, 46, 47.]
+
+[Footnote 171: Peters, _Geologische und mineralogische Studien aus dem
+sudöstlichen Ungarn_, in the _Sitzungsberichte der kais. Ak. in Wien_,
+B. xliii., 1te Abth., S. 435. See also pages 394 and 418 of the same
+volume (year 1861).]
+
+[Footnote 172: Such ladders are in ordinary use in the Jura.]
+
+[Footnote 173: _Turquie d'Europe,_ i. 132 (he quotes himself as i. 180,
+in the _Sitzungsb, der k. Ak. in Wien_, xlix. l. 324).]
+
+[Footnote 174: L.c., p, 521.]
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+HISTORY OF THEORIES RESPECTING THE CAUSES OF SUBTERRANEAN ICE.
+
+
+The only glacière which is in any sense historical, is that near
+Besançon; and a brief account of the different theories which have been
+advanced in explanation of the phenomena presented by it, will include
+almost all that has been written on ice-caves.
+
+The first mention I have found of this cave is contained in an old
+history of the Franche Comté of Burgundy, published at Dôle in 1592, to
+which reference has been already made. Gollut, the author, speaks more
+than once of a _glacière_ in his topographical descriptions, and in a
+short account of it he states that it lay near the village of _Leugné_,
+which I find marked in the Delphinal Atlas very near the site of the
+Chartreuse of Grâce-Dieu; so that there can be no doubt that his
+glacière was the same with that which now exists. His theory was, that
+the dense covering of trees and shrubs protected the soil and the
+surface-water from the rays of the sun, and so the cold which was stored
+up in the cave was enabled to withstand the attacks of the heat of
+summer.[175] In the case of many of the glacières, there can be no
+doubt that this idea of winter cold being so preserved, by natural
+means, as to resist the encroachments of the hotter seasons, is the true
+explanation of the phenomenon of underground ice.
+
+The next account of this glacière is found in the History of the Royal
+Academy of Sciences (French), under the year 1686,[176] but no theory is
+there suggested. The writer of the account states that in his time the
+floor of the cave was covered with ice, and that ice hung from the roof
+in festoons. In winter the cave was full of thick vapours, and a stream
+of water ran through it. The ice had for long been less abundant than in
+former times, in consequence of the felling of some trees which had
+stood near the entrance.
+
+The Academy received in the same year another letter on this subject,
+confirming the previous account, and adding some particulars. From this
+it would seem that people flocked from all sides to the glacière with
+waggons and mules, and conveyed the ice through the various parts of
+Burgundy, and to the camp of the Saone; not thereby diminishing the
+amount of ice, for one hot day produced as much as they could carry away
+in eight days. The ice seemed to be formed from a stream which ran
+through the cave and was frozen in the summer only. The writer of this
+second account saw vapours in the glacière (the editor of the _Histoire
+de l'Académie_ does not say at what season the visit to the cave took
+place), and was informed that this was an infallible sign of approaching
+rain; so much so, that the peasants were in the habit of determining the
+coming weather by the state of the grotto.
+
+In 1712, M. Billerez, Professor of Anatomy and Botany in the University
+of Besançon, communicated to the Academy[177] an account of a visit made
+by him to this cave in September 1711. He found 3 feet of ice on the
+floor of the cave, in a state of incipient thaw, and three pyramids,
+from 15 to 20 feet high and 5 or 6 feet in diameter, which had been
+already considerably reduced in size by thaw. A vapour was beginning to
+pass out from the cave, at the highest part of the arch of entrance; a
+phenomenon which, he was told, continued through the winter, and
+announced or accompanied the departure of the ice: nevertheless, the
+cold was so great that he could not remain in the glacière more than
+half an hour with any sort of comfort. The thermometer stood at 60°
+outside the cave, and fell to 10°[178] when placed inside; but
+thermometrical observations of that date were so vague as to be useless
+for present purposes. The ice appeared to be harder than the ordinary
+ice of rivers, less full of air-bubbles, and more difficult to melt.
+
+M. Billerez enunciated a new theory to account for the phenomena
+presented by the cave. He observed that the earth in the immediate
+neighbourhood, and especially above the roof of the grotto, was full of
+a nitrous or ammoniac salt, and he accordingly suggested that this salt
+was disturbed by the heat of summer and mingled itself with the water
+which penetrated by means of fissures to the grotto, and so the cave was
+affected in the same way as the smaller vessel in the ordinary
+preparation of artificial ice. He had heard that some rivers in China
+freeze in summer from the same cause.[179]
+
+In 1726, a further communication was made to the Academy by M. des
+Boz,[181] Royal Engineer, describing four visits which he had made to
+the grotto near Besançon at four different seasons of the year, viz., in
+May and November 1725, and in March and August 1726. In all cases he
+found the air in the cave colder than the external air,[182] and its
+variations in temperature corresponded with the external variations, the
+cold being greater in winter than in summer.
+
+M. des Boz ascribed the existence of ice in the cave to natural causes.
+The opening being towards the north-east, and corresponding with a gorge
+in the hills opposite, running in the same direction, none but cold
+winds could reach the mouth of the grotto. Moreover, the soil above was
+so thickly covered with trees and brushwood, that the rays of the sun
+could not reach the earth, much less the rock below. Credible persons
+asserted that since some of the trees had been felled, there had not
+been so much ice in the cave.
+
+In order to test the presence of salt, M. des Boz melted some of the
+ice, and evaporated the resulting water, but found no taste of salt in
+the matter which remained.[183] He denied the existence of the spring of
+water which previous accounts had mentioned, and believed that the water
+which formed the ice came solely from melted snow, and from the
+fissures of the rock.
+
+In 1727, the Duc de Lévi caused the whole of the ice to be removed from
+the cave, for the use of the army of the Saone, which he commanded. In
+1743 the ice had formed again, and the grotto was subjected to a very
+careful investigation by M. de Cossigny, chief engineer of Besançon, in
+the months of August and October.[183] The thermometer he used had been
+presented to him by the Academy, and was very probably constructed by M.
+de Réaumur himself, for de Cossigny's account was sent through M. de
+Réaumur to the Academy, but still the observations made with it cannot
+be considered very trustworthy. On the 8th of August, at 7.30 A.M., the
+temperature in the cave was 1/2° above the zero point of this
+thermometer, and at 11.30 A.M. it had risen to 1° above zero. On the
+17th of October, at 7 A.M., the thermometer stood at 1/2°, and at 4 P.M.
+it gave the same register.
+
+M. de Cossigny found that the entrance to the cave was rather more than
+150 feet above the Abbey of Grâce-Dieu, and about half a league distant
+by the ordinary path. A great part of his account is occupied by
+contradictions of previous accounts, especially in the matter of
+dimensions,[184] The people of Besançon had urged him to stay only a
+short time in the cave, because of the sulphureous and nitrous
+exhalations, but he detected no symptoms of anything of that kind. The
+most curious thing which he saw was the soft earth which lay, and still
+lies, at the bottom of the long slope of ice by which the descent is
+made; and he subjected this to various chemical tests and processes, but
+could not find that it contained anything different from ordinary
+earth.[185]
+
+When M. de Cossigny visited the cave, there were thirteen or fourteen
+columns of ice, from 6 to 8 feet high, and he was in consequence
+inclined to doubt the accuracy of the statement of M. Billerez, that in
+his time (1711) there were three columns only, from 15 to 20 feet high.
+But my own observation of the shape of the columns suggested that the
+largest of all was probably an amalgamation of several others; so that
+it is not unreasonable to suppose that after the Duc de Lévi removed the
+large columns seen by M. Billerez, a number of smaller columns were
+formed on the old site, and that these had not become large enough to
+amalgamate in 1743.
+
+Not satisfied with these visits of August and October, M. de Cossigny
+visited the cave in April 1745. He found the temperature at 5 A.M. to be
+exactly at the freezing point, and at noon it had risen 1°. From this he
+concluded that the stories of the greater cold in the cave during the
+summer, as compared with the winter, were false.
+
+In 1769, M. Prévost, of Geneva, visited the cave, as a young man; and in
+1789, he wrote an account of his visit in the _Journal de Genève_
+(March), which was afterwards inserted as an additional chapter in his
+book on Heat.[186] He believed that one or two hundred _toises_ was the
+utmost that could be allowed for the height of the hill in which the
+glacière lies,--a sufficiently vague approximation. He rejected the idea
+of salt as the cause of ice, and came to the conclusion that the cave
+was in fact nothing more than a good natural ice-house, being protected
+by dense trees, and a thick roof of rock, while its opening towards the
+north sheltered it from all warm winds. He accounted for the original
+presence of ice as follows:--In the winter, stalactites form at the
+edges of various fissures in the roof, and snow is drifted on to the
+floor of the cave by the north winds down the entrance-slope. When the
+warmer weather comes, the stalactites fall by their own weight, and,
+lying in the drifted and congealed snow, form nuclei round which the
+snow is still further congealed, and the water which results from the
+partial thaw of portions of the snow is also converted into ice. Thus, a
+larger collection of ice forms in winter than the heat of summer can
+destroy; and if none of it were removed, it might, in the course of
+years, almost fill the cave. At the time of his visit (August), M.
+Prévost found only one column, from 6 to 8 feet high.
+
+In 1783 (August 6), M. Girod-Chantrans visited the Glacière of Chaux
+(so called from a village near the glacière, on the opposite side from
+the Abbey of Grâce-Dieu), and his account of the visit appeared in the
+_Journal des Mines_[187] of Prairial, an iv., by which time the writer
+had become the Citizen Girod-Chantrans. He found a mass of
+stalactites of ice hanging from the roof, as if seeking to join
+themselves with corresponding stalagmites on the floor of the cave;
+the latter, five in number, being not more than 3 or 4 feet high, and
+standing on a thick sheet of ice. There was a sensible interval
+between this basement of ice and the rock and stones on which it
+reposed: it was, moreover, full of holes containing water, and the
+lower parts of the cave were unapproachable by reason of the large
+quantity of water which lay there. The thermometer stood at 35°·9 F.
+two feet above the floor, and at 78° F. in the shade outside. M.
+Girod-Chantrans determined, from all he saw and heard, that the summer
+freezing and winter thaw were fables, and he believed that the cave
+was only an instance of Nature's providing the same sort of receptacle
+for ice as men provide in artificial ice-houses. He was fortunate
+enough to obtain by chance the notes of a neighbouring physician, who
+had made careful observations and experiments in the glacière at
+various seasons of the year, and a _précis_ of these notes forms the
+most valuable part of his account.
+
+Dr. Oudot, the physician in question, found ten columns in January 1778,
+the largest of which was 5-1/2 feet high. The flooring of ice was
+nowhere more than 15 inches thick, and the parts of the rock which were
+not covered with ice were perfectly dry. The thermometer--M.
+Girod-Chantrans used Réaumur, so I suppose that he gives Dr. Oudot's
+observations in degrees of Réaumur, though some of the results of that
+supposition appear to be anomalous--gave 22° F. within the cave, and 21°
+F. outside.
+
+In April of the same year, the large column had increased in height to
+the extent of 13 inches; and the floor of ice on which it stood was
+1-1/2 inch thicker, and extended over a larger area than before; the
+thermometer stood at 36°.5 F. and 52° F. respectively in the same
+positions as in the former case. In July, the large column had lost 6
+inches of its height, and the thermometer gave 38°.75 F. and 74°.75 F.
+
+In October, the large column was only 3 feet high, and many of the
+others had disappeared, while their pedestal had become much thinner
+than it had been in the preceding months. There was also a considerable
+amount of mud in the cave, brought down apparently by the heavy rains of
+autumn. The thermometer gave 37°.6 F. and 63°.5 F.
+
+On the 8th of January, 1779, there were nine columns of very beautiful
+ice, and one of these, as before, was larger than the rest, being 5 feet
+high and 10 feet in circumference. The temperatures were 21° F. and
+16°.15 F. in the cave and in the open air respectively.
+
+Tradition related that, before the removal of the ice in 1727, one of
+the columns reached the roof, (Prévost calculated the limits of the
+height of the cave at 90 and 60 feet,) and this suggested to Dr. Oudot
+the idea of placing stakes of wood in the heads of the columns he found
+in the cave, in the hope that ice would thus collect in greater
+quantities under the fissures of the roof. Accordingly, he made holes in
+three of the columns, and established stakes 4, 5, and 10 feet high,
+returning on the 22nd of February, after an interval of six weeks, to
+observe the result of his experiment. He found the two shorter stakes
+completely masked with ice, forming columns a foot in diameter; and the
+longest stake, though not entirely concealed by the ice which had
+collected upon it, was crowned with a beautiful capital of perfectly
+transparent ice. The columns which had no stakes fixed upon them had
+also increased somewhat in size, but not nearly in the same proportion
+as those which were the subject of Dr. Oudot's experiment. The
+thermometer on this day gave 29°.5 F. and 59° F. as the temperatures.
+
+It may be remembered that I found one very beautiful column, far higher
+than any of those mentioned by Dr. Oudot, and higher than those which M.
+Billerez saw, formed upon the trunk and branches of a fir-tree. I have
+now no doubt that the peculiar shape of another--the largest of the
+three columns which were in the cave at the time of my visit--is due to
+the fact of its being a collection of several smaller columns, which
+have in course of time flowed into one as they increased separately in
+bulk, and that its height has been augmented by a device similar to that
+adopted by Dr. Oudot. The two magnificent capitals which this column
+possessed, as well as the numerous smaller capitals which sprang from
+its sides, will thus be completely accounted for.
+
+One more account may be mentioned, before I proceed to the theory which
+has found most favour in Switzerland of late years. M. Cadet published
+some _Conjectures_ on the formation of the ice in this cavern, in the
+_Annales de Chimie,_ Nivôse, an XI.[188] He saw the cave in the end of
+September 1791, and found very little ice--not a third of what there had
+been a month before, according to the account of his guide. The
+_limonadier_ of a public garden in Besançon informed him that the people
+of that town resorted to the glacière for ice when the supplies of the
+artificial ice-houses failed, and that they chose a hot day for this
+purpose, because on such days there was more ice in the cave. Ten
+_chars_ would have been sufficient to remove all the ice M. Cadet found,
+and the air inside the cave seemed to be not colder than the external
+air; but, nevertheless, M. Cadet believed the old story of the greater
+abundance of ice in summer than in winter, and he attempted to account
+for the phenomenon.
+
+The ground above and near the cave is covered with beech and chestnut
+trees, and thus is protected from the rays of the sun. The leaves of
+these trees give forth abundant moisture, which has been pumped up
+from their roots; and as this moisture passes from the liquid to the
+gaseous state, it absorbs a large quantity of caloric. Thus,
+throughout the summer, the atmosphere is incessantly refrigerated by
+the evaporation produced by the trees round the cave; whereas in
+winter no such process goes on, and the cave assumes a moderate
+temperature, such as is usually found in ordinary caves. Unfortunately
+for M. Cadet's theory, the facts are not in accordance with his
+imaginary data, nor yet with his conclusions. He adds, on the
+authority of one of his friends, that the intendant of the province,
+M. de Vanolles, wishing to preserve a larger amount of ice in the
+cave, built up the entrance with a wall 20 feet high, in which a small
+door was made, and the keys were left in the hands of the authorities
+of the neighbouring village, with orders that no ice should be
+removed. The effect of this was, that the ice diminished considerably,
+and they were obliged to pull down the wall again. M. Cadet saw the
+remains of the wall, and the story was confirmed by the Brothers of
+Grâce-Dieu. It would be very interesting to know at what season this
+wall was built, and when it was pulled down. If my ideas on the
+subject of ice-caves are correct, it would be absolutely fatal to shut
+out the heavy cold air of winter from the grotto.
+
+In 1822, M.A. Pictet, of Geneva, took up the question of natural
+glacières, and read a paper before the Helvetic Society of Natural
+Sciences,[189] describing his visits to the caves of the Brezon and the
+Valley of Reposoir. In order to explain the phenomena presented by those
+caves, M. Pictet adopted De Saussure's theory of the principle of
+_caves-froides_, rendering it somewhat more precise, and extending it
+to meet the case of ice-caves. It is well known that, in many parts of
+the world, cold currents are found to blow from the interstices of
+rocks; and these are utilised by neighbouring proprietors, who build
+sheds over the fissures, and so secure a cool place for keeping meat,
+&c. Examples of such currents are met with near Rome (in the _Monte
+Testaceo_), at Lugano, Lucerne (the caves of Hergiswyl), and in various
+other districts. It is found that the hotter the day, the stronger is
+the current of cold air; in winter the direction of the current is
+changed, and it blows into the rock instead of out from it.[190] De
+Saussure's theory, as developed by M. Pictet, was no doubt satisfactory,
+so far as it was used to account for the phenomenon of 'cold-caves,' but
+it seems to be insufficient as an explanation of the existence of large
+masses of subterranean ice; of which, by the way, De Saussure must have
+been entirely ignorant, for he makes no allusion to such ice, and the
+temperatures of the coldest of his caves were considerably above the
+freezing point.
+
+Pictet represents the case of a cave with cold currents of air to be
+much the same as that of a mine with a vertical shaft, ending in a
+horizontal gallery of which one extremity is in communication with the
+open air, at a point much lower, of course, than the upper extremity of
+the shaft. The cave corresponds to the horizontal gallery, and the
+various fissures in the rock take the place of the vertical shaft, and
+communicate freely with the external air. In summer, the columns of air
+contained in these fissures assume nearly the temperature of the rock in
+which they rest, that is to say, the mean temperature of the district,
+and therefore they are heavier than the corresponding external columns
+of air which terminate at the mouth of the cave; for the atmosphere in
+summer is very much above the mean temperature of the soil, or of the
+interior of the earth at moderate depths. The consequence is, that the
+heavy cool air descends from the fissures, and streams out into the
+cave, appearing as a cold current; and the hotter the day is--that is,
+the lighter the columns of external air--the more violent will be the
+disturbance of equilibrium, and therefore the more palpable the cold
+current. Naturally, in this last case, the air which enters by the upper
+orifices of the fissures is more heated, to begin with, than on cooler
+days; but external heat so very slightly affects the deeper parts of the
+fissures, that the columns of air thus introduced are speedily impressed
+with the mean temperature of the district. In winter, the external
+columns of air are as much heavier than the columns in the fissures as
+they are lighter in summer; and so cold currents of air blow from the
+cave into the fissures, though such currents are not of course colder
+than the external air. Thus the mean temperature of the cave is much
+lower than that of the rock in which it occurs; for the temperature of
+the currents varies from the mean temperature of the rock to the winter
+temperature of the external atmosphere.
+
+The descending columns of warmer air, in summer, must to some extent
+raise the temperature of the fissures above that which they would
+otherwise possess, that is, above the mean temperature of the place; but
+that may be considered to be counteracted by the corresponding lowering
+of the temperature of the fissures by the introduction of cold air from
+the cave in winter. By a similar reasoning, it will be seen that for
+some time after the spring change of direction in the currents takes
+place, the temperature of the cave will be less than would have been
+expected from a calculation founded on the true mean temperature of the
+rock through which the fissures pass. This, together with the fact of
+the porous nature of the rock in which most of the curious caves in the
+world occur, which allows a considerable amount of moisture to collect
+on all surfaces, and thereby induces a depression of temperature by
+evaporation, may be held to explain the presence of a greater amount of
+cold than might otherwise have been fairly reckoned upon in ice-caves.
+
+The idea of cold produced by evaporation Pictet took up warmly,
+believing that when promoted by rapid currents of air it would produce
+ice in the summer months; and he thus explained what he understood to be
+the phenomena of glacières. But it will have been seen, from the account
+of the caves I have visited, that the glacières are more or less in a
+state of thaw in the summer; and M. Thury's observations in the winter
+prove conclusively that they are then in a state of utter frost, so that
+the old belief with respect to the season at which the ice is formed may
+be supposed to have been exploded. The facts recorded by Mr. Scrope[191]
+would appear to depend upon the peculiar nature of rocks of volcanic
+formation; and I am inclined to think there is very little in common
+between such instances as he mentions and the large caves filled with
+ice which are to be found in the primary or secondary limestone.
+
+One of De Saussure's experiments, in the course of his investigation of
+the phenomena and causes of cold currents in caves, is worth recalling.
+He passed a current of air through a glass tube an inch in diameter,
+filled with moistened stones, and by that means succeeded in reducing
+the temperature of the current from 18° C. to 15° C.; and when the
+refrigerated current was directed against a wet-bulb thermometer, it
+fell to 14° C., thus showing a loss of 7°·2 F. of heat. No one can see
+much of limestone caverns without discovering that the surfaces over
+which any currents there may be are constrained to pass, present an
+abundance of moisture to refrigerate the currents; and it is not
+unreasonable to suppose that the large number of evaporating surfaces,
+which currents passing through heaps of débris--such as the basaltic
+stones described on page 261--come in contact with, are the main cause
+of the specially low temperature observed under such circumstances.
+
+Pictet's theory, however, did not convince all those into whose hands
+his paper fell, and M.J. Deluc wrote against it in the _Annales de
+Chimie et de Physique_ of the same year, 1822.[192] Deluc had not seen
+any glacière, but he was enabled to decide against the cold-current
+theory by a perusal of Pictet's own details, and of one of the accounts
+of the cave near Besançon. He objected, that in many cases the ice is
+found to melt in summer, instead of forming then; and also, that in the
+Glacière of S. Georges, which Pictet had described, there was no current
+whatever. Further, in all the cases of cold currents investigated or
+mentioned by De Saussure, the presence of summer ice was never even
+hinted at, and the lowest temperatures observed by him were considerably
+above the freezing point. I may add, from my own experience, that on the
+only occasions on which I found a decided current in a glacière--viz.,
+in the Glacière of Monthézy, and that of Chappet-sur-Villaz,--there was
+marked thaw in connection with the current. In the latter case, the
+channel from which the current came was filled with water; and in the
+former, water stood on the surface of the ice.
+
+The view which Deluc adopted was one which I have myself independently
+formed; and he would probably have written with more force if he had
+been acquainted with various small details relating to the position and
+surroundings of many of the caves. The heavy cold air of winter sinks
+down into the glacières, and the lighter warm air of summer cannot on
+ordinary principles of gravitation dislodge it, so that heat is very
+slowly spread in the caves; and even when some amount of heat does reach
+the ice, the latter melts but slowly, for ice absorbs 60° C. of heat in
+melting; and thus, when ice is once formed, it becomes a material
+guarantee for the permanence of cold in the cave.
+
+For this explanation to hold good, it is necessary that the level at
+which the ice is found should be below the level of the entrance to the
+cave; otherwise the mere weight of the cold air would cause it to leave
+its prison as soon as the spring warmth arrived. In every single case
+that has come under my observation, this condition has been emphatically
+fulfilled. It is necessary, also, that the cave should be protected from
+direct radiation, as the gravitation of cold air has nothing to do with
+resistance to that powerful means of introducing heat. This condition,
+also, is fulfilled by nature in all the glacières I have visited,
+excepting that of S. Georges; and there art has replaced the protection
+formerly afforded by the thick trees which grew over the hole of
+entrance. The effect of the second hole in the roof of this glacière is
+to destroy all the ice which is within range of the sun. A third and
+very necessary condition is, that the wind should not be allowed access
+to the cave; for if it were, it would infallibly bring in heated air, in
+spite of the specific weight of the cold air stored within. It will be
+understood from my descriptions of such glacières as that of the Grand
+Anu, of Monthézy, and the Lower Glacière of the Pré de S. Livres, how
+completely sheltered from all winds the entrances to those caves are.
+There can be no doubt, too, that the large surfaces which are available
+for evaporation have much to do with maintaining a somewhat lower
+temperature than the mean temperature of the place where the cave
+occurs. This had been noticed so long ago as Kircher's time; for among
+the answers which his questions received from the miners of Herrengrund,
+we find it stated that, so long as mines are dry, the deeper they are
+the hotter; but if they have water, they are less warm, however deep.
+From the mines of Schemnitz he was informed that, so long as the free
+passage of air was not hindered, the mines remained temperate; in other
+cases they were very warm. Another great advantage which some glacières
+possess must be borne in mind, namely, the collection of snow at the
+bottom of the pit in which the entrance lies. This snow absorbs, in the
+course of melting, all heat which strikes down by radiation or is driven
+down by accidental turns of the wind; and the snow-water thus forced
+into the cave will, at any rate, not seriously injure the ice. It is
+worthy of notice that the two caves which possess the greatest depth of
+ice, so far as I have been able to fathom it, are precisely those which
+have the greatest deposit of snow; and the ice in a third cave, that of
+Monthézy, which has likewise a large amount of snow in the entrance-pit,
+presents the appearance of very considerable depth. The Schafloch, it is
+true, which contains an immense bulk of ice, has no snow; but its
+elevation is great, as compared with that of some of the caves, and
+therefore the mean temperature of the rock in which it occurs is less
+unfavourable to the existence of ice.
+
+I believe that the true explanation of the curious phenomena presented
+by these caves in general, is to be found in Deluc's theory, fortified
+by such facts as those which I have now stated. The mean temperature of
+the rock at Besançon, where the elevation above the sea is
+comparatively so small, renders the temptation to suggest some chemical
+cause very strong.
+
+The question of ice in summer where thaw prevails in winter, may fairly
+be considered to have been eliminated from the discussion of such caves
+as I have seen, in spite of the persistent assertions of some of the
+peasantry. The observations, however, in caverns in volcanic formations,
+and in basaltic débris, are so circumstantial that it is impossible to
+reject them; and in such cases a theory similar to that enunciated by
+Mr. Scrope[193] seems to be the only one in any way satisfactory, though
+I have not heard of such marvellous results being produced elsewhere by
+evaporation. One observer, for instance, of the cavern near the village
+of Both, in the Eiffel, found a thickness of 3 feet of ice; and in that
+case it was melting in summer, instead of forming. In some cases it has
+been suggested that the length of time required for external heat or
+cold to penetrate through the earth and rock which lie above the caves
+is sufficient to account for the phenomenon of summer frost and winter
+thaw. Thus, it is said, the thickness of the superincumbent bed may be
+such that the heat of summer only gets through to the cave at Christmas,
+and then produces thaw, while in like manner the greatest cold will
+reach the cave in mid-summer. But there is a fatal objection to this
+idea in the fact that the invariable stratum--i.e., the stratum beyond
+which the annual changes of external temperature are not felt--is
+reached about 60 feet below the surface in temperate latitudes,[194]
+while at the tropics such changes are not felt more than a foot below
+the surface. Humboldt calculated that in the latitude of central France
+the whole annual variation in temperature at a depth of 30 feet would
+not amount to more than one degree.[195]
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 174: As Gollut's phraseology is peculiar, it may be as well
+to reproduce his account of the cave:--'Je ne veux pas omettre
+toutefois (puisque je suis en ces eaux) de mettre en memoire la
+commodité que nature hat doné à quelques delicats, puis qu'au fond
+d'un mõntagne de Leugné, la glace (_glasse_ in the index), se treuve
+en esté, pour le plaisir de ceux qui aim[~e]t a boire frais. Néanmoins
+dans ce t[~e]ps cela se perd, nõ pour autre raison (ainsi que íe
+pense) que pour ce que lon hat dépouillé le dessus de la mõtagne d'une
+époisse et aulte fustaie de bois, qui ne permettoit pas que les raions
+du soleil vinsent échauffer la terre et déseicher les distillations,
+que se couloi[~e]t iusques au plus bas et plus froid de la montagne:
+ou (par l'antipéristase) le froid s'epoississoit, et se reserroit,
+contre les chaleurs, entornantes et environnantes le long de l'esté,
+toute la circonference extérieure du mont.'--_Histoire_, &c.,  p. 87.]
+
+[Footnote 175: _Hist. de l'Acad._, t. ii., p. 2.]
+
+[Footnote 176: _Hist. de l'Acad._, an 1712, p. 20.]
+
+[Footnote 177: _C'est à dire_--M. Billerez explains--_à 10 degrés
+au-dessous du très-grand froid._ What the 60° may be worth, I cannot
+say.]
+
+[Footnote 178: Tournefort (_Voyage du Levant_, iii. 17) believed that
+the ammoniac salt, of which the earth was full in some districts near
+Erzeroum, had something to do with the persistence of snow on the ground
+there.]
+
+[Footnote 179: _Hist, de l'Acad.,_ an 1726, p. 16.]
+
+[Footnote 180: But see on this point the experience of M. Thury, in the
+Glacière of S. Georges (Appendix).]
+
+[Footnote 181: Sir Roderick Murchison's suggestion of the possible
+influence of salt in producing the phenomena of his ice-cave in Russia,
+did not, of course, proceed upon the supposition of salt actually
+mingling with water, but only of its increasing the evaporation of the
+air which came in contact with it.]
+
+[Footnote 182: _Mém. présentés à l'Académie par divers Sçavans_, i,
+195.]
+
+[Footnote 183: A long account was published in a history of Burgundy,
+printed at Dijon, in quarto, in 1737, which I have not been able to
+find. It was from the same source as the account in the Hist. of the
+Academy, in 1726.]
+
+[Footnote 184: I took this earth to be a collection of the particles
+carried down the slope of ice by the heavy rains of the month preceding
+my visit. M. de Cossigny speaks of the abundant rains of July, his visit
+being in August.]
+
+[Footnote 185: _Recherches sur la Chaleur_; Geneva and Paris, 1792.]
+
+[Footnote 186: P. 65. Now called _Annales des Mines_.]
+
+[Footnote 187: T. xlv. p. 160.]
+
+[Footnote 188: _Bibliothèque Universelle de Genève_, Première Série, t.
+xx.]
+
+[Footnote 189: See De Saussure's account of his numerous observations of
+such caves in the _Voyage dans les Alpes_, sections 1404-1415.]
+
+[Footnote 190: P. 271.]
+
+[Footnote 191: P. 271.]
+
+[Footnote 192: xxi. 113.]
+
+[Footnote 193: P. 271.]
+
+[Footnote 194: Daubuisson estimated the depth in question at from 46 to
+61 feet, while Kupffer put it at 77 feet.]
+
+[Footnote 195: De Saussure found a variation of 2°·25 F. at a depth of
+29·5 feet; but this was in a well, where the influence of the atmosphere
+was allowed to have effect. Naturally, the fissures which there may be
+in the rock surrounding a cave will increase the annual variation of
+temperature, by affording means of easier penetration to the heat and
+cold.
+
+Sir K. Murchison's cavern in Russia would seem to be entirely _sui
+generis_.]
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+ON THE PRISMATIC STRUCTURE OF THE ICE IN GLACIÈRES.
+
+
+It was natural to suppose that the prismatic structure which I found so
+very general in the glacières was the result of some cause or causes
+coming into operation after the first formation of the ice. On this
+point M. Thury's visit to the Glacière of S. Georges in the spring of
+1852 affords valuable information, for at that time the coating of ice
+on the wall, evidently newly formed, did not present the _structure
+aréolaire_ which he had observed in his summer visit to the cave. He
+suggests that, since ice is less coherent at a temperature of 32°
+F.--which is approximately the temperature of the ice-caves during
+several months of the year--than when exposed to a greater degree of
+cold, its molecules will then become free to assume a fresh system of
+arrangement.[196] On the other hand, Professor Faraday has found that
+ice formed under a temperature some degrees below the ordinary freezing
+point has a well-marked crystalline structure.[197] M. Thury suggests
+also, as a possibility, what I have found to be the case, by frequent
+observations, that the prismatic ice has greater power of resisting heat
+than ordinary ice; and on this supposition he accounts for the fact of
+hollow stalactites being found in the Cavern of S. Georges.[198] At the
+commencement of the hot season, the atmospheric temperature of the
+glacières rises gradually; and when it has almost reached 32° F., the
+prismatic change takes place in the ice, extending to a limited depth
+below the surface. The central parts of the stalactites retain their
+ordinary structure, and are after a time exposed to a general
+temperature rather above than below the freezing point; and thus they
+come to melt, the water escaping either by accidental fissures between
+some of the prisms, or by the extremity of the stalactite, or by some
+part of the surface which has chanced to escape the prismatic
+arrangement, and has itself melted under increased temperature.[199]
+
+M. Héricart de Thury describes the peculiar structure of the ice which
+he found in the Glacière of the Foire de Fondeurle.[200] He found that
+the crystallised portions were very distinctly marked, displaying for
+the most part a six-sided arrangement; and in the interior of a hollow
+stalactite he found numerous needles of ice perfectly crystallised, the
+crystals being some triangular and some six-sided. He was unable to
+detect any perfect pyramid.[201] I have already quoted Olafsen's
+observations on the polygonal lining which he saw on the surface of the
+ice in the Surtshellir. The French Encyclopædia [202] relates that M.
+Hassenfratz saw ice served up at table at Chambéry which broke into
+hexagonal prisms; and when he was shown the ice-houses where it was
+stored, he found considerable blocks of ice containing hexahedral prisms
+terminated by corresponding pyramids.
+
+In vol. xv. (New Series) of the American Journal of Science,[203] an
+extract is given from a letter describing the 'Ice Spring' in the Rocky
+Mountains, which the mountaineers consider to be one of the curiosities
+of the great trail from the States to Oregon and California. It is
+situated in a low marshy 'swale' to the right of the Sweetwater river,
+and about forty miles from the South Pass. The ground is filled with
+springs; and about 18 inches below the turf lies a smooth and horizontal
+sheet of ice, which remains the year round, protected by the soil and
+grass above it. On July 12th, 1849, it was from 2 to 4 inches thick; but
+one of the guides stated that he had seen it a foot deep. It was
+perfectly clear, and disposed in hexagonal prisms, separating readily at
+the natural joints. The ice had a slightly saline taste,[204] the ground
+above it being impregnated with salt, and the water near tasting of
+sulphur. The upper surface of the stratum of ice was perfectly smooth.
+
+In Poggendorff's _Annalen_ (1841, Erganzsband, 517-19,--Boué, an old
+offender in that way, says 1842) there is an account of ice being
+found in the Westerwald, near the village of Frickhofen at the foot of
+the _Dornburg_, among basaltic débris about 500 feet above the
+sea.[205] Commencing at a depth of 2 feet below the surface, the ice
+reaches from 20 to 22 feet farther down, where the loose stones give
+place to dry sand. The ice is in thin layers on the stones, and is
+deposited in the form of clear and regular hexagonal crystals. The
+lateral extent through which this phenomenon obtains is from 40 to 50
+feet each way, and is greater in winter than in summer. As in other
+cases that have been noticed in basaltic débris, the snow which falls
+upon the surface here is speedily melted. The _Allgemeine Zeitung_
+(1840, No. 309), from which the account in Poggendorff is taken,
+suggested that the melted snow-water which would thus run down among
+the interstices would readily freeze below the surface, while the
+heavy cold air of winter would be stored up at the lower levels, and
+the poor conducting powers of basaltic rock[206] would favour its
+permanence through the summer. The temperature of the cold current
+which was perceptible in the parts of the mass of débris where the ice
+existed was 1° R. (34°·25 F.). Nothing but a few lichens grow on the
+surface of the débris.
+
+These are, I think, all the references I have met with to the prismatic
+structure of subterranean ice. But there is an interesting account in
+Poggendorff 's _Annalen_,[207] by a private teacher in Jena, of the
+crystalline appearance of ice under slow thaw near that town. In the
+winter of 1840, the Saale was frozen, and the ice remained unbroken till
+the middle of January, when the thermometer rose suddenly, and the
+river in consequence overflowed the lower grounds, and carried large
+masses of ice on to the fields, where it was left when the water
+subsided. On the 20th of January the thermometer fell again, and
+remained below the freezing point till the 12th of February: some of the
+ice did not disappear till the following month.
+
+When the ice had lain a short time, cracks appeared on the surface
+exposed to the sun, and spread like a network from the edges towards the
+centre of the surface. At first there was no regularity in the
+connection of these lines, and the several meshes were of very different
+sizes. After a time, the larger meshes split up into smaller, and the
+system of network was found to penetrate below the surface, the cracks
+deepening into furrows, which descended perpendicularly from the
+surface, and divided the ice into long thin rhomboidal pillars. The
+surface-end of some of these pillars was strongly marked with right
+lines parallel to one of the sides of the mesh, and it was found that
+there was a tendency in the ice to split down planes through these lines
+and parallel to the corresponding side-plane. Parallel to the original
+surface of the mass of ice, the pillars broke off evenly. The
+side-planes had a rounded, wrinkled appearance; and their mutual
+inclinations--as far as could be determined--were from 105° to 115°, and
+from 66° to 75°. When these ice-pillars were examined by means of
+polarised light, they were found to possess a feeble double-refracting
+power.
+
+The writer of the article in Poggendorff suggests a question which he
+was not sure how to answer:--Is this appearance in correspondence with
+the original formation of the ice, or does it only appear under slow
+thaw?
+
+It is worthy of remark, that from the 1st to the 11th of February the
+thermometer was never higher than 22°·8 F., and during that time fell as
+low as 21° below zero, i.e. 43° below the freezing point.
+
+Professor Tyndall has informed me that in the winters of 1849, 1850,
+1851, he found the banks of a river in Germany loaded with massive
+layers of drift-ice, in a state of thaw, and was struck by the fact that
+every layer displayed the prismatic structure described above, the axes
+of the prisms being at right angles to the surfaces of freezing. It may
+be, he adds, that this structure is in the first place determined by the
+act of freezing, but it does not develop itself until the ice thaws.
+
+M. Hassenfratz observed an appearance in ice on the Danube at
+Vienna[208] corresponding to that described at Jena. He gives no
+information as to the state of the weather or the temperature at the
+time, nor any of the circumstances under which the ice came under his
+notice. One of the masses of ice which he describes was crystallised in
+prisms of various numbers of sides: of these prisms the greater part
+were hexahedral and irregular. Another mass was composed of prisms in
+the form of truncated pyramids; and in another he found quadrilateral
+and octahedral prisms, the former splitting parallel to the faces, and
+also truncated pyramids with five and six sides. He adds, that he had
+frequently seen in the upper valleys tufts of ice growing, as it were,
+out of the ground, and striated externally, but had never succeeded in
+discovering any internal organisation, until one evening in a time of
+thaw, when he found by means of a microscope that the striated tufts of
+ice had assumed the same structure on a small scale as that which he had
+observed on the Danube.
+
+A Frenchman who was present in the room in which the Chemical Section of
+the British Association met at Bath, and heard a paper which I read
+there on this prismatic structure, suggested that it was probably
+something akin to the rhomboidal form assumed by dried mud; and I have
+since been struck by the great resemblance to it, as far as the surface
+goes, which the pits of mud left by the coprolite-workers near Cambridge
+offer, of course on a very large scale. This led me to suppose that the
+intense dryness which would naturally be the result of the action of
+some weeks or months of great cold upon subterranean ice might be one of
+the causes of its assuming this form, and the observations at Jena would
+rather confirm than contradict this view: competent authorities,
+however, seem inclined to believe that warmth, and not cold, is the
+producing cause.[209]
+
+Professor Tyndall found, in the course of his experiments on the discs
+and flowers produced in the interior of a mass of ice by sending a warm
+ray through the mass, that the pieces of ice were in some cases
+traversed by hazy surfaces of discontinuity, which divided the
+apparently continuous mass into irregular prismatic segments. The
+intersections of the bounding surfaces of these segments with the
+surface of the slab of ice formed a very irregular network of
+lines.[210] I am inclined, however, to think that the irregularity in
+these cases proved to be so much greater than that observed in the
+glacières, that this interior prismatic subdivision must be referred to
+some different cause.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 196: The continued extrication of latent heat by ice, as it is
+cooled a few degrees below 32° F., appears to indicate a molecular
+change subsequent to the first freezing.--_Phil. Trans._, as quoted in
+the next note.]
+
+[Footnote 197: See the paper 'On Liquid Diffusion as applied to
+Analysis,' by the Master of the Mint (_Phil. Trans._ 1861, p. 222).]
+
+[Footnote 198: Compare the description of one of the hollow stalagmites I
+explored in the Schafloch, p. 145.]
+
+[Footnote 199: Professor Tyndall has pointed out that, owing to the want
+of perfect homogeneity, some parts of a block of ice exposed to a
+temperature of 32° F. will melt, while others remain solid _(Phil.
+Trans_. 1858, p. 214). He also arrived at the conclusion (p. 219) that
+heat could be conducted through the substance of a mass, and melt
+portions of the interior, without visible prejudice to the solidity of
+the other parts of the mass.]
+
+[Footnote 200: _Journal des Mines_, xxxiii. 157. See also an English
+translation of his account in the second volume of the _Edinburgh
+Journal of Science_.]
+
+[Footnote 201: It is to be hoped that the accuracy of his scientific
+descriptions exceeds that of his topographical information; for he
+states that the glacière is two leagues from Valence, whereas it cost me
+six hours' drive on a level road, and five and a half hours' walking and
+climbing, to reach it from that town.]
+
+[Footnote 202: Branch _Physique_, article _Glace_]
+
+[Footnote 203: P. 146 (an. 1853).]
+
+[Footnote 204: Dr. Lister experimented on sea-water in December 1684
+(_Ph. Trans_, xiv. 836), and found that though it took two nights to
+freeze, it was much harder when once frozen than common ice, lasting for
+three-quarters of an hour under a heat which melted 100 times its bulk
+of common ice at once. It was marked with oblong squares, and had a salt
+taste. Ice formed from water with an admixture of sulphuric acid is said
+to assume a crystalline appearance.]
+
+[Footnote 205: See also a pamphlet entitled _Das unterirdische Eisfeld
+bei der Dornburg am Südlichen Fusse des Westerwaldes_, by Thomä of
+Wiesbaden (32 pages, with a map of the district), published in 1841.]
+
+[Footnote 206: But see page 262.]
+
+[Footnote 207: lv. (an 1842), 472.]
+
+[Footnote 208: _Journal de Physique_, xxvi. (an 1785), 34.]
+
+[Footnote 209: In looking through some early volumes of the
+_Philosophical Transactions_, I found an 'Extract of a letter written by
+Mr. Muraltus of Zurich (September 1668), concerning the Icy and
+Chrystallin Mountains of Helvetia, called the Gletscher, English'd out
+of Latin' (_Phil. Trans._ iv. 982), which at first looked something like
+an assertion of the prismatic structure of ice on a large scale. The
+English version is as follows:--'The snow melted by the heat of the
+summer, other snow being faln within a little while after, and hardened
+into ice, which by little and little in a long tract of time depurating
+itself turns into a stone, not yielding in hardness and clearness to
+chrystall. Such stones closely joyned and compacted together compose a
+whole mountain, and that a very firm one; though in summer-time the
+country-people have observed it to burst asunder with great cracking,
+thunder-like.']
+
+[Footnote 210: See the woodcut illustrating Professor Tyndall's remarks
+in the 148th volume of the _Philosophical Transactions_ (1858, p. 214).]
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+ON THE MEAN TEMPERATURE OF THE REGIONS IN WHICH THE GLACIÈRES OCCUR.
+
+
+Many interesting experiments have for long been carried on with a view
+to determine the mean temperature at various depths below the surface of
+the earth. The construction of Artesian wells has afforded useful
+opportunities for increasing the amount of our knowledge on this
+subject; and the well at Pregny, near Geneva,[211] and the Monk Wearmouth
+coal-mines, as observed by Professor Phillips while a fresh shaft was
+being sunk,[212] have supplied most valuable facts. Without entering
+into any detail, which would be an unnecessary trouble, it may be stated
+generally, that, under ordinary circumstances, 1° F. of temperature is
+gained for every 50 or 60 feet of vertical descent into the interior of
+the earth. I have only met with one account of an experiment made in a
+horizontal direction, and it is curious that the law of the increase of
+temperature then observed seemed to be very much the same as that
+determined by the mean of the vertical observations. Boussingault[213]
+found several horizontal adits in a precipitous face of porphyritic
+syenite among the mountains of Marmato. In one of these adits--a gallery
+called Cruzada, at an elevation of 1,460 mètres--he found an increase
+of 1° C. of mean temperature for every 33 mètres of horizontal
+penetration, or, approximately, 1° F. for 60 feet.[214]
+
+Again, observations have been made, in various latitudes, of the
+decrease of temperature consequent upon gradual rising from the general
+surface of the earth; as, for instance, in the ascent of mountains.
+Speaking without any very great precision, but with sufficient accuracy
+for ordinary purposes, 1° F. is lost with every 300 feet of ascent.[215]
+It is evident that this decrease will be less rapid where the slope of
+ascent is gradual, from such considerations as the angle at which the
+sun's rays strike the slope, and the larger amount of surface which is
+in contact with a stratum of atmosphere of any given thickness.
+
+With these data, it is easy to arrive at some idea of the probable mean
+temperature of the rock containing several of the glacières I have
+described. The elevation of some of them has not been determined with
+sufficient accuracy to make the results of any calculation trustworthy;
+but four cases may be taken where the elevation is known--namely, the
+Glacières of S. Georges, S. Livres, Monthézy, and the Schafloch. If we
+take as a starting point the mean temperature of the town of Geneva,
+which has been determined at 49°·55 F., the elevation of that town being
+nearly 1,200 feet, we obtain the following approximate results for the
+mean temperature of the surface at the points in question:--
+
+
+  S. Georges        ....  40°·22 Fahr.
+  S. Livres (Lower) ....  38°·55"
+  Schafloch         ....  33°·88"
+  Monthézy          ....  41°·55"
+
+
+The law of decrease of temperature enunciated by M. Thury gives a higher
+mean temperature for the surface of the earth in these places, as in the
+following table:--
+
+
+  S. Georges        ....  41°·8 Fahr.
+  S. Livres         ....  40°·1"
+  Schafloch         ....  35°·6"
+  Monthézy          ....  42°·5"
+
+
+If any certain information could be obtained of the elevation of the
+Abbey of Grâce-Dieu, I am sure that a result more surprising than that
+in the case of the Glacière of Monthézy would appear. The elevation of
+the floor of the church in the citadel of Besançon is 367·7 mètres, and
+the plateau on the north side of the town of Baume-les-Dames is 531·9
+mètres. I am inclined to think, from the look of the country, that the
+latter possesses much the same elevation as the valley in which the
+Abbey lies; and in that case we should have comparatively a very high
+mean temperature for the surface in the neighbourhood where the glacière
+occurs.
+
+But if these are the mean temperatures of the surface, the natural
+temperatures of the caves themselves should be still higher, on account
+of the allowance to be made for increase of temperature with descent
+into the interior of the earth. This element will very materially affect
+our calculations in such a case as the lower part of the ice in the
+Glacière of the Pré de S. Livres, and the strange suggestive beginning
+of a new ice-cave 190 feet below the surface, on the Montagne de l'Eau,
+near Annecy. In any open pit or cave, the ordinary atmospheric
+influences find such easy access, that the temperature cannot be
+expected to follow the law observed when perforations of small bore are
+made in the earth, as in the case of the preliminary boring before
+commencing to dig a well;[216] but the two glacières mentioned above are
+so completely protected in their lowest parts, that they may be treated
+as if they were isolated from external influence of all ordinary kinds;
+and it may fairly be said that the mean temperature there ought to be
+considerably higher than at the surface.
+
+It is not very likely that the results of the above calculations are
+strictly in accordance with what a careful series of observations on the
+spot might show. The distance between Geneva and the Glacières of S.
+Georges and S. Livres is sufficiently small to make it probable that the
+reality is not very far different from the calculated temperature; but
+the other two caves are comparatively so far off, that the temperature
+and elevation of Geneva are not very safe data to build upon.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 211: Bischof, _Physical Researches_, 189.]
+
+[Footnote 212: _Philosophical Magazine_, v. 446 (1834).]
+
+[Footnote 213: _Annules de Chimie et de Physique_, liii. 2-10. See also
+Bischof, 136.]
+
+[Footnote 214: The English edition of Bischof affords here a proof of
+the danger of frequent changes from one scale to another. Bischof in the
+first instance rendered Boussingault into degrees Réaumur, and this was
+in turn reduced to degrees Fahrenheit; the result being that the
+authorised English edition of his book gives 2°·25 F. for 127·5 feet,
+which does not come within 10 feet of Boussingault's statement.]
+
+[Footnote 215: M. Thury calculates a decrease of 1° C. for every 174
+mètres between Geneva and S. Bernard, which is less than the decrease
+given in the text. He arrives at this conclusion by correcting the mean
+temperature of Geneva from 8°·9 C., the observed mean of eighteen years,
+to 9°·9 C., in consequence of supposed local causes, which unduly
+depress the temperature of Geneva. With the mean 8°·9 C. a result nearly
+in accordance with that of the text is obtained.]
+
+[Footnote 216: Professor Phillips found, in the course of his
+investigations in the Monk Wearmouth mines, some hundreds of yards below
+the sea, that when a new face of rock was exposed, its temperature was
+considerably higher than that of the gallery or shaft in which it lay.
+In some cases the difference amounted to 9 and 10 degrees. The rock soon
+cooled down to an agreement with the surrounding temperature.]
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX.
+
+
+M. Thury's observations during his winter visit to the Glacière of S.
+Georges are so curious and valuable, that I give the principal results
+of them here.
+
+It will be remembered that this glacière consists of a roomy cave, 110
+feet long and 60 feet high, with two orifices in the higher part of the
+roof, one of which is kept covered with the trunks of trees to shut out
+the direct radiation of the sun. A little thought suggested to M. Thury
+that the cold in the cave in mid-winter would most probably be greater
+than the external cold of the day, and less than that of the night; so
+that there should be a time in the later evening when a column of colder
+and heavier air would begin, to descend through the hole in the roof. To
+test the correctness of this supposition, he took up his abode in the
+cavern for the evening of the 10th January, 1858, with a lighted candle.
+The flame burned steadily for some time; but at 7.16 P.M. it began to
+flicker, and soon inclined downwards through an angle of about 45°; and
+when M. Thury placed himself under the principal opening, the flame was
+forced into an almost horizontal position. At 8 P.M. the current of air
+had all but disappeared. This violent and temporary disturbance of
+equilibrium was a matter of much surprise to M. Thury; for he had
+naturally expected a quiet current downwards, continuing through the
+greater part of the night.
+
+At 7.16 P.M. the external temperature was 23·9° F., and the temperature
+of the atmosphere in the cave at the same time was 30°·88 F.;[217] so
+that there is no wonder the current of air should be strong. It is very
+difficult to say, however, why it did not commence much earlier,
+considering that the external air must have been heavier than that in
+the cave long before 7 o'clock. M. Thury refers to the mirage as a
+somewhat similar instance, that phenomenon being explained by the
+supposition that atmospheric layers of different temperatures lie one
+above another in clearly-defined strata. He suggests, also, that as the
+heavier air tends to pass down into the cave, the less cold air already
+in the cave tends to pass out; and the narrow entrance confining the
+struggle between the opposing tendencies to a very small area, the
+weaker initial current is able for a time to hold its own against the
+intruder. On this supposition, it is easy to see that when the rupture
+does occur it will be violent.
+
+The next day, M. Thury arrived at the glacière at 9.50 A.M. He had
+determined, in the summer, that the temperature of the cave was
+invariable, at any rate through the 3-1/2 hours of his visit (from 7.30
+to 11 A.M.); but his winter experience was very different. The following
+are the results of his observations.
+
+In the cave:--
+
+January 9, at 7.16 P.M.[218]...  30°·884 Fahr.
+   "        " 7.20 "        ...  29°·75   "
+   "        " 7.27 "        ...  27°·5    "
+   "        " 7.50 "        ...  26°·834  "
+
+January 10, at 10.12 A.M.   ...  23°·684  "
+   "        "  10.0 "       ...  23°·9    "
+   "        "  11.20 "      ...  24°·022  "
+   "        "  12.14 P.M.   ...  24°·134  "
+   "        "   1.30 "      ...  24°·35   "
+   "        "   2.30 "      ...  24°·584  "
+   "        "   3.14 "      ...  24°·8    "
+   "        "   4.0  "      ...  25°·142  "
+
+Supposing the weather to have been much the same on the 9th and 10th of
+January, as M. Thury's account seems to say, there is something very
+strange in the great difference between the temperatures registered at 4
+P.M. on the one day, and at 7.16 P.M. on the other.
+
+The external temperatures at the mouth of the cave were as follows:--
+
+January 10, at 10.53 A.M. 25°·934 Fahr.
+    "       "  11.14  "   26°·384   "
+    "       "  11.45  "   28°·04    "
+    "       "  12.32 P.M. 27°·944   "
+    "       "   1.12  "   30°·644   "
+    "       "   3.3   "   26°·834   "
+    "       "   3.56  "   25°·7     "
+    "       "   4.26  "   25°·25    "
+
+The minimum temperature of the external air during the night of January
+10-11 was 18°·392 F., and that of the glacière 19°·76 F.[219] During the
+preceding night, the minimum in the cave was 22°·442 F., which may throw
+some light upon the difference between the temperatures at 7.16 P.M. on
+the 9th, and at 4 P.M. on the 10th.
+
+M. Thury bored a hole, of about 10 inches in depth, in the flooring of
+ice, and placed a thermometer in it, at 12.25 P.M., closing it up with
+cotton. At 2.55 P.M., and at 4.7. P.M., the thermometer marked the same
+temperature, namely, 26°·24 F.
+
+M. Thury's views on glacières in general, based upon the details of the
+three which he has visited, are much the same as those which I have
+expressed. He has, however, more belief than I in 'cold currents.'
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 217: This was given by a thermometer only placed in the cave
+at 7 P.M., and by construction not very sensible.]
+
+[Footnote 218: The moment when the disturbance of the atmosphere
+commenced.]
+
+[Footnote 219: M. Thury gives--4°·62 C. as the minimum in the glacière
+during the night in question; but on the next page he gives--6°·8 C.
+(=19°·76 F.). It is evident, from a comparison with other details of his
+observations, that the latter is the correct account.]
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
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+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland
+by George Forrest Browne
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14012 ***